On the evening of 6th of January 2021, I decided to turn on CSPAN to listen to the certification of Electoral College votes while I reviewed my notes for the following morning’s lecture in our long-running Violence and Nationalism module, where I was due to begin a six week series of lectures on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Four hours later, I realised that I would not be giving those lectures. This syllabus is what I did instead, and I share it in case it helps anyone else also trying to teach through the current moment.

 

Week 1 (7 January 2021)
Breaking News: Religion and Political Violence in the USA

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we look at the use of religious imagery and language in the 6th January coup, and place this imagery in the wider context of American civil religion.

Helpful sources from this week’s lecture:

Lynch, G. (2012) The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach. Oxford University Press.

Bellah, R. (2005) “Civil Religion in America” Daedalus 134.4: 40-55.

Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study

 

Week 2

BREAKING NEWS: Religion and Law in the USA

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we focus on how the legal understanding of “religion” as a private concern developed alongside American civil religion. We’ll focus especially on the role that Judaism, in the Tri-Faith coalition, played in legitimating the “non-religious” nature of civil religion.

Key reading: Schultz, K. (2011) Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews held postwar America to its Protestant promise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Primary sources (mostly court cases):

Everson v. Board of Education (1947) 

McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) 

Zorach v. Clauson (1952) 

Engel v. Vitale (1962) 

Abington v. Schemp (1963)

 

Week 3

Breaking News: Religion and Race in the USA (Part 1: Immigration)

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we focus on how the history of immigration debate in the USA led to a racialization of religion which paved the way for the election of Donald Trump.

Key reading:

Joshi, K. (2020) White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America. New York: NYU Press. Chapter 3, “Immigration, Citizenship, and White Christian Supremacy”

Gotanda, N. (2011) “The Racialization of Islam in American Law” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 637.1 pp. 184-195.

Gualtieri, S. (2009) Between Arab and White: race and ethnicity in the early Syrian American diaspora. University of California Press. Chapter 2, “Claiming Whiteness”.

Naylor, E. (2019) “The Roots of Racialized Religion”, Islam & Modernity.

Primary sources:

John Jay, “Federalist No. 2” 

1790 Naturalization Act

Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) 

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923)

Additional resources: 

Podcast: Religious Nationalism (Keeping it 101) 

 

Week 4

Breaking News: Religion and Race in the USA (Part 2: Black and White)

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we focus on the intersections between race, religion, and gender in the civil rights era, which was instrumental in the formation of today’s “Religious Right” and what Megan Goodwin calls “contraceptive nationalism”.

Primary Sources: 

Clergymen’s Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr./Letter from a Birmingham Jail 

Heschel, A. J. (1963) “Religion and Race”

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

Roe v. Wade (1973)

Books and journal articles related to this lecture (links, where available, to Chester University library): 

Baker, K. J. (2011) The Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930. University Press of Kansas.

Goodwin, M. (2020) Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Brodkin, K. (1998) How Jews Became White Folk and What that Says about Race in America. Rutgers University Press. 

Eisenstadt, L. (2018) “Enemy and Ally: Religion in Loving v. Virginia and Beyond”. Fordham Law Review 86.6: 2659-2669. 

Dowland, S. (2015) Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Other reading (news, opinion pieces, public reports):

Chrissy Stroop, “WHERE WERE THEY RADICALIZED? NO ANSWER IS COMPLETE WITHOUT ADDRESSING EVANGELICAL CHURCHES AND SCHOOLING”

George Hawley, “Survey Data Indicates a Complicated Relationship between Religion and Racial Attitudes”

Damon Barry, “Religion and Reactionary White Politics” 

Damon Barry, “The Alliance Between White Nationalism and Christianity in America: How We Got Here”

 

Week 5

Breaking News: Jewish Space Lasers

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we focus on American Judaism, Christian Zionism, and antisemitism in American politics.

Primary Sources

UN General Resolution 3379 (1975; revoked 1991)

GW Bush Address to the UN (1991) 

Books cited in this lecture (links to Chester University library, where available) 

Imhoff, S. (2017) Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism. Indiana University Press.

Levitt, L. (2007) American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust

Omer, A. (2019) Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians

Other reading (news, opinion pieces, public reports)

ICSR Report on Philosemitism

Yonat Shimron, “How the shofar emerged as a weapon of spiritual warfare for some evangelicals” 

Joshua Shanes, “The Evangelicalization of Orthodox Judaism” 

Zev Eleff, “Modern Orthodoxy is a Swing State” 

 

Week 6

Breaking News: QAnon

Due to the unfolding situation in the USA, we will be suspending the lectures originally scheduled for January in favour of a week by week examination of current events. This week we focus on QAnon, and consider it in the wider context of New Religious Movements in American history.

Books cited in this lecture:
Goodwin, M. (2020) Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 

Wilson, B. (1999) New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response 

Urban, H. (2015), New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America

Articles and reports cited in this lecture:

Adrienne LaFrance (2020) “The Prophecies of Q”, Atlantic Magazine. 

Pierce, J. (2021) “The Capitol Rioter Dressed Up as a Native American Is Part of a Long Cultural History of ‘Playing Indian.’” 

Pew Research Centre: How many Americans are aware of QAnon? 

Other resources (public scholarship):

Religious Studies Podcast: The Roots of QAnon Discourse 

Crockford, S. (2021) “Q SHAMAN’S NEW AGE-RADICAL RIGHT BLEND HINTS AT THE BLURRING OF SEEMINGLY DISPARATE CATEGORIES” 

Marc-André Argentino (2020), Twitter thread on “Qvangelicalism”