New Books

Two new books recently arrived in the mail. I look forward to reading Matthew Hedstrom's The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century and Bernadette Barton's Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays.

I have been hearing a lot about Hedstrom's award-winning book, and the latter I purchased after seeing it in the most recent catalog from NYU Press. I am looking for titles to incorporate in courses that I teach at UTC, including "Religion in Southern Culture" and "Contemporary Religious Issues." I am hopeful that Barton's book could be a helpful text for either of those courses.

          

Peter Gottschalk on American Heretics

I recently finished reading Peter Gottschalk's new book, American Heretics: Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the History of Religious Intolerance.

The author's agenda is fairly straightforward: he wants his audience to understand the history of religious intolerance in America that has existed in various forms since the colonial period. In seven chapters, Gottschalk offers distinct examples of religious persecution in America towards Quakers, Irish Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Muslims.

The overall narrative of Gottschalk's book is easy to follow and convincing. It would be difficult to read more than a few chapters without getting upset at the way that many Americans have been treated since the founding of the first colonies. While most of the material in American Heretics is common knowledge for the historian, the way that Gottschalk packages the information into succinct chapters on diversified religious groups provides a helpful and concise format for teaching about intolerance in America. The information on the Branch Davidians in the sixth chapter, in which Gottschalk ardently defends this Seventh-Day Adventist group as a misunderstood religious sect that was assaulted without just cause, was particularly interesting to me. It has been some time since I have thought about this episode in American history.

As much as I enjoyed the book, I wondered if Gottschalk used American Heretics as a platform to preach. I found it curious that he was quick to chastise many Americans for unfair stereotypes of Muslims, for instance, citing the remarks of extreme political pundits and conservative radicals as evidence. Gottschalk's argument that Americans have too often judged religious groups based on unfounded depictions is a point well taken, but I would want to ask him if the ridiculous political statements of Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and radicals such as Terry Jones, who have made inappropriate comments about Islam, reflect all conservative Americans? Or, more generally, should all white Protestant Americans be seen as political conservatives opposed to Obama, and eager to picket the establishment of a mosque at Ground Zero? Gottschalk rightly scolds our forefathers for persecuting "other" religious groups that do not meet what many Americans have deemed to practice acceptable forms of faith. But we should also be careful not to lambaste Americans with traditional beliefs for crimes they haven't committed or views they haven't expressed.

At the very least, Gottschalk's American Heretics should serve as a helpful starting point for students as they reflect on religious intolerance in America's history.

Better Late than Never

After completing the lecture notes for my spring 2014 courses, I wanted to do some reading in my field before diving back into my current research project.

I recently finished Molly Worthen's Apostles of Reason, and have now started Elesha Coffman's The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline. So far, so good. In the first one hundred pages, I learned a lot about the Disciples of Christ/Church of Christ as well as the organizational and marketing capabilities of Charles Clayton Morrison, the man most responsible for the success of The Christian Century. I hope to finish the rest of the book over the weekend.

I have recently designated a bookshelf in my home for the "fun reading" titles that I hope to tackle in my spare time, mostly in the evenings. Among the books on this bookshelf that I plan on reading in the near future include John D'Elia's A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of of Evangelical Scholarship in America (on my shelf for over three years now), Sarah Rivett's The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (winner of the Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History), Kate Bowler's Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, Peter Gottschalk's American Heretics: Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the History of Religious Intolerance, and Erskine Clarke's By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey.

         
I also recently ordered Hans Boersma's Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of Sacramental Tapestry, Tanya Luhrman's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, and John Turner's Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America. I realize that I am somewhat behind the times in reading these titles, but I figure better late than never.