At Religion in American History, Michael J. Altman takes a broad look at Frequencies, citing his appreciation of individual posts, comparing the site to indie music, and musing on alternative visual choices that would alter the impact and meaning of the content.
Posts Tagged ‘American religion’
April 3rd, 2012
Experiences with evangelical congregations
posted by John D. BoyIn The New Yorker, Joan Acocella gives a favorable review of Tanya M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.
February 3rd, 2012
Secularism and The Third Jihad
posted by Jessica PolebaumAt The Revealer, Jeremy F. Walton offers insight on the recent controversy surrounding the NYPD’s use of The Third Jihad in police training activities.
December 19th, 2011
Public sociology: rigor and relevance
posted by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam
Any authors would be pleased by an array of laudatory and thoughtful comments on their work, especially by a group of critics as distinguished and diverse as this. We are grateful for the care and attention our commentators have taken with American Grace, especially given that they are outside of our own discipline of political science. In writing this book, our hope was to speak beyond disciplinary boundaries. It is thus particularly gratifying to read John Torpey describe American Grace as “public sociology.” This is precisely what we hoped to achieve. We believe that more social science should be directed toward informing our public discourse, and that rigor versus relevance is a false choice.
September 12th, 2011
American religion in the era of Fosdick’s revenge
posted by David A. HollingerIs bland beautiful? Almost never, most of us would say. But when it comes to religion in a diverse society, the answer may be yes. This is the chief, if probably unintended implication of American Grace, which I take to be the most successfully argued, comprehensive sociological study of American religion in more than half a century. Robert Putnam and David Campbell harvest a generation of research and mature reflection about how religious affiliations of all kinds divide and unite Americans of different generations, regions, sexes, educational levels, and ethno-racial groups.
April 28th, 2011
Divine pervasion and the change that isn’t
posted by Pamela Klassen
Pervasive presence—or just ordinary ubiquity—is one of the main strategies in Oprah’s attempt to serve as a guide through the jumble of consumer choices, spiritual makeovers, and “original individuality” that is “secular” living in contemporary North America. Reading The Gospel of an Icon gave me a heightened awareness of this ubiquity, a new recognition of the way in which Oprah really is everywhere. As Lofton puts it in one of her clarifying turns of phrase: “She is the divine pervasion.”
April 20th, 2011
Farrakhan’s fading limelight
posted by John L. Esposito
David Lepeska’s New York Times article “Farrakhan Using Libyan Crisis to Bolster His Nation of Islam” brought the once prominent Nation of Islam (NOI) leader back, however briefly, into the limelight. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Louis Farrakhan was a master at attracting a disproportionate amount of attention, particularly media coverage. A bright, talented, and charismatic, but provocative and controversial speaker, Farrakhan denounced the many causes of racism and poverty, and gave voice to the grievances of African Americans and other minorities, enhancing his stature even among those who chose not to join his organization.
March 10th, 2011
Will Oprah Winfrey save us all?
posted by Deirdre EnglishOprah Winfrey is the single most powerful woman in media. She presides over a multi-billion dollar empire as both mogul and star. As a model of American womanhood, she is distinctly contemporary: never before has the predominantly white, middle-class public accepted such an anomalous spokesperson. She is single, childless, and co-habiting with the distinctively named Stedman Graham, who guards the few slivers of privacy she has left; her soul mate is her best friend, Gayle King. These factors alone would seem to mark her populist origins as more of an iconoclast than an icon; a free-thinker, cultural feminist, and a liberal.
March 9th, 2011
Mosques in America
posted by Jessica PolebaumIn a CNN op-ed, Karam Dana and Matt A. Barreto, SSRC Academia in the Public Sphere grantees and co-principal investigators of the Muslim American Public Opinion Survey, consider Representative Peter King’s upcoming hearings on radicalization in the American Muslim community in light of their research on Muslim identity and civic engagement.
March 8th, 2011
Spirituality, mediation, consumption
posted by David MorganOprah is a compelling object for the scholarly study of religion as a contemporary phenomenon. She is mass-mediated, commercial, and famous—and spiritual, if by that we mean something that is not encompassed by the institutional structure of an organized religion, but that belongs nonetheless to the domain of the academic study of “religion.” People consume, consult, and adore Oprah on a daily basis. In a word, she’s an icon. This is the term that Kathryn Lofton uses to describe Oprah, and it’s an appropriate choice, because it simultaneously alludes to religious imagery and popular branding, to sacred economies and the commercial market of media products. And the allusions are not mutually contradictory.
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