Following scholars deep into America's religions history and the story it tells about today.
Religion in the American Experience
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Religion has profoundly influenced the sweeping American narrative, perhaps more than any other force in our history, from the time before European settlers to the present day. The start-up National Museum of American Religion is working to build a museum in the nation’s capital that tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, inviting all to explore the role of religion in shaping the social, political, economic and cultural lives of Americans and thus America itself. I’m your host Chris Stevenson – join me for our podcast series, Religion and the American Experience, as we follow scholars deep into America’s religious history, and learn how it can inform and animate us as citizens grappling with complex questions of governance and American purpose in the 21st century. You can find episodes on Podbean under Religion in the American Experience and Apple Podcast.
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Transcript: Tornado God with Peter Thuesen
CHRIS: 2020 has brought America the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest wildfire season in California history, according to the California officials, and so many hurricanes that we have had to start using Greek letters to identify them. These things have traumatized Americans and America itself.
When Americans have experienced trauma, they have often reached out to religion hoping for some emotional comfort, physical assistance and answers to help them understand the sometimes chaotic and destructive world that surrounds them.
Peter Thuesen just published what is, for these reasons, a very timely book
called Tornado God: American Religion and Violent Weather, which, and I’m quoting here from the book cover flap, "captures the harrowing drama of tornadoes, as clergy, theologians, meteorologists, and ordinary citizens struggle to make sense of these death-dealing tempests. Mr. Thuesen says something that all Americans should listen to: ‘in the tornado, Americans experience something that is at once culturally peculiar and religiously primal In the whirlwind, Americans confront the question of their own destiny’ "
Peter J. Thuesen is a historian of American religion and Professor of Religion Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and co-editor of "Religion and American Culture: a Journal of Interpretation." He was awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for his book In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible. Mr. Thuesen has a PhD from Princeton University and taught previously at Tufts University and Yale Divinity School.
We are very happy to have Peter here to help us understand a very particular part of American religious history – religion and tornadoes, even as we experience our own natural calamities. Also, we hope to better understand generally what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and thus be better equipped as citizens to ensure that the American experiment in self-government endures.
Peter, you begin the book with the April 1974 “Super Outbreak” tornado system and the particular tornado that touched down in Xenia, Ohio. Can you share this story with us and why you chose it to “frame” the rest of the book?
PETER: Sure, well, and first I want to thank you Chris for having me for this podcast, I’m really excited about what you are doing and I’m thrilled to be able to take part in this.
The Xenia story is I think particularly compelling and poignant. As you say, yes, it was part of what later became known as the “super outbreak.” There was a rash of tornadoes that broke out over the American continent that afternoon on April 3, 1974. And, in Xenia alone 34 people were killed and so it indelibly imprinted that town with this disaster. But Xenia also is I think kind of symbolically significant partly because of its name. The word means “hospitality”, from the root meaning “hospitality” in Greek. And so the question I explore at the beginning of that section of the book is, what was Xenia welcoming, or well, it wasn’t really welcoming this thing into its midst, there on April 3,
1974? Was this a visitation of God or was it something else? And that’s the question that Xenia residents had to wrestle with powerfully in the aftermath of the tornado. Was this God that did this to them or not? And that’s the perennial question in American history. We are subject to the forces of nature and yet are those forces somehow linked to God’s plan, God’s providence? The newspaper accounts of Xenia residents reflecting on this afterwards are so powerful – some of the personal stories of loss are so powerful. And that has been true for every weather disaster in American history but I was particularly touched by the Xenia story partly because I live relatively close to Xenia in Indianapolis, so it is not a long drive away. There is that midwestern profile that I am familiar with, and so I decided to open the book with that.
CHRIS: When I read that first part, there is a picture in the book of three people at their slab, the Lauderbachs, husband, wife and a very young child. And, you know, you just, they are looking up at the camera and you just stare at them but then their surroundings where their house was, it is just a slab. So it becomes very personal even from my perspective, I don’t live near it, I don’t study this. But you mention that the newspaper reports were very revealing, very poignant. Can you share one or two, of either the letters or the editorials that came out as a result of the tornado in Xenia? I was especially struck by the letters, I think you quoted three from out of town residents, sort of trying to explain, from their perspective, why it had happened in Xenia. That was very interesting.
PETER: Right well you saw there some of the typical responses that have happened in the wake of disaster. I mean there was one person who wrote into the local paper who said that Xenia always had a reputation for wickedness so this must be God’s retribution for that. But then a local newspaper editor took issue with that quite strongly and said that his God is not a God that would do this kind of thing to people. And what is so striking to me as a historian about that is that the debate really is as old as America itself. I mean in the sense that Americans since the beginning of European colonization when they brought the Christian tradition with them as a way to reflect on these things, Christian and other traditions but particularly the Christian tradition, they have been debating these events in such terms. And, so, really, Xenia just in the newspaper back and forth in the aftermath provided a kind of microcosm for these long running debates in American history.
CHRIS: OK, yeah, well, you talk about time, this was in 1974. So, I want to go back to 1694 Cotton Mather – you have a story in there about Cotton Mather who was giving a sermon about “the God of glory thundereth” – I grabbed that from his sermon, that is not the title, but he used that scripture - and then what happens to his home while he is at church talking about this. Can you briefly tell us about this and perhaps more importantly, what it tells us about how early Americans, so this is in the colonial period, saw natural calamity such as tornadoes or lightning strikes?
PETER: Sure. I love Cotton Mather, he is one of the most interesting figures in American history. Of course, the whole family of Mathers is illustrious. It was this ministerial family steeped in the long Calvinist tradition. And they were highly
intellectual, and Cotton Mather was very smart, and he knew he was smart, and so he was a little bit full of himself. And only Cotton Mather could have gotten into this sort of situation it seems. He was preaching and he felt an urge to put down his notes and to speak on God and the weather basically. And it was during that sermon that someone handed him a note to say that his house had just been struck by lightning. And rather than just dropping everything and ending his sermon and rushing home, Mather, to model an unconcern for worldly things, continued his sermon. And so he went on to make the point, and this was later published, that though there are natural causes to the weather, the weather is still under the control of God, “the high thunderer” as he put it.
And that is the tension that began to emerge in colonial clergy and other figures who wrote about this in the 17th and 18th centuries. That on the one hand, the weather is governed by natural law and is predictable in that sense. Over time American learned more and more about how the weather worked. But on the other hand, for theists, for believers in God, the weather is still under God’s control somehow, and how do you balance those two? And, you know, Mather may not have wanted to admit it, but he sensed this tension. In fact, over time, the clergy started becoming worried that people would, as they put it, “stop at second causes” – “second causes” was the phrase for those secondary forces in nature, the wind, the humidity, and so forth, that govern the weather. And they warned people – don’t stop at second causes, remember that there is a first cause behind all of this, don’t forget the first cause and that’s God. So they sensed this atheistic possibility and they wanted to guard against it and so that is what that story from Cotton Mather’s sermon illustrates.
CHRIS: Right, sounds like it would be a great little video, you know, of him getting the note.
PETER: Oh, I wish we had it. Yes, I know.
CHRIS: Fantastic.
CHRIS: You write also in this same chapter something very, very fascinating that from an American religious history perspective, that Protestants & Catholics confronted physical calamities in significantly different religious ways. And I think we all know Protestants were the majority, Catholics were a very small minority. But even so, they really viewed violent weather let’s say, in different ways. Can you tell us about this and its implications?
PETER: Well, yes, I mean, one of the key differences was that in a Catholic way of being religious, there were more mediating figures, kind of buffers, between the individual and God and those included the saints. And, so, the Saints provided a measure of protection for people that Protestants were bereft of once the Protestant Reformation rejected, for the most part, the old Catholic cult of the Saints. Martin Luther, the early great Protestant reformer, is a prefect example of this. The details of it are somewhat disputed and whether the way Luther wrote about this particular story is entirely accurate is also disputed, but there is this famous story of Luther being caught in a thunderstorm and he is terror struck and the first thing he thinks to do is pray to St.
Anne, who is among other things, the patroness of people caught in thunderstorms, and so he makes a spontaneous vow, according to the old story, “St. Anne hep me and if you help me I’ll become a monk.” And so when he survives this calamity of course he is not going to renege on his vow, and so he enters a full-time religious life, takes a vow of celibacy that of course he later then in the course of the Reformation, renounces. So, the Saints provided protection, but then later Luther comes to reject that mediating function of the Saints by in large, and other Protestants rejected even more strongly. So the way I put it in the book is basically that for Protestants there is very little if anything standing between the individual and Almighty God when it comes to the sometimes frightening power of the weather.
CHRIS: Right, in fact, there is one sentence that you wrote that really almost came out and slapped me, right, you said: "Protestants faced the world alone” because of what you just explained. So, are there any implications for the entire American experiment in self-government of that sort of statement? Because this was a Protestant nation, more than anything else at the beginning. What are its implications, if any, in your mind?
PETER: Well, that is a really interesting question. I think, I mean, one could say that one implication is that once Americans become convinced that God is on their side then that is a powerful contributor to American nationalism and even the weather itself can buttress that kind of nationalistic fervor. I tell in the book about how in a couple of situations in English Protestant history there was the wide-spread feeling that God had supported the Protestant cause through meteorological intervention basically. So, when the English were facing the Spanish Armada in 1588, a storm helped defeat the Spanish Armada. Then a century later in 1688 the weather was said to have assisted William of Orange in invading England and overthrowing England’s last Catholic king.
And so the so-called “Protestant winds” of 1588 and 1688 were seen as interventions on behalf of Protestantism, and that kind of laid a foundation for later American nationalism. So, Americans in their doctrine of Manifest Destiny overspreading the American continent became convinced that God was on their side and even the weather would not stand in their way. Even the weather would sometimes assist them. And yet, the weather has a powerful way of frustrating expectations and so that is a recurring theme too, that as soon as people thought that weather would cooperate, it didn’t.
CHRIS: Peter, throughout the book I noticed that Americans reached out and grabbed the same few biblical verses, it seemed, over and over and over when they had to make sense of the whirlwinds’ awesome and terrible destruction around them. Can you share perhaps what some of those verses are or just generally how Americans used the Bible to decipher these whirlwinds.
PETER: Well, that is a great question, because one of the things that is most striking about the American experience with violent weather is that people, particularly Christians, who were the majority religious adherents in American history appealed to scripture again and again in trying to make sense of violent weather. I realized in the course of this project this was happening so much that I convinced the publisher to
include a scriptural index as part of the book because there are certain citations that occur again and again. So a tornado happens and someone inevitably appeals to a verse like Nahum 1:3, where it says “the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and the storm”, and that’s just one small example. The Hebrew Bible is full of verses that use meteorological imagery to illustrate divine power. I think there is something very primal about that across religious cultures. And you see it vividly in Hebrew scripture. And so those verses just jumped out to Americans in the wake of a storm and seemed to confirm a Providential reading of disaster even while raising lingering questions about what kind of God sends that kind of destruction. So, I mean, the Bible was both a touchstone I think and at times a source of comfort but also a source of religious questions about these terrible things.
CHRIS: Peter, along the Bible theme, you tell us in the book about two particular “Biblical winds”: one is the Pentecostal wind “the mighty rushing”, and it is sort of a positive one, and then the apocalyptic winds in the Book of Revelations, as destructive winds. Tell us about those two and how they were understood and used by Americans to try to understand violent weather.
PETER: Yes, well, that is one of the paradoxes of the wind as an instrument of God’s power, that is both a wind that builds up and enlivens people but it is also a wind that at times destroys. And so what I refer to as the Pentecostal wind is this story of course of the first Pentecost in the book of Acts where a rushing mighty wind descends and in that instance the wind becomes an image of the power of the Holy Spirit. But at the close of the Bible the wind figures into the element that brings destruction at the end, the unfolding apocalypse – so the four winds of the apocalypse recur throughout Christian history as an image of destruction – you find that in some medieval art for example.
And, so it is really two sides of this religious coin in the human experience, that God both creates but also destroys. And that is something that Americans perennially wrestle with.
CHRIS: You quote Henry Ward Beecher saying, and here I’m quoting from one of his sermons: “here is where the storms end. God no longer rules by force and fear, but by hope and love.” Can you speak Peter to the changes in how Americans understood violent weather in religious terms between colonial times and post-Civil War?
PETER: Yes. I mean, and I think a big part of the change is the rise of what we would begin to recognize as modern science, and a more scientific understanding of the weather. And with that a rising optimism that these once mysterious forces could be understood and maybe even mastered. You mentioned Henry Ward Beecher, and so by the latter half of the 19th century, I mean he was maybe the most famous preacher of his day, so very prominent figure. And he was involved in a tornado disaster, or the aftermath of it rather, that occurred in Iowa at Grinnell, lowa; Grinnell College was pretty much wiped out by a tornado in 1882. So the leaders of the college then went back east and appealed to Beecher in Brooklyn and others for help in raising money to rebuild the college. And Beecher used that incident partly as an occasion to talk about how he felt that a scientific world view was replacing an old superstitious one and in the face of
disasters like that and people could turn them to good, that good would come of them, and that people no longer be, as he put it, a “trembling and ignorant race” before the forces of nature. The namesake of the Grinnell College, Josiah Grinnell, even commented “that cyclone was a real windfall.” That seems in retrospect to be a rather callous comment since 30 townspeople were killed in that disaster. And yet what he meant was, we built Grinnell up better than ever before or after this. And that was typical of this emerging scientific optimistic confident mentality in the latter half of the 19th century. And so, Beecher was basically repudiating much of his old Puritan inheritance that assumed that weather disasters were punishment for some kind of human misconduct. Instead, he wanted to push the view that these were natural, and God’s purpose was to enlighten and to build up and not to destroy.
CHRIS: Wow. Very interesting.
We are listening to Peter J. Thuesen, historian of American religion and Professor of Religion Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and co-editor of "Religion and American Culture: a Journal of Interpretation." Mr. Thuesen has a PhD from Princeton University and taught previously at Tufts University and Yale Divinity School.
CHRIS: Peter, I want to move to talking about the deadliest tornado in American history, as you know, the “Tri-State Tornado”, which hit Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on March 18, 1925. Can you first describe, perhaps briefly, the physical picture for us then how people saw this in religious terms?
PETER: Yes. I mean the Tri-State Tornado is really an event that still stands out even in light of our recent weather disasters, that have been exacerbated by climate change.
The Tri-State Tornado still stands out as an especially destructive force. We’re not absolutely sure, but we think it was a singe tornado that moved across those states, a long-track tornado that maintained its destructive power over hundreds of miles. So nearly 700 people were killed in that disaster. And some of the little towns along the way were absolutely wiped off the map. One bigger town Murphysboro, Illinois, wasn’t completely destroyed but so many residents of that town were killed that it is indelibly imprinted in that town’s memory and history. And after the storm passed people were left absolutely stunned. I have a picture in the book of a man with a stunned look on his face, by his overturned piano in a pile of rubble that presumably was once his house.
And there is another photo I’ve seen of a child whose head was bandaged and he’s holding a dog and fortunately the dog is still alive. But there are cases like those of these poignant examples of people who were left speechless and stunned by the destructive power of this storm. And the way I talk about that storm in the book is that – it was a reminder even in the wake of the rise of modern science in the 19th century, that the forces of nature could only be mastered so far. Henry Ward Beecher’s optimism met its match in a sense in that disaster. And so it, I think, put the brakes on some of the hope that the tornado would someday be conquered.
CHRIS: Yeah, no, I think, I’m reminded of something I read, and I’m going to quote something you wrote in this chapter and I’d like you to explain what you meant. You write “The Tri-State Tornado represented the obverse of American exceptionalism – that instead of Nature’s nation, blessed by God, the United States was the singular recipient of Nature’s wrath … the Tri-State Tornado was a symbolic tipping point toward new ways of thinking about God, nature and American chosenness.” There’s a lot of stuff packed in those sentences. What do you mean? What does all of this mean maybe in the larger picture maybe of American exceptionalism, thoughts about that, you know, chosenness, etc.?
PETER: Right. Yes, the Tri-State Tornado, I mean, I should back up a bit and say, it wasn’t the first shock to the American system in the wake of scientific advances of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, in 1896, a massive tornado hit St. Louis, Missouri, and St. Louis was at that time was the 4th largest city in the United States and some 255 people were killed in that and a large section of the city was destroyed. And so 1896 St. Louis, and then the Tri-State Tornado in 1925, in the wake of disasters like that, and I should add too, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed some 6,000 people, I mean, if you want to talk about scale of disasters, that is even greater. But disasters such as this began to cause certain theologians to question, certainly the optimism of someone like Henry Ward Beecher, but also to question the long regnant assumption in American history that Americans were somehow particularly blessed by God. And one of the first people to do this was someone who was actually a young boy when the St. Louis tornado of 1896 hit. He was living nearby in St. Charles, Missouri, and this was Reinhold Niebuhr. And Reinhold Niebuhr in the wake of these disasters of the late 19th early 20th century began to rethink American exceptionalism and also to rethink the way the Bible had been used to interpret the weather. And so one of the passages that Niebuhr most focused on was Matthew 5:45 from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says the rain falls on the just and the unjust. And Niebuhr came to the conclusion that in that passage we see what he called an illustration of God’s “trans- moral” mercy. That nature is basically blind to the recipient of either its blessings or its curses. And this had huge implications for the way Americans thought about their own experience. I mean Niebuhr said we can’t assume in effect that nature is on our side. In fact, very often it is not. It is from that, that Niebuhr developed all sorts of related conclusions about American destiny and chosenness. In the in the 20th century as Niebuhr reconsiders this old colonial providential view of American chosenness, he realizes what he calls the radical implications of this passage. And so it’s the first in of a number of 20th century reflections I think on how difficult God’s providence really is to understand. Whereas previous thinkers in the American experience often assumed that the interpretations of providence was relatively easy.
CHRIS: That reminds me of the story, I’m going back here in time when Benjamin Franklin and the invention of the lightning rod and how people saw that when there was big storm that hit Boston, which had the most lightning rods. Can you elaborate on that story briefly, that really shows how Americans in the colonial period saw things, with regard to science now, this was a scientific thing, the lightning rod.
PETER: Sure, there was this controversy in the mid-1700s over lightning rods. Many people conclude that lightning rods brought down God’s wrath, that they were tempting fate (well, but not in an atheistic sense) – they were angering God by attempting to protect people from God’s wrath and deflect the power of the lightning. So people like Benjamin Franklin and others were engaged in this debate. I mean it was the same sort of debate that occurred interestingly over smallpox inoculation. Is that a presumptuous thing for people to do to try to protect themselves against illness if illness is seen as a providential punishment for some wrongdoing? So some of the colonial clergy had to step up and defend the practice of inoculation. I mean Cotton Mather did. Jonathan Edwards did. Jonathan Edwards took an inoculation for smallpox right after becoming president of the College of New Jersey – Princeton – and it killed him. So it’s a sad story in Edwards’ case. And yet, he was trying to defend modern science as something that was in keeping with a religious and pious view of the world. And yet, you know, on the popular level a lot of people felt that inoculation was dangerous because it interfered with God’s providential purposes.
CHRIS: And, did you notice, so you also would also look at, you know, sermons of local churches, right. You were looking at intellectual theologians, you were looking at newspaper editors and letter writers, and you were looking at local church sermons, right?
PETER: Well, one thing I think is that in the context of a sermon, in the context of a religious service, the burden, the recuring burden on clergy has always been to find a way to comfort. And so the question that is interesting to trace is, how did the clergy rise to that challenge, and did they make the same arguments in the17th or 18th century as they make in the 20th century. One thing that I see over time is that by the 20th century there are many more clergy willing to say “we don’t think that God is involved in the tornado at all”, and that becomes a way to comfort. Whereas the colonial clergy, as I suggested in talking about Cotton Mather, would have been much more averse to making such a statement. Even though they were aware of secondary causes in nature, they feared if you stressed that angle too much that you would be on a slippery slope to atheism. Whereas in the 20th century, clergy increasingly I think resort to pretty much an outright denial that God is involved in deadly weather and twisters. And it’s understandable that they would use that as a way to comfort, and yet that doesn’t answer the basic questions for religious people, of how we should understand our place in the natural world if we are religious and want to maintain a theistic frame of reference.
CHRIS: Yeah, right. So even closer to us in time, Peter, is the 2013 tornado that hit Plaza Towers Elementary School in the city of Moore, which is just outside of Oklahoma City, and it killed seven children there. You write this and I’ll quote: “the geographical location of [this tornado] was significant”, being where the Bible Belt and Tornado Alley overlap, which I found very interesting to consider and think about. And I think in your book much comes out of this analysis, right, that here are two things that are overlapping, can you explain that to us, what you are talking about there and its significance?
PETER: Yes, well, Oklahoma is the focus of the much of the last part of the book and of course it is because it is tornado alley, even taking into account that climate change may be shifting tornado alley gradually eastward, Oklahoma still is the home to more violent, destructive tornadoes than anywhere else on earth. And so, residents of Oklahoma have always had a special relationship with violent weather. And it’s special for another reason, or maybe I should say it’s representative for another reason, in that evangelical Protestantism is especially important in the religious experience of that state. And so violent weather tends to be viewed through an evangelical lens, this is the Bible Belt angle. And by Bible Belt angle I mean through a Biblical lens, because of course for an evangelical Protestant the Bible is still the principal authority and principal source of comfort in wake of disaster. So this event that you mention, the 2013 Moore tornado, it was a massive F5 tornado that just literally chewed up huge sections of the town. And made a direct hit on Plaza Towers Elementary school, which I later visited a couple of years later after it had been rebuilt, and 7 children were killed, it was in the middle of school day. And so it raised the old problem of theodicy - how you explain evil or suffering with particular acuteness. And because of the evangelical influence in Oklahoma, many people commented in the press, we can’t know why God allows these things and yet we still have to have faith that God is in charge. And yet, there was also what became a well-known incident when one person in the town was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, and he said to her at one point in the interview “do you thank God for the fact that you survived?” She hesitated a moment, “Well, I, I’m an atheist.” And it was an awkward moment for Wolf Blitzer because he was caught off guard. She was then later defended by atheist organizations for her honesty. But it put on display this long running tension in American history between viewing the weather naturalistically and something God is very much involved in. And so the Moore tornado 2013 I think put that all on display particularly powerfully.
CHRIS: Peter, before we leave this 2013 tornado event, in 2010 Oklahoma put out a poll, asking Oklahomans who the most powerful person in the state was. Share with us that anecdote, I think it is fascinating and sort of reflective of this overlap between the Bible Belt and violent weather in some ways.
PETER: Yes, well, the surprising thing was that the beloved local weatherman Gary England came in first and Jesus came in second. It is reflective of the fact that the weather is in some sense a religion in Oklahoma. At least it puts people in touch with things that they consider most important. I mean there are have been a number of local journalists who have written about this phenomenon. Holly Bailey wrote a great book in the wake of the Moore tornado in 2013. She talks some about this that and how weather watching really is a quasi-religion in Oklahoma, anytime tornadoes are in the forecast they send helicopters up so that if a tornado happens they can actually follow it and film it as it is moving across the landscape. And so there is this, even though it is mixed with fear, people are attracted to them and at the same time they fear them. To me that is the perfect emblem for the power of the divine, the divine is both attractive and fearsome at once. So that is why I love Oklahoma for a laboratory for thinking about these things.
CHRIS: So, towards the end of the book you talk quite a bit about Hurricane Katrina, not a tornado but definitely calamitous weather, and you write this, and I just want you to elaborate on your observation: I am quoting here: “While admiring [the benevolence of faith-based groups that descended upon the Gulf coast after Katrina], [historian James Hudnet-Beumler] could not shake the feeling that it was ‘some kind of Protestant penance for a societal and governmental failure….” Can you elaborate a little bit, I know you are quoting other people, but tell us a little about this and what it means in context of American’s religious understandings of violent weather?
PETER: Yes, well, I’m glad you brought up Katrina because Katrina brings in another whole dimension of this and that is the issue of, or the tension I should say, between divine control and human responsibility. And if we want to talk about perennial debates associated with the weather, that is certainly one. I mean, what is beyond human control
- and so that is the side that religious people would view as the divine side, what is beyond human control versus what is within humans’ power. And Katrina is in our recent national history the most glaring example of a failure of Americans to do what is within their power to help ameliorate a disaster. And so much has been written about that, about all the structural problems that contributed to that disaster. Ted Steinberg, another historian, has written about this and basically his argument is that the old phrase “Acts of God” is misleading, because there are really no “Acts of God” in the sense that there is always going to be human involvement in disaster and human reasons for suffering. So that is something that Americans had to reckon with and they’re increasingly going to need to reckon with as disasters, hurricanes in particular, become more destructive in this new world we find ourselves in of human-induced climate change. Hurricanes are becoming more intense, they’re causing more catastrophic flooding, which raises all kinds of questions about our priorities and what we as a society owe to each other to the common good to try to minimize both loss of life and economic destruction as well.
CHRIS: Well, this has been fantastic. I just have one last question. You write on the second-to-last page of your book “…in religion the tornado is an emblem of everything that humans cannot capture.” Why did you write that and what could the implications be to me as an American and to America itself?
PETER: Yes, I do think that the tornado is a particularly powerful emblem, it’s certainly a particularly American emblem, in that the United States is home to more violent tornadoes than any other nation on earth, I mean other nations can certainly have tornadoes, but our particular geographical situation gives rise to more violent tornadoes than anywhere else on earth and so that’s why tornadoes loom so large in the American imagination. But in terms of religion, when I say that they are an emblem of everything humans cannot capture, I meant, they have throughout our history given us questions that have again and again proven unanswerable, or at least questions whose answers that have been proposed will never satisfy everyone. And I don’t expect that to change either. I don’t expect the march of modern science which has certainly gotten better and better at predicting tornadoes, ever to completely dispel the mysteries that tornadoes
raise. And among those mysteries is the very basic question of how we as humans relate to the natural world and how the natural world relates to the divine world for Americans who are religious.
Thank you, Peter. We have been listening to Peter J. Thuesen, historian of American religion and Professor of Religion Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and author of Tornado God, published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. Thank you so much Peter for taking time to participate and for all your efforts that went in to writing the book.
PETER: Thank you, Chris, for having me.
Transcript: Religion in the 1800 Election with Ed Larson
Religion has profoundly influenced the sweeping American narrative, perhaps more than any other force in our history, from the time before European colonization to the present. The start-up National Museum of American Religion is working to build a museum in the nation's capital that will share the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, inviting all to explore the role of religion in shaping the social, political, economic and cultural lives of Americans and thus America itself.
I’m your host Chris Stevenson – join me for our twelve-part podcast series, Religion and the American Experience, as we follow scholars deep into America’s religious history, and learn how it can inform and animate us as citizens grappling with complex questions of governance and American purpose in the 21st century.
Episodes will be released every Monday between now and the end of the year on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
Interviewer: Religion and the concept of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States has always played a role in our politics and that includes in presidential elections. As we are all aware, 2020 has been no different. History can help us navigate today's contentious zone of church and state, and the contest between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800 may be particularly beneficial.
Ed Larson author of A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. He has a PhD in the History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from Harvard. Prior to becoming a professor, Larson practice law in Seattle and served as counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Mr. Larson is the author or co-author of fourteen books and over one hundred published articles, including the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion is latest book on Earth and science was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Mr. Larson was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller foundation's Bellagio study center held the Fulbright Program's John Adams Chair in American studies and served as an inaugural fellow at the library for the study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. Thank you, Ed, for being with us today.
Ed: Thank you for having me on the program.
Interviewer: Ed, in the introduction, you write of this contest between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in this way and I'm quoting here, "America's two greatest surviving revolutionary leaders had separated and the country was coming apart. One election took on extraordinary meaning," close quote. Why did you write that and what exactly does it mean?
Ed: When the country was founded, both in the Revolutionary War, when Adams and Jefferson were friends, and when the Constitution was drafted, with Washington taking over as president, again, with Adams as Vice President and Thomas Jefferson is Secretary of State, they work together.
But that's how all the Revolutionaries did, the leaders of the Revolution. They were yoked together and certainly there were loyalists versus patriots in Revolutionary America, but there wasn't a partisan divide. And when the Constitution was drafted, there was no notion, no sense, no even inkling of national political parties. So some states were divided with traditional party lines say, New York and Pennsylvania had established parties, political parties, but it wasn't a thing in the nation. And so they'd set up a system that did not conceive of political parties and that's how the original electoral college system worked, where they - where every state was expected to pick its best people. They could either do so in elections as most did or direct legislative pick. And those electors would then meet state by state in each state and vote. Each had two votes for the two people with up best qualified to lead the country. And that sort of notion, sure, the electors would be known locally, that's how they'd be elected. In theory, the Founding Fathers thought they would be elected in congressional districts where people would know them, and then they would have a sense of the best people in the country to run the system.
So there's just no, no notion of partisanship, but what had happened, late in Washington’s second term, Washington abhorred partisanship, Adams really did as well, two distinct political parties developed by the time Washington step down after two terms of office, a great believer in the rotation in office and serving as president isn't for power, it's for service, and so he steps down after two terms. And but - by this time, the outlines of two national political parties had started. One, surrounding Alexander Hamilton of which John Adams was part, the Federalist Party that believed in a strong federal government, believed in tariffs to protect manufacturing, believed in a vigorous military, supported trade with England at a time of growing International war between Revolutionary France and traditional Imperial England allied with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and what was emerging in Germany - Prussia. And so you, on a whole variety of issues. They split from another forming party, which was the Party of the Working People, Party of the Farmers, Party of Immigrants, uh, and it was coalescing around James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. James Madison was really the party leader. Now, The election was held under a sort of the old rules, the first time, but there were ink - there were notions of partnership surrounding at this would have been 1796 and in that election, because they use the old system that not really running as a tight party ticket. It turned out that the lead candidate of both factions, you call them then, came in first and second. Adams barely edged out by two electoral votes Jefferson so, Adams was President, Jefferson was Vice President.
Well, the next two - four years, the Adams administration was a catastrophe with respect to partisanship in America. These two parties exploded and there are a variety of reasons, none more important than the than the war, the worldwide war, which was trying to drag America in. France had been are our traditional ally, it had saved us during the revolution. England and been our old mother country. We traded enormously with both of them primarily with their colonies in the Caribbean, it was our main source of export, food exports to the Caribbean sugar colonies of the incredibly wealthy sugar colonies of Barbados and Jamaica, and the other ones down in the Caribbean. And the two countries were pulling us apart. Now Jefferson, because of his historic interest in anti-monarchism, hope that the French Revolution would turn out well and traditional ties and he'd served as Ambassador France, his party leaned toward France. Adam's party leaned, because of Hamilton, who believed he wanted - as he said he wanted to make America into a better England. An England with more freedoms, but still like England, a manufacturing country where Jefferson wanted an agricultural country. So there were a lot of things particularly the war that pulled these two parties apart.
And so that by 1800 when Jefferson and Adams launched the first real campaign for president, we're talking about organizing, we're talking about get-out-the-vote campaigns, we're talking about raising funds, we're talking about every member of Congress all of whom had been elected on a nonpartisan basis. Every single member of Congress, House and Senate had split up and we're part of Partisan Caucuses. There were party newspapers so that every town would have at least two newspapers funded from central sources. Jefferson/Madison would give money to one, Hamilton and his people would give money to the other. And so in every town, and I read them for the book, it would be like today, if you watch Fox News for a while and MSNBC, you get two different views of the world. Same facts, different world. Well, the facts are reconfigured, same story told in a very different way.
And so America by 1800, had truly pulled apart into two distinct camps, built around Madison's, well, it's tough to know what that party’s called because they call themselves Republicans, their opponents called themselves Democrats, which is a name that historians tend to use, Republican and Democratic Party or the Jeffersonian Party on one side and then Hamilton's Federalist Party which, because everyone knew Hamilton couldn't win anything, he was so unpopular that they ran - ran again with the hopes of winning a more moderate candidate, Adams. And so you had a rematch of the Adams-Jefferson fight, but not fought as really a pure factions, but both prepare civilly four years before. Now, this time, it was no holds barred. It was rock-gut that politics and to push that, and Jefferson excepted a hard-partisan Aaron Burr is his running mate because Aaron Burr could deliver New York. He envisioned so many of the ... Hamilton was good at this too, hardcore partition politics, but Burr is a master of it. And so Jefferson and Burr would have been one ticket. Jefferson for President, Burr intended to be Vice President, and Adams running with his - his new running mate now, now that he had a party ticket, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the largest slave owner in the South trying to combat and reach just get Southern votes, because otherwise, the thought would be they'd be for Jefferson.
Interviewer: Thank you for painting that picture. I'd like to move straight to the chapter, "For God and Party." Can you tell us about the state of religion and Religious Freedom in 1800 America?
Ed: Religion has always played, as you noted, an important part in American life and American society and it did so in 1800. 1800's a funny time because it's - it's between the Great Awakening and - sometimes called the Second Great Awakening of the Great Revival. There was a tremendous revival of religion before the Revolution led by a variety, George Whitefield coming over for - Whitefield coming over from England, the Wesley's, um, Methodist Movement, Baptist, a surge in that. And then, later on, there's going to be the, um, in the beginning in the 1820s, you'll have the Great Revival which really cements America as a - as a Protestant Nation, so you're in that in-between period.
And the revolution sort of shook things up with everything. Before the Revolution, most states, not every state, but most states had established churches and that meant you had a church that was favored by the government and received tax money. In the South, that tended to be the old Anglican Church, which during the war split and became the Episcopal church because it broke its ties with the crown. And in the North, in New England intended to be the Congregational Church, which was a pretty much a Calvinist church the [(14:00)] descendant of the Puritan church, and they were the established church in places like Massachusetts and Connecticut. And then, you had a couple places which traditionally didn't have an established church. You had a Quaker-friendly Pennsylvania. You had Baptist-friendly Rhode Island that did not establish churches and you did not have to profess belief in God or Christ. In most other states, it was pretty - pretty close. Most states had, um, religious tests for office. You had to be profess belief with God, and God in some states, profess belief in Jesus Christ. You really couldn't be a Catholic in Massachusetts. There'd never been a mass held in - in Massachusetts, sort of odd given the name of the names and mass in Massachusetts, but it had been very much dominated and they had an established church, the Congregational Church, the Calvinistic Congregational Church.
But during the revolution, you sort of had a bubbling up of that and with the overthrow of the Anglican Church, the Episcopal never had quite the standing, so in southern states led by Jefferson and Madison in Virginia, the Episcopal Church was disestablished. And you had the beginnings of a Revival Movement with growth of Methodism and growth of Baptist churches also an increased immigration of Lutherans in these areas in, you also - in Pennsylvania you had more Anabaptist coming in Mennonites, coming in. And then, in New England though, you had the Congregational Church hanging on and remaining established. But among the elites with the revolution you had a - and it was partly - partly the revolution, partly just the age of the enlightenment, you had a growing [(16:00)] amount of Deism, but even more Unitarianism. The difference being with Unitarianism, you still have an active God, you don't - you don't rely on Christ, but you do believe that typically Unitarians back then would believe in an active Providence. George Washington's a classic example of that, deeply believed in God, deeply believed in Providence, but didn't accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God; Jesus Christ was a teacher. So that would be - Franklin may be played with Deism earlier, but he - Benjamin Franklin, but he moved over in that respect, John Adams certainly moved in that respect becoming some sort of a Unitarian. Thomas Jefferson, you know, moved into Deism but then he moved later on into a Unitarianism sort of viewpoint. So you had that, so you had the elites. Hamilton would move in that direction. He led the elites, great growth in, Unitarianism or Providential Theism is how the great, there's a really fine Evangelical historian at Messiah College John Fea, and he calls it providential, uh - Providential Theism and I think that really captures, and I think he invented that term.
And you had that at that top, you still had some strongly Christian leaders like John Jay, there were some, but you had the country, a growing, you had a breakdown and establishment throughout most of the country except New England. And you had a rise in Baptists, Catholics, more Catholics were coming in the country, Lutheranism and a lot of this Methodism, a lot of these believe deeply in their religious. Religion meant a lot to them, the Baptist, but they believed in the separation of church and state because they had seen the limitations of America when you had a favored church and these were all dissenting groups, [(18:00)] whether you'd be Catholic or Jewish or back then, Baptist, Methodist, Lutherans. They relished the growing freedom of religion in America and they viewed that freedom in America, get rid of kings, get rid of monarchs, get rid of their toady churches that back them up and let religion be free. That's part of their vision of America. So that dynamism is all swirling around at the time of the election of 1800.
Interviewer: So can you briefly summarize then how the Federalists, Adams' party, and Republicans, Jefferson's party, saw religion in their approach to governing at the end of the 18th century?
Ed: Truly both of them took religion very seriously. Jefferson was really quite the religious scholar. He published his own version of the Bible. He knew his - he knew his religion and religion meant a lot to him just as it had with Franklin. When you get Adams and - and Washington, they don't seem quite as interested. But Adams comes from New England, and the Federalists in general, and this would include people like Governor Morris who is a - who was a senator from New York and a writer, key writer of the Constitution. He was a total Atheist. There weren't many Atheists back then, and he was and yet, these people tended to believe that religion, because you know - democracy was something new. Republican Government was something new. How do you trust the people? And they believed that belief in God was essential. Even if they didn't believe in themselves because elites, you know, don't have - elites can be trusted because they're elites. But the common people, they have this belief that if they didn't believe in God, you couldn't trust them. You couldn't trust them to not lie, not cheat ... because God was what made people moral. [(20:00)] And so they deeply believe that government needed the prop of religion. You needed - That was very much a civil religion. It wasn't, you know what you or I might do is, you know, this spirit in you. No, it's a civil religion and they believe deeply in civil religion.
So Adams, when he was president would call days of prayer and fasting. I mean, people who knew him well said, "What a hypocrite?" “He doesn’t believe any of this stuff himself”, but he did believe in it for the country, and he went to church. Washington went to church too. He had left the church before. While President, he went to church be all - he has left before communion because he couldn't bring himself to take communion because of the meaning of communion. So he go to church for the ... and then, leave. Um, Adam stayed for the whole thing and he would call days of prayer and fasting and he presented himself as the candidate of established religion.
Now, Jefferson thought it was all hypocritical because he knew Adams and he thought we had the same religious beliefs basically. But he thought that Adams had played the religion card quietly, four years before in the election of 1796 - he had thought that the Federalists had quietly ... because there wasn't a major campaign but there was a whispering campaign. He thought they'd played religion against him and he just said, "That's not going to happen again. We're going to answer them led by Madison who is the party leader. We're going to answer these guys point by point." And so, you had the Federalists wrapping themselves in religion. And you had Jefferson's people saying, "Well, Jefferson just as religious as Adams. Jefferson is a member of the Episcopal Church." You'd read articles, you'd read broadsides. You can read them all the time. We don't know [(22:00)] whether he goes more or less than Adams. But he's, you know, he's a Christian, he's believer in Christianity. And, but then they twisted it on him; the twist was they - while the Federals were reaching out to the established Christians and saying, "You can't have ... Jefferson's a Deist or worse." By that time he wasn’t, he was a Unitarian but he's a Deist or worse, worse being Atheist. "You can't trust him," and they picked through his writings. "He never mentions God in the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the Declaration and doesn't mention God. How can that be? How can you elect such a person?" And one time, and he was the author of "The Virginia Bill for the Separation," basically Religious Freedom, where they disestablish the Episcopal Church. "He's the author of that. He doesn't believe in a state church."
And so they kept pounding on that and - and Jefferson would come back and so he made it directly, his party made direct pleas to these new vibrant religions, whether it be Lutheranism or - or the Calvinist in the - in Southern States, the Baptist, the, the Methodist, which were growing, um, certainly, the Catholics, reached out to all of them and said, "That guy wants to establish…." The rub against Adams all along when he was a monarchist. He wants to be King John the First and turn it over to his son, John Quincy, John the Second. He built a big army. Well, he built an army during the - during the - during his term of office because he feared that France was going to invade. It was a foundless fear, Adams had actually believed it but personally, but it was a sort of a trumped-up war. He also had the Alien and Sedition Acts, wich Jefferson thought were unconstitutional that protect estate. Taxes have gone up to pay for a whole fleet of naval ships. He started a war on the high seas [(24:00)] with the French to, [(24:00)] ostensibly to protect American shipping. Jefferson said it made it worse. The taxes were high. He's trying - He's trying to take over. He's trying to be a monarch. He's trying to restore monarchy. And the established church played into that because dissident religions had always felt think of the pilgrims that left England.
They left England because they couldn't stand an established church in England, appealed to those people and so, Baptists, especially in Virginia and other places over in Rhode Island went behind - went behind Jefferson. Jefferson played the religion card hard and he says, "I believe in religion and I believe everybody should be free to practice their own religion." So he played on his support for Religious Freedom. While Adam said, "You can't trust an Atheist. You can't trust a Deist. You can't trust these people. We need to have a Christian America," and the church that he really appears - that - that appealed to is a growing Presbyterian Church.
So you see a divide between this new Presbyterian Church as well as the Congregational Church in New England, which of course backed Adams cause that traditionally what he'd been. And then on the other side, but the Congregational Churches by this time is sort of losing its religion anyway. And then on the other side, you see the dissident groups, especially the churches brought in by the immigrants. Immigrants, because Adams had passed an immigration restriction laws and tried to throw out all the immigrants, a naturalization law as part of his America First Policy as President. These immigrants who tended to be Lutherans or Baptist or Mennonites or some sort of, some of them were Jews certainly, a lot were Catholics, alot from Ireland. These people rally behind Jefferson so you ended up having this divide over religion, and if you read the articles and newspaper, if you read [(26:00)] the stitches, if you read the op-ed pieces or the letters to the editor, I mean, both sides, people backing in Jefferson fear that their religion would literally be abolished and they would be forced to support the State Church if Adams won, Jefferson's people. The people for Adams thought Jefferson was going to turn America into another France at this time during the Revolution France. Revolutionary France had outlawed the Catholic Church and closed, turned Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason and, um, that's what they said, that's what they were told in the Federalist newspapers that that's what Jefferson was going to do.
A story I love is, there's this one - when Jefferson wins, there's this one older person in a town in Connecticut, which was a Federalist stronghold with an established church who goes over to a - a person he knew in town who he wasn't very close to, he happened to be the editor of the local Jeffersonian newspaper and had his Bible and said, "Will you hold my Bible for me?" And he said, "Why?" "Well, I've heard Jefferson. So once he becomes President, he's going to come and take all of our Bibles and I don't think they'd think of looking in your house for it." So that's the fear that was actually palatable in America by the time of the election.
Interviewer: I read in your book this ad that the Federalist newspaper called The Gazette of the United States printed almost daily you write in September and October of 1800. Can you - So I can quote it here from your book and then maybe you can ...
Ed: Sure.
Interviewer: ... elaborate a bit. I mean, it has everything to do with what you just said so,….
Ed: And in his preface of that I should note that this wasn't just any newspaper. Um, they had Flagship [(28:00)] newspapers because - and this was the Flagship Federalist Paper. This was it. And if you read and I have, you know, basically all the newspapers, they just reprinted, the you had - you had the Gazette of the United States, this one. You have the Aurora which was the key, um, Jeffersonian newspaper, um, and published in both in the Capitol, Philadelphia. Um, and then, lesser importance, but this was the anchor of the party. This was like Fox News or MSNBC. This was the core and this ad you're talking about, every day in big, big bold letters on the front page with a big black mark border so it just dominates the front page and I'll let you read it.
Interviewer: Quote, "The only question to be asked by every American laying his hand on his heart is, shall I continue in allegiance to God and a religious president or impiously declare for Jefferson and no God?" Close quote.
Ed: That's how they pitched it in and it was picked up as the party line which again, Jefferson - Jefferson's people came out so strong. It says - It's simply not true. It's simply not true. All they're talking about is an established church. And Jefferson's is as good a Christian as Adams, which is probably factually correct though neither of them would be qualified as very good Christians. In the way, I would define that term about believing in Christ as your Savior. I don't think either would have said that but they - they, um - it was, um, and Jefferson's people came back and said, "No, we'll protect your religion," and it turns out that backfires because of the enthusiasm of the Baptists and the Lutherans and the Catholics.
In fact, [(30:00)] later - later after the election, just as Jefferson thought that the religion card had defeated him four years earlier, John Adams later, after reflecting on the election, he says, it was very close again. I mean, it was it was extremely- it was razor-thin both elections and Jefferson only won because thanks to Aaron Burr who carried New York. He lost a few electoral votes here and there other places, um and the result is he won a narrow victory, one-state victory where he lost a one-state victory before, so we're talking about a one-state flip, nothing big. But Adams later said, "You know, what lost me was religion. They just said after it was all over, they said, 'Give me an Infidel. Give me an Atheist. Give me anything but a Presbyterian President’.'" Because the idea back then is Presbyterian was going to push an established church. And you know, the funny thing is Adams was never a Presbyterian.
Interviewer: The Republican newspaper, Aurora presented, the choice as quote, "One between an established church, a religious test, and an order of priesthood with the Federalists. Or Religious Liberty, the rights of conscience, no priesthood, truth, and Jefferson." I'd like to - to go back a little bit and ask you to tell us what Jefferson did in Virginia to push - to push Religious Freedom, to push the separation of church and state that made him such a Religious Freedom revolutionary.
Ed: That's a wonderful question because the way the Aurora was painting it, just want to underline. They had a consistent messaging, consistent messaging throughout all thirteen columns. Well, um, by that time, sixteen states, every state. Whether you're in Vermont or South Carolina, [(32:00)] Georgia, Tennessee, it's consistent. The two parties had consistent messaging, which is pretty impressive because we never had parties like that before.
But the messaging as you're picking up, was both sides took religion seriously. Both sides played for the religious vote. Both took religious voters seriously and made really, for all their superficial, you know, you sort of read it, it's really not superficial, um, in the sense that, "Yeah, it's worded in a little tacky way." But both of them are making strong arguments. In the way of Jefferson, what Jefferson built on was Jefferson had worked hard. He'd been governor. He was governor. He had pushed the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, even though he was an Anglican, even though he was traditionally been an Episcopalian, remained an Episcopalian. And by the way, when he becomes President, he goes to church regularly, to a Baptist Church. He does as President just as Washington and Adams had. He took religions seriously.
But what he had done is over the entrenched opposition of the Anglican Church and the Virginia Gentry, he worked hand-in-glove with James Madison to pass a law that said, "We no longer have a religious test for office," By that, you don't have to, as you did in most states, had to say, swear that you believe in God or swear that you believe In Christ. I mean, both of those existed. He got rid of that for Virginia, that had always been the law before. And it also said that no money, no money shall go to, no government money should go to support the any church, and that every church is free. And it's written if you read the statute. It's written in the [(34:00)] , couched, very much in religious language that this is the way you honor God.
And whenever Jefferson spoke publicly about this, and he did regularly, he said, "I deeply believe in religious consciousness; I have my own beliefs. I have my own religious beliefs. What they are between me and God," he'd say. He wouldn't go in at length to his own religious beliefs, but every person should have the freedom to believe and practice their faith and not be forced to support any other religion belief. But it was always couched as "This is the religion as it says right in the statute, most pleasing to God." Now, Madison, of course, had gone to Princeton University, Princeton College. And Princeton College, was very much a reli - when he went there, it was very much a deeply religious school. So he had with sort of Scottish Presbyterianism and he had - he knew this religion too, just as Jefferson knew it. And they - and - And so they couched in religious terms and he always spoke consistently in that way, and that ends up being crucial for both.
Madison wins his election for Cong ... he runs for Congress in the very first election and he's running against James Monroe as an Anti-Federalist, he's running in Federalist in Anti-Federalist District, but he wraps himself up into - into the statute for Religious Freedom. He says, "This is what I gave you," and because it's sort of the Hill Country, there's a lot of Lutherans and there's some Baptists, there's some Methodists, and they all rally to him and he narrowly wins victory. So, he had had the experience of running on religion, and if you looked at it, then he offers the first, the First Amendment which includes Anti-Establishment Clause. He backs that, he pushes that through single-handedly almost, he pushes it through Congress, [(36:00)] nobody else seemed to care about the Bill of Rights but Madison and, um, then when he finally dies, when Jefferson dies, if you- if you go to his grave, he lists three accomplishments on his grave. That's it. He doesn't list being President of the United States. One of the three lists is that he's the “Author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom," that's one of the three he wants to highlight.
Interviewer: How revolutionary was that? In your estimation.
Ed: Well it was - it was worldwide - it was revolutionary. It was revolutionary in the sense that it wouldn't happen in England. They're still an established church in England, wouldn't have happened in Canada. It wouldn't happen in China. It wouldn't happen in the Arab world. Um, but it wasn't - What it was was the leading edge of freedom in America.
That America had been - the United States, yes, they still had established religions in most of the states, most of the colonies before the Revolution. But with the Revolution, people started valuing individual freedom and really what more important is your religious freedom and they look to the king and the kings ... didn't matter was the King of France or the King of Sweden or the King of - of um - of England. Ever since the days of Constantine and certainly, the Byzantine Empire, religion props up a monarch. And since we were in very anti-monarchical times, the idea of people should have freedom of conscious, now, that had come to America in part because many dissenters did come to America. Quakers came to America, Puritans came to America, Pilgrims came to America, certainly people [(38:00)] from France, the Protestants driven out of France, they came to America, the Huguenots, and so, some Jews came to America, some Catholics came to America, Maryland in particular around Philadelphia as well. And so we had some of that background, so you take that background and you throw on top of it a revolution where your overturning monarchical ways. Yes, it was revolutionary, but it was in the logical path toward liberty and freedom with which America was moving.
And then, you get the shocking experience of France where France, when they overthrow the king who had been a, you know, a tyrant in France, “let them eat cake”. And the French people had been, you know, terribly treated by the monarchy and the nobility. Well, the Catholic Church, which had been such a visible prop of the monarchy goes with it. And so you have this - there it was really revolutionary, but there it was an expunging of religion as happened later in Mexico. There was an expunging of Catholicism. If you ever want to read a wonderful book that I love by Graham Greene, The Power of the Glory talks about, you know, what was happening to the Catholic Church in Mexico. That was to come soon. You already had the situation in France and Jefferson was more - what was happening with Jefferson and religious freedom in America was more within the evolutionary American tradition. And it led, I deeply believe, and I think most historians would agree to this. It helped lay the foundation for the great revival that was coming. The - The Great Awakening had opened up a variety of religious beliefs and weakened the established churches as people with the Great Awakening came to have a once again a deeper personal relationship with God and with religion, same way with the Great Awakening. [(40:00)] You would have again with the Great Revival, but there, it's even more diverse because you have Mormonism coming up, you have a variety of different pseudo-Protestant beliefs develop, but you also have an enormous growth among Baptist and Methodist and particularly those two, particularly Baptist and the Methodist. So it's part of that trend and this opening - this idea that America is opening, "We're going to protect you and your religious beliefs." Freedom – Freedom, free exercise, but also prevent you from being - from established religion, um, imposing religion on you, let you be free in this way. This created the - the fertile soil that has made it so that religion has remained vibrant in America much more so than in Europe, which was sort of still bundled down with established religions because even established religion even comes back in France after you have the restoration of the monarchy there.
Interviewer: Thank you. That's a great description of - of sort of Jefferson in his legacy with regards to Religious Freedom in the context of the world. I appreciate that.
Ed: If I can add one thing I know. That's where certainly the Federalist got it wrong. The Federalist always, that's why the party disappeared, it always looked backward. They thought you need an established church for integrity. They also thought you need a mercantilist - I'm going to make a parallel here, a mercantilist, economic system. Mercantilism is basically government guided and you have high tariffs to protect particular industries. You do not have laissez-faire capitalism. You don't have [(42:00)] the free market and that's what they thought because they look back how France and England operated. They look back. We need stability. We need an established church. They look back to England and France how it had been under the ancient regime. And Jefferson breaks with that. He had read Adam Smith. He brings in, Hamilton's gone at Treasury and he brings an Albert Gallatin who is a great believer in - in open free capitalism and not government protection and - and letting capitalism operate. And we had a booming economy thanks to that. And same way with religion, so they're parallels and they were our future. Jefferson, in so many ways, um, he gets criticized for this area and that area, deservedly so, slavery and lots of things. But boy, on the economy and religion, what he laid the foundation of, for whatever reason, it - with those respects, he often called the election of 1800, "The Revolution of 1800." That it was a revolution just as 1776 had been a revolution. And in the economy and religion, It really was in a way, it was a completion of the - of where America was moving.
Interviewer: We have been talking with Ed Larson, author of A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, who holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. Ed, we are very grateful that you participated with us today. It's been very enlightening. I hope that's been helpful to our listeners.
Ed: Thank you so much. It's been great talking with you.
The podcast series Religion in the American Experience is a project of the National Museum of American Religion. Episodes are released each Monday starting October 19, 2020 through the end of the year on Podbean, under Story of American Religion, Apple Podcast and Spotify.
Transcript: Evangelicals Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy 1970s-1990s
Interviewer: Evangelicals have been active and influential in all parts of the American Experience. For this interview, the term Evangelical is defined as believers who won - have had a born-again experience resulting in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to accept the full authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct of life and three are committed to spreading the gospel by bearing public witness to their faith. Their impact on U.S. Foreign Policy is large, fascinating, and full of experiences with direct bearing on our politics today. This is especially true as Americans look abroad to the Middle East and China. Two places where one, the United States has been actively engaged in the last several decades and two, the culture is wrapped in powerful religious ideas, very foreign to Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular. Today, we are grateful to have Professor Lauren Turek with us to discuss her book, "To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Relations". The case studies in her book detailed the extent of Evangelical influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Miss Turek is an assistant professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Lauren earned her Doctorate in History from the University of Virginia in 2015 and holds a Degree in Museum Studies from New York University. She is a specialist in U.S. Diplomatic History and American Religious History and is currently at work on a second book project which will explore Congressional debates over U.S. Foreign Aid in the 20th century. Turek has also developed exhibitions at a number of museums, historic sites, and cultural institutions. Lauren, thank you for being with us.
Lauren Turek: Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to talk with you today.
Interviewer: Lauren, would you explain what was happening in the 1960s for Evangelicals that will help frame your book scope for us?
Lauren: Sure. I am actually going to telescope out a little more than that and just talk about what the world was looking like for Christians in that era and the dynamics of world politics at the time. So one of the things that we see if we think about the 1960s, what is happening in the world is there is a process of decolonization that is going on where countries that were formerly under colonial rule by colonial powers are gaining their independence, many have gained independence by the 60s and that is leading to a number of people in these new countries to seek to question a lot of the assumptions about Colonialism to kind of push for kind of Anti-Colonial Nationalist Movements. And because of the important role that religious groups, especially Protestant groups had played in missionary work in the early days of Imperialism and Colonialism, going back to the 19th century, there was a significant critique coming from people living in throughout the Global South about missionary work, critiques that missionary work was sort of inherently, culturally imperialist. And what we saw in many Western countries including the United States among Mainline Protestants was a reaction to that, a concern that they did not want to be contributing to a culturally imperialist model. And so there were changes in the way that the missionary movement approached its goals. So we started to see where a lot of Mainline Protestants started to call people back from the mission field or to redefine their approach to missions to think about how they might do more to solve the problems of poverty or instability abroad to take a more kind of social justice orientation to their work. Evangelicals watching this happen were quite concerned about the redefinition of missionary work to have this broader focus and what they saw as a potential diminishing of the emphasis on spreading the gospel because Evangelicals really firmly believed that they had a responsibility to go out, share the gospel with the entire world in order to make all, uh, you know, spread the news to all of the people of the world. They were concerned that without active missionary work, without an active focus on Evangelism, the folks throughout the Global South would not have the opportunity to hear the gospel. They would be missing out on this and Christians would be kind of forfeiting this key role that they're playing. So we start to see in the 1960s as Evangelicals, especially in the late 1960s, Evangelicals grow increasingly critical of these moves by Mainline Protestants right at like at Uppsala. And they start to articulate new plans for themselves about how they can do more missionary work, how they can do more active missionary engagement in parts of the world where they - not that they weren't active before, but that they could expand their - their involvement there so that they could spread the gospel. So what we see is this flourishing of - of concern of anxiety about the world around them and about these what they say are, you know, two billion souls who have not been saved or two billion people who have not heard the gospels. So there's a real desire to go out and reach the unreached.
Interviewer: Great. And so this - this in the book you define or you don’t, I think there was a - an official term called Mission Crisis. That's what you just described, correct?
Lauren: Yes. Yes. So, folks, there were a number of Missiologists, uh, like, uh, a man named Barrett who - who really wrote extensively about this fear, this anxiety. That there was this crisis of missions that people were leaving the mission fields and that Evangelicals had to do something or all these people would go unsaved, they would - they would not have heard the good news of, you know, Christianity. And there's - it's hard to sort of overstate just how much anxiety this caused for these religious groups. I mean, Billy Graham is looking at a world that seems to be beset by all sorts of crisis. If we think about what's happening, especially in the late 1960s, there are - there's social unrest throughout the world, there are protests in many countries, there's sign of emerging economic challenges, there's a lot of - eventually in the 70s, a lot of political scandals so he’s looking out on a world that seems really, umm, to be affected by a kind of spiritual malaise, but also just sort of a dangerous world and he's worried that, you know, Evangelicals really need to take action. They need to - they need to get involved. They need to do something because first of all, this is an opportunity, right? When people are feeling that there's a sort of spiritual malaise, they might be very receptive to hearing the gospel but also because he feels a responsibility to all of these people that they - that they hear it. And so, this helps us understand the series of conferences that they've start to organize in the late 1960s and to the 1970s to try to bring Evangelicals from around the world together to come up with some sort of strategy. And not a sort of top-down one, but, a collective strategy for how they can go out and effectively reach these two billion people.
Interviewer: Right. So let's - let's move right into the 1970s. Can you give us the why and how the Lausanne Movement which you're referring to here, begun in the mid-1970s and what it meant to Evangelicals and their interactions with the world?
Lauren: Sure. So in 1974, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association held a huge Congress in Lausanne, Switzerland. They brought together twenty-four hundred Evangelicals and some other folks from throughout the world, and it was a really unique event. First of all, what they had done was they made sure not just to invite Evangelicals from the United States or Europe, they made a conscious effort to invite a wide number of delegates from countries in the Global South. So it was, first of all, one of the most diverse gatherings that they had had. And they didn't just invite those delegates to listen, they invited some of these delegates to share papers and to talk about Evangelistic strategy. And the kind of tagline of the conference was, "Let the Earth Hear His Voice," right? So in other words, this is the plan we're going to try to come up with some way to share the gospel with everybody. And the papers that the invited speakers generated their circulated before the Congress so that everybody has a chance to read them and comment on them. There are response papers that are generated. So the Congress is really a big working session and there are a number of working groups put in place. They also draft the Lausanne Covenant, which is a document that most of the Evangelicals who attended sign and it's a statement - essentially a statement of mission or a statement of purpose going forward to lay out how Evangelicals are going to evangelize the world. And I just want to stress Evangelicals are again, it's not a top-down movement, there are lots of different denominations that fall into Evangelicalism and Non-Denominational groups and Parachurch groups. So it's not as though there's one person directing all of this and so a lot of the activity that's happening is to provide some kind of structure for groups that work really independently. But the Lausanne Covenant defines a goal for world evangelization and it's pretty broad in how it talks about its - its objectives. And there's these sets of debates that emerge out of the Congress that reflect some of those challenges of the 1960s and 1970s, the challenges of decolonization that I was just mentioning. There are a couple Evangelical theologians who come from countries in Latin America who share papers that are deeply critical of the Western missionary model, folks like C. Rene Padilla and others who are coming from Latin America who are looking at the situation in their countries and they're saying, "There's no way that we can hope to reach people or hope to share the gospel with people if they are suffering from poverty, if they are suffering from inequality, if they are suffering from threats to their livelihood. So we need to break man’s slavery in the world." Padilla says, "If we're going to be able to evangelize people ..." And he basically calls for a social justice orientation for Evangelicals. And many of the Western, the U.S., the English Evangelicals who respond to Padilla's calls for - he actually calls for a moratorium on Western missions. He says, "We should stop this entirely and let people from these countries focus on these problems and focus on evangelizing themselves," and the response that he gets from Evangelicals in the United States. they acknowledged the problem of cultural imperialism, but there is this anxiety that we see where Evangelicals are so worried that
so many of these countries in the Global South don't have any Christians nearby who could be local Evangelists. And so they say, "Well, we can't put a moratorium on missions because then we really won't be able to spread the gospel," and they - they kind of hit back against Padilla and others like him. And they suggest that, "Well, we really just need to focus on Evangelism. Evangelism has to be our primary goal." And it's not that Padilla doesn't want Evangelism, it's just he wants local Evangelism. And so that idea starts to kind of germinate for Evangelicals. And in the Covenant, both - both Evangelism and social action are discussed, but it is very clear in the Covenant that the primary focus is going to be on Evangelism. So there's a kind of a discussion of social justice. It's very clear that they acknowledge that they need to deal with some of these social problems about the ... Evangelism is still at the fore front but those debates continue. And so in the years and decades after that first Congress in Lausanne, there are a number of follow-up meetings and also small regional meetings where groups in the Global South talk about ways in which they can encourage, and it's - what they call sort of Indigenous and Evangelism or Local Evangelism. There are working groups in the United States who are trying to figure out ways to share the gospel message in a way that is perhaps less culturally insensitive, or is more responsive to the individual cultures of each place that they're looking to. And this is where we start to see efforts to create radio programming that is in a given language that really reflects the cultural dynamics of a particular place. So the outcome of this movement is, first of all, a considerable amount more communication between Evangelicals throughout the world. There's a kind of network that emerges where they're talking with each other more, where they're trying to be a little bit more coordinated with their efforts even though they're still pretty dispersed, and where they're very aware of what's going on in these other countries. It doesn't mean that there's no debate or that they don't, you know, disagree about how they should go about evangelizing but it is a really signal moment that brings all of these Evangelicals together and gives them a sense of focus or a sense of purpose to this unified mission.
Interviewer: Well, Lauren with that great understanding of the Lausanne Covenant let's move into the chapter where you deal with religious freedom in foreign policy. Let's see how this all played out. So you noted that in the 1970s, as Evangelicals surveyed the world within the framework of the Great Commission, which is Jesus' invitation to go and baptize all people. Communist and Muslim states stood out as hostile to Evangelism in part because Evangelicals define religious freedom as and I'm quoting here from the book, "The freedom to practice and propagate religion in accordance with the will of God." Can you elaborate Lauren, on the ramifications of that definition?
Lauren: Absolutely. So it's really - this goes back to that definition of what an Evangelical is and the sort of third point that you highlighted, a point that comes from an excellent sociologist of religion Mark Shibley - was the really core belief that doing - being an Evangelical involves Evangelism. It involves sharing your faith, and that is a core part of both practice and belief. And so for Evangelicals, if they cannot share their faith, they feel that they are not being able to fully practice their religion, that they are - their beliefs are being imposed upon. And this really is highlighted for Evangelicals in particular in the situation unfolding in the Soviet Union. Evangelicals had long been concerned about religious freedom in the Soviet Union. There's of course lots of rhetoric about godless communism in all of this, but in terms of actual - looking at the actual policies, they're very concerned about religious practitioners who were facing state persecution for practicing their beliefs. And this goes back quite a ways. What changes in the 1970s is that Evangelicals begin to organize more effectively as a political lobby to push the U.S. government, to take particular actions, to try to sanction the Soviet Union, and pressure it to change its policies. The Soviet Union ostensibly had a kind of religious freedom part of its constitution, but obviously was not actually - that wasn't actually in practice. What they see in communist countries, in particular, is not only can people from not so - so first of all, in - in the Soviet Union, it's not that you couldn't belong to a church, right? There were Baptist Churches, but they had to be registered with the State in order to be acceptable. And obviously, in the process of registering with the state, they had to comply with certain sets of rules. And one of the things that they weren't allowed to do, not only were they not allowed to evangelize others, they could not educate their children, in their faith the way that they wanted to. So there was this real sense from Evangelicals, especially those who were practicing in unregistered churches who were trying to practice clandestinely so they would not be kind of under the observation of the State. They were already doing something kind of dangerous by practicing clandestinely by educating their children, by trying to evangelize. And Evangelicals in the United States reading stories or hearing from folks who faced arrest or psychiatric treatments for psychiatric treatments or assaults or long prison sentences for doing what Evangelicals in the West viewed as a kind of core aspect of their practice of faith was very alarming to them. And so in the 1970s, as other religious groups like Jewish groups in the United States were similarly very attentive to religious persecution in the Soviet Union, there's a tremendous amount of persecution against Jewish, Soviet Jews and they were very effective at using the 1974 Trade Act in Congress. So they - they add an amendment to that Trade Act, the Jackson-Vanek Amendment which created a kind of barrier to trade essentially that it said if countries are not going to allow kind of free immigration for their people so that Jews can leave and that sort of thing, we're not going to trade with those countries or we're not going to extend most favored nation status at any rate. So U.S. Evangelicals looking at the success of Jewish interest groups in, first of all, highlighting the threat to their ability to, you know, survive in this in communist Society. They're inspired by that in many ways and they say we should be advocating more forcefully for our co-religionists. And so we start to see similar advocacy in Congress starting in the mid-1970s. They bring up the cases of religious persecution that they hear about, they highlight specific cases of religious prisoners of Evangelical Baptist, Pentecostal prisoners in Soviet labor camps. They call for their release. They really advocate for people in the Soviet Union to have more access to Bibles, to have more access to practice their faith freely. And it is a really effective way to organize because there's a general sense within the Congress, there was a lot of support for Soviet Jews, - then is a lot of support for Soviet Christians, is a very effective way to make an argument that the Soviet Union is restricting not just religious practice, but Human Rights in their country. At a time when there's bipartisan support for pushing back against that and so it becomes a way for this lobby to grow more powerful and more politically effective at this time. And so they're able to actually get some prisoners released. They are able to push to deny trade to certain countries. They are able to kind of keep this in the minds of policymakers where if they're meeting with their Soviet counterparts, they're asking about religious prisoners so that it's never kind of far for people's minds. So that's how it kind of develops in the 70s where they take this concern about religious practice of religious freedom and their anxiety that in some of these countries are not able to spread the gospel and these people are still unreached. And they can actually translate that into actually testifying before Congress, actually writing lots of letters to Congresspeople and really organizing very effectively around this concern.
Interviewer: Let's - Let's dive a little bit deeper here. So when the National Security Council briefed President Reagan, so now we're moving into the 80s, before the Geneva Summit in November 1985, they highlighted the "Extraordinary burgeoning of religion in the USSR as by far the most dramatic development in Soviet dissent in recent years," and that by the time Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981, Evangelicals had a defined foreign policy agenda, which you spoke about here, that underscored religious freedom. So, can you give us an example or two of how this played out during the Reagan presidency?
Lauren: Sure. So there's actually a few ways of this plays out. I mean, this - so the Siberian Seven, of course, had been - they were a group of two families of Pentecostals who had, uh, kind of taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy in the late 1970s because they were not, - you know, they were facing persecution in the Soviet Union. Um, they - there had not been much they had not been able to be gotten out safely during the Carter Administration. And of course, Reagan was very sympathetic to their plight very concerned about their situation. And so when Reagan met with his counterparts in the Soviet Union when Reagan's, you know, advisors were meeting with their counterparts with the ambassador's we're meeting, the Siberian Seven came up quite often. It came up quite often in the records of their conversations just really pushing the Soviets to let these folks emigrate. The Siberian Seven is - are in some ways, a kind of a different case from what many Evangelicals were sort of hoping for with the Soviet Union because they do essentially want to - to leave and come so they can practice their faith freely. And they do get released during Reagan's presidency. Reagan pursues this in a kind of quiet diplomacy approach, right? He's not publicizing his activities. He's now outwardly criticizing the Soviet Union. He keeps things very quiet as he works the kind of back channels to help support their release. Now, Evangelical activists, a lot of them did not necessarily want to open the floodgates to have Evangelicals in a situation where they're all going to emigrate from the Soviet Union. What many Evangelicals in the United States and the Soviet Union actually want is for policy changes in the Soviet Union so that people who live there can stay and then evangelize their Brethren. So the Siberian Seven is actually kind of interesting case. It attracted a lot of attention. It certainly brought a national attention to the problem of religious persecution in the Soviet Union. But when many Evangelicals were hoping to see were actually ways to use the levers of foreign policy, to pressure the Soviet Union, to change its own internal policies. Which is challenging because of course, the Soviet Union's a Sovereign nation. It really reacted very strongly against the suggestion that it should be changing its internal policies just because the United States didn't like them. These are cold war adversaries that was not something they were keen on, but that's really a lot of what Evangelicals were hoping to see. And some of the folks who are able to immigrate to the United States kind of, uh, say like, "Well, I would like to be able to continue to evangelize my countrymen." It's, it's, that's the kind of desire that exists. So there's that. So - So Evangelicals see Reagan as a potential Champion for their goals, their, you know - he does get the Siberian Seven released. He is very attentive to the problem of religious persecution in the Soviet Union. He speaks about the Soviet Union and its religious repression. So they're certainly happy that he is promoting that particular vision and really embracing the idea of religious liberty or religious freedom as a core human right. That doesn't mean that they always aligned with the Reagan Administration on policy. For example, one of the things that the Reagan Administration was really eager to do in its time in office was to try to chip away at some of the, sort of relationships between the Soviet Union and its clients states or sort of friendly allied states in the Eastern Bloc. And it put in place a policy of differentiation to do that where they would be more receptive to countries that might be willing to have a more independent foreign policy from the Soviet Union. And Romania is a really good example. Romania was also a country that was deeply repressive for Evangelicals. There are reams of testimony that Evangelicals were giving in Congress about how brutally repressive this is the conditions were. That they were, you know - they had all sorts of lurid stories about how they were ripping up Bibles and using the pages as toilet paper and all of these. Just really sort of very, you know, the kind of imagery that would really grab people in Congress. And - And you know, they talk about churches being bulldozed. So there's just this, this sort of imagery there that really grabs people and gets people upset. And meanwhile, the Reagan Administration sees the Romanian government as one that is perhaps going to exercise a bit of independence from the Soviet Union, and so they're eager to extend normalize trading relations with them. And Evangelicals are saying, "Absolutely, not. We don't want you to do that. They're abusing the kind of - They're abusing Evangelicals. They're abusing people's right to practice their religion," and so they end up really pushing hard against Reagan policies there. So Reagan can be an ally but it's, it's kind of - it's sometimes mixed, right? They will push back if they think that he is not pursuing their general goal of pushing for religious freedom in all of these countries that they see as hostile to their faith.
Interviewer: We are talking with Professor Lauren Turek about her book, "To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations," which details the extent of Evangelical Influence on American Foreign Policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s.
Lauren, in July of 1990 as the Soviet Union is starting to unravel, Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Western NGOs, including some U.S. religious organizations for advice on making the transition to democracy as well as for aid and fostering civil society in Russia. Can you tell us about this project, Christian Bridge, what it was? What it did including its successes and failures?
Lauren: Sure. So there's this, in the - in the 90s, as, in the late 80s and early 90s, as the situation in the Soviet Union is starting to change and it's becoming increasingly apparent that they're at a transition moment, Gorbachev invites a group of - a group of Evangelicals to come to kind of meet with - with leaders in Moscow. They actually come. They, they - It's a whole group of Evangelicals. They include the sort of executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals, one of the editors of Christianity Today, one of the leaders from the National Religious broadcasters, and then a bunch of folks who work on Slavic Missionary Work or who are doing kind of Radio Evangelism. So it's this really kind of high-level group of Evangelicals who go. They're very well connected and they - they go because they get - they get invited to come to Moscow. It seems like this sort of exciting opportunity to go and they meet with the Soviet leaders. I have pictures of them kind of meeting with leaders of the KGB, meeting with, meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and talking about how the kind of religious values that they promote could potentially contribute to shoring up some aspects of Soviet Civil Society. They are - The Evangelicals who go are very wary. I mean, they don't know exactly what's going to happen. They are not sure. There has been this kind of a bit of religious opening in the Soviet Union. They're not sure if that's kind of window that's been opened is going to snap shut, but they go because this might be an opportunity. And what ends up happening is they form this kind of ad hoc group called Project Christian Bridge, which is an effort essentially to kind of advise the Soviet Union on how they can bring these Christian values, these moral principles to bear on improving Soviet Society. And so what they do is they, you know, tthey've got all these participants, they go back home, uh, and they try to figure out ways that they can, you know, help in a post-soviet context, uh, to educate people in the military, to educate the media, and so on and so forth, to try to help folks in those areas. Their main focus of course, is Evangelism. They - They believe that the best way to you know, create Civil Society there is to build up the number of Christians. And so what we see are a lot of efforts back in the United States as part of Project Christian Bridge to develop suggestions for how increased religious freedom in the Soviet Union could actually help with this Project of Building Civil Society. So there's lots of - lots of ways to try to provide aid to the what is by then the kind of former Soviet Union to the Commonwealth of Independent States. They also start to coordinate these visits from Russian officials to U.S. churches. So what see are - for example, some of the big leaders of the army in the former Soviet Union traveling to the United States, traveling actually to Tennessee to meet with leaders in the Pentecostal Church, the Church of God to talk to them about, you know, moral values and instilling moral values and - in their people and so on and so forth, which is just really surprising, right? The idea that the Russian military wants to find ways to instill kind of Christian - Christian ideals among its soldiers, and - and maybe it's officers in the Russian army and they have all these talks if you look, there some newspaper articles from, um, Columbia, Tennessee highlighting the visit of these Russian Military Officers to learn about U.S. Christian or U.S. Evangelical values, U.S. Evangelical practices. And there's a real push to ensure a new laws in the Commonwealth of Independent States in Russia to have more religious freedom. So that what we end up seeing in the aftermath of this is that there's actually this enormous inflow of religious groups from the United States to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's this, it's just - And it's not just Evangelicals, there's an influx of, you know, all sorts of different faiths that come in because there's this new openness that has emerged. Now, the reaction to this in Russia after a few years the, you know, the Orthodox Church in Russia sees this as inherently threatening to their own hold on power, right? Their own grasp of the populace. So they're very concerned that all of these religious groups coming in preaching on street corners, opening institutions in their country that that's going to detract from their ability to maintain their hold on their believers. But, what we see is there - is this kind of short period of a few years where all of these religious groups are coming in and trying to evangelize in Russia. Eventually, the Russian Orthodox Church is able to clamp down on some of the freedoms that had been opened up to allow for this but there continued to be of Evangelical engagement through - through groups like Project Christian Bridge and others that were working there to ensure kind of Evangelical presence in - in Russia. But you have two other case studies I want to get to here in the time remaining. The second case study is Guatemala. Can you tell us about the February 4, 1976 earthquake that struck that country, and what happened religiously to them as a result?
Lauren: Absolutely. So on February 4th, 1976, there's this tremendous devastating earthquake that hits in Guatemala. It causes widespread devastation throughout you know, from - from kind of radiating out throughout the area. I mean, the description of homes that have been destroyed, people, in ...- incredibly injured or folks who died. It - There's just a tremendous amount of devastation. And there's of course, an immediate response from religious groups in general in the United States to go and provide aid to the people who are suffering in Guatemala, to help them rebuild, to help them recover from this devastating event. There was in fact so much aid from religious groups that, um, members of the Presidential Administration we're starting to direct folks directly to those different groups. And it's again, it's Catholic groups, Christian groups. Sorry, Protestant groups, Evangelical groups, etc. so there's just this - this outpouring. Now, there were already a number of Evangelical groups that had been involved in Guatemala. They had been doing missionary work there since the, you know - for a very long time. But the earthquake and the desire to go help after the earthquake was also this tremendous opportunity for Evangelism. And so what we see is that some smaller Non-Denominational Evangelical Churches from the United States go into Guatemala after the earthquake to kind of set up shop to help folks recover, but also to build some Churches. And one of the churches that goes down is a church from California called Gospel Outreach Church. And they are, uh - they actually started as a kind of hippie church in the in this sort of, Days of the Jesus Movement in the 70s, but they had become a more kind of conservative traditional Evangelical Church, by 1976. And they actually, there - the man who goes down and it's a Reverend Carlos Ramirez. He goes down to Guatemala, with a group of folks from the Gospel Outreach Church. They go to help. They go to help people rebuild from this earthquake and they start a new church, there called El Verbo, the Church of the word. And while they're there, they start to build a following. And there have been a lot of, theologians and religious studies scholars who have talked about the ways in which, in the aftermath of the earthquake, the message of Evangelical Christianity, which has kind of apocalyptic overtones which talks about,- which talks about and contextualizes events like an earthquake really effectively that they were able to bring people in impart because of the shock of the earthquake. That their ideas and ideology became really appealing, and so they build this following in Guatemala City. And one of the people who comes to join their church is a man named Rios Montt, Efraín Ríos Montt and he had been a - well, he was a General in the Guatemalan Army. He had at one point, run for president, but because of corruption in the government, he was not able to, - he felt that he had been unfairly treated in the election that he, had been blocked. And so he had kind of spent some time in Spain and had come back, and he was - he was in need of some spiritual help and so he finds the teachings of the Gospel Church very - of El Verbo, very appealing so he becomes a member of this church. Now, fast forward a few years, and he's working at the church. He's actually a director of their Christian Day School. He's, you know, doing his administrative tasks. And he hears on the radio that there has been a coup, the government has been overthrown by a group, a young - a group of young military men, a military, - a sort of military coup and he is being called to the Palace, to the National Palace to come because he's been named as one of the new leaders of government by these - these young military folks. So he consults with Carlos Ramirez with the other Reverends at the church and he actually gets their blessing. They kind of they, you know - there's some news articles or news coverage from the time and they say they kind of laid hands on him. They prayed and they came to the view that he had been chosen by God to lead Guatemala into a new kind of become - to become a kind of model of Christianity in this area, and so he goes. And although he was only one of three people that the coup plotters had kind of put in charge, there were two other military leaders so they have this Military Junta, he very quickly marginalizes the other two military leaders and declares himself the sole leader of Guatemala within a short period. And this is all taking place in early 1982. And he makes all of these speeches on the radio where he talks about how he's going to turn Guatemala to God. Now, Guatemala. of course, is a nominally Catholic country at this time, it's you know - it's not as though there had not been a lot of missionary work there already, but he says he's going to turn the country to God by which he means he's going to support in particular Evangelicals and the particular type of Protestant Christianity that he practices. What actually happens is he kind of vows to end corruption and do all of that and he does make some changes in the urban areas. So the kind of urban Guatemalans, the middle and upper-class, they do sort of see him as helping them. But, he identifies "communist insurgents" quote-unquote, communist insurgents, in rural areas as a threat not only to his leadership but as a threat to his desire to spread his Christian vision throughout his country, right? Because he sees in the same way that - that other Evangelicals do communism as kind of inherently threatening to religious freedom and religious practice. So he unleashes the army on indigenous people, the Mayans and other indigenous groups who are living in the highlands in Guatemala, in this - in this sort of deeply devastating counterinsurgency campaign, where they're literally putting people into strategic hamlets and model villages, what they call the Model Villages, but they're essentially strategic hamlets to, break up communities or put them in this kind of refugee camps and then, they kill or disappear just thousands and thousands of people. They essentially engage in genocide. But there's that language and rhetoric of religious freedom and so he also at the same time is trying to cultivate a close relationship with the Reagan Administration. He's playing on the language of Human Rights, he's saying, "We're going to bring Christianity. We're going to promote an end to corruption," and he's asking for U.S. aid to do that. He's asking in particular for military aid to help him put down this insurgency of what he terms an insurgency. He invites Evangelical leaders from the United States down to come and tour the country, to meet with him, to pray with him, to see some of these strategic hamlets, and they pledged a tremendous amount of aid to him. Pat Robertson goes on the 700 Club and calls for U.S. citizens, U.S. watchers of his show to not only call their Congresspeople and push them to provide military aid to this regime, but to support private fundraising that they're doing to try to send whatever material they can to help him in his goals. And the Reagan Administration encounters a lot of pushback, right? There are members of Congress who are watching what's happening in Guatemala. They're hearing from Secular Human Rights Organization saying that this is a really devastating Human Rights situation. People are being killed. And they're unwilling to provide that aid, and so we end up in this situation where Evangelicals are pushing very hard to have that aid extended. The Reagan Administration is trying to find ways to work around Congressional resistance to this, and eventually, they are able to offer the sale of some helicopter parts, but Evangelicals, Rios Montt is not necessarily keen on that. He wants - He wants the aid to be provided to him. Evangelicals help him secure the helicopter parts that he needs from sources in Canada and Israel. So they are able to actually materially help him with his efforts. Now he's later ousted in another coup. A lot of the military men were not super thrilled that he was kind of emphasizing the religious dynamics. He was constantly using religious rhetoric and his speeches. They ousted him in part because they're frustrated with that and with the incredible influence that his church members have - his church advisors have on his leadership. But it's this remarkable, moment where we see the Confluence of Evangelical concern, U.S. Evangelical engagement with this region, U.S. Evangelical concern about spreading the gospel and some of this communist and anti-communist rhetoric that we're seeing. So he's - it's a tremendously interesting case study.
Interviewer: No, I agree. Very interesting. Before we leave it and go to South Africa and Apartheid, I want to - to note from your book I learned that before the earthquake, uh, Guatemala had a seven percent Protestant population. And by 1982, so six years later, they had flipped it. They were then twenty-two percent Protestant. And as you say they were ...
Lauren: And they just grew from there.
Interviewer: Okay, right. That's what you said. So, um, just from the missionary aspect, also very very fascinating, let's move to South African Apartheid. So, can you explain how Mainline Protestant religious leaders and Evangelical religious leaders differed in their approach to Apartheid in South Africa, which was a major U.S. Foreign Policy issue in the 80s and 90s?
Lauren: Sure. So this is when I think about the case study is that I chose, one of the things that I was trying to do was look at the wide array of ways in which Evangelicals might have influenced policy. So the case of the Soviet Union, we see them being very effective at using the language of religious liberty to - to get particular legislation and particular policies. We see an on-the-ground effectiveness in Guatemala and congressional resistance in - in that case. South Africa, there's a tremendous variation in terms of not just Evangelical perspective in the United States about the problem of Apartheid but Evangelical perspective in South Africa about what the response should be to Apartheid. And then of course, there is the kind of what we see the perspective from Mainline Protestants and many Catholics where there's a huge amount of religious-based activism to try to end Apartheid in the country of South Africa, right? So there's a lot of protestant activism on that, both in the United States and in South Africa. And in fact, in South Africa, it's, it's you know, folks like Desmond Tutu, and other sort of really well-known religious leaders. They tend to be like Anglican or other Mainline Protestant churches. So they are advocating for an end to the Apartheid regime and all of the you know, racist policies that that entailed and the tremendous amounts of Human Rights abuses which were, just increasing regularly throughout this - throughout the 70s and 80s. So it was a seriously bad situation. Plus of course, this very racist regime. Now, Evangelicals in United States, when interviewed, many of them particularly, very conservative ones would say that they were deeply opposed to the racist policies of the Apartheid regime. So they would say we are opposed to Apartheid, but they were worried that if the Apartheid regime was removed, that the new leadership that would come in might come from folks from the African National Congress, which they viewed as a Communist Organization or at least inspired, you know, or in potentially influence by Communism. So they were worried that what would happen would be with the removal of Apartheid leaders in an immediate way, ANC leaders would come in and maybe South Africa would fall to Communism. And if that happened. it would take what they saw as one of the most Christian countries in - on the continent of Africa and maybe create a situation where religious freedom would be restricted. So that was the perception. Now, there was a lot of debate right there, were - there were whole group of Southern Baptist in the Southern Baptist Convention who were calling for a much more kind of progressive response to Apartheid. They were much more supportive of movements that Mainline Protestants and Catholics and Secular Organizations in the United States were advocating for at the time which is they wanted the United States to disinvest from South Africa. They wanted them to sanction the government in order to put pressure on the Apartheid regime to end Apartheid. Those groups in the Southern Baptists were marginalized though because there were these more powerful conservative voices who pushed them out of positions of leadership and really advocated for a different approach. And so, what they were calling form was rather than bringing justice to South Africa rather than an immediate end to Apartheid. They were calling for a kind of gradualism and they were very opposed to the efforts to impose sanctions or to disinvest, or to divest, to have corporations divest. And a lot of it is rooted in this language of religious liberty and the fear that they have that a communist government was going to come in and that would be the end of that. And so they're playing on those anxieties and fears. And, so when there is a movement in Congress to pass legislation, to pass this Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act that would involve some of these four policy levers applied to the Apartheid government, Evangelicals in the United States along with some conservative Evangelicals from South Africa who have a kind of - who are also worried about Communism. They mount this campaign to resist the passage of this legislation and they go on TV, and they write letters, and they do all of this stuff to try to make their case. And we see you know, quite a bit of an effort to bring some of these more conservative South African Evangelicals to speak about what they see as the potential threats of an immediate end to an Apartheid and they kind of call for a gradual end. Now, they are not successful in blocking the comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act and in fact, advocates in Congress who support the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act are able to ensure that it gets enforced even though the Reagan Administration, does not approve of it, tries to - tries to sort of veto it and everything. So tthey are not successful in this case unlike in some of the other cases I talked about. What's important though is that there is this focus on again, preventing - it's preventing a certain government change in that country and there isn't as much of a focus on justice. And it is only later that we see in South Africa, South African Evangelicals feeling a sense that they have really messed up, that not focusing on justice, that by focusing only on their desire to continue to evangelize, and so on and so forth, that they have really done harm. And so there's an effort to engage in a kind of reconciliation process there. And so we see some South African Evangelicals who play a key role in that reconciliation process later in the 1990s. U.S. Evangelicals, their thoughts about Apartheid evolved after the end of Apartheid, but it's - but they were certainly, again, not all of them, right? There's a lot of difference of opinion, but - but the core group that are advocating against the - the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, they are slower to kind of have their views about the situation involved over time.
Interviewer: I want to, uh, quote from your book about these South African Evangelicals looking back on their approach as you just brought it up. It was very moving, uh, profound I should say, what they said and I'm quoting here, "In South Africa, I'm quoting from them. In South Africa, we hear more and more that no price is too high to pay for our religious liberty. The fact is that genocide is too high, high a price, and no one, not even Evangelicals, not even for the highest ideals have the right to take measures that might destroy millions of innocent non-combatants." So I think that's, related to what you just said.
Lauren: Absolutely. And it also again, it just - it highlights this ongoing disjuncture between a social justice orientation and this - the Primacy of Evangelism, right? So this is a kind of ongoing discussion and also the definitions of Human Rights. When we think of Human Rights, is it just religious liberty, or is it a broader search for justice?
Interviewer: Right. Lauren, you end the book with this statement, "Evangelicals' impact on U.S. Foreign Relations is a testament to the power of religiously inspired individuals, united in a common cause to shape national politics as well as the international order." Do you want to add anything to that here as we close?
Lauren: I think we're still seeing today a lot of the rhetoric and ideas of this group, from the sort of rhetoric of the 1970s and 1980s still shaping U.S. Foreign Policy in insignificant ways even today. So this was a grassroots movement. They managed to build a large global network and they were able to make significant interventions into U.S. Policy. And so, you know, in terms of thinking broadly about how - how grassroots - grassroots groups can be very influential. I think sometimes we have this perception that only - only kind of elites or the foreign policymakers are the one shaping policy, and grassroots activism doesn't matter, but it does, right? And we can - we can have a range of perspectives and views about whether we think that these policies, that these particular groups put in place were beneficial or not, I won't give my personal opinion, but we can certainly have a range of opinions about that. But it is very clear that religious belief united this group. They're set of beliefs united this group and made them or contributed to their ability to organize very effectively and shape the world around them in really profound ways.
Interviewer: We have been talking with Professor Lauren Turek about her book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations". Thank you, Lauren, so much for being with us. It has been very enlightening and I believe helpful to me and all listeners.
Lauren: Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful to get to talk to you.
Transcript: "Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America" with Linford Fisher.
Chris: When European Christians arrived in this vast territory we now call the Americas over four hundred years ago, they found indigenous people here with their own meaningful and personal and sacred religious beliefs. The contact and conflict between Europeans and natives sparked a long-term series of religious encounters that intertwined with other settler colonial processes such as commerce, government, enslavement, warfare, and evangelization.
The taking of Native Americans' land and their lives have been called one of America's two original sins. The legacies of colonialism swirl all about us still including broken treaties, reservations, alcoholism, poverty, despair, misunderstandings, and questions of sovereignty alongside of survival, persistence, cultural and linguistic revitalization, and a return to traditional practices.
Because religion was central to these processes in colonial America and continues to play an important role today, taking a look at the religious interactions between European colonists and Native Americans will help us all better understand these issues and help each other flourish in the American 21st century.
Linford Fisher is a Professor of History at Brown University. He received his Doctorate from Harvard University in two thousand-eight. Professor Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world including Native Americans, religion, material culture, and Indian and African slavery and servitude. He is the co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island's Founding Father. Additionally, he has authored over a dozen articles and book chapters and is currently finishing a history of Native American enslavement in the English colonies and the United States between Columbus and the American Civil War.
He is the Principal Investigator of the Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas project which seeks to create a public, centralized database of native slavery throughout the Americas and across time.
We are very happy to have Linford here to help us understand a particular part of America's religious history, religion, and the shaping of native cultures in early America by discussing his book, The Indian Great Awakening, published in 2012.
Also, as with each episode in our podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion, growing in the soil of the ideal of religious freedom as a governing principle, has done to America and what America has done to religion and, thus, be better equipped as citizens to ensure that the American experiment in self-government endures.
Said Abraham Lincoln, "We cannot escape history."
Thank you, Lin, for being with us.
Linford: Sure. Thanks for having me, Chris.
Chris: First, Lin, I want to make clear that your book covers a specific time periodand a specific location.
Linford: Yeah, you are right in a sense. It does focus on New England. Uh, New York is in their different places. Um, and there are gestures, other parts of the country. It also spans really from the seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century.
The core of the book is about a century, uh, in terms of its purview. But yes. So this cannot stand in for all Native American history everywhere. Um, the Americas are a vast vast area and its history is rich and diverse.
But this little corner of the Americas, I think, represents a process that, uh, can lead to productive conversations about other parts of-- of, this area as well.
Lin, can you tell us about the little, leather pouch found at a Pequot girl's gravesite who died sometime in the late seventeenth century or early eighteenth century and what it means in the framing of your story?
Linford: Yeah. So this is the story I open up with in the introduction to the book, because it represents, uh some of the themes that the book tackles overall. And, it is a challenging thing to talk about and mentioned, maybe, because it has to do with the, um, accidental unearthing of, uh, human remains. And so I want to acknowledge that up front that, um, I, share this story, very respectfully, um, but knowing that it is-- it is actually, uh, not my place and my role, in a way, to talk about human remains in Native communities.
But, this particular instance happened, because, uh, there was a-- a homeowner in Connecticut who was trying to make way for an underground gun range. And so he had a bulldozer come in and plow this whole section of his yard up. And as they were bulldozing the land, they realized that the dirt was really dark in regular sort of intervals as they were plowing stuff away.
And so they brought in the archaeologist from the state. Fortunately, the bulldozer, um, o-- operator did the right thing. And they began to look. And they realized, they just bulldozed through a Pequot grave. The Pequots are these, you know, large in the seventeenth century-- extraordinarily large, native group in the south eastern Connecticut-- southern Connecticut.
And, what they found, in working with the present-day Mashantucket Pequots, who authorized archaeologist to go in and to begin to, to reinter them, but also, in the process, to do some sort of analysis as well.
And, what they found is in one of these graves, the remains of a young Pequot woman, probably, in her teens. And buried with her was this bear-skin pouch, that contains, or actually I mentioned it was bear skin but it is-- it is this pouch, this medicine bundle, that within it was, uh, the remains of a bear paw and also a fragment of a Bible page.
And these two things, you do not often see together in terms of New England, in terms of the archaeological record. And so it got people wondering how can we interpret this? And it is also unusual, as you probably know, for Christians, more generally, to tear Bible pages out and use them separately from the Bible.
And so here we have this, you know, young Pequot woman, who dies, early. She is not, you know, fully grown and not an adult woman.
As we are trying to understand-- not we, but people were trying to understand this, um, you need to realize that maybe there was something about the way in which, um, these two religious influences and backgrounds came together in this medicine bundle.
Uh, so the Bible representing some sort of Christian presence, maybe, Christianization, but also maybe just using the Bible page as like a talisman, like almost a way of you know, bringing on or-- or producing power and the bear paw on the same way.
So these two things are together. They are wielded by a native person, maybe added to her grave, you know? She might have not made that choice. But it meant something in terms of the coming together of two different religious kind of traditions and backgrounds.
The bear paw also represents power as well. So the idea is this that-- that when we think about native religious lives in this time period, it is not always so clear the meanings they assigned. And for too long, we have sort of listened to missionaries and preachers and ministers, especially European ministers and preachers, in terms of trying to understand, conversion and the meaning of the religious engagement.
So I started with that as a way to sort of introduce some larger questions and themes
Chris: Great. Thank you. Right. We will get to some of those themes later. You also write - and this is, I think, foundational to our discussion - that the Native [(16:00)] Americans believed they were given the land by the Great Spirit. How did European colonists see Native American land?
Linford: Yeah. It is a really as you say, foundational piece of the settler colonial process, which is to say that there is a-- a vastly different, way of understanding land and its meaning between Europeans and natives.
As you say, natives, believe that they have been, you know, created on this, land and had been given it to them. It had been given to them to-- to use in different kinds of ways. And they had specific ways that they use it, um, whether it is hunting and fishing or gardens, or whatever else.
But Europeans had a different way of understanding this and the English, in particular, in terms of claiming a plot of land and building a wall or a fence and putting a house on it that is there year-round and using the land in different kinds of ways, cultivating specific kinds of gardens that, you know, are there year-round and so forth.
And, I think Europeans also, generally, saw the land as something that is exploitable in-- in very specific kinds of ways. So the English come over. They see this amazing area and New England that is, just bursting with, you know, naturally, produced kinds of things that they are lacking in England like trees and … the British Isles are, basically, you know, devoid of trees by this point. They have just cannot grow them fast enough.
And they see in their eyes, um, you know, only - tens of thousands of natives. But in their eyes, they see a lot of land that is not used, that is unimproved, the same language I used.
And so within their frame of reference kind of based [(18:00)] on this Biblical mandates of the early, uh, chapters of Genesis to kind of go out and-- and do stuff with the land, to work the land. They believe that they can just sort of come in and take land that is not actively being used. And sometimes they can take land that is actively being used as well.
So it is not only this idea of-- of land, uh, whether there is no one on it. But they have these phrases. And they talk about, yeah, uh, unimproved land or the emptiness of the land. Um, and in doing so overlooked the presence of Native Americans and also how natives understand land, how natives are using land, how natives, are actively cultivating, and are actively growing gardens and so forth.
Chris: Thank you. That is very helpful. Can you tell us, Lin, about the Propagation of the Gospel in New England Company or what is called the New England Company which is featured prominently in your book, why it was formed, what it became, and some of its early work?
Linford: So this company is formed by people for the most part in London, who see, this sort of colonization process as a great opportunity. And so there has been talk from the beginning even with the sort of founding in Virginia in 1607 but also in 1620 up in Plymouth.
The idea is that the English, uh, have said for a long time they want to evangelize natives. That is part of their justification for colonization. But when push comes to shove, they realized pretty quickly it is hard. It is really really hard, in part, because natives are, incredibly vibrant in terms of their culture and religion and their own sort of systems of understanding the world and the way that they organize their lives and so forth. And so it is not evident to them at all that they should adopt Christianity. And so natives, you know, listen. They are very patient often. And then they sort of, [(20:00)], move on.
And so it takes several decades for something that is sort of a viable missionary movement to take root. And when it does begin to take root, it is around a few individuals who begin to learn the native languages like John Eliot with the Mayhews, on Martha's Vineyard. Generally, it is in Massachusetts.
And when these stories, and Eliot-- John Eliot is very good at self-promotion. So he actually publishes a few tracts describing his successes among the natives in the 1640s. And they get published in London. And when they get published, people began to have interest in supporting this sort of, active evangelization that is going on.
And so they formed this company around 1649. It actually, uh-- with the Restoration in sixteen-sixty, the charter gets revoked. And so they have to reorganize in the 1660s. And this persists up through, uh, the eighteenth century, um, as-- as one of the main ways that specific outreach and evangelization of natives gets funded within the New England context.
Chris: Okay. You write that in the 1720s, native communities began inviting Anglo-American ministers and missionaries to reside on their lands. Can you explain why they did this and what it looked like?
Linford: Yes. You have to realize that 1720s, 1730s, uh, the settler colonial process has been in place for a hundred years. It has been ongoing for a hundred years. It is a century of English people living in this area, um, sometimes on land that they have bought in certain kinds of ways with deeds and paper trails no matter how complicated those transactions are. Sometimes it is on land that was forcibly taken. Sometimes it is on conquered lands, so-called, uh, through several wars that were fought.
And, uh, if you think about, how natives looked at themselves and how they perceived what was happening in the 1720s, they have been through a century of-- of that. They have been through two major wars, uh, one, the first Pequot War in the 1630s. That was essentially a genocidal war against the Pequot nation [sighs]. And then King Philip's War in 1675-1676, in which, uh, a whole collection of natives actually tried to kick out the English from New England after decades of, you know, different kinds of broken promises and, uh, infringement on native sovereignty and land and religious infringement as well through evangelization [sighs].
And it was not successful. But the response by-- by the colonists was to essentially try to crush all of that, um, what they termed rebellion and uprising. And, so that resistance movement was put down militarily. And, after King Philip's War in the 1670s, there is really no viable military push back from natives in New England against colonization.
So essentially in 1720, these native peoples are living as defeated people, uh, militarily speaking, um, and subjugated people. Maybe defeated is a wrong word-- subjugated people within this colonial context. They have been pushed back to certain reserve lands, uh, universally in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Uh, Plymouth gets incorporated into Massachusetts. So it is a single entity in the enti-- in the 18th century.
And, uh, natives, I think, um, having been multiple generations into colonization, began to look around and say, "We have to find a way to form alliances and to get some of the tools, in terms of language and writing, that will help us preserve our communities."
And so that is why they invite teachers in, primarily at first, and not missionaries [(24:00)] or evangelists or preachers, because, literacy and the ability to write was critical to defending yourself in court, to providing a paper trail of the transactions that were taking place, to be able to read the documents that were put in front of you asking you to sign if you are like selling land or something.
So literacy was seen as a really important tool. And natives are very savvy about this and invite in educators to accomplish that in the 1720s.
Chris: You also wrote this in the same section of the book. And I am quoting here, "Although civilization had long been part of the New England Company's evangelization strategy, it received greater emphasis particularly with reference to Indian children." Can you elaborate?
Linford: Yes. On the history of Christian missions, I think there has always been this lurking kind of duality in terms of what is being offered or demanded. And this is definitely true in the seventeenth century and eighteenth century in terms of English missions, meaning that missionaries and ministers might have seen themselves as kind of offering the pure gospel, the pure Christian gospel, its ideas, its, you know, theology, its-- the Bible, its the Bible verses, its salvation, all the sort of metaphysical stuff, right? The reality is to be a really good Christian, to be a-- an authentic Christian, required you to also adopt different kinds of cultural habits not only of your mind but of your body.
And so even in the seventeenth century, when John Eliot had these praying towns, um, that were established in Connecticut and Massachusetts and there is some, also in Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard - often, natives, that they wanted to join a praying town, had to adopt English dress. They had to, so they had to change their-- their clothing, that they cut their hair. Indian men, especially, had long long hair, and they had to cut them off-- cut that off and use the English language.
So, um, the same kind of trend continues on into the 17th, uh, excuse me, the 18th century in the 1720s when these evangelists and missionaries and-- and educators come, uh, to native communities.
They are also looking to effect a physical change and a cultural change among natives as well. And the easiest way to be-- to plant the seeds of-- of a cultural change and to "civilized native communities" was to start with the children. So if you get the children to speak English, you get the children to wear English clothes, get the children to embrace what it means to be Christian, and that is gonna sort of, overtime, change the whole community. That is the idea of-- of focusing on children.
Chris: Okay. The Great Awakening took place in the 1730s and 1740s throughout the colonies and were quite different in the form of worship the Puritans and other traditional churches practiced. The new form included extemporaneous sermons, personal and experiential redemption including being born again, shaking, fainting, crying, et cetera. Lin, what effect did the Great Awakening have on Native Americans and why?
Linford: I think the Great Awakening was a point of curiosity for natives, uh, initially. So if you can imagine these educators and missionaries coming to your land in like the 1720s and trying to talk to you about the Christian God and trying to read the Bible to you and it is all very dull and boring and, you know, there is no concepts necessarily in native tradition and native, sort of theology that it exists, such that it exists, anyway, like religious worlds, for stuff like “hell”, for ideas even like “sin” are these deeply Christian theological concepts that do not have analogues, um, in-- in native societies, in native culture, in native language, even.
And so John Eliot, again, to return to him, in the 17th century, when he translated the entire Christian Bible or the New Testaments into the Wampanoag or Massachusetts language as they called it back then, too he had to invent phrases, to try to communicate certain kind of concepts to natives in this-- this Bible translation.
So you have this sort of very staid kind of Puritan way of doing church. It is-- it is super boring, I think, for contemporary Americans probably today as well as for natives back then. Two-hour-long services, an hour-and-a-half-long sermon, right, like monotone singing or not-- not monotone, but, you have kind of lined out the songs, in common response.
And what happens in the First Great Awakening - which is why it is also popular for other demographics, uh, you know, in the United-- in colonial America - is to have changes to all those kinds of -- uh, rituals and traditions and how church is done. So [sighs] instead of a spoken out, very dull, long sermon, you have people up front who are dancing around and giving very kind of, uh, enthusiastic, um, deliveries of sermons. Not everyone did this. But some people did this.
You had a multi-part singing. A new hymn is being produced. You had people who, as you described as well, who had what they called the jerks like these-- these, uh, ecstatic experiences where they fall down and be like “slaying the spirit” as what we call them in the 20th century.
Um, you had people who were-- said they were healed. You had people who, you know, spoken strange languages. And you had people who had dreams and visions. And you had women who got up front and preached. And you had African-Americans who were sort of felt free to speak about their own experiences. You had natives who had the same thing happening to them, too.
So again, no matter how you sort of say or how you describe this or how you, understand what was really happening or whether it was the Holy Spirit as they said or whether that there were some sort of other social psychology we could point to, the point is church changed and how church was conducted changed pretty dramatically.
And so natives were part of that group of people who came to kind of see the spectacle. And in some cases, they were drawn in by this sort of more emotive and, revelation-based and also personal, experiential-based, way of doing church. And so, we have natives who kind of are self-conscious about this who kind of say, "I-- I came-- I used to come here, because it was really different. And it was exciting." And-- then they end up-- some of them leave, because it ends up being less exciting and also for other reasons as well. So that initial draw, I think, can partly be explained just by the Great Awakening itself and how different it was.
There’s other reasons. I think they were attracted to the revivalist preachers which has the revivalist preachers often-- not always, but often were advocates for native communities, at least, initially. And I think natives saw this as another possible way to leverage support for their own communities, so just like learning the English language, learning how to write as a tool for native to, um, protect their sovereignty and to, you know, protect their land.
So to, participation in the first Great Awakening, in some cases, was a way to, potentially leverage some sort of favor with certain kinds of White ministers and people they thought could advocate for them.
Chris: We are talking with Linford Fisher about his book, The Indian Great Awakening, published in two thousand-twelve. Dr. Fisher is a Professor of History at Brown University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in two thousand-eight.
Lin, in your chapter about affiliating, you discussed the term conversion and quote Wonalancet, a Pennacook tribal leader, who said that "he was willing to leave my old canoe and embark in a new canoe". Will you tell us how Native Americans mentally reacted to the concept of Christian conversion?
Linford: Yeah. You know, when I wrote this book, I think I was thinking about how unique this sort of native way of, um, embracing multiple things at once was. So the Wonalancet quote is really interesting. But also Samson Occom - who was a minister in the mid-eighteenth century as well, a Mohegan minister - told a story where he, um, said that there was a guy who had a knife. And when the blade broke, he just attached another handle and another knife to that existing handle. And when that blade broke, he did the same thing. And soon, he had a knife that had like six handles but only one blade. And he said this was kind of a way to understand how, uh, natives might interact with different religious ideas, right, that-- that you can bring on, uh, you know, mentally, spiritually in terms of rituals, uh, adopts additional kinds of practices without giving up the ones that you had done before. James Axtell, and other historians, have called this an “incorporative approach” to religion that Native Americans incorporated multiple modes and multiple rituals and multiple ideas into their life-world.
I do think there is, different meaning for this, when you have a population that has been colonized and then evangelized. The decisions you make to adopt or not adopt are very very different than for you or I or, humans are complex and how we piece our lives together are also complex. And that complexity, I think, had been flattened for natives in terms of conversion, um, and I think are flattened in terms of a lot of missionary contexts.
And so trying to find a way to express the really, I think real and gritty reality which is that natives kind of sampled and dabbled and went to church and then did not go to church and pray and then did not pray and sing some songs and then did not sing songs, you know? And then they went back and went to a powwow in their, you know, reserve lands.
And so how do we talk about that? Um, what does conversion looks like for people? How did they describe it? So Wonalancet has this great imagery of changing canoes which is pretty interesting. But I do not know that that is how everyone would have described it, right? Um, this idea of the knife and the stacking of the handles is a different way to think about it as well. So just trying to complicate this static and very, uh, black-and-white, um, tsk, notion of what conversion might be and what it does and what it looks like in the long term as well.
Chris: I think, the fact that they were colonized and then evangelized, that, had to-- that changes the paradigm quite a bit if you were colonized and the decisions that go into what you do with the colonizers' religion that they are inviting you to look at? So thank you for that.
Some Native Americans had seemingly sincere conversions to [(38:00)] Christianity that looked and felt how European Christianity looked and felt, and some did not, I noticed in your book. Can you talk to us about that a little bit? And maybe give us a quick description of Samson Occom.
Linford: Sure. So one of the things that I am not trying to do in the book is to rule out the possibilities of what you might call like a more typical Christian conversion, right? So surely, even though we had some natives who kind of dabbled and - and there is clear evidence of this and I have this in a section of the book - they dabbled, they attend, and then they-- they do not attend, right? They go off and do their own thing where they do not believe.
You also have examples of people who embraced this, who embraced European Christianity and even indigenize it in certain kinds of ways, and who embraced revivalism, who embraced Christian concepts that are foreign to natives in terms of sin and hell and all this other stuff.
So Occom, Samson Occom, is one of these people who, comes to some sort of awareness of his own sort of - I guess, in-- in the Christian terminology and as he says himself - his own sinfulness. And he does profess, uh, belief and faith in, uh, the Christian God and in Jesus, specifically, in the First Great Awakening as a youth. And then he goes on to become a-- a minister, unofficially, at first, and an educator and then gets ordained by the Presbyterians and is an ordained Presbyterian-Mohegan-Christian-Indian Minister and all these sort of stacking on of his different identities in a way.
He actually goes to, the United Kingdom and, um, does a fundraising tour for Moor's Indian, Charity School which then becomes, later on, Dartmouth College, where the funds are used to fund Dartmouth College. And so he is a really interesting complex individual, um, who I think has not really been fully appreciated in terms of that complexity. He is just seen as someone who represents a good Christian convert, you know in the way, he is a minister. He seems to fully embrace this. He is-- he dresses like, uh, English person. He speaks really, and he speaks English very well.
But, you know, you start to scratch the surface a little bit. And he has got all kinds of concerns as well. And-- and he really does indigenize, Christianity in a certain kind of way. Um, and I think people like him also need to be part of the story. It is not just a story of rejection. It is not just a story of murkiness, and sampling, but there is also stories of people who really embraced European Christianity. And Occom, I think, is one of them.
Chris: Lin, you write of a new Indian education effort in the seventeen-fifties and seventeen-sixties this way. And I am quoting, "In the face of prior failure, through evangelism and education, English educators were not simply seeking to hand out the rudiments of literacy. They sought nothing less than a totalizing, civilizing transformation which they felt was best done away from the interference of native families and communities." What led to this new approach? And what were its ramifications?
Linford: So if you imagine yourself in the seventeen-fifties as a White English minister or missionary and you, maybe you have been around for thirty years trying to do this, right, and so you might have been involved in the nineteen-twenty-- or excuse me, the seventeen-twenties trying to educate, uh, native children, you have lived through the First Great Awakening, you saw natives join local White churches.
But then within a couple of years, you saw the same natives, who profess Christianity, uh, leave those churches and maybe start their own churches on their reservations. And you are sitting here saying to yourself, "We failed somehow. We did not effect the kind of change among native communities we thought we were going to effect."
And so that is what prompts this sort of, next wave of education and evangelization. And you-- you know, the point of all of these, I think, for many of the missionaries and educators was, as you said in that quote, to, produce a more durable cultural change as well as a religious change.
And so-- and that is-- that had been the case since the seventeenth century. That civilizing component had always been there. But it gets more intense and radical in the seventeen-fifties, because, there is this idea that the way to really, effect this change permanently is to extract children out of their home context, which had not been done, in large numbers previously and to basically re-educate them. I mean it is a re-education camp, essentially. You are, really trying to get them to speak English, all the things I mentioned before. You are getting to wear English clothes. You are getting into, you know, convert to Christianity, to learn about Christianity. And you are essentially trying to get them to then go back to their home communities as Christian missionaries to spread that same sort of sensibility about culture and about language and about religion in their own way to their own people.
So that is the origin of Moor's Indian Charity School, um, that is, uh-- it brings native children far ways-- far away as, New Jersey and to New York, but also Rhode Island, Connecticut to, uh, Lebanon in Connecticut and really tries to-- to educate them in a specifically English Christian model.
Chris: Thank you. Lin, you wrote about a 1778 Indian tribe statement to the Connecticut Assembly that they, the Native Americans, "do not want Negroes or mulattoes to inhabit their lands", and that they wished to keep them out of their tribe. How did Native Americans view African Americans?
Linford: The long history of natives and Africans, maybe in some ways, is not getting along, in other ways, getting along. But if you think about them, in the context of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, they really do not often have a lot in common, at least, at the beginning. The one thing they shared was the, experience of displacements and colonization or colonialism, more generally. And sometimes they shared the experience of slavery, enslavement, because Native Americans were enslaved and sometimes right alongside of Africans as well.
But in other ways, there was a big difference, Natives who were not enslaved and who had their own land and their own sovereignty and their own nation still intact, saw themselves, pridefully, in a way, vis-a-vis enslaved Africans who were brought across the Atlantic to North America. And so there was a little bit of, at least, early on, an attempt to distinguish themselves from Africans.
And so that statement that you read, there is a little bit of that. And then I think there is a longer history of that sort of differentiation that they are trying to make. But there is also something more specific in that statement. This sort of, petition to not allow Africans and African-Americans onto their land is, in part, because of the intermarriage that have been taking place between Africans and Indians, in part, because of the shared experiences of slavery, in part, because sometimes they end up working on, - maybe for wages as well or living together or, occupying the lower social strata in colonial society, in other ways, coming into contact and-- and marrying and-- and intermarrying.
And, uh, the way in which the colonial society viewed the children of these marriages or the children of these, um, these couples and so forth, was that they did not view mixed-race people as being legitimately native.
And so the fear for natives in New England is that as people of mixed race are increasingly on their reservations that the White society would see them as less and less legitimate. And eventually, it would remove their claims for lands, because they are no longer seen as actually, "authentic natives".
So that is a really powerful fear and idea that begins to take root. And so this, petition is-- is so sad in some ways, because you know that if they are barring natives-- excuse me, uh, mixed race and African- Americans from their lands, in some cases, they are barring their [(50:00)] own flesh and blood, their own relatives.
But that impulse to preserve their land was so strong that at times, that was what, they thought needed to be done. And there is other cases though of outsider, Africans, African-Americans coming onto their land and just squatting and claiming land, too. And that also, was a problem.
So there is multiple reasons, I think, why that petition comes into play. But there is something-- if you can understand the core of it, as a concern for land and protecting land and the way in which race is being coded and read in certain ways by the White or White society, I think that helps understand, uh, but, otherwise, might be a somewhat confusing petition.
Chris: In the period after the Revolutionary War, the so-called National Period in American history, how are the interactions between Native Americans and Americans different? And how were they the same?
Linford: Yeah. So it is a huge topic and question. It is a really good one, because a lot of changes very, very quickly. And I would even go back to think about seventeen-fifty compared to seventeen-eighty, for example. So you have, the French and Indian War, the Seven Years' War, internationally, that is the result of that in seventeen-sixty three is the French are kicked out of North America. And even for natives in New England, the idea that the French are just counterbalance to the English is really powerful and really important.
And so that is one of the changes that takes place. And then in the American Revolution, the British and the British Crown are essentially removed from the equation within what becomes the United States. And that is important, because there was always this tension between what the colonies and colonial rulers and legislators said and did regarding natives and then what the Crown back in England might say or do.
And so natives were constantly petitioning the Crown - the English Crown, the English King or Queen - asking for redress, asking for help, asking for aid, asking to return their rights in the face of colonial governments. And with the American Revolution the English Crown is out of the picture. There is no more possibility of having this like other party to counterbalance the American colonists.
And in its place, it is not George Washington that is not who is sort of structurally put at the sort of center of Indian diplomacy, although I think he plays that role in some ways but, instead, the Congress. So the US Congress is now the arbiter of all things Indian.
And the US Congress is not a favorable entity. They look very hungrily just like, you know, Americans do at lands out to the west of what had been Proclamation Line of 1763, this imaginary line that ran up to the Appalachian Mountains. And previously, um, speculation and land purchasing and expansion was-- was prohibited by the British government after the American Revolution, uh, passed that line, that is. After the American Revolution, um, essentially, that line goes away. There is a lot of very fast westward expansion. And natives really have nowhere to turn in terms of advocacy.
And so it is a-- it is a pretty massively different political environment, cultural environment, and even religiously. Most of the Anglican and English missionary societies pulled out as well. So, um, it is a whole new-- a whole new world, literally, for a lot of natives.
Chris: So the-- the New England Company, as you say, pulled out. And that was, a large player in the religious interactions between European colonists and the Native [(54:00)] Americans. It was gone. What took its place? Specifically or just generally, what-- what were the changes in their religious interactions?
Linford: Yeah. There is a missionary society that is formed in the seventeen-eighties, a kind of New England. And it has replaced the New England Company, basically. And it has a very long name which I will certainly not get right. It is the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and Parts Adjacent, I think it is, something to that effect.
Anyway, the point is that there is another missionary society that-- that emerges in this time period. And then in eighteen-ten, a more important missionary society is formed, again, in New England. But that has, um, a broader reach. So if the-- this society I just mentioned from the seventeen-eighties that was formed after the American Revolution is founded really to-- to evangelize natives in New England, um, the-- what is called the ABCFM, the American, um, Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, excuse me. Uh, they, have a global vision. And natives are part of that. So they are sending missionaries to India. They are sending missionaries to Hawaii. They are sending missionaries everywhere as well as to the Cherokees, for example, right?
So there are missionary movements and bodies and entities that end up playing some of those same roles, but, again, within the sort of new national context, um, that feels different in some ways.
Chris: Lin, towards the end of your book - and this is the last question - you write that distinct echoes of these various threads of Christianization, affiliation, and the appropriation of Christian forms, and surprising in nominal ways, can be found in the form of church buildings. Can you describe one of these Church buildings you have in the book and emphasize the visible religious and cultural legacies of the time period covered in your book?
Linford: Yeah. I think the most striking one for me is the Mohegan Church on the Mohegan land in Connecticut today. These churches play really important roles. And I will get to the religious, symbolism in a second. But, these churches are often what anchors native communities through the really dark periods of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. And by that, I mean that, starting even in the eighteen-twenties and eighteen-thirties, there is this idea that natives are disappearing, that they are not authentically native unless they are a hundred percent native in terms of their blood and heritage.
And, the removal ideology even comes in New England. People have not written about this very much. But there’s some federal agents that come to different New England native nations. And they suggest to them like, "Hey, if you would just move, you know, out west, we could give you more land. And you could be happier and everything else. You want to fight with the local people here." And, to a tribe, they turn that offer down. And there is no forced removal here like there is elsewhere.
But through all of these different kinds of trials, the Narragansetts were detribalized, in the eighteen-eighties, for example. They were bought out, person by person, of their Narragansett identity for about thirteen dollars. I mean it is kind of this amazing story and super sad story.
So there is this ideology of disappearance. There is this ideology of removal. There is this ideology of detribalization. There is this notion that, again, authentic natives cannot be of a mixed, multiple races.
And so, as their land base gets stripped away, as, people are [(58:00)]-- are moving and dispersing for various reasons, often, the only piece of land that has a paper trail back to the colonial period is the land on which these churches sit. And these churches become vitally important in the late twentieth century and the seventies and eighties when these same native nations are trying to apply for federal recognition. And sometimes the only paper trail in terms of the consistent land use they can point to are these churches.
And so the Mohegan Church is one of those examples. The Mohegans had been asked by federal agents if they wanted to move out west to Mississippi. They were like, "No. Thank you." And quickly build a church, like you know, in a way to stave off removal, because they believe if they would sort of visibly show that they were Christian in some ways, and have this sort of visible sign of being Americanized and Christianized that it would help them to retain their sovereignty.
So the church was built. It is not super well attended in any meaningful way. The minister for a long time was White. But it is a visible, important presence on Mohegan lands.
And today, when you go there there is a way in which it still operates in this sort of murky way, uh, culturally speaking. So you go in. And, at the very front of the church is this, you know, impressive wooden cross on the wall. And above it, hanging above it, is an eagle feather.
And you know, native life-world in the way they understand, assigned meaning and-- and value in terms of spiritual power, eagles are-- and eagle feathers are immensely important. They had been, historically and traditionally, way before the American bald eagle became protected by the federal government. So this eagle feather represents native and indigenous spiritual power. And it is hanging above the cross, right? It is on the wall with the cross, but it is above the cross.
And so somehow this just symbolizes for me, again, this complexity of the way in which the natives historically been on, also, up to the present have thought about the relationships between their own lives and spiritual, investments and involvements, the way it is tied to notions of sovereignty and protecting land and protecting even language and their own physical bodies, and the way in which, these things have coexisted. And it is not like-- there is only an eagle feather. It is not that it is only across but-- together.
And so the book cover actually tries to put those things side by side to illustrate, in a way, the complexity of these kinds of relationships over time that we can still see today and still hear-- hear people narrating today as well. I mean, one of the things that was the most meaningful to me is in the conclusion for the book is getting out and actually talking with people, having conversations with present-day tribal members who have, you know, become friends and people that I turn to for questions about, native history in this current book project that I am working on.
And the idea, I think, I hope my readers get when they finish the book is that this is not just a story about the past but actually native communities are here. They are alive and well and, despite some centuries of, uh, settler colonialism, are thriving and are working on reclaiming their language. They are working on reclaiming their traditional ways of living and being. And, they are diverse. And-- and they are just really vibrant and wonderful.
And so to find a way to communicate that as well to the reader and also to listeners of this podcast, I think, is actually maybe one of the most important takeaways is that this history as well as this current colonizing process, I would add, is not done. My native friends will remind me that the colonial period for them does not end with American Revolution. It is still ongoing. And that is a really important perspective, I think, for, White Americans to have.
Chris: Thank you, Lin. We have been talking with Linford Fisher about his book, The Indian Great Awakening, published in two thousand-twelve. He is a Professor of History at Brown University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in two thousand-eight.
Thank you so much, Lin, for taking time to participate and for all your efforts in studying the religious interactions between the Native Americans and the European settlers which undergird America's relationship and interactions with Native Americans today, as you so well said.
Linford: No problem, Chris. Thanks for having me. It is really a delight to have this conversation.
Transcript: "Are Race and Religion Intertwined in American History?" with Paul Harvey.
Religion has often influenced how Americans understand and see race. And race has often influenced how Americans understand and see religion.
For our purposes today, we will define race as any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry. For example, the twenty-twenty Census race categories are White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian Native or Pacific Islander, or some other race.
As we all observe and participate in the national reckoning with racism after the death of George Floyd on May twenty-fifth of this year, a fuller and more accurate understanding of how race and religion have been intertwined in the United States history will be of use.
Paul Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches, writes, and teaches in the field of American history from the sixteenth century to the present. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1992.
Dr. Harvey is the author of many books including Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography; The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History; and Freedom's Coming: Religious Cultures and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era.
We are very happy to have Paul here to help us understand a particular part of American religious history, the intersections of religion and race, by discussing his new book "Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History" published in 2017.
Also, as with each episode in our podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and, thus, be better equipped as citizens to ensure that the American experiment in self-government endures. As Abraham Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history."
Thank you Paul for being with us.
Paul: Thank you. Very glad to be here.
Chris: You start your book by saying that race and religion are co-constituting categories. Can you tell us just briefly what you mean by that? And why it is important to our discussion?
Paul: Yeah. So what I was trying to do in that part of the book was take a, uh, uh-- that is an academic language co-constituting categories which does not maybe mean anything to a more general audience. But what it means is that, um, race has been fundamental to how religion has come to be defined that American history to the very definition of religion itself. And religion has come to also be something that has defined racial categories over time. So they in-- in effect they both define each other.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Paul, in your chapter about race and colonial American religion, you state that as European colonizers tried to bring others into the Christian fold, they faced questions of how an Indian or a Negro could also be a Christian person. And given-- and I am quoting here, "And given that raced bodies claimed Christian privileges – [and I will insert here "such as freedom"] - Euro-Americans puzzled over how to convert but deploy it on behalf of racial hierarchy." Can you give an example or two of how this played out?
Paul: Yeah. So the big question in the seventeenth century was the question of that historically you were not supposed to enslave people of your own religion. And so if an African-American, for example, became a Christian, as sometimes happened in the seventeenth century - usually Anglican Christians, in fact then how could you possibly keep them enslaved?
So some of the first laws, uh, written in the sixteen-sixties, sixteen-seventies addressed precisely this issue by saying essentially just because one converts to the faith does not mean that one has-- one changes once status in the in the social world. And that they keep, they actually keep rewriting that law and keep sort of updating it, because, it remains I think-- the-- I think they have to do that, because it remains a problem; it remains a dilemma in their own mind that they cannot quite figure out how to deal with.
And so the law becomes more strict and more-- it becomes longer and more explicit over time until in the-- in the-- in the 1720S it is a much lengthier version of the same law which basically says, "Neither you nor your children, albeit you have become or will become Christian, will ever change your status in-- in the social world." They try to make that as-- as clear as possible.
And one of the reasons they do so is because the, slave owners do not want to introduce slaves to the Christian faith. And, therefore, Christian missionaries - Anglican missionaries, mostly - um, have to, uh, find a way to persuade slaveholders that Christianity will not lead to freedom. The problem is slaveholders are - in this era, at least - are never really fully persuaded of that. I think that is why the-- they have the profusion of these laws that-- that they kept trying to persuade slaveholders. But slaveholders were largely resistant to having missionaries come on their plantations and that-- and that kind of thing. And I think it is because they still had-- implicitly is they still had this older view that, Christianity was tied to freedom, therefore, a slave Christian was just a contradiction in terms .
Chris: You write in your book that as a result of these laws, I am quoting here, "Christianity and enslavement were theoretically compatible."
Paul: Yeah. Exactly a summary of what I just said. Yeah. But they-- they had to be made compatible over time. It was not something that came naturally in the seventeenth century world.
Chris: Right. Also, in that same area of the book, you write this sentence, and I am quoting here, "Race trumped religion as the most important category in an ordered society." Why did you say that? That is a powerful statement.
Paul: Yeah. precisely, because the Racial category into which-- which someone had been put became the most important category that defined their lives rather than the religious category that they either had or that they could opt for so that, African-- the category African was a more important category in terms of defining your status than the category Christian or Muslim or whatever other religion you would want to put in there.
So the first-- the first category that defines your life principally is the-- the racialized category, African and African-American.
Chris: Right. So Paul, regarding Native Americans now, you quote one of their prophets as saying, "The great spirit did not mean that the White people and the red people should live near each other," which sounds familiar to this statement also in your book from an anti-immigration advocate during the influx of Chinese in the late nineteenth century in the western United States, "It is the economy of providence that man shall exist in nationalities and that they shall be divided by the antipathies of race." What did all this mean?
Paul: Yeah. So those are two quotes that sound alike, but actually are-- come from very different context, because one comes from a Native American prophet. So what is happening in the eighteenth century is, Indian peoples, Native American peoples who had conceptualized themselves as all different-- all different groups of people, tribalized peoples, for example are coming to use terms like “Red men”-- the Red Men, the Indian, the singular terms like that. In other words, they-- they begin to adopt the racialized categories that were imposed upon them, as part of the necessity, part of the need to defend their communities against the colonizing, orders of their day.
And so a statement like that is part of the kind of Indian self-defense that emerges in the eighteenth century, an Indian self-defense that ironically used the racialized categories invented by Europeans in the first place.
The second quote from the later-- when was that - later nineteenth century, I suppose-- I do not remember--when that was. It is quote that comes from those in positions of power, uh, who were attempting to define who can be an American.
So for the question of that-- that day was can a Chinese person, a person of Chinese descent racially be an American citizen? Is a Chinese person racially capable of comprehending American liberty, for example?
One of the anti-- there is many anti-immigration arguments. But one of the anti-immigration ar-- arguments is they are racially incapable of understanding, freedom, liberty, Christianity, et cetera. Of course, there were Chinese Christians at the time who were pointing out that they were perfectly capable of understanding Christianity, because that was their religion, in fact.
But that was one of the principal, um, tsk, themes of-- of anti-immigration polemics from the li-- from the later nineteen century. But that quote is coming from those who have the ability to define, uh, the power relations of that society. The quote from the Native American prophet is coming from the other side: those who were being displaced, those who were - the colonial subjects of the Europeans.
Chris: And then you quote Frederick Douglass, saying this, um, "Revivals in religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand-in-hand together. The church and the slave prison stand next to each other. The groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit. The pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity." What effect did such rhetoric have in the United States?
Paul: That is one of, uh, Douglass', uh, classic, uh, passages pointing out the hypocrisy of slave-holding Christianity; he was-- he was a master at doing that.
And it is interesting. The effect is it helps to galvanize abolitionism, uh, because the-- the abolitionists adopt exactly that rhetoric that comes from Douglass, because he is so-- he is so good at-- at mocking and i-- imitating in a mocking style, for example, a pro-slavery sermon. He does that sometimes and will deliver a pro-slavery sermon in a style that clearly is mocking it at the same time. It is a paro-- self- parody of that sermon.
So that-- that is a-- that quote comes from the context in which he is doing that. And that helps to galvanize abolitionism. But ironically, also helps to galvanize pro-slavery, because the pro-slavery forces recognize the power of that critique. And they have to figure out how to respond to it.
So if you think of the big picture kind of as the18th century as the, uh, the-- the pro-slavery argument is the so called “necessary evil” argument. We were sort of left with this institution. And there is not much we can do about it except hope it goes away, kind of a Thomas Jeffersonian, uh, view, but when you read sermons from the eighteen-thirties, forties, fifties, basically after the eighteen-thirties, they increasingly adopt a-- a pro-slavery stance which makes slavery not only compatible to but instrumental to the spread of-- the spread of Christianity. And part of that comes from a response to exactly the fact that they were being mocked for their hypocrisy. And they know that they have to respond to that. And they do respond to it with some very powerful sermons of their own.
Chris: Paul, I’m going to move into your chapter about religious ways of knowing race before the Civil War. Um, the first couple of chapters were more introductory. In this chapter you explained that Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion led to a strengthening of how Christianity would be woven into the ideology of the masterclass. Can you help us understand how that was done?
Paul: Yeah. So Nat Turner was a Baptist Minister, and a slave in Southampton County Virginia. Very very interesting life story. Very controversial life story, because we-- we know very little about him. And most of what we know comes from the, uh, confessions of Nat Turner which were collected by a lawyer named Thomas Gray. And there is a great controversy among historians about how much we can trust that particular document, because some people think Thomas Gray embellished, parts of Nat Turner's story to help-- to make a more spectacular story, because Thomas Gray basically wanted to make money out of selling this book. That was his motive for doing it.
However, I tend to think it is reasonably reliable. That is my personal position. And so, Nat Turner is someone who takes the apocalyptic passages of the Bible as symbolic of how he should act in this world and to rise up in revolt against slavery basically by slaughtering Whites in his-- in his county.
White seeing that-- this is that, exactly at the moment that the abolitionist movement is being born in 1831. So 1831 is a hugely important year of American history in terms of how slavery comes to be viewed. And it is also usually important here, because you really-- maybe a few years before 1831and the 1820s but certainly after 1831, you see the full rise and development of the pro-slavery theology that I spoke of before, uh, most famously enunciated by James Henley Thornwell, a Presbyterian Minister in 1850.
And he gives a famous sermon in 1850, ironically, a sermon in which he was consecrating a chapel that Whites had built for Black Presbyterian parishioners. Uh, and there were-- there were so many Black Pre-- Presbyterian parishioners in this particular church that they-- they needed a separate place to meet, cos they could not fit all in the segregated balcony.
So he-- he comes to give this, and he says, uh, "One, I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother. I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother." He disavows a racist, justification for slavery. But then he goes on to give a kind of what we would think of as a-- a nineteenth century conservative argument based-- that comes out of European thought really which is that, uh, slavery and other forms of social order are necessary to prevent anarchy. And it may be that slavery has evils in it. But, it is our job to restrain those evils. But there are much greater evils in the abolition of slavery.
The New York Catholic, priest, John Hughes, the Archbishop John Hughes in New York, he basically makes the same argument. And so he ends up saying, "Slavery is evil as many institutions-- human institutions are, because humans have sinned in them. And they create evil institutions."
But the one thing that is more evil than slavery is abolitionism, because abolitionism leads to anarchy. It leads to the complete dissolution of all social order. And it leads to kind of the worst of all possible worlds.
And so slavery may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best world that we can hope for given the situation that we were handed, uh, as an inheritance of-- from the 17th and 18th century. And we may hope that this world will become a better and freer world for everyone at some indeterminate point in the future. But for now, this is the best world that we can hope for.
So it is getting woven in in that-- in that particular pro-slavery, uh, way in which, God creates a social order that resembles a family. The slaveholder is kind of like the father. And, the rest of the family fall into place. And each person in the family has their place in the social order. The slaves are like children who are cared for by the father, but who also have to obey the father.
So that is the model that God has provided for us in the social world-- in the religious world but also in the social world.
Chris: Fascinating. Can you tell us, Paul, how slaves saw Jesus? And how it differed from how non-slaves “saw” Jesus"?
Paul: So slaves adopt, not all, but many slaves adopt Christianity in the nineteenth century, uh sometimes, at the behest of, uh, White ministers, oftentimes, at the behest of their own ministers. And they begin to have their own visions of Jesus. And what is interesting is they often refer to Jesus of a White man, uh, and as a-- a small particularly a small White man who is kind of like a small friend to them.
Tsk, so, uh, I have authored a previous book called The Color of Christ with speculates about-- uh, co-authored, as you said, uh-- previous book called The Color of Christ which speculates about what is the meaning of a White image of Jesus in the mind of slaves? And my conclusion there, our conclusion rather, was that there was no other choice but to conceptualize Jesus as a White man, because that was the predominant, prevailing image in the nineteenth century. That was the image that was being massed produced and-- by steam printing presses.
And so they conceived of him that way, uh, because that is how he is handed down to them. But that does not mean that they conceived-- so Jesus is White. But Jesus is not a White man in the sense of the White man like their master. He is the White man who is their friend. We would now say almost like a White ally, I think, is the-- the contemporary, uh, version of that-- of that-- of that same kind of language. Uh, and they perceived him as their ally in overcoming the struggles and toil and strife of the world of slavery they have to live through.
Chris: How did that differ from how the White man saw Jesus?
Paul: Yeah. So Whites obviously had this, an evangelical conception of Jesus. And Jesus-- and so it is like half of it is the same, because Jesus is their comforter and their friend as well. So Jesus is the comforter and friend of the slaveholder as well as the slave. Uh, but Jesus as a-- as it comes-- as he comes to be institutionalized in the church is also representative of the social order, I think, in a way that he-- it was simply not the case, uh, with slaves, because Jesus was the way to conceptualize a different social order for slaves as opposed to the defender of the social order.
Chris: You also write, Paul, that school books envision Hindus and Buddhists as Oriental others, different not just in terms of religion but also different racially from Caucasian Christians. What were the implications of this?
Paul: The implications-- there is many different implications. Some of those implications become more evident in the later nineteenth century with, uh, Chinese Exclusion Acts and anti-immigration laws and that kind of thing. But for the antebellum sort of mid-19th century which is where that particular quote comes from, you have this interesting phenomenon that New England intellectuals have become, uh, fascinated by so called "Oriental" religions. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, was, Henry David Thoreau, et cetera, the-- these kinds of people.
So they are kind of inventing, the field of what we would now call comparative religion. Uh, but in inventing it, as it comes to be passed down in school books and other things, they-- it comes to be passed down as sort of like religions that are interesting by people who are racially other than us, uh, and who cannot conceive of the world that we live in, because they have different-- both racial categories of their mind and religious categories of their mind.
So the popularization of these ideas of Emerson, et al, end up, uh, perpetuating the racialization of other peoples.
Chris: We are talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American history from the 16th century to the present.
Paul, presenting White and Black religious thought after the Civil War, you share these observations, "If God had sanctioned White caretaking of Negroes in bondage as the divine plan for Southern Christian civilization, then what was God's will in a world without slavery?" And, "African-Americans understood that Black freedom and Black Christianity were just at the moment of their true rebirth at the end of the Civil War. They perceived that their constricted bounds of habitation for Black Americans was about to expand. And they trusted their God was the author of that revolution."
Did the country at large understand this? And where did this divergence of opinion lead America during Reconstruction?
Paul: No. The country at large did not understand that. Uh, some people did. Some Whites did. Uh, uh, nearly all Blacks did. Uh, the-- the country at large did not.
So what I am referring to there is, first of all, the dilemma for White Southerners is when you have the entire-- when your entire intellectual universe is constructed with this pro-slavery ideology and God has a certain will, uh, to preserve slavery in order to spread in order to help Christianity diffuse itself and so forth. When-- when your entire mental world is constructed on that and then slavery suddenly violently disappears, then, uh, what really is the will of God? They have to figure that out. It is-- it is a great theological dilemma for many people, many White Southerners at the--- at the end of the Civil War.
Uh, it is not a dilemma for Blacks owners, because they had much more of a theology that God would provide them liberation in God's time. And they, in fact, saw that happen. So they saw the Civil War, in effect, as a fulfillment of prophecy.
Uh, but they faced the challenge of creating-- the challenge and the opportunity both of creating, uh, independent religious institutions. So what happens in, uh, southern churches after the Civil War is Whites, uh, insist that Black should remain a part of the church in exactly the way that they had been before, that is, a segregated part of church-- of White churches: sitting in balconies, not being in positions of power, and so forth. Because they-- they think Blacks are not civilized and Christianized enough to run their own institutions.
Blacks obviously, want no part of that. And by, uh, in very great numbers, uh, separate out and formed their own independent churches sometimes with the cooperation of Whites, more often, with either the resistance or simply the, tsk, um, uh, the resistance of Whites or simply Whites, uh, acknowledging that they have left and having wanting nothing more to do with them, uh, and feeling in a-- and ironically feeling betrayed by the people that they thought were their loyal slaves. Then they have come to discover that they were never loyal slaves. In their own minds, that was always a kind of act that they had to play in the-- in the antebellum south.
Uh, so that-- but that is-- that is a part of-- of Black, free Black men of color and free Black women of color in the antebellum era had created a theology that-- that had prepared this moment that the Civil War created. And-- and so Black churches stepped into that role, played their social roles, played their political roles, played all the multi various roles that Black churches did, because there were not other Black institutions to-- to fill all of those different kinds of roles at that time.
Chris: Paul, can you tell us the background, in effect, of Reverend HN Turner's declarations in the late 19th century that in America White is God and Black is the devil and God is a Negro?
Paul: Yeah. So that is-- that comes from a speech he gave in the 1890s to the-- to a-- a group of Black Baptists. Uh, Henry McNeal Turner was a Methodist. Interestingly, Turner was a free man of color before the Civil War. He was never a slave. Uh, he becomes a Methodist Minister in the eighteen-fifties, the Union Army Chaplain during the Civil War, and a State Rep-- a State Senator in Georgia after the Civil War for a couple of years.
He was basically kicked out of the State Senate, in a sort of coup that White Democrats, um, tsk, enact against Black Republicans in Georgia. That was just part of the process of redemption-- political, so called redemption, after the Civil War.
And he becomes increasingly embittered and disillusioned by American society in the 1880s and 1890s. And one of the sources of that bitter disillusionment was that he perceived clearly the connection of the White image of Jesus with the divinization of Whiteness as a property that people have and, therefore, the demonization of Blackness.
So he says, "All people have the capacity to envision God in their own image." Obviously, White people have done that. Black people have the same right to envision God in their own image. And so that is what I am going to do when I say, "God is a Negro." He does not mean that as a literal phrase. He means that God metaphorically identifies with the struggle of Black people. He is basically making exactly-- exactly the same argument that Black theologians of the 1960s and forward - James Cone, et cetera - make. Uh, but he is making it in the 1890s. So I think of him really as the Father of-- of Black Theology in the nineteenth century.
Chris: During this time, after the Civil War, the United States, especially in the southern states or entirely in the-- in the southern states, experienced lynchings. And in your book, you call them acts of purification where clergymen pronounced benedictions as men crucified and set afire Black bodies. So there is a lot of religious language in those discussions.
Tell me more about that, or tell us more about that, please.
Paul: Yeah. So this is obviously one of the most horrific episodes of American history, the lynching of Black people about five thousand or so from the 1880s to the 1950s. Uh, we do not have an exact figure. But that is a-- that is a sort of a round-- approximate round figure, probably, more that are not known about but, um, tsk, e-- enough that it is one of the great scandals of American history. It is also one of the great scandals of American religious history that, um, many White churches either-- the-- the typical response simply would be not to acknowledge that at all, simply to turn your back and sort of pretend like it did not exist.
A less common but very powerful response was to either justify it or to, in some particular occasions - that is what I am referring to there - to participate in it.
So for example, there is a very famous-- I will just give you one story that illuminates the complexities of this. There is a very famous lynching of a Black man in Waco, Texas in the 1910s. And there is actually a Baptist Minister there, James Dawson, who was there and watches it, White Baptist Minister, and he is, um, he is horrified by it actually. Uh, but he also says, "What could I, a single individual, possibly do about this?"
And this is an event in which several thousand people set the Black man on fire. And the use of fire is an obvious image of purification. So there has been a lot of theological scholarship about the meaning of this. And one argument that has come out of the theological scholarship is the right of, the evangelical right of purification of sin comes to be invested on the body of the Black men and Black women, mostly Black men, who are kind of the representative of societal sins and, therefore, must be sacrificed in expiation of our own sins. So the Black body becomes the vehicle of-- of societal expiation in this theology.
Chris: Now, Paul, regarding Native Americans in the early twentieth century, the American Missionary Association's Charles Shelton said, "The Indian must go down. Extermination or annihilation is the only possible solution of the question. You can send to the Indian the rifle and exterminate him in that way. Or we can send to the Indian the gospel of Christ its great power of civilization and through its influence, exterminate the savage that
save the man."
Chris: Tell us about this and what it represents.
Paul: Yeah. So that-- that is referring to the famous, uh, slogan from the nineteenth century, "Kill the Indian; save the man." Kill the Indian; save the man. And the idea was that the same process-- and-- and by the way, these are, these are many times ex-abolitionists and people who are very involved with Black civil rights. And they-- they have an idea that-- that, uh, they are going to help Blacks rise in American civilization.
And what happens is they, uh-- and they-- they do many heroic things in-- in the process of doing that, create Black colleges and universities, for example, uh, oftentimes against, uh, the attacks of the clan. Many of these are the same people who are involved in, tsk, the creation of this idea - kill the Indian; save the man - the creation of Indian boarding schools which really had the same basic idea as Black, schools of the time.
The idea was to take, uncivilized, uneducated people. Civilize them, train them in the ways of American civilization so that they could then rise up an American civilization. And over a period of several generations, let us say, become, equal partners to Whites and American civilization.
So the great irony of this, in my opinion, is it had a kind of, it had a kind of idealistic, uh, motive. But it has an utterly disastrous end that we all know about in how Indian boarding schools actually functioned in which Native children were beaten so that they would not speak their native language, for example, and all kinds of stories that, that come out of these, uh, come out of these institutions.
But the, the more pluralistic idea that emerges later in the twentieth century is simply not present, largely not present, in the-- in the later nineteenth century. And there-- there was only one path to civilization. Uh, and so it comes to be applied to Indians, by many of the same people who are applying it to African-Americans with idealistic motives but with disastrous ends.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. In your chapter about race, religion, and immigration, you relate that the early twentieth century increase in Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants caused "the relationship of Jews to Whiteness to be more in question". Why is this significant?
Paul: It is significant, because there had been a long period of Jewish immigration in American history, German Jews, mostly. Uh, and these are the people who, for example, create Reform Judaism in Cincinnati in the, uh, in the later nineteenth century, for example.
Uh, in the later nineteenth, twentieth century, you have, uh, this whole period of immigration from Poland, Eastern Europe, uh, uh, Russian Jews, and so forth. And they are really-- they are perceived as racially different, uh, in a way that German Jews were not.
Uh, and there is a lot of reasons for that. One is they are more likely to speak, uh, languages unfamiliar to Americans, Yiddish in particular. For another, they are very much crowded into, uh, tenements in New York and places like that. Uh, and they-- they come to be seen as a foreign people and unassimilable people by some Americans see them that way, uh, in a way that-- that German Jews were not. Also, I would say this is because of the-- they were coming in such large numbers, much larger numbers than-- than German Jews had ever come in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Um, so they, uh, are thought of as a-- a racialized people. And that is-- that is not characteristic of how Jews had been thought of in American history. That is something that is a relatively new thing in the later nineteenth century, I believe.
Chris: Thank you. Tell us about the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, its purpose, and what it meant.
Paul: Yeah. So the world, uh, across Chicago 1893 had the great world's fair. This-- this amazing spectacular event in Chicago in 1893. All kinds of things, uh, things-- things happened there, uh, one of which was the World's Parliament of Religions.
And the idea actually came from Liberal Protestants, and they wanted to bring everyone, all different representatives of different religious groups, together from all over the world. And their goal, the Liberal Protestant goal, was actually to show that all world religions had something to contribute, some moral message to contribute. And that Liberal Protestantism was kind of at the summit, because it combined all the great messages of all the other liberal religions.
Uh, they would not have said it that explicitly, but their implicit goal was-- was that. But what happens is, tsk, uh, you see many Americans for the first time being introduced to, Hinduism, to Buddhism, in a way that they had never heard before by people who are not consenting necessarily to this Liberal Protestant project. Some of these people go on to have rather famous careers as kind of purveyors of eastern, religious with wisdom.
Uh, tsk, the practices of yoga and things like that begin to take off from the World's Parliament of Religions. It is a kind of central moment in terms of how people are going to come to think of-- of pluralism in American religion.
Chris: Also in this, uh, same time period, you talk about the former Southern Baptist Minister, Thomas Dixon "Transforming the suffering savior of the lost cause into a herald of American power." Paul, can you tell us about how religion wove itself into the Ku Klux Klan and what it meant for twentieth century America?
Paul: Yeah. So, lost cause refers to the idea common in the late 19th century south that, um, tsk, the --the cause of the self was holy and that the Southerners had lost that cause, because God was testing and purifying them for some greater purpose in the-- in the future. That is a very common idea many White Southerners had at the time.
Thomas Dixon comes from a family of Baptist Ministers in North Carolina, uh, but he is also very interested in theater. He is a Shakespearean theater actor, and he does all kinds of other things.
In the early twentieth century, he writes a couple of famous novels; The Clansman was one in which the clan played the role of saving American civilization from the "brutalities of Negro savages", around all that stuff.
So these novels are important partly because they are very popular as novels, but then they become the-- the screenplay as it were for the famous film, Birth of a Nation, in 1915 that many people are familiar with which basically retells the story of the Civil War as White Southerners understood it.
And, again, the plan-- the clan in the film plays the heroic role of saving, uh, women from being raped and saving American civilization as it were from being raped. Women in the film were kind of a symbol for American civilization as a whole which is being raped by Negro savages.
And the film comes out. And the Ku Klux Klan, second-- so called second Ku Klux Klan began, not coincidentally, at exactly the same moment, because the film is a kind of inspiration for the clan. And, of course, the clan famously becomes very, very huge in the 1920s, uh, with many millions of members not primarily in the South. Actually, Indiana was the center of the clan at that time. And the clan becomes a purveyor of, uh, certainly racism, of course, but principally of anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism more than anything else.
Um, so all of those things from-- so Dixon plays a-- a key role in the recreation and reformation of the clan in the early twentieth century, uh, through the 1920s and, uh, you know has a, tsk, has a sort of a demonic role in American history for that reason.
Chris: During the 1906 Azusa Street Revivals in Los Angeles, one participant wrote, "I, being southern-born, thought it a miracle that I could sit in a service by a colored saint of God and worship, or eat at a great camp table and forget I was eating beside a colored saint. But in spirit and truth, God was worshiped in love and harmony. " What did these arrivals-- what did-- I am sorry. What are these Azusa Street Revivals? And what did they do for religion and race in America?
Paul: Yeah. So the Azusa Street Revivals are kind of one of the-- one of the founding moments of what we now call Pentecostalism which is to say Pentecostalism is the idea that after salvation and baptism, there was a kind of baptism of the Holy Spirit which allows the recipient of the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues, uh, and to become a purely, holy person.
One of the-- and there is much scholarly controversy about who exactly founded Pentecostalism. But certainly, one of its founders - I think the principal one in my opinion - was William Seymour, an African-American, uh, former Baptist Minister from Louisiana, who goes to some, tsk, uh, holiness meetings. Holiness is kind of like the predecessor to Pentecostalism in Houston. Uh, he is actually required to sit it by himself in a segregated part of the room.
And he ends up in Los Angeles, uh, rents a former horse stable, uh, and next to a African Methodist Episcopal Church, and begins the series of revivals which miraculously catch the attention of the local papers. Those stories in the local papers are picked up by international papers, and, pretty soon, you have people coming from all over the world including some White Southerners to receive this so called baptism of the Holy Spirit at the hands literally of William Seymour.
So the White-- I cannot remember the name of the person who wrote that. But it is a White Southerner who was remarking that he could not have conceived of an interracial, physical interaction, religious and physical interaction at the same time, outside of this context, because it was so foreign to the way White Southerners thought of race relations.
But it speaks to how Pentecostalism, in its early days, had, a kind of religious power to overcome racial barriers. Pentecostalism, after a generation, quickly segregates itself just like all other things in American society are segregated. But in this kind of originary moment, there are, uh, particular moments of racial interaction that are rather remarkable to contemplate.
Chris: Paul, now, moving into religion and civil rights, can you tell us how Black churches had been criticized? And then what role some played in the Civil Rights Movement going forward?
Paul: Yeah. So there is a great-- there is a-- a lot of literature written by African-American intellectuals in the middle of the twentieth century would say basically this "The church is the largest institution in the Black community." And, as W.E.B. Du Bois writes in the 1930s, I think it was, "What has the church done on behalf of social progress? The flat answer is nothing, if not, less than nothing." And Du Bois was one of these critics that you just, refer to there. And he is talking about the church has all this potential power that is going unused.
Now, I think that is a somewhat of an unfair criticism, because when you look at what churches were actually doing, there is actually a lot going on. It is just not very publicly visible. But Du Bois and others thought that the church could do a lot more.
Lo and behold, in 1950s and 60s, of course, you have the grand representative of the Black church, Martin Luther King, rise up. But he rises up from a, uh-- he-- he grows up in the 1930s and 40s where his father was a minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. His father was protesting, for example, the fact that there were no Black high schools for any Black students in Atlanta. And he forces the city government to build the Booker T. Washington High School where Martin Luther King, Jr. went to high school, went to junior high, rather.
So there is-- there is a kind of history of activism which then becomes public in the 50s and 60s. Uh, but in the era before the fifties and sixties, there-- there is the idea that the Black church has a kind of social-- potential social power that is unrealized.
Chris: rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer, summed up her life's work with this statement, which you have in your book, "We cannot separate Christ from freedom and freedom from Christ." Can you tell us about her and what this meant?
Paul: Yes. Fannie Lou Hamer was a poor African-American, uh, sharecropper in, um, tsk, Mississippi, uh, growing up in the 40s, 50s, and 60s who goes to a civil rights meeting. And I believe it is 1962, if I remember correctly, uh, at that time that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has come to Mississippi to organize people.
And she kind of catches the-- the message of-- of the young, uh, people who are leading SNCC. And she becomes very much involved with SNCC, tries to register to vote. Uh, she is arrested, uh, undergoes basically torture in Mississippi jails, is really beaten quite brutally, is physically damaged for life as a result of that, but emerges.
And she enters the national stage, because she goes to the Democratic Convention in 1964. And there is a controversy about who is going to represent Mississippi at the Democratic Convention. And, of course, White Mississippians want no Black people. Black people from Mississippi want to be fairly represented as part of the delegation. And eventually, the compromise comes that-- that there will be two seats for Black delegates from Mississippi.
And-- Fannie Lou Hamer famously says, "We did not come all this way for no two seats," Uh, because the-- the compromise to her is an unacceptable, loss of what the Civil Rights Movement had stood for. And then she, -- actually, Lyndon Johnson is watching this. And he cuts off the -- the TV, cos he does not want the-- the nation to watch Fannie Lou Hamer.
But Fannie Lou Hamer, uh, has a great voice begins to sing This Little Light of Mine which is a song that is, uh, sort of associated with her now. And she ends up being basically the symbol of what the Civil Rights Movement represents in the State of Mississippi. She is kind of like the-- the representative of that from the ordinary class or folk that the Civil Rights Movement organized.
Chris: Thank you. Could you paint for us a religious portrait of Cesar Chavez and what he did?
Paul: Yeah. So Cesar Chavez was something of a figure parallel to Martin Luther King in the sixties. Uh, Caesar Chavez--except from the world of Catholicism.
Cesar Chavez, uh, grows up as a Mexican-American Catholic in the 40s and 50s. In the 50s begins-- and-- and especially in the sixties begins to organize, um, tsk, farm workers, predominantly Mexican-American, uh, farm workers but some Filipinos as well in the California fields in the 1960s. And he does so using a Catholic religious imagery very similar to how Martin Luther King uses Protestant religious imagery.
But in Chavez's case, he is not-- he is different than King, because Chavez is not a great orator in and of himself. King was a great orator, and Chavez was not. But Chavez is a person who has mastered this-- the symbology of suffering that comes from Catholicism.
So one of Chavez's means of portraying the goals of the farm workers' union is to engage in public fast and to engage in the public suffering of a fast which for him represents the public suffering of Jesus on the cross. And he wants to make that point clear.
So he does that more through his actions, I think, than his words per se. But he becomes the symbol of farm workers' struggles as a result of that.
Chris: Thank you. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights organizer and Mennonite Minister, Vince Harding, wrote this in his “Black Power in the American Christ”: "Perhaps, God is writing on the wall saying that we Christians, Black and White, must choose between death with the American Christ and life with the suffering servant of God." What did he mean? And what effect did this have?
Paul: Yeah. So he is talking about how Christianity had been so enmeshed with White supremacy through most of American history that the only choice now was whether to try to extricate the message of Christianity from White supremacy. And if it was not ex-- if it could not be extricated, uh, then the message simply could not, uh-- then-- then it was essentially a dead, form. It would not have any meaning whatsoever.
Chris: And did this have an effect in the country?
Paul: Yeah. So Vincent Harding was an associate's of King and was someone who was important in the development of Black theology in the nineteen-sixties. And he is a kind of representative that of the-- the idea-- King had this idea, too, that-- that Christianity was-- was-- at the end of the day, Christianity was salvageable, was, uh, was-- you were able to extricate Christianity from White supremacy, because Christianity has an essence that does not have to be, does not have to be covered in White supremacy.
Of course, many critics of Christianity is 60s Malcolm X, et cetera, said, otherwise, that it was so enmeshed in White supremacy that it could not be extricated, and Harding and others had a different idea and were important in-- in propagating kind of idea of a new Christianity in American history.
Chris: Towards the end of your book, you quote a scholar saying that in 21st America, race and religion are increasingly decoupling. What went into that statement? And what are its implications for us?
Paul: Yeah. Um, I used to think that more than I think that now, honestly, uh, but just because of what we have seen over the last year. Uh, but I was-- I was referring there to the fact that, churches in America are more likely-- much more likely to, uh, be of diverse membership now than it would have been the case in the past. And we do not think of the White church as a thing as we would have in an earlier generation.
And, for example, twenty percent of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention are African-American churches. They often have multiple affiliations. They may be affiliated with a Black denomination. But they also affiliate with this denomination, Southern Baptists, who historically came out of the slaveholding South. So that-- that is what he means by the-- the-- by the decoupling.
Uh, I think recent books, really just in the past year, such as Jemar Tisby's The Color of Compromise, have challenged the notion that that there really has been this decoupling. Yeah, There has been a decoupling institutionally, but there is not been a decoupling ideologically effectively is what he says.
Chris: Paul, that leads us into this closing question. You mentioned in your book, the book Divided by Faith, published in 2001 by two religious sociologists and its treatment of what you call or what they call heart change and systemic institutional change. Can you elaborate on these and how understanding them might help us 2020?
Paul: Yeah. So, uh, the evangelical emphasis has always been on the individual that the transformation of the individual through salvation by Christ is the key to transforming society.
Critics of that view have always held, kind of the social gospel critics and so forth - and Martin Luther King had the same idea - held that the transformation of society is necessary also in the transformation of individuals. And the two really cannot be, uh, separated out in the traditional way.
So what Emerson and Smith say in Divided by Faith is, um, there are many White evangelicals who-- who clearly want to overcome the racist history of American evangelicalism. But they conceived of doing so through individual relations. And the problem with that is individual relations do not address the structural causes, the structural impediments that American racism historically has imposed.
Uh, this is a realization, I believe, that Martin Luther King was really coming to later in his life. And he really presses this point in the last three years of his life, 1965 and 1968.
Contemporary, uh, critics have picked up this point and have said that the phrase we now use is “structural racism” which is a sort of the collective structural racism embedded in the very institutions of American history have to be addressed. And you cannot simply address it at the level of better individual race relations. As important as those might be, as laudable as those projects might be, they do not address this kind of structural problems.
So, Black evangelicals tend to see the structural racism that are embedded in American history White evangelicals do not. And that is-- that is basic problem that American Christianity faces. That is the argument of Emerson and Smith, and one that I think still holds a lot of weight.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. We have been talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American History from the sixteenth century to the present.
Thank you so much, Paul, for taking time to participate and for all your efforts in studying race and religion.
Paul: Thank you so much for this opportunity, Chris. I really appreciate it.
Transcript: "Has Religion Influenced American Diplomacy and War?" with Andrew Preston.
Chris: United States foreign policy is of great interest to all Americans because of the important thread in the American narrative that says we should use our blessings of freedom and wealth to benefit the world: Foreign policy matters. The burning question for us on this podcast is how did religion influence American foreign policy and war if at all? To help us answer this question, we will talk with Andrew Preston, professor of American history at the University of Cambridge and author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. Mr. Preston specializes in the history of American foreign relations, specifically the intersection between national and international, including the influence that domestic politics and culture, particularly religion, have had on conduct of US foreign policy.
Also as with each episode in our podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and thus more fully comprehend the necessity of this idea of religious freedom to America in fulfilling her purposes in the world.
Thank you, Andrew, for being with us today. Your book is absolutely fantastic. I read it years ago and it revealed to me an entire part of American history that I had not really heard of and that's almost endless in its influence and that is, religion's role in US foreign policy. So before I start any specific questions, can you tell us just generally how religion has influenced US war and diplomacy?
Andrew: Well, thanks for having me, Chris. I should say that first off. It's a real pleasure to be here. And thanks for the questions and the, and the discussion around my book. When I wrote this book almost 10 years ago, you said you read it a while ago, not many people were working on religion and US foreign policy. And now it's a whole subfield in political science and in history. So it's really, it's been, it's been really exciting. The religious influence in American foreign policy has been sometimes tricky to demonstrate because you don't always find policymakers saying I want to do A, B, or C or X, Y, Z because of my religious beliefs, especially when you're talking about high-level diplomacy. You don't always find that kind of record in NSC meet meeting minutes or, you know, things like that.
Andrew: So sometimes you have to read between the lines. Sometimes it's tricky but once historians and political scientists began to know what to look for, the job became easier. And it also became much more interesting because, as you said, it all of a sudden opened up this whole vista on how we should see American foreign policy. And then to get, to get back to your question, what is the general influence? Religion has over time, over a long period of time acted as a kind of conscience for American foreign policy and for American foreign policy makers, even for policymakers who themselves weren't religious because of American domestic politics, because of the the very vibrant role that religion plays in American domestic politics. And then the fact that domestic politics and political actors then apply pressure to policymakers and force them to confront moral questions in foreign policy. Religion has in, in that way had a huge influence on the conduct of American foreign policy and not just in the last 10 or 20 years, but the last 200 years.
Chris: Okay, so it took some sleuthing on your part to get at those tools that allowed you to see the influence. So it was a little bit of a, a job to do, I guess.
Andrew: Absolutely, and that's what, that's what is fun about it. That, that's the, that's the most fun you can have as an historian is, is piecing things together and reading between the lines and getting to know the context and getting to know the people.
Chris: Sure, absolutely. Well, thank you for doing that because it's just super revealing. So the second sort of introductory question would be tell us about the title. The title grabbed me. It just grabbed me in all ways. Tell, tell us about that title, where it came from? Why you used it?
Andrew: The title comes from the Book of Ephesians and it's where Paul is telling new Christians what they need to do. They need to what they need to wear effectively, he is using this metaphorically. And they need to wield the sword of the spirit and also brandish the shield of faith, along with another number of other accouterments. And he doesn't use those two phrases side-by-side in Ephesians in this, in this passage. But I put them together uhh because to me they capture exactly what the religious influence on American foreign policy was and still is all about.
Andrew: So on one hand, you have the sword of the spirit, which is the kind of, which is familiar to a lot of people. That's the kind of interventionist Messianic, we are going to reform the world type of ideology that has been present in American foreign policy from Manifest Destiny all the way up to the present. And in fact, when I began my book, I began my book during the, the years of the George W. Bush administration and at the height of the Iraq War. And a lot of people a friend of mine actually put it like this. A lot of people assumed that I was sort of writing a history of the Bush administration's foreign policy. And when I told a friend that actually I was going back much further in time uhh 200 years, I ended up going back 400 years. But he said, "Are you're writing a history of Bush backwards?" Basically the use of religion to justify war and empire and all that kind of thing. And that's definitely a part of the story and that's the sword of the spirit. But as I did more research, the shield of faith was also extremely important.
Andrew: And historians had not paid nearly enough attention to internationalism and pacifism and solving conflicts and promoting interfaith dialogue, promote, using religion as a, as a tool for peace. And so I have called that the shield of faith. And where the religious influence is most powerful is a blend of the kind of reformist interventionist impulse and the more pacifistic kind of internationalist impulse and where the two have combined in order to produce this very, very compelling moral vision for American foreign policy. And that, that's why the book is called Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith. If I could say one more thing about that, it I, I can't claim any credit. I can't claim credit for thinking of that, even though I came across that John Foster Dulles used the, used those those verses.
Woodrow Wilson did, lots of my historical actors in the book talked about the sword of the spirit and the shield of faith. But my wife and I were I, I live in England and based in England. We were going for a walk in the country with our dog and one of the things we love to do is to stop into these little village parish churches that are, you know, like a thousand years old and full of history. And we went into one in Northamptonshire, which is a neighboring county to, to where I'm from, Cambridgeshire. And there was a large memorial plaque on the wall of the church, this beautiful little church in the middle of nowhere. And it was to the dead of the two World Wars which is very common in English village churches. And this plaque had the, the passages, had the verses rather, and my wife said because I was, we were just talking about my book and I was just talking about what I would later identify as the sword of spirit and the shield of faith. And she said, "There it is. There is your title right there," because it just perfectly captures the book.
Chris: I agree. It perfectly captures it. So let's dive in. Andrew, thanks for that helpful foundation you laid there for us. We are just going to cover four of your thirty chapters. So we are going to talk about FDR and his faith, the religion and religious freedom used by the Johnson and Kennedy administrations, the Vietnam War, religion's influence on that, it's prosecution and then we are going to touch lightly on the epilogue of 9/11 a little bit after that. So Andrew, can you paint for us a religious portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Andrew: He was - so if I was painting just a quick portrait, he was by instinct non-theological as in non-doctrinal. To him, religion was a living thing. It was about spirituality, but it was also about ethics. But it wasn't something that you would think about, think a lot about. He wasn't a theologian but his religion was very deep. It was very profound. His wife Eleanor, who wasn't a religious person as far as we know, said that that was the most it was the thing that he felt deepest and was most mysterious in him was his faith. He was an Episcopalian and he was also by instinct as well as I would say not by doctrine because I just said he wasn't doctrinal. But to him, religion was inherently interfaith. He was an Episcopalian. As I just said, he was a Protestant. But to him, religion was a force for community, a force for coming together as well as a source of ethics. And he thought that religious commonalities inherently trumps religious differences and that should be then the basis not the only basis but a basis for politics and foreign policy.
Chris: Okay, and I should say we are starting with FDR but there is a whole, I don't know the chapter number of that chapter. But there, we're, we're skipping all this other religion, religious influence on American foreign policy pre mid-20th century and yeah.
Andrew: It's a big book. It's a big book, you know, so you can just go and say... [chuckles]
Chris: Uhh so anyways, people should read it and, and from the beginning.
Andrew: Oh thank you.
Chris: Okay, so that’s the portrait. That's helpful. I just visited Hyde Park last summer and you know, was moved by his religion sort of in the same spirit of what you relate there. I'm going to quote something from your book regarding FDR, "Building on Lincoln's ecumenical civil religion, Roosevelt was the first president to prioritize faith itself as opposed to Protestantism or even Christianity as the essence of American democracy." Can you tell us, Andrew, about how FDR used his religious beliefs and his faith in the prosecution of foreign policy, its significance and ramifications?
Andrew: Yeah. It's, it's a huge question. I should, I should sort of prefaced my answer by talking about that quote that you just read and say that I wanted to sort of pay due respect here to previous presidents who also made gestures to what we now call or what came to be called in this, in FDR's period in the 1930s and 40s, the Judeo-Christian tradition. So George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson spoke in very vague terms and not very often in ways that we would later call the Judeo-Christian tradition. So looking at how Christianity owes its roots to Judaism and how Jews and Christians should cooperate in American politics and American society and in American culture.
Chris: Right.
Andrew: But it was FDR who really elevated that notion to something that we might, to, to something that was included in the American civil religion and even I would say in the American body politic and the political fabric of the nation. This idea that Will Herberg in 1955 called the idea of a nation as Protestant, Catholic Jew. And from there, we can talk about this perhaps later in the podcast if you want, although other historians have, have talked about this a great deal from, from that notion of this kind of tri-faith America, what the historian Kevin Schultz calls tri-faith America. You then have it opens up spaces for further and further religious pluralism. For FDR in the 1930s, it was a way of distinguishing what was good about America and what was bad about what was going on elsewhere in the world, especially in Nazi Germany, but also in the Soviet Union as well as, well, to a lesser extent in Japan. But really it was about Nazi Germany.
And for FDR the religion was important for the reasons I already said because it was a source of personal comfort, a source of spirituality, a source of ethics. But for him, it was a source of democracy. And the reason it was a source of democracy is because without freedom of conscience, you couldn't have a democracy and without democracy you couldn't have peace. Peace either at home or in the context of the late 1930s and early 1940s, you couldn't have peace abroad. And one of the reasons why the freedom of religion was so politically important and geopolitically important to FDR is because if everything rested on freedom of conscience, you couldn't have, you couldn't have freedom of conscience without the freedom of religion. And he talked about this endlessly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It's there in the Four Freedoms, in the second of the Four Freedoms, in the freedom of worship.
And it's there in some of his most important speeches leading up to World War II. Remember, this is a time when most Americans did not want to get involved in Europe. And his biggest task was convincing not the people we now call isolationist. Your Charles Lindberghs and your Gerald Nuys, people like that. His biggest task was because the isolationists, those sort of hardcore isolationists weren't the majority. The biggest task was convincing probably a plurality of Americans who were very internationally-minded, including Christian pacifists, including a lot of Protestant and Catholic and Jewish leaders. Very internationally-minded but did not want to get involved in Europe. And so one way of, of co-- of winning this argument was by appealing to what was starting to be called the Judeo-Christian tradition in a way that meant this is what is good about America, but even if Nazi Germany isn't going to attack us, this is why we have to worry about the Germans because what they're doing is they are snuffing out the freedom of religion.
And if we go back to this idea of what we might call FDR's faith-based democratic peace theory, democracies don't go to war with one another. You can't have peace without democracy. You can't have democracy without freedom of conscience. You can't have freedom of conscience without freedom of religion. That's why Americans should pay attention to what was going on in Germany. That's why they should worry about what the Germans were doing to religion. And if you're listening to this podcast or watching this video and you're interested in this, just do a quick Google "1939 State of the Union Address". And FDR's 1939 State of the Union just begins by laying that all out. Here is why we should care about freedom of religion because it's not just about what is happening to Jews and some German Christians. It's really about the fate of the world.
Chris: In the chapter that you call interestingly "The Revolutionary Church In A Revolutionary Age." And in that chapter, you write, I'm quoting here, "Perhaps without realizing it, Kennedy and Johnson reflected a shift that was taking place in religion's influence on politics and especially on foreign policy. In a modernizing society that was both increasingly secular and pluralistic, religion's role could never again be assumed. The presidents could look to faith but they could not rely on it." Why did you use the term "Revolutionary Church" in the chapter's title? And can you take us through a few examples of how the Kennedy and Johnson admin-- administration saw religion and religious freedom as part of their foreign policy toolkit or not?
Andrew: One more thought about FDR. One of the reasons I enjoyed, I did not expect to do anything on FDR when I began this book because if you read much of the biographical literature on him, including by people who knew FDR better than I ever will, people like Arthur Schlesinger, they either ignore his religious values and his, his religious faith. Or they say that it was a kind of on, you know, it was kind of superficial that he would go to church on Sundays sometimes. And that, that I kind of took that at face value took that assessment. And the more research I did, the more interesting if FDR became, FDR's religion became because it, religion was such a central part of his life. It was a very, very important part of his life and it was a very important part of his, his politics and then he made it a very important part of his foreign policy.
Chris: Yup.
Andrew: One of the trickiest chapters or the, the two of the trickiest chapters that, that I wrote that we're going to discuss I think in the 1960s deal with those, that deal with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. And partly because of Kennedy's Catholicism, which a lot of people have written about, but I'm not sure anyone is really, politically there is a lot of really good stuff on, on the politics of Kennedy's Catholicism. But I'm not sure we've got to the bottom, just like I'm not sure we had got to the bottom of FDR's Anglicanism. I'm not sure we've got to the bottom of JFK's Catholicism as a personal faith. Although Fred Logavell's biography on JFK that came out recently just starts to get us there. He doesn't deal with the presidency in this volume, but it starts to get us there. And LBJ was this like a lot of other presidents like Ronald Reagan was like some other presidents had and sort of was wonderfully but frustratingly eclectic and diverse in his religious views, not just in religions he respected or read or but he would dabble in all sorts of religions and I don't mean in a superficial way but in a fairly, I would say in a fairly profound way.
And you ask why the revolutionary church, one of the really interesting things in writing these chapters in the 1960s was trying to get to grips with JFK and LBJ and some other people too. I've got some stuff that I found really interesting on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his faith in the Vietnam War. But it was also trying to get to grips with their religion in this time of incredible turbulence, socially and culturally, including in religion. And so the revolutionary church is about Vatican II. It's about the Death of God Movement. It's about Liberal Protes--Mainline Protestantism and a lot of the activism that Mainline Protestants took part in in civil rights and second like feminism and all sorts of things. And then of course, it's also I have a later chapter about, I don't want to call it the backlash because I think that does an injustice to conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists and conservative Catholics. But then you have this kind of counter, what I call the Counter Reformation of the 1960s coming in as well.
Chris: Okay, you write in this chapter this "Neither Kennedy nor Johnson nor most of their advisers understood the new American religious landscape or grasped the importance of religious pluralism in a globalizing world." Why did you say that and what were the effects of this?
Andrew: Yeah, so this is one of the, the trickiest things about these about these chapters. So Kennedy and Johnson, especially Kennedy, came in as a modernizing pre-- not just a modern president but a modernizing president. And he surrounded himself with modernization theorists, people who called themselves modernization theorists. And inherently tied up in modernization theory is this assumption of secularization, that is it, you know, it goes back to Freud and it goes back to Weber, it goes back to all sorts of thinkers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then as societies become more modern, they will become more secular. And it's just, it's, it's an inescapable process. And people like Walt Rostow and other modernization theorists in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations weren't that concerned with religion. But as far as I can tell, they did have this, this kind of assumption that as the world was becoming more modern, it would become more secular.
And therefore, they didn't have to deal with religion. By the same token, Kennedy's Catholicism, which of course was a white-hot subject in 1964 for liberals as well as conservatives. I mean, for a lot of people, a lot of a lot of people who supported the Civil Rights Movement said they weren't going to vote for Kennedy because he was a Catholic. I mean, it's, it, it, it just seems so foreign to us today when the Supreme Court has a Catholic majority and Catholics are just part of the mainstream. It's easy to forget just how visceral anti-Catholicism was as late as the early 1960s. Even more so, I would say, than Mormonism is for political candidates in today in politics, where people like Mitt Romney have to deal with that issue of Mormonism and there where some people just wouldn't vote for him no matter what because he is a Mormon.
Andrew: The point here is that after Kennedy gets elected in 1960 because Catholicism is such a third rail he doesn't want to deal with religion. He talks in very vague platitudes about religion, but he is not going to go down the route that FDR and Truman and Eisenhower did in using religion as a political tool because if he does that he tries to use it as a political tool. The risk that this is going blow up in his face is really, really enormous. So he just tries to contain it and move it aside and that, as I was saying, it works quite nicely with his administration because most of them, even the religious ones like Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk, but they are happy to deal with foreign problems in this containerized way where religions is, is just not a part. And the consequences for foreign policy for that I argue in the book were actually quite profound because it made them miss a lot of the ferment, the growing ferment in for lack of a better term what was happening in world religions. What was happening in the 1960s with Islam and into the 1970s, what was happening in Southeast Asia. There, there is this quote that I, in the, in the book, I don't have it in front of me so I, I hope I don't mangle it but what?
Chris: I have it. But I have it, yeah.
Andrew: Is this the one about, is this the one about the Buddhist Crisis?
Chris: Yeah. Should I read it?
Andrew: Right, you please do. Thank you.
Chris: As we got it. Yeah.
"The 1963 South Vietnam Buddhist Uprising caught the Kennedy administration flat-footed. ‘How could this have happened?’ A perplexed JFK asked his advisors about the Buddhists, 'Who are these people? Why didn't we know about them before?'"
Andrew: Yeah, it's an amazing and I think I go on to say something like it's shocking that Kennedy was shocked that, that by the Buddhist Uprising.
In 1963, the Catholic leader of South Vietnam ,because there was a substantial uhhm uhh population of Catholics because Vietnam had once been a French colony. And Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam was a Catholic. His brother, his brother, his older brother was the bishop of Hue. They weren't just Catholics. They were a prominent, very active Catholic family and they were America's allies in the fight against communism in South Vietnam. And in 1963 uhh the Buddhists who felt repressed under the Diem government launched a peaceful, a, a series of peaceful protests. This is, these are the protests that led to that very famous and, and very troubling image of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burning himself alive in protest. Probably one of the most famous if not the most famous photo image from the Vietnam War.
And this is what Kennedy is talking about when he says who are these people because he doesn't know the Buddhist themselves, you know, but of course, they are the largest religious group in Vietnam. They are absolutely essential to politics and the fact that Kennedy, the president of the United States who is escalating the conflict that would be later, not much later become the Vietnam War. The fact that he is perplexed by, by these people just is, is to me still baffling when I think about that. And the, the Kennedy administration just didn't have a handle and I argue in the book that they didn't have a handle on it just as they didn't have a handle on the early signs of the Shia Revolution in, in Iran because they just didn't want to deal with religion. They just didn't, they thought religion was a dying force that it, it was politically irrelevant that you had these kind of wild-eyed mystics either and in terms, in terms of Muslim clerics or Buddhist monks or whoever. And the fact that they were burning themselves to death in protest just showed how irrational they were and these people aren't the way of the future. And that of course was just a, it wasn't only a fundamental misreading of what was happening because they weren't taking religion seriously. It, it was a fundamental error and it was a basic error in the conduct of American foreign policy.
Chris: Right. You talked about, a few minutes ago Robert McNamara, and then you mentioned the Buddhist who burned himself alive? Can you tell us that story about the Quaker who left his home one morning and asking his wife what can I do to help him stop this war?
Andrew: It's right. This is, this is Norman Morrison. So this is in 1965 and Norman Morrison was very idealistic and very, very much against the war. And he drove to the Pentagon and got close enough. He was right under McNamara's window, but got close enough to McNamara's window where McNamara could see him. And he covered himself with gasoline and was still holding his daughter. And then somebody who realized what he was about to do, people who were kind of mystified as to what was going on and they saw what he was about to do, told him to, to, to put the baby down so the baby wouldn't be hurt, which he did. And then he, in protest against the escalating war in Vietnam, burned himself to death. And that shook, we know that that shook McNamara up, even though McNamara was a very, very buttoned-up guy and didn't talk about his feelings and just wanted to repress that image and just not deal with it and just move on. And he was like that with everything in life.
He was known as an IBM machine on legs and as somebody who is extremely clever, very rational, one of the founders of systems analysis when he was at Harvard Business school. Ran the Ford Motor Company, brought it back to profitability in the 1950s. Was a master of data. It was always stats, stats, stats with McNamara. So a very rational man, but also it turns out quite spiritual. So there is this, this kind of, you know, we talked before about how do you get to know someone's faith? Well, it's a mysterious thing. It's a very powerful, powerful thing. And McNamara later turned against the war without saying he turned against the war. But he started testifying in Congress as to how badly the war was going and how it wasn't going to go well and he was implying that the US should leave.
This is in 1967 and privately at the, in the, at the Pentagon in, in the White House, he would have these breakdowns into 1966-67 and early '68 where he would burst into tears. I think a psychologist would probably say it's because he wasn't talking about his problems. He wasn't talking about the war directly. He was trying to bottle it all up. And I argue that this, that this, this moral act of conscience by Norman Morrison, the guy who burned himself in protest, contributed to McNamara's spiritual crisis about the Vietnam War. And it awakened in him a lot of the values that he held as a Christian, as a Presbyterian. And also his, his sort of his ethical compass. It sort of set his ethical compass off. And it made for him the war, this war that was going badly, that was costing the United States so much not just in, in blood and treasure but also in terms of the, of the the conscience of the nation, the morality of the nation. As Martin Luther King said in 1967, it really caused McNamara to have this breakdown on the war and to leave the administration.
Chris: Do we know anything about his religiosity besides that he was a Presbyterian?
Andrew: Well, he was an Elder. He wasn't just, you know, a, a notional Presbyterian. He was a, he was, he was an active Presbyterian. He read widely in, not just sort of conventional Protestant books in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, but he read widely on ethics and spiritualism morality and how religion either influenced or in-- intersected with a lot of those currents of thought that were becoming of course extremely popular in the 1950s and 60s. So he was certainly well-versed in a lot of these, in a lot of these issues.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Again with this, with this chapter we could go on and on and on, but we have to move on.
We are talking with Andrew Preston, professor of American History at the University of Cambridge and author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy.
Now, to Vietnam and the religious beliefs that supported it or agitated against it. Andrew and so then influenced American political processes in the US prosecution of that war, I want to talk about two sides of the coin here. I want to talk about the religions and religious influences that supported it and those that criticized it. I'm going to start with the latter by quoting Martin Luther King in 1967. In his “A Time To Break Silence”, responding to criticism of his anti-Vietnam War stance, "Have they the critics forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them. What can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?" Andrew, what is this representative of in context of American religious reaction to the Vietnam War?
Andrew: I think first and foremost what historians have recovered over the last 10 or 15 years, it is, it's first and foremost about Martin Luther King's own, the importance of his own spirituality and his own theology and his own Christian witness. And I think we, we do him an, an injustice if we forget that first and foremost, he was a man of faith and a preacher. But it also speaks to a wider crisis of conscience and a crisis of ethics in the United States. Vietnam was a difficult war to explain, right? It was the, I mean, the Johnson administration had difficulty explaining it even just to the general public. The Johnson administration had difficulty explaining it why America was fighting, had difficulty explaining it to the, to the Congress, to the national media. So it was a, it was a very, very tricky war to justify. That's not to say that Johnson didn't believe in what he was doing. I think he did. I think he was tormented about it and he would ask the Secret Service to drive him to churches in the middle of the night so he could sit in silence and pray. So he was tormented about it.
And it didn't matter what church, this again speaks to Johnson's inherent, his instinctive ecumenism. It's no coincidence that FDR was Johnson's hero on almost everything but also on religion which is something we often forget. But King speaking out in 1967, not for the first time. It's a myth that that's and he partly contributed to the myth by calling it a time to break silence, calling his address the time to break because it wasn't a sermon. It was just, it was, it was a speech but it was in Riverside Church and he, he called it a time to break silence. But he had spoken out against the war in March of 1965 just as it was beginning to take off and he got so much pushback on that from all quarters, including people within the Civil Rights Movement that he then kept quiet for another two years. And when he did speak out against it, it was, it was actually he was a latecomer in the sense to this angst, this moral angst that, that a lot of the country, not all of the country but a lot of the country was having about the war.
Andrew: How do we justify, you know, the, the most powerful nation in the history of the world. The richest with the most powerful military, this industrial giant that can project power halfway across the world and rain down devastation on this incredibly impoverished, non-industrial society that was fighting for national independence, right? I mean, if you put communism to one side, which a lot of historians of the Vietnam War do or at least separated from Vietnamese nationalism, at the heart of what the Vietnamese were fighting for was national self-determination, which is, you know, going back to Woodrow Wilson, going back to the founders. That's a very American thing. So it was a, it was a, it was a really it was a really tough war to support and it was a very tough war to remain silent about. And King's, King's speech is the most eloquent testimony to that.
Chris: Can you mention some of the religions that would have sided. You say Martin Luther King was a latecomer. What, what religious traditions were generally opposed to the war? Is that a fair question?
Andrew: It, it's a fair question but it's a difficult one to answer because it was pretty much across the board. So certainly Mainline Protestants the, the National Council of Churches and a lot of their affiliates, the main, the mainline denominations, most of the leadership of those organizations and churches were opposed to the war, some earlier than others. I should say in defense of King, one of the reasons he was a, a slightly latecomer to this is because when he did, when and when he was one of the first to speak out about it, there was a worry in the Civil Rights Movement that he was going to damage the Civil Rights Movement by getting on the wrong side of Johnson. So it was a political decision to, to, to then be quiet about that.
But American Jews were very critical of the war from a very early point. Quite a few Catholics, obviously, there were also quite a few Catholics who were supportive of the war because it was a very complicated thing for America, for not just American Catholicism, but for the Catholic church because of the prevalence of Catholicism within Vietnam and the religious issues in, at play in Vietnam. But a lot of Jesuit priests spoken against the war most famously the Berrigan Brothers. And eventually an organization formed called CALCAV, Clergy And Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. And it was led by Richard Newhouse a Lutheran later Catholic but at the time Lutheran. Abraham Heschel and Daniel Berrigan. So Protestant-Catholic-Jew, tri-faith nation. And they, they were one of the earliest along with new left student organizations like SDS. They were one of the earliest segments of American society to, to, to campaign against the war.
Chris: Okay. Well, let's flip that coin over and I'm going to quote something from also a 1967 statement, this one from the American Council of Christian churches, which supported the war, "America must win Vietnam. There is no other acceptable course. To surrender or show weakness before the communist onslaught would be the greatest disaster ever to befall America. The conflict with communism is God versus anti-god, Christ versus Antichrist." What does this represent Andrew?
Tell us about the, the religious influence supporting the Vietnam War.
Andrew: So that represents a lot of things. But at heart, it represents two things. One is just the, the fervency of American anti-communism in the Cold War. And I'll, I'll unpack that a little bit. But the other it represents is just what Vietnam came to stand for by the time that statement was issued in what we now call the cul-- or what would later come to be called the culture wars, which don't begin in the 1990s when the term was coined but I would argue began in the 1960's and 1970's. And so when people are forced to choose sides and if, if the other side is uhh seen as unpatriotic and critical of America in a time of crisis and so on and so forth, then the people who are naturally inclined to support the president's or to fight communism are gonna double down. And there is this kind of something that, that we see in American society or indeed in lots of societies. Bur we have seen in American society uhhm periodically, but I would say unfortunately increasingly up to, up to the present.
Andrew: And so in the 1960s what the American Council of Christian Churches wanted to highlight was the fact that yes, this is a difficult war to support in some ways. But when you boil it right down to its, its essence, it's what Reagan would later call a noble cause. This is a, a struggle against communism, Godless communism. Communism that was if you, if you inverted everything that communism stood for, this is what people used to say during the Cold War. If you inverted everything that communism stood for, Americanism was on the other side. So you'd have the dictatorship of the proletariat and you'd have a liberal democracy. You would have atheism and you would have freedom of religion. You would have a command economy and then you would have the free market and so on and so forth. So it was, it was kind of the ultimate other and it was assumed to be and there was a lot of evidence for this that it was inherently aggressive and that communism wanted to spread. Uhhm and so, there are moments where fault lines, it could be in China, it could be in Korea, it could be a Vietnam, Latin America, Berlin, or other places in Europe where, where communism was see-- was being seen to advance.
And this gets to the kind of almost eschatological flavor of that statement that you've just read that you quoted from my book that if communism wins in one place, it's going to keep winning. And it's going to snuff out everything that America stands for and eventually it's gonna snuff out those freedoms in the United States itself. Now, it seemed far-fetched to a lot of people at the time that Vietnam would be that important uhhm but to a lot of other people it made total sense. And by this time, by the late 60s, there is this inexorable logic to that, right? We go back to Franklin Roosevelt and what I said about FDR and the, and the Germans. That's the exact same argument that FDR made about the Germans. And then when the Nazis are gone from 1945 when they're defeated and as the Cold War begins to escalate, Harry Truman and then later Dwight Eisenhower applies it to the Soviet Union. It's the exact same logic and as I said, given that what was, what was happening in world politics in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s there is, you know, there was, it wasn't like the people like Carl McIntire were making this up out of whole cloth. Now, what they were doing was following that logic to its, to the nth degree, to the absolute end of that logical chain in making Vietnam so important in this global struggle against communism.
Chris: Right and they definitely, you know, put it into a very stark religious language. God and [crosstalk]
Andrew: Can I, can I say one more thing about that too.
Chris: Absolutely.
Andrew: So it is, it is, so and so I don't mean to drone on a bit but, so really interestingly Billy Graham in the 1960s paid a lot of attention to what was going on in world politics and also in Vietnam. And Billy Graham is one of the people who of course helped launch the Cold War crusade in a very ideological sense in the 1940s and 50s. But by the 1960s, he certainly hadn't lessened his anti-communism. He still didn't like communism at all. But what was going on in Vietnam? This is why Billy Graham perfectly symbolizes the struggles of the 1960s. The struggles I was referring to earlier about what a difficult war it was to support with conscience and also to argue in favor of and to justify. Billy Graham stood by his friend Lyndon Johnson. He stood by his friend Richard Nixon. But privately, we know that he was anguished about what was going on in Vietnam. And so, to me, Billy Graham's dilemmas, his struggles this kind of turmoil that he saw in the world and where Vietnam didn't really fit into any of those neat categories in the 1950s and seeing him struggle with that to me is very profound but also very telling of the turbulence of the decade.
Chris: I agree. I, I have read a biography, a couple biographies of Billy Graham and I think you're right, right on there. We are out of time just about but I don't want to end the podcast without giving you a chance to at least bring us up to speed through a decade after 9/11. Give us in a nutshell religion's influence on America's response to 9/11and everything that sort of has, sort of has come after that with regard to war in, in the Middle East.
Andrew: Well, as I said earlier when I began this book in I began in 2003. That's when I began research on it and began telling people I was writing it and I said that a friend of mine said, "Oh you're writing a history of Bush backwards." And there is certainly there has been over the last 20 years, there has been a strong religious strain of supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the war on terror, a kind of American exceptionalism to remake the world, to spread democracy, and especially to protect religious freedom. But that's not the only part of the story. And even that part of the story is much more complicated than we allow for. So Bush is remembered for Iraq and I think that's probably right. That's the, the most important thing that he did as president and that is what historians are going to be spending most of their time trying to puzzle out and work through in the coming decades.
But Bush was also the president who did more to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa than any other president. He made it a real cause of his including at the height of the Iraq War. He would take time away from the war planning in the war on terror to consider HIV/AIDS. And I don't think you can really comprehend that without understanding Bush's own personal faith, the faith of some of his advisers like Michael Gerson and others and then how that faith then translated into politics. So I would say about Bush that he is more complicated than I think we realize now and we won't sort of like with Eisenhower where our understanding of Eisenhower underwent a real revolution in the 1980s because of scholarship finding new sources and thinking, having time to reflect about Eisenhower. I think something similar might happen with George W. Bush, certainly with his religion.
Andrew: And then Obama is, is no easier to figure out in a lot of senses. And, and I don't mean in a lot of senses of the way that people talk about in, in highly political terms, in highly politicized terms. Obama's heroes were a lot of peace activists and community developers, but it was, it was also Reinhold Niebuhr and he cited Reinhold Niebuhr is his favorite philosopher and he actually very bravely invoked Niebuhr in his speech in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize and saying look, I'm, I'm an American president. I, I can't live a pacifistic life. I can't be a pacifistic president. There are times where I might have to, as Niebuhr said, choose the lesser evil, but do so for moral reasons. And to be a Christian realist. To be a realist but to have Christianity kind of be his moral compass through there. So I found both Bush and Obama very interesting. I, I only deal with them as you said very briefly in an epilogue to at the end of a very long book that was published in 2012. But I do conclude by saying that both Bush and Obama, in their very different very eclectic ways, fit perfectly within the tradition of the religious influence on American war and diplomacy.
Chris: Thank you for bringing us up into the 2000s. Andrew, as we conclude, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book, either in terms of perhaps important historical transformations you have charted or in terms of simply helping us better understand our present moment?
Andrew: I wish I could help us understand our present moment better. If, if I could I would be a very famous man because understanding the present moment is a challenge for us all right now. But the one thing I would take away, I would want people to take away from my book is that religion and politics, it does not just mean, it doesn't just push in one direction. It's not shorthand for the Christian right or the religious right or whatever, whatever shorthand people want to come up with. That it's, that it's more complicated. And as Obama had, said many times that it's also more productive than a lot of people assume. On the other hand, I would also want people who don't need reminding of religion's importance in politics and foreign policy to consider that it's not the only story and that it fits in with a much wider puzzle of what American politics is, what American foreign policy is and what it, what they mean within the American body politic.
Chris: Thank you, Andrew. We have been talking with Andrew Preston, professor of American History at the University of Cambridge and author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. Mr. Preston specializes in the history of American foreign relations, specifically the intersection between national and international, including the influence of domestic politics and culture, particularly religion have had on conduct of US foreign policy. Andrew, thank you for being with us. It has been very enlightening and I hope you have enjoyed the time with us as well.
Andrew: Very much, Chris. Thank you.
Transcript: "The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 2" with Billy Graham
Chris: If anyone thinks about religion in America, which thinking is absolutely essential to understand the nation, one of the first things that comes to mind whether one is religious or not, is Billy Graham. And even if that's not the case, because of his outsized 20th-century influence, we should think about Billy Graham. Born in 1918 on a dairy farm in North Carolina, Billy Graham later would be an advisor to American presidents, travel the world including behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and fill stadiums to witness his preaching. Our discussion about this towering figure on the American historical stage will help all of us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and we trust that, as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
Today we have with us - Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and The Shaping of a Nation. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions, and American Protestant thought. He is the author or co-editor of seven books including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, Religion in American Life, and Religion in 19th Century America.
Dr. Wacker has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture and is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Grant, thank you so much for being with us today.
Graham: Thank you, Chris.
Chris: Before we dive into the details, Grant, can you tell us why you chose the title you did?
Graham: Well, at the most obvious level in a sense is that when the Billy Graham Library was dedicated in 2007, George Bush, former president, George HW Bush was present, and he called Graham “America's Pastor.” And so the label was publicized quite prominently at that point. But the label had often been used in, um, in newspapers and in magazines and, you know, over-- for many years, um, and in a lot of different contexts.
Chris: And then the subtitle is prominent, “Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation”, that's, uh, that's a pretty powerful statement. Why did you choose that?
Graham: Well, I have to be honest. My editor chose that. So I asked her, "Are you sure we want to go with that? That is a pretty powerful statement." And she said, "Yeah. Go for it." Uh, so, yeah, that may be a bit too muscular. Uh, but what I did want to suggest-- I was willing to go with it, but I did want to suggest is that he helped articulate, uh, a set of religious values. They came to define the Evangelical movement, which, you know, is 60 million, 80 million strong depending on how you define it. A segment that large and he comes to define it, that did seem reasonable.
Chris: Right. Tell us in brief why should Americans who are not Evangelicals including those who are not Christian, uh, should pick up a book that says “America's Pastor”, someone who's shaped the nation? Just really briefly and then we'll dive into some details, we'll get into the details.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: If that would be a good question to ask.
Graham: Well, that's-- it's a terrific question and, uh, and, again, I would say that Graham helped create a public space for religion, uh, certainly for Evangelicals, he helped bring that-- he helped bring them out of the closet in the 1950s into a place of prominence and respectability and that those numbers have grown continually since then. And, so, um, almost by any reasonable measure of things, Graham is important by virtue of the public space he helped create but also because of his associations with presidents of the United States. He's conspicuous, he was always there, and the press loved it. And all these photographs of, you know, Graham on the golf course with Eisenhower and Johnson and Nixon, it goes on and on, so he brings a certain brand label of faith into public consciousness.
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Grant, give us a short biography of Billy Graham bringing us up through the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade which made him a prominent national figure--high-level bio up to that point.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the short of it is-- is that he was a pretty inconspicuous figure until then and born on a dairy farm in North Carolina and a very remote rural area. Um, his sister told me that they would probably not see more than one car a day pass. He attended a rural high school for three years, which was customary in those days. He was a C student, not terribly good and not terribly bad either, just an ordinary kid. He went off to Bob Jones University, which in those days was Bob Jones College, and it was in Tennessee. He went there for a semester. He did not fit in, didn't like it, transferred to Florida Bible Institute, and he did fit in and he loved it. But, again, a very inconspicuous school in Florida. Then he went to Wheaton College for a better education and for a respectable bachelor's degree and as the jargon goes - Wheaton is the Harvard of the Evangelical world. It was then, still is. In fact, around there, they say that Harvard is the Wheaton of the Ivy League. A very fine school.
And so Graham did well there. Again, he was not a valedictorian or anything, but he did well enough. After Wheaton, he became a pastor for a year, not successful as a pastor. Then he went into Youth for Christ and began to-- began to spread his wings, so to speak and traveled all over the US, all over Britain, part of the continent, and he began to feel, you know, his calling. But he didn't really come into national prominence until 1949, the crusade in Los Angeles.
Chris: Can you give us a few details about that event? How it happened and what happened?
Graham: Yeah. In retrospect, you look at Billy Graham's autobiography the part-- the chapter on, um, Los Angeles, he calls “turning point.” So, in his own perspective, he wrote when he was an old man, h, he looked back at this very long career, very, you know, celebrated career and he sees 1949, Los Angeles is the point where he ceases to be just a Southern Country Boy preacher and he has a kind of national prominence. Um, and he went there for three weeks in the fall of 1949 and, uh, that was extended to six weeks and then finally, to eight weeks. Pitched a huge circus tent and reputedly one of the largest in the world right in downtown Los Angeles. Graham always had an eye for the spectacular. And so right in the center of the town and a big carbon arc light and at first, crowds were very slow to come but momentum built and I'd say momentum built three weeks in and for three, uh, two reasons. First is, uh, celebrities started to come and they would then give their testimonials and Graham always understood the power of the testimonial. Testimonies meant more than any theology textbook. Right?
And then the second reason he really flourished was because William Randolph Hearst discovered him and Hearst was the owner of one of the two largest newspaper chains in the nation, and there's no reason to think that Hearst shared Graham's religious views, but he did share Graham's anti-communism. And so Hearst began to give Graham prominent coverage in his newspapers.
Chris: Okay. Thank you for that, uh, that biography of him and bringing us up to that important event. Is it important to note for our listeners that Graham was also a Fuller Brush salesman?
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Wasn't that true? He was a--
Graham: He was. Summer out of high school, 17, uh, he's just a 17-year-old kid and he was selling Fuller brushes door-to-door in South Carolina. And as the story goes, he sold more Fuller Brushes than anybody else in the state that summer and what's important to note about that, the long-range significance is that he came to the sense that, A, Fuller brushes are really good brushes, and if you have a good product and market it with all the energy you can. So he was never shy about marketing his message. Use the newspapers, use radio, television, podcasts. Use anything available.
Chris: Right.
Graham: He said, "I got the best product in the world. I'm going to sell it."
Chris: Yeah, okay. And for our listeners, you used the word “testimonials” of celebrities at that 1949 Crusade event, what do you mean by “testimonials”? What celebrities said after they were at The Crusade and would report to the press or what?
Graham: Yeah. At several levels, uh, the most obvious level is that when someone made a commitment to Christ they would sign a card and so Graham's organizers, counselors, would know. So, in a sense, they go on record.
Chris: Okay.
Graham: And then Graham was quite a student, never shy about asking people who are prominent then to talk, come up, and to talk about what-- what they've meant to them or their conversion experience. Now, what Graham was always a little vague about, I think, is that very often - more often than not, these are not sky-blue conversions. These were people who had grown up in the church and they had strayed, their faith had grown cold, and they were coming back to the church. So once in a while though when he was confronted about this, he would say, "Look, what's the difference? You're coming to faith from no faith, or if you are reviving a faith that has grown cold or dead, died? What's the difference?"
Chris: Right.
Graham: So people would talk about this.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Now, Grant, you write in your book that Graham was not a theologian but a "craftsman who worked with theological materials". Would you tell us what his main teachings were and then talk about his delivery and style? That is, paint for us the portrait of Billy Graham as pastor?
Graham: Well, first, his main teachings was traditional Protestant, Evangelical theology almost boilerplate, you would say. He made no innovations theologically at all. In fact, he trimmed it a lot. He preached a very streamlined gospel. Left off a lot of things that a lot of Protestants think are terribly important. For him, the core of the Gospel is that the Bible is authoritative. It provides a rule for life and he wasn't very concerned about the Bible and churches or Society. It's a rule for our personal lives and Christ died for our sins, rose again, and by appropriating Christ, faith in Christ, bringing-- calling Christ into our lives, we can be forgiven of sins into an invigorated life. Graham didn't use the word “holiness of life” very often but this is what he was talking about. We can have a new life. We can have a cleansed life, a better light, and then the life beyond. That was part of the message.
And when I think about it and as I read many letters to Graham, I mean, people literally sent millions and we think about what you see there over and over is that from Graham, they gain the sense of a second chance: "I messed up my life and this message gives me a second chance." So that was, I would say, the theology and the effect. He was not an eloquent preacher, but he was an effective preacher, um, and, uh, his goal always was to connect and he figured if you can't connect, there's no point preaching. And we know that he connected because of the crowds that came, he probably preached to more people than anyone else in history with the exception of John Paul II. We know he preach live to more than 80 million people. He was connecting and the message was simple. It was dynamic, he preached fast and hard especially in the beginning. As time went on, it slowed down, but it was a simple method. And once he said, "The average American has a vocabulary at 600 words," and he said, "I'm going to stay within their range." And he did. I mean, you look at those sermons and you know, these are-- and let’s even talk more about that.
Actually, I haven't thought about this for a long time is he said, "I try to use one-syllable words." And if you look, this in all sermons, any of that, they're short and punchy, it's like one time he said, "I like your thinking my preaching is like firing ammunition, you know, these short punching one-syllable words." So anyway, so that was the preaching style - fast, loud, hard, in the beginning, it tapered off over the years, but an eloquent-- not an eloquent preacher, but an effective one.
Chris: I remember reading in your book, or maybe it was his autobiography or something else where he, as part of his preaching maybe at the end of his sermon if he called him that he would-- he would invite people to come up, right? And, uh, he would continually say, "We'll wait. I'm waiting." Right? Was that part of-- was that always part of his delivery?
Graham: Yes. From the very beginning. And it was, um, very deliberate and actually that-- I've thought about this some and actually, I thought about it a lot, is what the old fashioned revivalist had called, “The Altar Call.” He didn't call it that very much. He'd say, "It's time to come forward," and for an evangelist, that's the payoff, it isn't the money. It's if people don't respond then there's no point being an evangelist. It's like being a salesman, again, if you don't sell brushes, then you're not effective. Well, if people don't respond, then you have failed, frankly. Now, he would not always say that. He would say, "God has called me to preach, and regardless of the results, I'm preaching." But still at a more human level. It was the result, people coming, that counted.
Chris: Sure. Okay. Thank you. Later on, now, this is mid-20th-century and you write, after-- after he became a prominent national figure, you say that, "Graham fit the idealization if not idolization of the post-World War II youth culture." What did you mean by that? And what were the ramifications?
Graham: He came to prominence in the late 40s as a Youth for Christ speaker and at that point he was flamboyant and, uh, he wore bright-colored suits and even at one point flashing ties, with little batteries in the ties, believe it or not. And the lights that flash. I mean, there was almost-- I mean it was spectacular and some people would say it was tacky. He wouldn’t and he just say, "Well, you know, I'm attracting young people," and, uh, and in those meetings, they would do things that he would later on regret or either back at, they would even have, uh, you know, dancing. I think it was a dancing bear or maybe his horse, a dancing horse would come out and say, the horse, you know, "How many people are there in the trinity?" And the horse would stomp his feet three times. This was in the very beginning and later on, you know, he would wince, oh, my lord, you know, but it attracted people. I mean, it worked, he was attracting young people. Um, as time went on, in the 50s, he tried to connect and he brought his message into connection with world events.
Now, later on, he would, again, feel that he had gone too far and he would back off from that. But in the early years, he talked a lot about communism and other kinds of social trends, um, that he thought made his preaching relevant. And in that sense, he wasn't preaching precisely to youth any more, but it certainly was a younger crowd.
Chris: And at this time in American history, there was sort of a “celebrity culture” that had emerged post-World War II, you think of the Kennedy administration as Camelot and things like that. He fit in very well with that. Can you give us your thought on--
Graham: Yeah, even more than that, and this is, you know, I wouldn't want to lay my body on the track for this but in a lot of ways, this was the era of the one person celebrity per field, one person per field. There's one Elvis, right? There was one Leonard Bernstein. Uh, there was one Walter Cronkite and obviously, there are so many more in all those fields, but there's one person who seemed to define the conversation and everybody else, singers, you know, rock 'n roll singers want to be like Elvis. All right? And so somehow, there are reasons, it's not somehow but they really good reasons why Billy moved into that singular position among evangelists and nobody else came close. By the early 50s, there was simply no one else who came close and today we look back at it and we have to kind of say, "Billy Graham wasn't always Billy Graham." I mean there was a time, you know, he failed at times when he was younger and he knew it. But by the mid '50s, you know, he was a singular person.
Chris: Right. Okay. So now let's move forward maybe a decade or so and regarding Billy Graham and the Civil Rights Movement you write this, Grant, "Martin Luther King was the absent presence throughout Graham's life both before and after King's death." What does the historical record tell us about Billy Graham and Jim Crow, racism, and the Civil Rights Movement? That is a very broad subject.
Graham: Complicated--
Chris: Just the high-level.
Graham: Yeah, a very good question. We could talk about that for hours, I'll try not to. I'll try to be succinct. And I'd say that Graham’s record on Civil Right was erratic. We do not see linear progress. We expect to see a man who started off as a Southern segregationist and then ended up very progressive at the end of his life and that's not the way it happened. The way it happened is that he did grow up in a strongly segregated society and it was until he was a young man that it ever occurred to him there was something wrong with that and he talks about it. And it wasn't until he actually got to Wheaton College as a postgraduate in the sense that it never occurred to him, he said that, as he put it in those days, "A negro was my peer." And he said this with regret. He said, "I can't believe that that's how I grew up. But I did, I grow up in the South." All right? And so this is by the late '40s and by 1952, 53 he had come to the conviction that he would no longer tolerate segregation in his meetings.
So he insisted upon integrated meetings. He encountered enormous opposition. He was commonly called a communist traitor, a traitor to his race. I mean, you know, he-- he took a lot of opposition, it was a courageous position. By the late 50s and into the mid-60s, however, he seemed to step back and he became, um, worried about two things - one, violence in the street, Watts, for example, and he wasn't alone. I mean, Robert Kennedy, you know, was worried too. So he wasn't alone in his but he was growing worried about, uh, black power. And so they began to call for law and order. You know, the solution to our problem is not Christ but, well, Christ is a part of it, but we certainly need law and order. So in a sense, he's moving backward in the mid-60s. Um, and then also he becomes very worried later on about Martin Luther King's opposition to the Vietnam War. Graham supported it. He supported Nixon in the early days. So there are a couple of reasons.
By the early 70s, however, he had this complete turnaround and he comes, by the early 70s, to be-- he strongly insists upon colorblindness. Now, today, we see that as a problem, as part of the problem, but in the early-- early 70s that was perceived as a progressive position, absolute color blindness. In fact, I think in one of his best sermons where he was actually quite eloquent was preached in Durban South Africa in 1973. The first integrated meeting since apartheid and there he insisted, he said, "Christ was a brown man. He wasn't black. He wasn't white. But the point is he transcends all these colors." It's a kind of colorblindness message and he held to that 'til end of his life.
Chris: Do we have, uh-- we must have a record that he interacted with Martin Luther King?
Graham: He did. It was not-- I would say it was an unsteady relationship and one since these are kind of like, you know, you know, two big German shepherds in the ring. I mean, these are two of the most prominent figures in American culture and I think the relationship was wary, not weary, but wary for both of them. Graham is an Evangelist, King as a reformer and they were both some of the other, but fundamentally, their approaches are different. And so there's a certain wariness and there was a public cooperation, uh, from about 1957 on, when Graham invited King to come to his Crusade. But there definitely were times after 1957 where Graham drew back from King; King drew away from Graham. I think we can only imagine what would have happened if Graham and King had really worked together, but the plain sad historical truth of it is they didn't. They didn't oppose each other but they didn't work together, with the one exception where, in '68, King came out, he came out publicly and strongly opposing the Vietnam War as I mentioned and Graham challenged King quite directly on this point. But when King was assassinated, Graham was very clear that King was one of the, you know, the great moral leaders of the age.
Chris: Okay, we'll have to think about that. Process all that, a little bit. Thank you.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham--
Graham: It is a complicated story.
Chris: Sure.
Graham: A lot of ways we wish that it weren't, but the history often isn't. You just have to deal with it as it is.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham set up the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and you write that “he originated it to regularize his finances but that from the outset, it was more than that. It enjoyed providential legitimation for it handled the disposition of money that had been received providentially." Would you tell us the role of this organization in what Billy Graham aspired to do and did do?
Graham: Well, first, I'll say the-- it came to be called the BGEA and then insiders deleted the E. And so they just called it the BGA, you hear that all the time. So let's say the BGA is understudied. It's one of the most important features of Graham's career and we don't-- we have not received a sustained study of it. You need someone with a business career, really, to look at it because it was an extremely well-oiled machine, um, and the main purpose of it was to handle the finances, to receive the finances, the public accounting to make sure that there is nothing illegitimate. Graham received a lot of criticism in his life. Some of it was warranted. But the one thing he was never criticized about was finances and because of the BGA, totally upfront public. Okay.
So the money would come in usually in small quantities, mom-and-pop. There's a continual revenue stream and it would be sent, he would say on the radio program, you know, “send your contributions” or Cliff Barrels, and so he would say, "Send your contributions to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota," then those lines, "That's all the address you need. Just Minneapolis, Minnesota," and, you know, people did by the millions. I think it's worth noting the Graham organization and ministry, always survived on small contributions from large numbers of people, mom and pop, grandma and grandpa, never survived with big grants. He didn't want big grants. He wants contributions. And so that's what the BGA was there for.
Chris: Okay. You quote Billy Graham as saying quote here, "I intend to go anywhere sponsored by anybody to preach the gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I'm sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world." Then you add, Grant, "When his life and words are considered in their entirety, Graham clearly did not mean that correct belief was unimportant, but some items of belief are more important than others. The question was how to work with people of divergent views in the common cause of Christian evangelism." How did Graham do this and what were the effects?
Graham: Almost, uh, well, I won't say from the outset but certainly by the early 1950s and very clearly by the mid-1950s, he would say, "I work with anyone who works with me and then there were two qualifications. If they don't ask me to change my message," and then he would add, "and if they accept the deity of Christ." Well, in practice, he didn't stress the deity of Christ and he was willing for that to be presupposed. He understood that people understood the deity of Christ in different ways. So he didn't make an issue of that. Um, what he did make an issue of, "Just don't ask me to change my message and let's talk about Christ. Let's talk about changing the world." So he worked with Mormons. He worked with liberal Protestants and with Catholics and he tried to work with Fundamentalists to his right ,and that did not work. Fundamentalists would not work with him, but he tried. So he just tried to open his arms and say, you know, there's a big tent here because, in a sense, he didn't put it this way, but it was, "We've got bigger fish to fry than to fight with each other." And to a remarkable extent, um, he succeeded.
He even said I'll work with Jews. Now, of course, this is tricky. I mean, he's calling people to faith in Christ and then Jews couldn't go that far, but they could go with him in his affirmation of God and morality and patriotism. So he had lots of good relationships even with Jews.
Chris: Right. Thank you for that. We are talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Listeners, if you have not yet done so, please visit storyoamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, I think our listeners have great interest and that's understated, generally in this question - how religion is involved in politics? You dedicate a chapter to investigating Billy Graham's involvement in politics. You write this in that chapter, "By virtually all accounts, including otherwise sharply critical ones, Graham proves impervious to the temptations of greed and lust but political power was another matter." Tell us, Grant, what we need to know about Graham and American presidents and American politics.
Graham: Hmm. I'm amazed by that sentence that I wrote. Wow. Okay, I'll stand by that. I'm surprised by that but I think I got it there right. There's not a trace of sexual impropriety in his life. And as I said, there is not a trace of financial impropriety. There is a great deal of evidence, overwhelming evidence, that he fell into partisanship in ways that he would later, uh, severely regret. And he admitted that, I mean, he said, this-- these are my words but effectively, he said it is like the moth to the flame. He said, "I just couldn't stay out of it." And the real issue is that politicians gained a lot by their association with him. They gain, let's go back to our word here, legitimation. By having their picture on a cover with Billy Graham, they knew perfectly well that there would be millions of people say, "Well, you know, this guy is endorsed by Billy Graham. He must be okay." So they gained and he gained at a very human level. He would not acknowledge this but I think it's pretty obvious that he enjoyed association with power. He didn't exercise power himself except within his organization, and it wasn't that he wanted to, you know, be the Secretary of Defense or something like that, but he enjoyed being with people who had power, he enjoyed the association with the glamour, the allure of power. So he got something out of it.
And then if he were pressed about it, he would admit that he did hang out a lot with famous people and powerful people and his defense of this was, hey, the rich need God just as much as the poor, the powerful need God just as much as the weak. I mean, why not? I mean, you know, they need a pastor, and presidents need a pastor. So that was part of it. Then he would also have the argument that overseas, internationally, people took him and his message more seriously if they saw that he had the ear of the president and he did. He did have the ear of the president and it is undeniable that especially overseas people found that very, very impressive. And again, “if the president of the United States listens to Billy Graham, then I should to.”
Chris: Right. What's the list of presidents that he was an unofficial adviser to? Can you give us that and then maybe an anecdote or two, uh, of him interacting with presidents? Whether it's Truman or Nixon or Eisenhower or Reagan, give us a sense of that.
Graham: Yeah, he personally met every president of the United States in the course of his life. Uh, one president, the first one that he met was Truman and the relationship was disastrous. Truman, uh, intensely disliked Graham, personally. Uh, and Graham disliked Truman. He didn't say so but there was, uh, no compatibility there at all. There are reasons for that. Um, but Graham got along with all the other presidents. He was-- I think his closest friend in his whole life except for two or three immediate associates, his closest friend was Lyndon Johnson and they were what we call “pals.” They were buddies. There was a camaraderie there. They just enjoyed being with each other. And at one point, Johnson said, "Billy consider the White House your motel whenever you're in Washington, you don't need an invitation. Just ring us up and you know, there'll be a room for you." So he was very close to Johnson personally. He was close to Richard Nixon, which was probably the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to him. He was entangled in his friendship with Nixon and, uh, he lost perspective. I think that's all we can say. And later he knew that. But he did. He lost perspective with Nixon.
After that, he was fairly close with Reagan and with the senior Bush, these were all personal friends, but also, often isn't noted is that his wife Ruth was close to the Presidents' wives and so it wasn't just one way but very often, the four would vacation together. That's a whole another story that needs to be told.
Chris: Okay. Great. Let's see. You write in the same chapter that over the course of his public ministry, Graham "displayed three distinguishable outlooks towards the American dream - challenging America, embracing America, and transcending America." Would you elaborate on each briefly?
Graham: He always from the beginning to the end, um, challenge, uh, America's misdeeds as a nation. Now, exactly what those misdeeds were changed according to the times and say in the 1950s, he warned Americans about being soft on communism. And, uh, in the 1960s he continued to worry about that but they were soft on communism in Vietnam. Now, he changed his mind about this. He, uh, he backed off on his support of the Vietnam War and that's another story. But then in the 60s, he would talk about materialism and, you know, juvenile delinquency, the rise of divorce, such things. And then later on, he talked about racism and militarism and by the end of his career, I'd say his central concern with America was militarism like Eisenhower, the military-industrial complex. Graham said by the 1980s that our greatest dangers, he said we're going to destroy the-- we're going to destroy civilization if we keep going, not just America, America and the Soviet Union. That's the challenge part.
The embrace part is that, I would say by the 60s and especially in the 70s, he had grown to become very comfortable with the American way of life. He was the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade, for example, in 1970. And so here he is, he's in this convertible, you know, and the roses and, you know, and all the other people that are celebrities and he's waving and gives every indication that America's a pretty good place and not a whole lot that do draw back from. And then say this last through the 70s, he becomes, well, there was a magazine article, an article in the New York Times. They called him “America's chaplain.” He intensely disliked that but it's true. He disliked it because he knew it was true. Okay.
By the end of his life, though, I'd say from the '70-- the later 70s and the 80s and 90s, um, he took this posture of transcending in which he tried to say the gospel is bigger than us, it's bigger than America, it's bigger than any country. Christ transcends the gospel. One of the lines that he would repeat, over the years was if you hitch your wagon to any particular political party, when that party falls, your wagon will fall. And if you want the gospel to succeed, you got to unhitch from the political parties from America. And, I mean, at one point, he even said, "America should be more like Canada." He said, "Canada doesn't go around trying to police the world." Well, that, a little bit tongue-in-cheek there, but his larger point is is that we have a message that's bigger than the nation.
Chris: Right. Regarding this last point of transcending, I noted that you quote him as admitting "I used to make the mistake of almost identifying the kingdom of God with the American way of life," which is, sort of, captures that-- that sentiment that you explain there.
Grant, talk to us about Billy Graham and war, peace, and global justice, which you call long and complex, but I think it's important enough to our listeners to get a 30,000-foot level - allowed by our time constraints.
Graham: Um, let's focus on war and peace, uh, and, uh, their-- the short of it is he moved from a posture of a guy whose strident spread-eagled patriotism in the 50s to, as I have said, an advocacy of the mutual disarmament, demilitarization and it's important to stress “mutual.” He never wanted the US unilaterally to disarm. But he said we have to work with the Soviet Union. And, indeed, by the 80s, he would say that what the US and Soviet Union are doing is like two little boys, uh, standing in a tub of gasoline and playing with matches. We're going to destroy the world.
Now, that's the late Graham. The early Graham was quite different. The early Graham saw communism as the greatest threat and though he did not call for, uh, well-- I was gonna say he didn't call for war. He supported the Korean War, in the beginning. He supported the Vietnam War, in the beginning, in both wars, he backed off as time went on but still he would-- he felt that, uh, communism was a terrible threat, militarily, religiously in every way and we have to confront it. And so there's that strident, confrontational side of Graham, but it gradually abated as he grew older and I think the reason he came to have a more-- he was never a pacifist but he had a more pacific view of the world is just that he traveled the world so much and he just came to see so much suffering. A lot of people see it and they don't-- it doesn't register. But he saw suffering around the world and it touched him and changed him, he became a changed man.
Chris: Thank you. In telling this part of the story in the book, you write this, which I think was a fantastic capture of it. You wrote, "Graham seem to be hearing the voice of a new Jesus." That's how you put it.
Graham: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Grant, in an absolutely fascinating and enlightening part of your book, you state this: "The pastor as evangelist needed an audience, which is to say, he needed an audience in order to be who he was. The pastor and the audience created each other." What can you tell us about why the people came, who they were, the conversion process at his events, at his crusades and why they committed while there?
Graham: From the outside and here I draw upon the letters that people wrote to him afterward. So this isn't just speculations, it's listening to the letters. And from the outside, many of them would talk about how, uh, they came because there was something amiss in their lives and they usually couldn't put their finger on it. Um, “my life is just off the rails” and sometimes in very specific ways, “I've fallen into crime”, for example, or adultery or this or that but more often, it was a sense-- just a general sense that life is lost its meaning and then Graham preached about a second chance in Christ, you know, you come to Christ and you can start over. And again and again, this is what they would talk about is that second chance. Now, that's at the spiritual level. I think we can back off then we can analyze it a little more and as historians and we can say that it was also was a spectacular event in the precise sense of that. It was exciting. Graham comes to town, you know, tens of thousands of people come to the meetings. All buses are going to town. There's all this advertising all around town, billboards, bumper stickers, people are talking about it. And so then you go to a meeting and there's all the music and the crowds and, you know, so there's all of this. It is an event.
I went to a Graham meeting, myself, when I was only 12 years old. It was the only time I've ever been to Graham meeting, 12 years old, but I still remember it. What I remember about, A, is that Graham was a very funny preacher and they're-- actually I can remember one of the jokes he told and I don't remember anything else about the sermon. But I was a kid, grew up in a little town in Missouri--
Chris: What was the joke?
Graham: Oh, well, [laughs] it's probably-- it won't be funny if I tell it, but he was talking about puppy love and he said parents never take puppy-- he's talking about young teenagers. He said, "Parents never take puppy love seriously, but it's extremely real to the puppy." Okay? Well, there are just gales of laughter at this and it doesn't come off all that great when I tell it all these years later but in the context of the setting it was funny, but he was great. He told a lot of jokes and sometimes just straight-up jokes, self-deprecating jokes. He was a master of self-deprecating humor. And, of course, when you analyze that, that only works if you know that you're very famous and powerful. If you don't have, you know, accomplishments behind you then a self-deprecating joke isn't a joke, but he could joke about himself and people like that and it was genuine. I think he really did see his own career as amazing himself as much as anyone else. “How did this happen? I'm just a country kid.”
So he told jokes about himself and people laughed about it. So that was part of the appeal, his humor, the music, the crowds and then when people come forward, they would repeatedly talk about a new life they found.
Chris: And so, what was the conversion process to-- for lack of a better word, maybe that's not the right word. But at the-- at the crusade, what happened physically when somebody was converted and then what-- and why did they do it? What did they have to do?
Graham: This too. It's a very important process and I mean, we haven't studied enough. It can be analyzed, religious studies, scholars have analyzed it some but not enough.
Typically, typically, he would come to the end of a sermon and he would ask people to make a commitment to Christ and he-- more than that, he would say, "I want you to stand up and walk to the front." Now, this was a stroke of genius. He didn't invent this but he stressed it, you need to stand up and walk to the front. In other words, it doesn't count if you just have a conversion in your heart. And it really doesn't count if you just sort of put your finger up. What you need to do is make a palpable, visible movement. So what does that do? Well, it solidifies it in your own life and it solidifies it in the eyes of people around you. So, if you're standing up you're telling people around, "I need something," and he understood that. So people then walk to the front and he would offer a short prayer and then there are counselors.
Now, there's many counselors and sometimes or as many counselors as they were converts. He never called them converts. He called them inquirers. Okay. But there are as many counselors as inquirers and the idea was, in fact, that for every inquirer there would be a counselor and the counselor would offer a small gospel of John and a decision card. Uh, people could write down their name, phone number, and then in principle, later on, a counselor would contact the inquirer and say, "How's it going?" You know, and, "Have you found a church?" And there, again, Graham was shrewd. It isn't good enough just to come forward and even sign a card that's not good enough. What you need to do is an affiliate with a church. I mentioned Jews earlier, he even said, quietly, affiliate with a synagogue if you're Jewish, but that wasn't a big part. But the point is you need to make a concrete affiliation. And so this-- this is the process and I look at it and I think about it and what's striking about the whole process is the stress upon making things visible and palpable where you can measure it.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. That paints a great picture for us, uh, let's see. You mentioned letters-- in the book you say, uh, this about the letters that came and the letters that were written by him in response that "They flowed as an unending river from all parts of the world." Despite admitting in your book that letters to him and from him, merit a book themselves, would you be willing to paint the picture here perhaps as small as time allows, you know, we don't have a lot of time but give us a sense of this letter phenomenon.
Graham: If I were ever to write another book about Graham, I'm not. I promise you. But, uh, but if I were ever to do that, I would write it about the letters. I think that's this, actually I think that's the single most important part of studying who Billy Graham was because who he was was entirely a product of how he connected to people and we don't know how he connected with people until they tell us and they did and they told us in the letters. As I said they came in by the millions. I don't know how many, most of them were discarded but a few thousand have survived and I've sampled them systematically and I would say the majority of the letters, uh, simply expressed thanks to Graham, coming to town, preaching a message that meant a lot to me. Uh, by large minority of the letters talked about a conversion of some sort, not usually in any dramatic sense. These are not Pentecostal meetings, but rather, you know, "I changed my life. I came to Christ. I professed faith." So this would be a large minority of the letters.
Um, other strains that you get within the letters are people who talked about very-- some very serious misdeeds whether you think of them as sins or crimes, um, straying, a lot of letters referring to adultery and, um, less of them actually referring to fornication but a striking number of them referred to adultery and to addictions, problem with alcohol. It would be prominent. So, you know, it's a mix, now what is fascinating to me? Why are they sending these to Graham? They know he's not going to read them. I mean, he's getting millions of letters – it’s like riding the president of the United States. And many of the letters are long and they're detailed and handwritten. So why do people do this? Um, it is kind of a confessional. It's a Protestant version of the Catholic confessional, I think. Um, but there are a lot of possible reasons but clearly, people found a lot of meaning just in the act of writing the letters.
Chris: Well, if you're not going to write the book, hopefully, somebody listening--
Graham: I hope so. Maybe you, Chris. That's good project for you.
Chris: Okay, thank you. Here, as we wind down a few more questions. As you write about his identity in the book how Graham viewed himself; on the one hand you write this: "Though hardly anyone called Graham vain, flashes of vanity abounded." And then the other side of the coin, "Graham's personal humility seemed to atone for the excesses of self-promotion." Would you help us understand what Billy Graham thought of Billy Graham?
Graham: Now, that's a wonderful question and, um, it's one of the most complicated features of his career. Extremely ambitious and you have a sense that he just worked hard but in the obvious sense that he wants to promote himself and he was never shy about promoting himself. And the other time-- but at the same time he was a deeply humble man, and everybody who was around him and me too, I mean, I had four extended visits with him and each time, I came away, just kind of overwhelmed by this personal humility. And insofar as I can explain it, I would say it was his sense that God had called him to a mission and that he was good at it. But it's always God has called me, God has enabled me and actually, it's the sense that "If I don't do what I'm called to do, then I have failed God." And so he never, you know, he never put it exactly this way, but it was like an Olympic runner like the Eric Liddell, you know, line, "God made me fast and God takes pleasure in watching me run," and I think this was it. There's nothing in it myself. I'm just a kid from the-- from the farm, he keeps saying. He said that over and over. He's just a farm kid and he'd say, "I'm not--" you know, "I'm not an academic. I'm probably not all that smart. I mean, you know, nothing like that," but he said, "God gave me a job and I'm good at doing that job."
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Well explained. I guess here at the end, uh, the last question would be this. So here we are 2020, almost 21, he has been dead several years, uh, in his prime, it's been several decades. So he is no longer with us. Obviously, the historical record is clear. He had an effect on America. He had an effect on Americans; he occupies a very particular place in American history and in American religious history. From your vantage point now, Grant, as an expert on him, in the scholarly sense, would you share any lessons or takeaways from this book either in terms of important historical transformations that you have charted over American history in regards to religion and religious people acting in it, or in terms of helping us better understand the present moment?
Graham: In answering these, I reveal a certain, I suppose, a political orientation of my own in the sense that I think that what we learned, number one, from Graham is the dangers of political entanglement. Um, and he became aware of it and strongly regretted it and I think that's a message that is worth noting and he withdrew from the Christian Right. He never was part of it. He opposed and he said, "I will not support it because politics, explicit partisan politics does not belong in the pulpit." So I would say for me, anyway, that's one lesson is the danger of the explicit partisan entanglement with the church.
Um, the second lesson, though, is actually comes from, a very-- the penultimate question you asked about the relation of ambition and humility. And that is, in Graham, we see a man of deep personal humility, but one who also felt that he had a call. And humility was no excuse for not fulfilling that call, you do the job that God has called you to do.
Maybe there's one more and that is, I would say, he understood the person-- the importance of personal probity, uh, sexual fidelity with his wife, financial integrity, um, and honesty with, you know, within as much as possible and person spoke that much sometimes, you know. He would overstate what he-- what he meant to say. But within reason, the conviction of the necessity of telling the truth.
Um, and then personal holiness. I mean, he took very very seriously personal devotions, reading Bible, prayer, all of these things were part of his conviction that it matters how the Evangelist lives.
He never said this but I would say, you know, there was a TV commercial, it says, "What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas." Graham felt that was absolutely wrong. What happens in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. It does matter how the individual lives.
Chris: Okay, thank you. And I guess I'll have one last personal question. Do we know anything from the historical record about how he shouldered the burdens of what he learned as America's Pastor? I'm thinking specifically of the letters. He didn't read them as you say, but certainly, he knew people were writing him. Certainly, he knew who he was addressing and what sort of things people were coming to the altar with, right? That the burden of a pastor although he didn't pastor his own church and get to know people intimately, in some senses, perhaps he knew more of human suffering because of his immense reach. Is there anything in the historical record that tells us how he shouldered those burdens?
Graham: He sampled the letters, certainly, as far as humanly possible. I mean, for many years, they came in semi-trucks each day. So all you can do is a sample and actually, his wife was a very important part of his story, Ruth Bell Graham, and she read samples of the letters too. So, in that sense, he came to know, uh, about the suffering, um, but also, though Billy worked hard, he also was very careful about vacations. This may surprise us, he spent a lot of time sunning himself, you know, on beaches. He loves beaches and just, you know, getting a suntan and I want to stress, I mean, he worked hard and yet he knew how to pace himself. So he understood the importance of a weekend, the importance of a vacation, he understood the meaning of a sabbatical. And so a lot like Ronald Reagan in this sense. We read that Reagan was very strict about, you know, his personal recreation, you know, exercise and all this. Well, Graham was too. He was a calisthenics-exercise-nut, we would say and so Graham knew how to balance, you know, work with play and exercise and I think that, you know.
Chris: Okay. Fair enough. We've been talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor, Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Don't forget to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, thank you so much for being with us and doing the hard work, for writing a book that helps us all understand America better.
Graham: Right. You asked wonderful questions, Chris. So thank you so much.
Transcript: "The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 3" with Maegan Parker Brooks
Interviewer: The Civil Rights Movement is important to America and it's important to Americans at this point in our national history. The story itself and the reception of the story is complex, nuanced, messy, profound, compelling, sad, joyful, hopeful, and despairing. The Civil Rights Movement story is inextricably linked to black slavery, what some call one of America's two our original sins. A good way to better understand any event or movement in history and what it importantly projects onto the present is to focus on individual actors on history stage.
Interviewer: The name Fannie Lou Hamer will most likely not be familiar to most of our listeners. She was one of these larger-than-life actors in the Civil Rights Movement whose story has slipped from the memory of the nation. For the purposes of this podcast series, we want to know about her religious thought and how it motivated and animated her fight for full civil rights for black Americans in the mid-20th century.
To do this, we have with us today Maegan Parker Brooks, associate professor in the Department of Civic Communication and Media at Willamette University and author of several books and other media about the life and times of Fannie Lou Hamer, including Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman, and the children's book Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 and is a teacher-scholar working at the intersections of rhetoric, race, and public memory.
Today's episode will help us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcasts notifications under the sign-up tab.
Maegan, thank you so much for being with us today.
Maegan: Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you about Mrs. Hamer.
Interviewer: Maegan, first, you write that Mrs. Hamer's life story is "vivid, inspirational, and harrowing". How did you become interested in Fannie Lou Hamer to the extent that you have become quite an expert and dedicated to preserving and sharing her life story, including her work which continues today?
Maegan: Yeah. Yeah. I, I can vividly remember the first uh time I learned about Fannie Lou Hamer and I maybe it won't come as a surprise to many of your listeners that it wasn't until I was well into my graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was taking a class on Gender and the Civil Rights Movement. We read Gianna Kylie's fantastic biography of Hamer and I couldn't believe that I had been studying communication, rhetoric, American public discourse for years at, at that point, and I didn't know anything about Fannie Lou Hamer, someone who you know, who's discourse was so powerful that the president of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson interrupted one of her most famous speeches. And so then and there, in that classroom, you know, on my way home that evening, I had this idea that you know, somebody should go around the United States and find these speeches, transcripts of these speeches, recordings, talk with people who had heard her speak as her biographers had chronicled and gather those into a collection of speeches. At that point, there were only three or four of Hamer's speeches published. And so that sort of seed of an idea became my dissertation project. And at that moment, I had no way of knowing that Fannie Lou Hamer often traveled to Madison, Wisconsin where I was studying. That there were people, they're well into their 80s who knew her, who listened to her, who actually taped and kept her recordings of speeches that she gave in, in small churches and classrooms there in Madison. So it turned out I was in a really great place to begin that research. But you know, that was really the moment for me uhm and, and really began this trajectory of Fannie Lou Hamer research that's now spanned about 15 years.
Interviewer: Okay. Well, that's a fantastic story. So you approached this not necessarily from the historical perspective, but from the communications and rhetoric perspective which is unique, I think. Well, before we, we talk more or in detail about Hamer, can you explain the "National Fable of the Civil Rights Movement" to us because you frame your book about Mrs. Hamer as one that attempts to address this fable.
Maegan: Absolutely. You know, I'll say that this idea is probably familiar to a lot of your listeners. But what I love about that phrase "National Fable of the Civil Rights Movement" that was coined by historian Jeanne Theoharis in her recent book it really puts language around what I think many of us suspect which is that the story of the Civil Rights Movement in the last 50 or 60 years has become largely flattened. Some would say it's been whitewashed. The radical nature of the activism has largely been papered over. It's become a tale that is situated in history and doesn't always draw out contemporary parallels and in fact, a lot of times it denies those contemporary parallels. So it, it's often told and then I'm thinking in, you know, large public remembrances as a story where a few larger-than-life leaders and I'm sure your listeners can sort of tick those people off, right? Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, you know, did extraordinary things and they made this progress and now we have moved past that, right? We are at this post-racial society.
Maegan: And I think for me, you know, one of the reasons why I was so motivated to travel around the country and gather Hamer's speeches and really listen to what she had to say is her story and the way that she tells her story challenges this Fable of the Civil Rights Movement. The issues that she was grappling with during her lifetime, you know, things like police brutality voter disenfranchisement, disparities in terms of health, income, these are things that we're still grappling with today, right? And so, a lot of Hamers words are just as relevant in our 2020 context as they were in 1964 and 5 when she first started, you know, speaking on the public stage. And so, yes, I, I used this frame of the Fable of the Civil Rights Movement and I argue much like you did in the introduction that if we focus on telling complex, fuller, robust histories of individuals who, who contributed to change but who are also relatable, right? There's a lot about Fannie Lou Hamer's life story that I think many of your listeners, you know, myself included, can identify with and relate to. She doesn't seem so larger than life that we couldn't imagine ourselves also contributing to change in our communities in, in the, in the many of the creative ways that she did. I'm very humbled by her accomplishments but I also see the way in which she could empower people in our contemporary context. And so, I believe stories like that really puncture uhm trouble this convenient history that, you know, makes us feel good about ourselves and denies the work that remains in our culture.
Interviewer: All right. Thank you. That's helpful. We move forward and move through these questions. As I said in the introduction, for our purposes what we want to draw out along the road of understanding, who, who she was and what she did is her religious motivations, which as I read the book, were very profound for her. And I think it will be, are, are definitely an integral part of her story and she was very open about that. So I'm excited to talk about those things. Hamer's mother, Luella - so now we're going to start in on the questions about her and her life, told her once, her mother told her once when she was young, a young in response to Fannie Lou Hamer's complaining about the inequality she saw as a young person between whites and blacks in her small town. Her mother said, "Be grateful that you are black. If God had wanted you to be white, you would have been white. So you accept yourself for what you are and you respect yourself as a black child." Maegan, can you give us a short biography of Hamer, her growing up and her early adult years bringing us up to just before that mass meeting in August of 1962. This will be helpful to our listeners.
Maegan: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer was born the 20th child to sharecropper parents, James Lee and Luella Townsend. She was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi and the family moved when she was about two years old to a plantation outside of Ruleville, Mississippi in the Delta. At the time, Ruleville was the epicenter of the worldwide cotton industry. It was one of the most productive regions of the country and our country was one of the most productive regions in the world in terms of producing cotton. So her family became sharecroppers on E.W. Brandon's plantation out about four miles east of the city center of Ruleville. She herself was uh tricked into the plantation owner's debt through treats that he enabled her to get from his commissary, commissary stores. So she actually started picking cotton at the age of six, six years old to pay off those debts from, you know, candy and things that he let her take from the store. So really you know, heart-wrenching story about her early you know, en-- enlistment into sharecropping. She did attend school. She learned to read very well. She had uhm a teacher she called Professor Thornton Layne uhm who was a bit of a character. She remembered him fondly. She learned to, to read and write and recite poetry in the one-room schoolhouse that he led.
Maegan: But she did have to leave school at the age of 12 uhm to help her aging parents and help earn money for the family to make ends meet in this really exploitative sharecropping system. As she went, grew up in age, so into her twenties, many of her brothers and sisters, her older brothers and sisters left the Mississippi Delta as part of the Great Migration. So they left to Northern cities in search of, you know, better jobs, a better life. She stayed and she cared for her aging parents. Her mother, Luella was blinded by an accident where she was clearing brush. And so she really required Fannie Lou Hamer's help. Hamer met Perry Hamer who was a tractor driver and a sharecropper at a neighboring plantation and she and her mother moved from E.W. Brandon's plantation W.D. Marlow's plantation and she earned a position of privilege on that plantation. She, she was recognized for her leadership abilities her reading and writing skills. And so, she became the timekeeper on the plantation. So she worked with the landowner but in her you know, resistive capacity that she had at that point in her life, she would work to give sharecroppers a fair uh accounting, a fair earning for their harvest. Whereas when the plantation owner was weighing the cotton that they brought in, he would use a weighted scale to cheat them out of money for their work.
Maegan: And so, she was, you know, trying to balance the scales there on the plantation far before she became invested in the movement. Into the 1960s, she and Perry Hamer were entrusted with two daughters from their community whose families were not able to raise them. I think that's really a testament to the respect that people in the community had for the Hamers. And so, Fannie Lou Hamer was raising two young children, caring for her mother, working as a sharecropper. She also, as I said, was the timekeeper. She would commonly be called on to clean the plantation owner's home. And then it was in that post that she learned about the fact that she'd been given a forced hysterectomy without her consent or knowledge. So she had a uterine tumor that she went in to get removed and the doctor sterilized her without her consent or knowledge. And she found out about that through rumors that were floating around the plantation owner's house. And she actually confronted that doctor and this happened in 1961. It was so common in the state of Mississippi in fact, to forcibly sterilize poor women, women of color that it was called a Mississippi Appendectomy. But she knew she had no recourse and this really frustrated her and she started to say things to those around her. Really anyone who would listen that if she could just find a way to change things like she recognized how unjust these systems were and if she could just find a way to really speak out against them she would jump at that opportunity. And then that opportunity came in the form of this mass meeting in 1962.
Interviewer: That's, that's super helpful. Maegan, you write about Mrs. Hamer's father, Reverend Townsend, and his Stranger's Home Baptist Church becoming her "sole source of formal learning" and that the church "provided a training ground for her eventual activism". Can you elaborate a bit on this, including where the song fits in that made her famous?
Maegan: Yeah, absolutely. So this was something that was very generative for me to learn about through the interviews that I did with Hamer's friends and family and, and many fellow activists. So I, I learned that the church really became the place where Hamer honed her activist skills that she would then transfer to the movement. So being the daughter of a black Baptist Minister hearing her father deliver the word from the pulpit, you know, puts Hamer in a relatively common category with many civil rights activists, right? So this was King's story, right? This is John Lewis's a story and others. And she learned from her father how to connect Biblical stories, right? Like the Exodus narrative, the story of the Israelites' bondage in Egypt and in the resistance of that becoming a chosen people. She learned about that parallel as her father would connect it to the experience of black people in America from, from the pulpit. So she learned about that. She learned about scripture uhm that connected to the ag-- agrarian experience, experience of sharecropping, thinking about, you know, herbs withering and, you know, do not fret evildoers, they will be cut down and wither as the, the herb, right? So she would, she would learn about these Biblical parallels from her father, you know, in terms of content. She was also learning about style. How to deliver a message in this call in response format that really enlisted the audience into the learning, the sort of co-learning that they were doing during the church experience.
Maegan: She talked about the black church as one of the few places, if, if not the only place that black people in her community had that they could really call their own, right? It was a place where they could exercise, you know, their freedom of thought, their freedom of expression. And so, you know, she learned about how to deliver an engaging sermon which served her very well when she started working for the movement. And, and last I'll say that she also learned the power of song. She really found her beautiful contra-alto voice singing in the church. Her father would commonly call upon her to sing songs. And so, when she transferred these, these ideas to the movement, she would take hymns like Go Tell It on the Mountain and This Little Light of Mine and she would change some of the verses to reflect the contemporary situation that Black people were struggling with in Mississippi or in other areas of the United States, depending where she was speaking to give them renewed significance and salience. So I'd like to play the This Little Light of Mine, her version of it. And just it would be great if your listeners could think about that how the common response is even working within this song, right? So like how she's functioning as a song leader and inviting the participation, you know, kind of think about this as like empowerment, right, through the very nature of, of the way that she's leading the song itself. So I'll just play a, a clip of her version of This Little Light of Mine.
[song clip playing]
Maegan: Okay, so I'll, I'll stop there and just you know, point out the way in which she's inviting, you know, participation along with her through that repetition and changing the lyrics from you know, I've Got a Light of Freedom, I'm Gonna Let it Shine, okay. And I think that really speaks to the way she saw herself as called by God to do this work, right? Feeling like voter registration, advocacy, you know, was akin to proselytizing, a form of doing God's work and, and as you would say fulfilling God's word wonderfully.
Interviewer: Okay, great. That was wonderful to hear that. Thank you for sharing that.
Interviewer: Maegan, tell us the story of the August 27, 1962 mass meeting at Williams Chapel Baptist Church, including the sermon and why 44 year old Fannie Lou Hamer was moved by all this?
Maegan: Yeah you know, this is one of those defining moments in Hamer's life, right? So when I was sharing a bit about her biography and sort of ending with this meeting it, it was this confluence of events that led to Hamer's activist career, really the origin of her activist career. So she was becoming, you know, increasingly dissatisfied with her experiences in the Mississippi Delta. She wanted to speak out about things like the forced sterilization, right? Like the economic exploitation that she was seeing uhm happened day in and day out on the plantation. But she didn't see any, you know, mechanism or way to speak out about this. So about that time the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was traveling throughout the South and they were probably getting or encouraging this new form of civic activism among the masses of black people. In places like the Mississippi Delta where black people outnumbered whites by a considerable margin. So rather than as the NAACP had for generations or going into the black middle and upper classes and encouraging voters among, you know, teachers and preachers and people who were you know, well-established in their communities, that was a bit more of the NAACP strategy for black civic engagement.
Maegan: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led by Bob Moses and others in the state had this idea that they wanted to go into churches and pool halls and juke joints and empower the masses of black people uhm who had been left out of a lot of these previous campaigns. So it was part of that strategy coming into rural Mississippi, coming into the Mississippi Delta, coming into her church for a mass meeting that brought Hamer into the fold of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. So she was even skeptical going into this meeting. One of her friends who she really loved and respected encouraged her to try to come. So she came and she listened to the messages and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was a trained black Baptist theologian and Mississippi native and he delivered a sermon called Discerning the Signs of the Time. And he was riffing on the section of the Bible where you know, Jesus says to the scribes and the Pharisees, you know, how is it that you don't recognize me as the Messiah, right? So how do you not see what is before you and recognize these signs. And Bevel took that idea and transferred it to contemporary United States pointing out things like Freedom Rides, right? And sit-ins and, you know, Brown versus Board of Education decision.
Maegan: The things that were happening around Mississippi and around the country that signaled a change in the times, right? And he invited the people seated before him to become a part of that change, to recognize the signs of the time. He even, you know, used references to the clouds. You can see the change in weather and predict that there will be rain, how can you not see these signs of the time, right? So, so pulling that those, those ideas through from the Bible. And so, this really resonated with Hamer, right? So this was, you know, speaking her language and it, and it really resonated with her. And then James Foreman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee followed up Bevel's sermon with a brief civic education lesson, you know, telling people seated before him, black people, you know, day labor, sharecroppers, that they had a constitutionally protected right to vote. That they had this right and that they could exercise it. And, and this is how we'll go down to, you know, the county seat and we'll register at the courthouse on Friday. And it was followed up with this altar call, right? You know, “who would like to come do this on Friday?” And Hamer was one of the first people to raise her hand and say, yep, she was gonna try to vote on that Friday along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You know, some of your listeners might be thinking like, oh, okay, you know, go down to the, that county courthouse and register to vote.
Maegan: You know, why did it require a sermon? Why did it require a civic education lesson. And the context here is really key, right? So Hamer from, you know, generations back, she's the granddaughter of an enslaved person. She'd been living in this tightly-controlled plantation environment where people who tried to speak up, people who tried to challenge the exploitative nature of sharecropping were lynched, right? There, Joe Pullum is someone she often references who is a person who stood up to the landowner who demanded pay for, adequate pay for his labor. And a lynch mob came after him and they, you know, not only through a, a drawn-out altercation kill Joe Pullum but then they the, the lynchers did horrific things like preserve his earlobe in a drugstore that black people frequented as this intimidating sign. They, they dragged his body through the town, right? I mean, there, there were horrific examples made of people who stood up against white supremacy. So the idea of going down to the courthouse and demanding one's right to vote was frightening, it was frightening to the people that get that, that were gathered there. And Foreman and Bevel knew this and they knew that they needed to not only persuade people to try this but support them along the way. So, you know, Hamer's act of raising her hand and indicating her willingness was a very brave act uhm in 1962 in the Mississippi Delta.
Interviewer: Right. Well, why don't you tell us the story of what happened on Friday and I'll, I'll just let me quote something you wrote that Fannie Lou Hamer did when she was so fearful? But then in that sometime in, in the, the latter part of the story, but I want to read this and then have you tell us what happened that day. On the way home from registering to vote unsuccessfully you write that Fannie Lou Hamer's "strong voice belied her tangled stomach, but she summoned the power of gospel music and sang all the way home". Maegan, tell us what happened that day and the ramifications.
Maegan: Yeah. Yeah, so Bevel and Foreman were not expecting that 18 people would have come down for the, you know, their version of an altar call, raise their hand, indicate their willingness to vote. So they actually weren't prepared to transport, you know, 18 black Deltans to Indianola, which is about 26 miles away. So they had to find an old bus that was used to transport migrant workers to and from Mississippi to Florida. So they actually, they used this old bus from someone in the community who is supportive of their efforts and they drove 18 people from Ruleville to Indianola. And, you know, on the way there you know, Hamer reflects a bit about being hopeful. One of the things that Foreman talked about in his address at, at the church was that through the vote, black Deltans could change the power structure of their community, right? They can vote out racist sheriffs, for example. So, you know, it's, it's likely that Hamer was hopeful. She also packed a, a pair of comfortable shoes. She remembers and writes because she thought and, and she was told that they could be arrested for this. And so she, you know, wanted to make sure she was prepared uhm in that case. So they drove to Indianola. When they arrived at the courthouse was lined with Citizens Council members. So white men with shotguns and dogs. And, and initially, they didn't understand you.
Maegan: Who are all these people standing outside the courthouse and till they realized that that act of a bus full of black people had got the word out to the community? They've been followed there by Citizens Council members and the Citizens Council if some of your readers or, or listeners, excuse me, are unfamiliar uhm was commonly referred to as the “Klan in suits, not sheets”. So this was the "respectable Klan in Mississippi". And they were there to intimidate the would-be voters who were scared now to even get off the bus, right? To go into the courthouse. Hamer was one of the first people who went into the courthouse and sort of summoned that strength and she was, you know, flanked and supported by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When they arrived into the courthouse the registrar told them that they had to, you know, come back in, two at a time and they had to take this test that was designed to bar their civic assertion, right? It wasn't a test that was, you know, going to reward their competence. They couldn't study for it. She had interpreted an obscure passage from the Mississippi State Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. So all 18 of the would-be registrants failed their registration test and it took all day.
Maegan: So by late afternoon, they filed back onto the bus and they were headed home and everyone was discouraged, dem-- demoralized, frightened, right? Because they feared what would happen to them once they got home if this many, you know, citizens counselors knew about their attempt to vote, would the plantation owners know about their attempt to vote, right? And what would that mean for their lives and their livelihood? So they were scared. And then, you know, a couple of miles down the road, they got pulled over by a state highway patrolman. And the state highway patrolman went to arrest the bus driver and his crime was driving a bus that was too yellow. A bus that too closely resembled a school bus. And the rest of the people on the bus said, "If you're going arrest him, you'll have to arrest all of us." and so this was more than the highway patrolman was prepared for, so he said, "Well, I'll fine you $100." And they couldn't gather $100. No one had, you know, $100 between all of them, but they did manage to gather $30 which he took and they headed home. And Hamer during this time really emerges as the community leader because she starts singing gospel songs, Walk With Me O Lord, right? As I'm on this Jesus journey” to help comfort the people on the bus, right? To help remind them of the importance of what they were doing even in light of their failed attempt and to help and strengthen their resolve to go home and face whatever awaited them once they returned.
Interviewer: Okay. Thank you. Is it, is that when, if I remember correctly, she had to leave her home that night?
Maegan: Okay. So by the time Hamer returned to her the plantation where she lived and worked at W.D. Marlow's plantation she heard right away from her daughter and her daughter's cousin, pap's cousin that she, that the landowner had been "raising Cain all day". He had got a call from the Citizens Council that she was down there trying to register and he came storming up to her and said, you know with-- you must withdraw your registration attempt or you're gonna have to leave this plantation. And he said, "Even if you do withdraw, it's just how I feel you might have to leave anyway. I'll come back in the morning for your answer." But Hamer did not wait until the morning. She told him that she didn't go down there to register for him. She went down there to register for herself and she knew that uh she was now in danger and she needed to leave that night. And so she left that evening. She left her home where she lived with her husband, her mother, her daughters for 18 years where she served in this important role as a timekeeper where she had, you know, baked goods for the plantation owner's son when he was away at war, right?
Maegan: I mean, this was a hard decision to make that evening, but she was fearful because of what she said, because of what she did and how the landowner and other citizens counselors might respond. So she moved in with a friend who had encouraged her to come to the initial mass meeting in the first place. She moved in with Mary and Robert Tucker and she stayed there for a week or so and till Perry Hamer, who was forced to stay on the plantation and finish the harvest or forfeit all the family's belongings. So he was, he and, and her daughters were still on W.D. Marlow's plantation and he noticed buckshot shells in the machinery house. And he was worried that those shells were intended for his wife and not any sort of hunting at that point in the season, right? This is August. And so, he encouraged Hamer to take their children to a faraway cabin. A, a cousin of Perry Hamer lived in uh the neighboring town of Cascilla in Tallahatchie County. And so Hamer escaped uhm from uh the house where she was staying. And days later, in fact, 16 shots were fired into the bedroom where she had been sleeping just inches above her bed.
Interviewer: Okay. Thank you.
Maegan: I think Ben McMorran comes and finds her in Tallahatchie County where she sought refuge. And they go and do a speaking and singing tour. And then, yeah, when she returns to uhm Ruleville, by then the harvest is past and, and they uh SNCC helps them rent a house in town.
Interviewer: Without a home people pooled their money and rented a home in Ruleville for the Hamers, which Fannie Lou Hamer took as a "sign from God". The first time she had not lived on a plantation. Maegan, you write this, "It's a funny thing since I started working for Christ, which is how Fannie Lou Hamer characterized her civil rights advocacy". Can you paint the full portrait of Mrs. Hamer and her religious motivations as she entered the realm of civil rights advocate here at age 44? Just give us a brief description of her sort of religious, the portrait of her religiously she has embarked on this that will define her life for the rest of her life.
Maegan: Yeah. Yeah, so I want to play a quote from her here. This is from her first sermon that we have on record. So this was her telling this uh you know, in response to your question, you know, telling the audience gathered before her about how she'd been called from God to do this civil rights work. And so, we'll, we'll just take a listen to that and I'll expand a little bit.
Sound clip:
Maegan: So you can hear there this conviction, right? That she casts in Biblical terms. She really felt that, you know, the sign of SNCC and SCLC coming into her community, the fact that she narrowly escaped death at the Tucker's home. The fact that then SNCC goes and finds her at this remote cabin and brings her into the Civil Rights work. And then when she returns from a, a speaking and singing tour in the fall of 1962, SNCC is able to get her family a, a modest home in town. So the first time that our family lives off of a plantation uhm she knows the work is hard, right? She knows that firsthand, but she also feels like God is providing for her and that's assigned to her that she should continue doing this work and encouraging others to do so as well.
Interviewer: Okay, profoundly moving. Maegan, let's, let's move on to Sunday, June 9th, 1963: "And the voices of 10 black passengers, including that of Fannie Lou Hamer rose above the other bus travelers' chatter as they sang Go Tell It On The Mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain to let my people go. Who's that yonder dressed in red? Let my people go, must be the children Bob Moses led. Let my people go". Maegan, can you give us a detailed description of who these people were? Where they were going? And then what happened to them? This being so critical to Fannie Lou Hamer's future advocacy.
Maegan: Yeah. Yes, you know, and I will just warn your listeners that this is a very traumatic story about what Hamer and her fellow civil rights workers endured on their way home from the Civil Rights Workshop in South Carolina. So, they were returning from one of these workshops that was molded in the Highlander Folk School model of empowering local people through these sort of center people organize first, right? So they were chosen from their communities as Leaders to attend the civil rights training session to help train other people to register and go out and vote. And the idea is that this could have a ripple effect within their communities, right? So they were returning from this. They, you know, had learned and shared in many of these hymns turned movement anthems like the “Go Tell it on the Mountain” that you quote from there. So they were singing these songs on the bus and this was aggravating the white bus driver. And all along the way at each sort of Continental Trailways stop that they made, they saw him get off the bus and make phone calls, right? So they started to get suspicious that he would, he was communicating with perhaps the Citizens Council or perhaps local police who often were one and the same. A couple stops from their final Greenwood, Mississippi destination, they get off in Montgomery County.
Maegan: They stopped at a place called Staley's Cafe. Hamer actually decides to stay on the bus. A few people go into the counter and they try to be served uhm right? So they, they know that they have a right because of the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling in 1961 that they should be served as black people at this counter but the white waitress refused to serve them. There starts to be a bit of a commotion and a police person, a policeman who I believe was called by the bus driver is there and suddenly there are many more policemen that kind of swarmed this cafe. So the civil rights workers decide to just leave, try to get back on the bus on the way and now ponder who was one of the organizers starts to copy down the license plate tags of the police officers as they were trained to do so and they were reporting these to the justice department. The police officer sees her doing that and, and starts to arrest her and all the people with them. Hamer sees this commotion from the bus, she comes off and she asks like, "What should I do? Should I go on to Greenwood right and get help or you know, like what, what do I do here?" She's asking Anell Ponder and Anell Ponder is trying to get her to go back on the bus.
Maegan: But she's spotted by one of the policemen and she's, you know, roughly handled, kicked, handcuffed, thrown into the back of a car. They're all bought, brought to the Montgomery County Jail in Winona, Mississippi. They're all uhm put into cells. And then over the course of that evening, they're subjected to horrific beatings and they can hear these beatings from their own cells. They, you know, are anticipating what's going to happen to them. When Hamer endures this beating from a, a blackjack, so a, a loaded you know, both sides instrument that uh the police officers in the cell ordered other black prisoners who were there to, to beat Hamer with or else they would be, you know, shot. The police officer sort of pointed to their guns when the black prisoners refused to beat this elderly, you know, to them elder black woman. Hamer, in telling the story, often alludes to sexual abuse that she endured during this beating. She was trying to smooth her dress down. Her dress kept getting worked up. She was laying on a cot. She was forced to lay face down and her dress would work up and she would try and pull it down. And that was angering the police officers who were forcing the prisoners, one to sit on her legs. They were holding her hands back and she felt one of the police officers, she couldn't see who because her dress was over her face feeling underneath her clothes during this time. And eventually, she passed out from the abuse.
Maegan: Uh and when she came to, she was being dragged back to her cell. Her cellmate Ben was taken in and just before the cellmate started to receive similar treatment a phone call came into the jail. And they believe that phone call was from someone who the SNCC workers had contacted when the civil rights workers didn't return. And what ensued was you know, the FBI came to the jail to interview the civil rights workers. There was coordination between Julian Bond of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Martin Luther King Jr. of SCLC, and this went all the way up to attorney general at the time, Robert F. Kennedy and on to J. Edgar Hoover. There was a, the awareness that there were 9 civil rights workers being held in this Winona, Mississippi jail cell and that they were fearful that they would be killed. And they were there for several days, four or five days and Hamer believes the only reason why they were able to eventually secure their release, Ambassador Andrew Young, he was not an ambassador then, Andrew Young, the civil rights worker Andrew Young uh Dorothy Cort-- Cotton and James Bevel came to secure their release.
Maegan: And, and they had the bail money sent from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC to do so. But Hamer believes the only reason why they were able to be released to those civil rights workers was because uhm uh Governor Wallace did his famous stand in the schoolhouse door in Alabama days before while they were in prison. And then Medgar Evers had just been assassinated on his front porch that or, or front lawn early that morning. And so, they believed that Robert F. Kennedy, perhaps John F. Kennedy ordered them to be released. It was just this horrific confluence of events that were demonstrating the horrors of white supremacy across the nation and they didn't want an additional horrific event like the killing of you know, 9 civil rights workers in a Mississippi jail cell to precipitate that even further. So they were released. Hamer and now Allene Ponder and others spent months uhm healing first in Mississippi in a hospital and then later transferred to Atlanta. And she also flew to Washington, D.C. not long after she met with King in Atlanta. And the FBI investigated the case and, and brought a trial against uh the white police officers. And that was one of the first times where white police officers were being held accountable for this. They, they were found not guilty in, in Oxford, Mississippi months later. But there was a, a trial brought against them.
Interviewer: Hard to hear. Before we leave this, I'm just going to read something you write, you write, and this is about Fannie Lou Hamer's regaining of, of her health." As you say, she did have months of, of medical assistance. But, but here you write when they were leaving "Sometime after midnight, Hamer's fever broke and she regained consciousness. Parting her cracked lips and breathing deeply in and out of her bruised diaphragm, a fellow activist remembered Hamer's low voice singing out, 'Walk with me now, Lord. Walk with me while I'm on this Jesus journey. I want Jesus to walk with me by my friend now, Lord, by my friend. Make a way from me now, Lord, make away from me. While I'm on this Jesus journey, I want Jesus to walk with me.'"
I think that is just indicative of, of sort of how she saw herself as a civil rights activist as sort of working for Jesus himself.
Maegan, you write that Hamer had come to see black political activism as divinely inspired and you quote a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party chair describing it this way later, "Fannie Lou Hamer was a religious fanatic in the most positive sense. I heard her say, 'If I hate white people, I can't see the face of Jesus.' So she was very anti-hate, very pro-nonviolent, and she took her religious beliefs and she parlayed them into politics." And you've commented on this so we're not, we're not going stay here and discuss. But I just wanted to bring that out of something you wrote for our listeners to sort of continue to grasp, to try to understand who Fannie Lou Hamer was and what motivated her in what she did which that, that experience in Winona really scarred her for life and as she often would refer to it and it is, as I said, very difficult to hear.
Interviewer: We are talking with Maegan Parker Brooks, associate professor in the Department of Civic Communication and Media at Willamette University and author of several books and other media about the life and times of Fannie Lou Hamer, including Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman, and the children's book Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Maegan uh we have about fifteen minutes uh plus or minus. We need you to tell us the story about the 1964 speech to the credentials committee and I think you have something to play from that. But if you can give us a little bit of background here what she's doing and then we'll hear that, that excerpt.
Maegan: Sure. So the, if your listeners do know about Fannie Lou Hamer, odds are they learned about her through this speech, right? This is her most famous address. It was a speech that she gave to the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. And it was part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's larger strategy to unseat the Mississippi regulars, as they were called. The Mississippi delegates who were sent from their state. So the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed out of Freedom Summer. So the larger SNCC, SCLC, COFO Initiative that had taken throughout the summer of 1964 and it culminated in the, this creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. They were they, they had followed all of the rules for organizing a political party. They had sworn their allegiance to the Democratic Party and they had a loud, you know, people of all races to join. So they were contrasting that inclusive, inclusivity with exclusivity of the Mississippi regular party who was, which was an all-white delegation. They did not represent the state of Mississippi's constituents. And so, they took this fight to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
Maegan: And there was a, you know, multiple-prong lobbying effort. There were it was a 24-hour vigil on the Atlantic City Boardwalk in which Hamer was singing. There were pictures of the civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner who had been murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi for their civil rights worker, work. And there was lobbying efforts sort of behind the scenes trying to lobby credentials committee members. But the culminating event of this culmination was a, a, eight-person testimonies including the widow of uh Michael Schwerner, Rita Schwerner Bender, Martin Luther King Jr. uhm Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. They were really notable speakers on this panel. It was testifying about the white supremacists terror in Mississippi that was keeping black people from voting. But the most memorable of those speeches and those testimonies was Fannie Lou Hamer's. So she spoke for about eight minutes. She shared the story that I shared with you all of her first registration attempt and what happened as a result. She shared the story of the beating in Winona, Mississippi, and that led to this climactic conclusion that I'll play for you here and then I'll talk about the interruption that she endured. But let's, let's listen to the conclusion of her testimony before the DNC.
Sound clip:.
Maegan: So not long after Hamer started delivering that address before the credentials committee, 108-person committee, but also before the press, CBS, ABC, NBC were all there rolling, right? It is about two o'clock in the afternoon. President Johnson uh had heard about Hamer. He had heard about this challenge and he didn't want, not want anything interrupting what he saw as essentially his inauguration to this whole second ter-- term that he was going to have. So he called an impromptu press conference to call the press tension away and it was rumored that he was going to announce his running mate in this press conference. So the cameras followed him. And so, we went from Atlantic City. Hamer's beginning of her address to the White House, to LBJ and what news reporters thought was going to be an announcement of his running mate. Instead, it was like a known, a known announcement. He announced it was the nine-month anniversary of the assassination of JFK. So a nine-month anniversary of something is what he called the reporters there to announce. And so, they realized that they've been duped and they decided to replay Hamer's testimony on their nightly news program in prime time. And so, this way Hamer was in-- introduced to the American public, right? People seated, you know, in TV trays eating dinner, you know, watching the convention saw Fannie Lou Hamer that night and telegrams of support poured into the DNC for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and really forced Johnson to negotiate with the MFDP and offer them a compromise which, you know, Hamer rejected outright. It was a really offensive compromise but this was really the introduction of Hamer to the nation and has had long-lasting effects.
Interviewer: Okay, thank you. And thank you for playing that. I want to jump forward a little bit to Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer and, and sort of their interaction. Malcolm X called her "America's number one freedom fighting woman". And you write that “Hamer nodded her head and raised her arms to the heavens when Malcolm talked about an enraged Jesus driving out the money changers, turning the tables over in the temple. And by the time it got to the Revolutionary Jesus of Revelations, the Jesus whose patience ran out, Hamer was back on her feet shouting, 'Tell it'". Maegan, can you talk to us about her relationship with this "radical view of Christianity," that's in quotes from your book, that Malcolm espoused and how it animated her work?
Maegan: Absolutely. So I, I am glad you asked this question because I think that part of that National Fable of the Civil Rights Movement maybe is a thinking that you know, Christianity informed and infused this sort of Kumbaya, let's all come together. Let's all love one another. Let's love our enemies. And certainly, yes, there was a part of that, right? And Hamer was a warm, loving person. She was a person who forgave uhm all manner of transgressions against her and who really believed in the power of moral suasion, and she believed this throughout her career. So she did not waver when SNCC activists did by the mid-1960s and they, and expelled white people from their organization. She never wavered in believing that white people had a soul, that they could be redeemed. She, she didn't, she kept that, she held fast to that. But that's not to say that she didn't believe that, as she would often say, Jesus was a revolutionary person. Jesus was out there with the poor and the disenfranchised and he was on the side of the oppressed. That Jesus was radical in nature. Like that's the, that's the Jesus that she also exemplified in her activism and she believed not in the turn the other cheek ideology, but as she would say you know, there came a time in the Bible when David had to slay Goliath. And, and she would, you know, draw that parallel that there was a time for self-defense and there was a time for standing up for your rights. And she, you know, had loaded guns in her house because her house was, you know, often firebombed and there were, you know, citizen counselors and Klan people who would drive by her house. So she believed in armed self-defense and she believed in the radical power of black activism, even as she was a devout Christian.
Interviewer: Right. Thank you. And that, I think that it is important to, to see and to understand. We don't have too much time. But let, let, let me ask a, a question or two about Fannie Lou Hamer's involvement in the National Women's Political Caucus which participation you wrote Fannie Lou Hamer cast in Biblical terms with an allusion to the Book of Esther. I'm going to quote here from her, "So I'm saying to you today, who knows but that I have come as to the Kingdom for such a time as this." Can you share with us what she did in that caucus, what her influence was, including her approach to reproductive control, which she called the Great Sin and why? This is fascinating piece of American history and American religious history, I think, that we don't really know about.
Maegan: Yeah, I agree and, you know, in, in feminist history too, right? So Hamer was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus. She participated in the inaugural meeting. She spoke at that inaugural meeting and she called white feminists to task for trying to bring together women from different backgrounds under this banner of sisterhood before they dealt with the real divisions between women of different races, different classes, different life experiences, right? And so, that's where we get that Ruth parallel that she's thinking about or excuse me, that Esther parallel that you quoted from, right? So she's thinking about herself at this meeting, in this precipitous moment, right? This important moment, the founding of the National Women's Political Caucus. But she's not identifying wholeheartedly with the second wave feminist, right? And in some ways, she's thinking about the need to protect her people, right? And acknowledge uhm the lived experiences that they've endured, right?
Maegan: So, well, you know, part of what she talks about with reproductive control and why she can't be 100% on board in terms of pro-choice is because of the Mississippi Appendectomy experiences that I mentioned earlier with, in our discussion, right? Because your reproductive justice as reproductive freedom, I guess, would be the, the more precise phrase at that point. Reproductive freedom for Hamer was really concerning. She worried that it would devolve into reproductive control in places like Mississippi. And so, she spoke that kind of truth to power during that meeting. And she also, you know, brought with her to that founding meeting Gussie Mae Love who was the mother of a young teen in the Mississippi Delta. A young black woman who was carelessly murdered outside of a grocery store on her graduation day by drunken white teens who were driving by. It was this horrific event that had happened and she brought Gussie Mae Love with her to the founding of the National Women's Political Caucus and said, "Your oppression has never been like ours." And she pointed out that you know, Gussie Mae Love was there as a living example of the white supremacist terror that black people were living through in the South in 1971.
Interviewer: All right. Well, thank you for that description of sort of some of her work with, with that caucus. Maegan, her final years were difficult for her and her family, I read. She seemed well, they were often without enough funds to live comfortably. I sort of got the sense that they were, they were sad, somewhat sad, her, her later years, although she kept doing things to help people congregated to her to get help and she offered what she could. I just got a sense of she was tired, worn out for good reason. And it was just you know, in the lower class of Americans that tho-- those times in your life are hard and I got that sense. Her death on March 14th, 1977 well, her, her funeral drew a large crowd and she was eulogized by Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, who has appeared in this story before. And he said this at the end, "Thank you for the inspiration. Thank you for the example. Thank you for so strengthening our lives that we might live so God can use us anytime, anywhere." That phrase "so God can use us", that seems like a, a very good description of, of Fannie Lou Hamer and what she did as she saw it. I think she would agree that she did she did things as an instrument in, in God's hands.
I think that's probably an accurate way of how she might put it. Can as we conclude, Maegan do you want to share with us any lessons or takeaways from the book, either in terms of important historical transformations you have charted or in terms of helping us understand our present moment? And I should say we could go on and on with this interview. There's much that we've missed and skipped but I would just encourage listeners to go check out a book on uh Fannie Lou Hamer. Look at uh some of which were written by Maegan uhm and, and get to know her, listen to her speeches and songs. You can find them on the Internet and get to know this woman who did much with little to affect the American narrative. So Maegan.
Maegan: Okay. Uhm yeah, I mean, I, I think that Hamer, the lesson of, lessons from Hamer's life are manifold, but I think thinking about this idea that there are wells of wisdom upon which to draw, right? That Hamer's creative approaches to problem-solving. Her view that freedom was a constant struggle, right? And after the victories like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for example, she was still working to build a poverty program in her community, Freedom Farm Cooperative, with something that she invested so much time, money, energy and creative problem-solving thought into. So there are many stories from her life that I think could inform our approaches to activism in our contemporary context activism and organizing. And then certainly, the way that her faith informed her approach to activism, it was complex, right? She really drew upon her astounding in-depth knowledge of the Bible and connected that with her lived experiences in profound ways that I think your listeners would, could learn a lot more from. So yes, I will just second your, your encouragement that readers, the listeners continue to learn about Fannie Lou Hamer through, through books uhm through websites, through other sources that are available.
Interviewer: Thank you.
We have been talking with Maegan Parker Brooks, associate professor in the Department of Civic Communication and Media uh at Willamette University and author of several books and other media about the life and times of Fannie Lou Hamer, including Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman and the children's book Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners now understand more about what, what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, seeing too its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government. Don't forget to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the sign up tab.
Maegan, thank you so much for being with us and thank you even more than that for doing all the hard work that you did and understanding this person, Fannie Lou Hamer, and getting the word out to us via books and other, other sources. It's been very enlightening and I hope you've enjoyed the time with us as well.
Maegan: Thank you for having me.
Transcript: "The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 4" with Catherine O’Donnell
Interviewer: The Catholic Church is the United States' second-largest religious grouping after Protestantism and the country's largest church or religious denomination. As of 2018, 23% of Americans are Catholic. This is startling when you realize that at the beginning of the American experiment in self-government, religions and their adherence were almost completely Protestant and vehemently and even violently sometimes - anti-Catholic. The story of this transformation is critical to understanding the American religious landscape, which is another way of saying, "It is critical to understanding America." And often the best way to understand a historical movement or an event is to learn about individual actors on history's stage. Importantly, as historian Ann Braude of Harvard Divinity School wrote, "Women's history is American religious history." One prominent female Catholic in American history is Elizabeth Ann Seton who began the Sisters of Charity, the first religious community of women founded in the United States, and who was the aunt of Seton Hall University's founder, Bishop James Roosevelt Bailey.
Today, to help us understand the life and times of Elizabeth Ann Seton in our quest to comprehend America is Catherine O'Donnell, professor of history at Arizona State University and author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint which was awarded the Distinguished Book Award by the Conference on the History of Women Religious, as well as the Biography Prize from the Catholic Press Association. Her primary research interests include early American history, culture, and religion. She is also the author of Men of Letters in The Early Republic and many articles appearing in venues including the William and Mary Quarterly, The Journal of The Early Republic, Early American Literature, and The US Catholic Historian. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early American history and the Atlantic World.
It is hoped that our time together today will help us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and we trust that as a result, listeners will come to better understand how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its future. Join us in building the National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital to open in 2026 on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words – “Almighty God hath created the mind free”, by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.
Catherine, after that lengthy monologue, thank you for being with us today.
Catherine: Thank you.
Interviewer: First, Catherine, tell us how you became interested in Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Catherine: I think there are two paths to that. So I did-- I did grow up Catholic. I always loved the stories of the saints. But I like the medieval ones, you know, the ones that smelled like roses after they died, the sort of thing. And it was when I was actually teaching, university, this was at William and Mary and I was teaching a course on Early American Biography and I let students choose their person. And I was teaching in Virginia, so, you know, there were five James Madisons and Jeffersons, and one young woman said she wanted to write about Mother Seton. And I just thought, "Wait a minute. She's filed in my head with the Catholic Saints, not with Early American History." But, of course, she was both and I was startled to discover there was not a lot of modern scholarship on her and that's where the journey began.
Interviewer: Okay, fair enough. Now, Catherine, for our listeners, many of whom are not Catholic, why should understanding Elizabeth Seton be of interest to them or stated differently - why would it make them better citizens of the United States to learn about the life and times of Elizabeth Ann Seton?
Catherine: Interesting. So I confess that I think that learning about anyone deeply is a good step toward being a better citizen, in that it helps to build community to understand other people's perspectives and experiences. Seeing in particular, I would make two, kind of, maybe almost competing claims for her. So, first, she was an adventurer. She was willing to change her mind, to try new things, to irritate people that she knew by thinking very differently from them and that's kind of admirable and necessary. At the same time, she took very seriously the need to live in harmony with others and she constantly thought about how to reconcile her single-minded pursuit of truth with her really sincere wish to be compassionate and gentle with other people. So if we could kind of do both of those things, I feel that that would be useful as citizens.
Interviewer: Sure. That's, that's a great-- that's a great answer. Now the final question to frame our discussion before we get into the nitty-gritty. You write that during the last half of the 18th-century, "The rhetoric and pageantry of New York's anti-popery [or anti-Catholicism] outstripped true persecution." Catherine, can you describe for us the religious and religious freedom landscapes of New York City during this time, which I think is essential for us to understand Elizabeth Seton?
Catherine: I agree. It is essential. So, New York has this fascinating history. It's first a Dutch colony and the Dutch Reformed Church is in power than it's an English colony and Anglicanism, what would become Episcopalianism is powerful. And Anglicanism was officially the established religion during Seton's childhood, early childhood, and just before. But, New York was always this sort of quilt and you very early begin to have Methodists and Baptists there as those denominations and Evangelicalism begins to flourish. You have Quakers whom Seton admired when she was young because she liked their plain clothes. You have Jews in New York City and a synagogue as well. You have enslaved people who have brought African religions and-- and syncretistic religions to New York. And you also have this kind of mix of vitriol, ill-feeling, sometimes directed against Catholics as sort of soldiers of the pope and disloyal people and a lot of tolerance because New Yorkers wanted to get along, they wanted to go along, and often it made more sense just not to ask questions. So it's a really fascinating kind of stew of different religions and different approaches to religion.
Interviewer: Okay, great. That's helpful. Now, let's get to Elizabeth Seton herself. Can you just give us a brief biographical sketch of her taking us from her birth in 1774 to when she set sail for Livorno, Italy at age 29 in 1803?
Catherine: Yes. She was born as you hear from that date, right, as revolution creeps toward the colonies and she's born in New York to a very ambitious doctor father who actually sails away to England to continue his medical education as the colonies are in peril. He does come back as essentially a medic in the British army but Seton's mother dies during the revolution shortly after giving birth to the couple's third child. And Seton grows up in a family and a city that is recovering from this terrible war. Her father remarries but Elizabeth's stepmother is cold and awkward. Her father has to, sort of, wangle his way back in because he was a loyalist to the city's good graces. She's conscious of all of this. She's intellectually ambitious. Not particularly interested in organized Christianity, but she did enjoy nature and kind of clearly felt a craving for Divine presence. She felt that more on her own than through, than through services. And her family was Episcopal, she had no connection with Catholicism at this point.
So she thinks of herself as melancholy, it's clear she was kind of, a beauty, kind of a flirt. And she attracts her husband, William McGee Seton who's a tall, handsome, transatlantic merchant, six or seven years older than she is. And they marry and she's just thrilled, from her letters it's clear that after this kind of unsettled, somewhat unhappy childhood, she has a husband she loves. She begins bearing children, she eventually has five children. But her husband is coughing and weakening and it turns out he has tuberculosis - consumption, they would have called it. At the same time, the family's merchant business is at risk because of the Napoleonic Wars and her husband's not the best businessman. So Seton then is faced with a frail, truly frail husband and a husband who has gone bankrupt. She's recently given birth to her fifth child, and the question is what to do? And what they come up with is this kind of cockamamie plan to go to Italy where William has business associates and the hope is that those associates, the Filicchi family, will help William build his business back and the lovely Italian climate will somehow save him from tuberculosis.
Interviewer: Okay. So they set sail. By the way, I also found it interesting that they were protected by the nation's first bankruptcy law because if that-- because otherwise the horrible debtor's prison loom.
Catherine: Yeah.
Interviewer: Right? And that created great stress, I think. That's what I read, correct? That that was a real stress.
Catherine: Absolutely. I thought that detail might be too, sort of, historian nerdy but it's important, right? So prior to the bankruptcy law, you could be put in debtor's prison until you could pay off your creditors as if being in debt was criminal, right? In a way that seems very foreign to us. And, William, Elizabeth's husband, had seen this happen to people close to him throughout his life and he was terrified of it and it was just really in the months before he used this bankruptcy law that the first law was passed and it did mean they weren't spared humiliation, right? They were not spared financial risk, but they were spared his imprisonment.
Interviewer: You write that during this time period you just described, "Amid calamities, large and small, Elizabeth drained her mind of words and images until she felt only God." What is going on here with Elizabeth and her religious views?
Catherine: Yeah. So as I mentioned, she had always wanted to feel close to God but had not found a church that spoke to her, really. And so, including when she was a young mother she would read sermons, she would read the Bible, she would walk in nature, as she began to be more and more fearful for her husband and her family, she did turn more toward a communal religion, right? To shared religion rather than just individual. There's a minister, an Episcopal minister, at Trinity Church - John Henry Hobart, who became a kind of spiritual guide. But it was still the case is clear in that passage, that specific doctrine is not what is moving her, right? It's a kind of imminence. It's just as a sense of closeness to God that in some sense, some people who read these passages feel it-- feels more Eastern than Western, but there's also this tradition of prayer within Christianity. And-- and that is what she found solace in and what began to make Christianity and worship really central to her life so that it wasn't just that Christianity created an ethical person, which she also found important. It was that the worship itself was sustaining to her.
Interviewer: Okay. And she also believed at this time you write, "She considered her choice of religion a matter of taste, not virtue." And you also quoted as saying, "I think the first point of religion is cheerfulness and harmony." How does that fit into your understanding of Elizabeth's religious persona at that time, before she set sail?
Catherine: Yeah. I love how you're specifying at that time she right because this is something that changes throughout her life in a fascinating way. So religion was like cuisine or like fashion, right? It came in different forms and people enjoy different variants of it and that was-- that was fine. Right? One can get one's calories from curry, from beef stew, and one is still getting the job done. That's kind of how she thought about religion, throughout her young life. When she became more interested in Episcopalianism, Hobart, this minister, did begin to get her thinking that the Episcopal communion had some kind of distinctive claim perhaps, some particular relationship back to, Christ's Apostles. But that was sort of just an overlay over what we would call ecumenicism, right? Or it just a sense that the differences among the denominations were not so important.
Interviewer: Okay. Fair enough. Good. Now she's going to set sail with her husband and one of her children on the Shepherdess to Italy, and when she does that, as you described it, Elizabeth was, "Trying to strike an ambitious bargain. She would give up everything else if God allowed her the only thing she truly wanted - her family's reunions after death." What does this-- this is a very deep sentiment. What-- and very, very, very religious in its own right, not attached to a particular church or faith. What does this represent in her life story?
Catherine: Yeah. So she-- she had become more and more drawn to-- to the idea, sort of, summed up in scripture, "This world is not my home," that this is a temporary passage and her life had been marked by loss, as I mentioned the-- the death of her mother and of her infant sister, it's really her first memory. She fears the death of her husband, her children because this is the 18th century, you know, she'd seen her children ill and not known whether they would survive, and so she's accepted that she can't control what happens in this world. What she wants is a reunion after death, right? In some kind of non-doctrinal Christian afterlife. And she will do anything. Right? There is, no possession, no ambition that she holds, that she places above that hope of reunion in a-- in a Christian afterlife. And it goes beyond lip service, right? I mean, she does, sort of, sail through this bankruptcy and this calamity, without really being that upset that she has to write down every single possession that her family owns and hand the list over to people, right? She-- she really has begun to-- to set aside the things of this world, in her hope for a future, but there is an element of barter here, right? She wants something from-- from this God that she believes in so passionately and what she wants is her family's safety after death.
Interviewer: Okay. So, they arrived in Italy, several things happen, which are quite intense. Tell us what happened to her in Italy, give us a brief sketch of sort of her trip there, what happened? What happened religiously?
Catherine: Yeah. There's so much drama in her life.
Interviewer: There is a lot of drama.
Catherine: So, you know, her father had actually died as a doctor serving ill people in New York, then she gets to Italy with her ill husband and there was really no such doctor to help them. And her husband dies shortly after this little group - Elizabeth, her husband, and her oldest daughter are released from a cold, damp quarantine. So there she is, the plan has failed, right? William actually dies dreaming that he's won the lottery, but he has not, he's still bankrupt, and she's a widow. She's an impoverished widow now in Italy with her-- with her oldest daughter and she's got these sermons that her Episcopal minister has sent with her and the family that she's staying with, the Filicchi, have always thought of the United States as maybe a home for Catholicism, which they see as endangered by Napoleonic Europe. And they think it's providential, it's God's grace that this pious widow has landed in their home and they immediately, kind of, unabashedly begin to try to convert her to Catholicism and I'm laughing because Elizabeth Seton laughed. She like, she could not believe, that they were doing this and she wrote, you know, "These charitable Romans. They didn't waste a minute," and she's polite and she reverts to this ecumenicism that she's always held, right? "They're Catholic, I'm Protestant, everybody's doing their best. I'm a kind of a good New Yorker. I'll be a tourist. I'll go around. I'll see what these people do," but she expected it to be almost like visiting a museum, you know what I mean? Watching somebody else's festival and she found herself moved by Catholic masses, by this beautiful art. The Filicchi, kind of, cheated and they took her to Florence. So she saw this beautiful Catholic art. She's very moved by the figure of the Virgin Mary which was not at all prominent in the Protestantism that she knew but which is prominent in Italian Catholic devotion.
And, little by little, she becomes aware that this is not a religion she's watching. This is a religion that speaks-- speaks to her in its beauty, in the Catholic teaching that Christ is present in the Eucharist, right? Which gave her the sense of presence that she'd always wanted and she's amazed. She kind of doesn't know what to do with that. At first, and resist she knows this will not go over well at home, but she does decide to convert to Catholicism while in Italy.
Interviewer: Right. And you mentioned this briefly but I'm going to ask you to elaborate a little bit more, uh, the Filicchis and some, I think Bishop Carroll in Baltimore because, of course, perhaps, they all felt like, "God had given Filippo Filicchi the chance to plant Catholicism in the United States."
Interviewer: Does this have significant ramifications?
Catherine: That's a-- that's a wonderful question, and that is a part of her life or a part of the book that people read very differently. So there are some who see this as Filippo did, right? And Antonio, these Italian brothers as a moment in which kind of human intentions were less-- it was less important than Divine intention and there Elizabeth was and she was there for a Divine reason. You know, as a-- as a historian, I follow the earthly evidence and it's clear that so Filippo had earlier travel to the United States. He'd written to the pope suggesting that, "This freedom of religion in the US, this is not actually dangerous to Catholicism. This is good. We can work with this." So he had a very kind of forward-looking view, and certainly, I think without this family actively exposing her to Catholic writing, taking her to mass, it's unlikely that Seton would have taken it upon herself to experience religion in this way.
That said, she also was a woman not to be trifled with. And, in fact, if Filippo had understood her a little bit better, he might not have dared to try. It was almost his ignorance that made this work because he thought she was malleable. Well, she was not malleable, she was polite and she was determined to make her own decision about whether this religion spoke to her. And, in fact, it did. It touched her, it moved her, it gave her the sense of divine presence. It was as if, kind of, heaven reached down to earth as she saw it. And there is a way in which there's a certain amount of Eat, Pray, Love here, I was thinking. Like, this is a tourist and you go to somewhere else and you think, "Oh, these happy-- these happy people, right? They-- they've got it all figured out." Tourists can feel this, right? You go somewhere else and everything seems simpler and the colors seem brighter. And in fact, Northern Italy during this period is incredibly complicated. There's religious diversity but what she saw was a, sort of, unified Catholic belief and beauty, that she wanted to live within. So she'd always lived amongst choices in New York and here she saw unity and that's what she wanted.
Interviewer: Okay. So once-- when she gets back to New York City, she does leave her Episcopal faith and join St. Peter's Catholic Church in New York. And I like how you wrote about it that she liked, "the Church of St. Peter with a cross on the top instead of a weathercock." She seemed most convinced of Catholicism being the true way because of her singular experience with the Eucharist. You mentioned that briefly. Can you explain that? It's-- what it did to her exactly, and why that was such a powerful and almost a singular reason it seemed that she--
Catherine: Yeah.
Interviewer: Came to the Catholic Church.
Catherine: Yeah. So as she understood and was taught Episcopal teachings, the communion in her Episcopal Church was an honoring of the Last Supper, right? It referred to the Last Supper. It was an act of communion amongst the congregation but Catholic teaching offered her something else. And that was that Christ was, in a real way, present in this bread or this wafer that she's going to consume and her minister, her former minister, as were many Protestants were apoplectic at this, right? Like, to them, this was the heart of Catholic absurdity and barbarism and they're just very straightforward about it. So there's hundreds of thousands of little Christs and you're crunching into them when you eat the bread. I mean, it's-- it's completely
disrespectful, I suppose, if one believes, right? But they're just sort of trying to jar her out of believing this. It's a fantasy for them. It's little green men. To her, she comes to the view that, "Well, you believe in all these other miracles? Right? How much of life do you actually understand? Why is it that this one part of faith you decide to be completely rational about and disdainful of?" To her, it's the greatest gift because since childhood, what she has wanted like craved is a feeling that she is near God and God is near her and so to be told that in communion, she's-- she's one, right? She's consuming divinity in a real way is just so fulfilling and gorgeous to her. And this is something we see throughout Catholic history and interestingly, often with women. It's a-- it's a thread through the history of female saints in particular and Seton takes her part in that-- in that tradition and just the joy she feels throughout her life. I mean, communion is the last meal she will have right before she dies that that never leaves her, this-- this deep satisfaction in taking Catholic communion.
Interviewer: Okay, thank you. We are talking with Catherine O'Donnell, professor of history at Arizona State University and author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint, as part of “Religion in the American Experience”, a podcast series of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the profound story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion which includes the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle. Join us in building the National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital to open in 2026 on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words, "Almighty God hath created the mind free," by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.
Catherine, we read of two interesting things during Elizabeth's Catholic time in New York. One, that her Catholic Priest wanted to get rid of New York's requirement for office holders to force-swear allegiance to foreign powers including the ecclesiastical ones, and a sexual abuse scandal. Can you talk a little bit about these two events and how Elizabeth fits into them?
Catherine: Yeah. So the first is an effort to rid the new United States of this legacy of formal anti-Catholicism that was part of the English tradition. And the rule that you had to force-swear allegiance to the pope is a holdover from the idea that Catholics could not be good British subjects and then could not be American citizens because their loyalties lay in Rome. And so the effort to get rid of that was an effort to defend Catholic liberty, but it was also part of this larger decision that religion could be private, right? That Americans could have relationships through business, through politics, through walking down the street together, and the god that they believed in, the way that they worshipped would not interfere with those relationships. So that's an incredibly important idea in American history and you see it flowering at this period.
At this moment in her life, Seton has doubts about it, I have to say because she's just risked everything to convert. She's converted because she thinks that Catholicism is a uniquely safe and sure path toward this afterlife that she wants for herself and for everyone and she's honestly kind of thinking like, "I don't know. This is not a dinner party. Should I be polite and keep things to myself? What if doing that prevents others from finding this important truth?" So she will change her mind again about this. But at this point, she wants to proselytize or convince others of this truth that she thinks she's found. So that's the first piece. The second piece is part of this long tragic story of the Catholic church and sexual abuse which is we know is an issue-- still an issue, still being uncovered and you see it, it comes out in documents early in the church. And in this-- in these early days, it tends to be a priest in a relationship with a woman, usually an adult woman. And what's happened in New York here is that it looks as if a priest had approached inappropriately a young Irish woman and interestingly, another priest in the parish was outraged by this and helped the young woman bring it to the attention of Bishop Carroll who was then the nation's only bishop. And Bishop Carroll actually takes it seriously. It's a dark story. The brighter thread in it is the efforts, awkward though they were of these clergy to respond, in the end, some of these priests are removed from their-- their duties.
And Seton clearly knows about this. Her response is not to involve herself at all, but it's clear that the Catholicism she understands herself to join is a-- is a broader world than this little tangled Parish in New York. So she's reading Thomas à Kempis, she's reading Aquinas, she's seeking guidance from clergy in Boston and elsewhere, I think, trying to draw on the-- the deeper and more sincere parts of the Catholic church and separate herself a bit from this troubled parish.
Interviewer: Right. Okay. Well, let's see.
After finally leaving New York, so Elizabeth does and her family does leave New York and they first go to Baltimore, and then they go on to found the Sisters of Charity in-- in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where, as you movingly write, "The landscape felt sacred for these Catholic women as for Evangelical Protestants gathering for revivals in the fields and clearings across the new nation, God filled the raw American air." Can you tell us briefly the story of her from New York to Emmitsburg and what she founded?
Catherine: Yeah. She, she is impatient with New York. She wants to live a more fully devotional life. And as you-- as you note, some of these priests - many of whom were refugees from the French Revolution and who kind of like these Italians I was talking about, saw the United States as a place where a different kind of Catholicism could thrive. They see her as a respectable face for this church that a lot of Americans mistrust. She first was brought to Baltimore, she's a school teacher there. It's okay, but she has bigger dreams, the priests have bigger dreams for her, and she is able to found, with their help, this Sisterhood in Emmitsburg near the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is gorgeous, which remains gorgeous. It's just a shockingly lovely part of the country, and she had always, throughout her life, kind of, felt God in nature, um, and she does there. And that, as well as her desire for intense religious experience, and her willing to experiment, actually makes her a companion of a lot of other Americans who were becoming Baptists and Methodists during this time, right? Their-- the doctrines they were choosing are quite different and they might even have mistrusted each other's doctrines. But this desire for a more intense experience of religion and a willingness to, you know, upset your uncle [laughs] and an eagerness to feel God in the air around you, all of that unites Seton's Catholicism with these other Protestant experiences.
So, but the community she founds is very much within the Catholic - we might say, monastic tradition or tradition of convents and monasteries and so forth. The-- the key piece of it is that it's not cloister, right? The women, Seton, and the women who quickly begin to join her don't have to stay inside and pray with their contribution being prayer. They do pray but their contribution is also taking care of others and this is drawing on a French tradition of Daughters of Charity, and that's particularly useful in the United States because there are very few priests, the country is enormous, and there are a lot of Catholics who have no contact with clergy, very little contact with clergy, children who will grow up what-- what would have been called unchurched without perhaps the help of these women these Sisters of Charity, who could tend to people's bodies and their minds and also bring the Catholic Church into people's lives in a way that clergy could not do.
Interviewer: Okay. And so Elizabeth was the mother - capital M, there at Sisters of Charity, as well as mother - small, lowercase M for her-- for her children, and we'll get into some of that a little bit later. Um, I noted that-- and we won't talk about this but I did note that, um, just as Elizabeth stayed away from the sexual abuse scandal and that-- that the-- you write, "She prepared girls to enter society, not upended." So she-- she did certain things, but she didn't do other things. Uh, something also you've mentioned was tuberculosis. Now, tuberculosis plagued Elizabeth and her family as it did society and, in fact, I don't think I've ever read about a biography where sickness and death were so vividly and frequently described in great and moving detail as yours did, Catherine. And I'm guessing this was also not foreign to many Americans at that time. Sickness always stalked and there was little knowledge of how to prevent death, but it was a profound experience to feel in some small way what they felt and especially Elizabeth. I read when Anna died, you wrote of a painful procedure that they suggested to her. That was suggested to Anna that would allow her to-- and Anna thought of this. She said, she decided to go along with it because, "It would pay my penance for so often drawing in my waist to look small and imitate the looks of my companions, let the ribs now draw with pain for having drawn with vanity." So she was but dying and she knew it. This is representative of what, Catherine? For Anna and her sister, Beck, who later dies as well, you know, heart-rending. What is this representative of? This approach to sickness and death that was all around Elizabeth and her family?
Catherine: Yeah. There's-- there's a radical acceptance of pain and loss throughout Seton's life and it is the-- the challenge of her life, right? The heroics of her life, the way a ship's captain's heroics come from the sea and storms and maybe battles, right? This is where her-- her story and it's drama lies and she originally, you know, had even tried to train herself to love people less, in the hopes that it would hurt less when they died and she forced herself not to do that. She forced herself to love fully and yet to love with the acceptance that people might be taken away and might be taken away in these kind of brutal ways. I'll say sort of on-- I'm not sure this is appropriate but on a personal level, like I'm a mother and it was not just painful to read about the loss of her children, but unsettling, it was unsettling to see the-- her acceptance of it. There's just a radical rejection of any claim on their earthly good that is not anything I could muster, something that I could only describe as a historian and marvel at as a human being. It did-- it did enable Elizabeth Seton to be enormously comforting to others who were experiencing grief.
And as you note, this is everyone eventually even now and everyone often, in time, with less medical training. And she-- she would tell people, "There's-- there's no way to cure this. There's no way to speed this up. You just live through it. It's a-- it's a season of life," and continuing to love the sufferer, the person who has died and God is the obligation that Seton felt and that she and that she-- she taught to others. But I don't know if your listeners see a video but I'm just shaking my head even as I described this because the extent to which she accepts this even as it is so painful is really still unfathomable to me even after spending, you know, ten years with this woman's papers.
Interviewer: Did she-- did she and the sisters there believe that sickness, pain, and death were-- were given to them because of something they did wrong? I saw some threads of that but not-- not always.
Catherine: Yeah, that's it. That's a pretty deep question. I think it's clear that at some point in her life, she did and as with - I think I used the word “barter” about her saying like, "I'll do anything if God allows my family to be, to be saved." There's there's a tit-for-tat almost a transactional quality to some of her experience of religion that does eventually drop-- drop away, I think, so that she becomes more content with the idea that God is unknowable in all but love and so that it is inappropriate just simply silly, I guess, to try to parse why something happened or certainly to try to offer something up in hopes of getting something back. But I agree with you that there are definitely moments in which Seton or people around her such as her daughters seemed to be thinking a specific piece of suffering might emerge from a specific, a specific bad-- bad deed. But it's really a kind of fascinating subject, and the last-- the last thing I'll say is a couple of her friends argue with her about this a little bit, a Protestant friend of hers, a very interesting woman, Eliza Sadler, kind of pokes it early on, and she's like, "Well, it would be kind of pretty to think that things had this specific meaning or you could pay for X by offering Y but-- but I-- but I doubt you." And as I say, I think that Seton also moved away from that more transactional style of worship as she aged.
Interviewer: Okay. Let's move on-- we just have a few more minutes. I want to get to a few more questions and then let you sort of have the last word. You once wrote in the book that, "Elizabeth hinted that she saw The Sisterhood as some devout women who service to God was less important than the clergy. The priesthood was an embassy, The Sisterhood an errand. She drew the contrast ruthlessly." Can you elaborate briefly on Elizabeth's thoughts here?
Catherine: Yeah. So to her, the priesthood was the greatest calling on earth, right? I mean priests have the ability to turn the Eucharist into the body of Christ, right? They have sacramental authority and she knew that she could not be a priest because she was a woman and she also knew and she makes this a little bit clearer, she could be pretty prickly, that some men of dubious character could be praised because their manhood allowed that. So she's a keen observer and when a priest friend of hers, a collaborator, kind of whining because he's not allowed to lead the heroic missionary life he wished he led, she sympathizes with him and she also pokes it at him a little bit and says, "Well, you can be a priest." So she observes it. That said, she does not want to up-end it, right? She understands the gendered architecture of the church as something that she needs to live within as her inability to be a priest is another cross to bear as there are many crosses to bear. And in the end, she does clearly believe that priests as ambassadors, sisters as errand-runners, they're both servants and the distance between both the clergies and the sisters and divinity is so much more immense, than the difference between sisters and clergy that, again, she is content with it. She's-- she's serene about it, but she is a careful observer.
Interviewer: Okay, thank you. By the early 19th century, you write that the Sisters of Charity were, "Alive in the thoughts of Catholic Church clergy throughout the United States." What was the influence of this organization?
Catherine: Yeah. And also moving forward, right? Through the 19th century, they're caring for children, their founding schools, their founding orphanages which both cares for the vulnerable and also means in a public way, you don't have a lot of impoverished Catholic children running the streets, right? It's both an act of mercy and something that enables Catholicism to become more accepted in the United States. They-- The Sisters of Charity found communities everywhere in the deep South, the Midwest, California and they are absolutely essential to the fabric, the spiritual, and the practical work of the Catholic Church throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Interviewer: Okay. Thank you. I wanted to get that from you before we end with a little bit more of Elizabeth's experience. The final death that we encounter in the book is Elizabeth's own in 1821 at the age of 47, quite young. You describe Elizabeth's reaction to death's imminence in this way, "Perhaps after so many years of being both Mother, capital M, and mother, lowercase M, in her last moments, she could only be the first." What did you mean and how did Elizabeth view her death?
Catherine: Yeah. So she had one surviving daughter at this point, her other two daughters had both died of consumption and her two sons were off trying to make their way in the world. And Catherine, the surviving daughter is there but Seton pays her no particular mind on her-- on her deathbed. She has kind of transcended her blood family and is fully inhabiting her role as the mother to this Sisterhood and there's nothing cruel about it. She's been an extraordinarily devoted mother but in these last moments of her life, it's-- it's her spirituality that is central. And it's also quite striking that someone who had originally tried to trade for having for everyone who had, in a way found her way into formal Christianity in the hopes of a nice cozy afterlife, by the end of her life, she envisions a heaven that is infinite time and on landmarked space and absolutely unknowable and she's just shed all of her preconceptions, she shed all of her earthly desires, even for particular attachments to these people she deeply loved and all she is waiting for is-- is a union in whatever form it comes with-- with God. And it's extraordinarily moving even to read her writings from those last week's or the writings of people that were near here. It's moving at the distance of two hundred years. So one can only imagine what-- what that little room was, was like when-- when she died.
Interviewer: Thank you. You write that, "No public notice condemned Elizabeth's faith when she died. She was lauded by a culture that for the moment feared a religion more than potpourri or Catholicism." Help us quickly understand the American religious landscape at the time of her death and her position in it.
Catherine: Yes. So Catholicism had been mistrusted, Catholicism will, kind of, be mistrusted again when you have the waves of Irish immigrants, my people, coming in the 1840s, should have re-sparked a lot of the animosity. But at this point, early 19th century, Catholicism was accepted as a form of Christianity which may seem obvious now, which absolutely had not been obvious through much of colonial and early national history. Seton and the other Sisters of Charity who were already running more than one school and more than one orphanage, might have been considered by Protestants to be somewhat odd, right? Their dress would be striking but they were seen as benevolent, pious women who were a boon to the community and to the nation and that is the note that is struck in the notices of Seton's death.
Interviewer: Okay. Thank you. Catherine, as we conclude, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book either in terms of important historical transformations you charted or are charting or in terms of helping us better understand our present moment in the American narrative?
Catherine: Interesting. So, I would say that this is a story about the early days of the first amendment of religious liberty in the United States and the-- the legal structures were in a sense in place but the way people would live within those structures was very much being invented. So, even if one has the right to choose religion and to abandon the religion of your father and your mother and to choose your own, that doesn't mean you know how to do it without breaking your mother's heart. That doesn't mean you know how to do it without angering your neighbor, and I think watching Elizabeth Seton and the people around her figure out how to live fully within this liberty that they enjoyed is extraordinarily moving and to see her change her mind - so, to go from wanting to proselytize and convince people of what she believed at the time of her conversion to later in her life being quite adamant that she would live out her faith, but others would make their own decisions and she would not try to persuade anyone of anything is really quite moving. And I think perhaps instructive as people still believe things very deeply and yet still want to live gently among people who disagree profoundly.
And then the last thing I would say is that Seton is an ethos of connection, always connect. So she saw people very specifically, she tried to understand what each student would respond to, to listen to people, and to be critical or supportive or humorous as that person seem to need in that moment. And so that kind of attention and love as a skill, right? That you can develop not as like an emotion that you just let wash over you is I think enormously instructive and this may seem a little bit touchy-feely, but-- but I think it can also be a civic virtue, right? To see other citizens clearly, to listen carefully to be specific in our relationships to avoid characters caricatures to connect rather than separate, that I think is-- is just always useful and perhaps at this moment, more-- more useful than ever.
Interviewer: Okay, thank you. Very, very helpful. We have been talking with Catherine O'Donnell, professor of history at Arizona State University and author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint as part of “Religion in the American Experience”, a podcast series of the National Museum of American Religion, which is dedicated to telling the profound story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. We trust that as a result, listeners will see how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its future.
Please join us in building the National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital to open in 2026 on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words, "Almighty God hath created the mind free," by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.
Catherine, thank you for being with us today and doing the really hard work of writing, researching, and writing a book that helps us all understand America a little bit better. It's been super enlightening for me, and I hope our listeners and I hope you've enjoy the time with us as well.
Catherine: Thank you so much for having me. I did enjoy it.
Transcript: "How Are Sports and Religion Interconnected in America?" with Rebecca Alpert
Chris: Sports is everywhere in America as we all know. The Super Bowl, the Masters, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the US Open, the Olympics, the NBA, MLB, NFL, Youth Travel leagues, High School sports, and the list goes on and on and on. So maybe if we understand sports better we can understand America better. For this podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we want to learn about the relationship between religion and sports which it turns out is a deep and meaningful one. This discussion will help us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. We trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom, as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
Chris: Today, to discuss religion and sports, we have with us Rebecca Alpert, professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies, which we will use as the basis of our interview today. Her research interests include religion and sport, religion and sexuality, and American Judaism in the 20th century. She is also the author of Out of Left Field Jews and Black Baseball, and co-editor of God's games and Globalization: New Perspectives on religion and Sport published in 2019. Professor Alpert also was among the first women in America ordained as a rabbi. We encourage listeners to visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Chris: Rebecca thank you so much for being with us today.
Rebecca: It's a pleasure, Chris.
Chris: First and I think our listeners will want to know how in the world did you become interested in the relationship between sports and religion, and then become an expert in regards to it? Tell us your story.
Rebecca: So it's a story that starts with an oral history of a friend of mine who made connections for me between a person who was writing an oral history of people who were Baseball fans. He didn't have enough women so he was looking pretty hard to find a woman or two that he could interview. I went and sat in with him and we had a great conversation. Bill Friedman is his name and when I read back what I wrote or what I had said after he published it, I realized that the connection between my Jewishness and my experience as a baseball fan as a child was actually very close. I wound up thinking this is an interesting place to pursue my research as I was sort of looking for a new research topic.
I guess my first article was about Jackie Robinson. Growing up as a child my mother really believed that the Brooklyn Dodgers were Jewish which they weren't. Cal Abrams I think was their only Jewish player and there really wasn't much connection except for all of the diehard fans in Brooklyn who really embraced the Dodgers as a gritty working-class team. Unlike the Yankees who represented US steel at that point, represented the industry and money. The Dodgers had a working-class ethic and they were the first to integrate baseball. They were the first to say that we don't think these separate leagues are really making any sense. African-Americans or I guess whatever they were called that point in time, have a right to play, and the owners and leaders of the Dodgers made that so. They couldn't have done it without the ethnic fans in Brooklyn; it wasn't just the Jews, It was the Italians, the Irish, and the Chinese actually it turned out, who were still living in Brooklyn and we're committed to coming to the ballpark because that's what all of these other owners were really afraid, that the white fans would desert what desert baseball if it became a black sport.
So that felt like a connection between my Jewish values and Sport. As I investigated Robinson's story I discovered that I certainly wasn't the only one. I discovered hundreds of stories and memoirs and musicals on Broadway, and all kinds of things supporting this idea that there was this connection. That's really what got me going in terms of my interests. I'm actually a bigger basketball than baseball fan, but I started writing about baseball and discovered that there is a whole world out there, of people thinking about baseball as a religion and the connection between baseball and various religious practices.
Chris: That's a great backstory so let's get into the details here. I want you to help us unpack something that you wrote at the beginning of the chapter called, "Why study religion and sports anyway"? I'm going to quote you here. "Studying the interconnections between sports and religion gives us an opportunity to understand how these key aspects of society, influence our political and cultural lives and provide ways to understand human experience and its meaning and purpose". That's pretty deep stuff for sports, some of our listeners are going to say that “this lady's taking herself way too seriously. She's taking sports way too seriously.” Can you try to convince us, Rebecca, that you are not taking it too seriously and that this is significant and important to America and Americans?
Rebecca: So I taught this course on Sports and Society for a number of years and I've actually had to spend a lot of time convincing my students of that. Then last year happened, where Sports became the focal point of some of the most important questions particularly about race but also about gender in our society. Then I think people began to pay more attention to how we understand Sports and why Sports is so important.
Chris, you said it yourself, right, at the beginning. It's the Super Bowl is probably a bigger holiday time in the United States than many of our other holidays. We take it really seriously as there are all kinds of rituals associated with it. If people stop and think well, what do I eat on Super Bowl Sunday? I eat special foods. Why is that any different from our Thanksgiving holidays, right? I get together with my family, these are my people and we connect through the Super Bowl. We pay attention to sports and even though we've been told that it's just the protesters who are making sports important. In fact, sports has been militarized if you take a look at the logo of the National Football League, you'll see that it's an American flag in the shape of a shield. What's going on there? That's not just about sports, that's intrinsic to our society, it's how we see ourselves. We can't live as a society without these events.
Many people are not that interested in sports but then, of course, there are many people who are not that interested in politics, there are many people who are not that interested in religion. I mean, it doesn't mean that those elements of our culture are not important. I have memories of being in the airport during the Olympics when our women's soccer team was winning and there are hundreds of people gathered around the television sets watching. What is that social experience but a way of binding ourselves as a community and feeling part of something? This is central to the idea that the way we use religion in society as well. One of the recent headlines was that Bill Belichick the least likely person in the world, who is the coach of the New England Patriots turned down the president's offer of a medal. He made an important statement and his statement was carried by the news media in the same way politician's statements and other people's statements were. We take our sports figures seriously, they are our heroes. They're important people in society and they make a difference, convincing enough, I don't know?
Chris: It is, you didn't have to convince me. I think you've convinced our listeners or at least a lot of them and I think they'll be convinced as we go through the questions here. You state, Rebecca that sports is, "One of the most popular and significant dimensions of Human Experience". How does it compare with religion? Not in the details, but in a statement like that.
Rebecca: Curious to me is that in ancient times the worlds of sports and the world of religion were actually directly connected. The rituals of the religious traditions of ancient Greek society, ancient Mayan Society, and ancient Japanese society were all expressed through sporting events. They seem to have a similar function in the life of us as a society. Sports and religion are ways that people use to make meaning and to enact rituals and to make a connection to what is Ultimate Reality. So I would say they have a very close connection in terms of most cultures actually and certainly ours.
Chris: Right. You admit that the definitions in the religion of religion and sport do not overlap much and instead you write this, "While religion has never been thought to be a sport many have written eloquently about their perception and experience of sports as a religion". Tell us how this is done?
Rebecca: Sure. Those of us who do religious studies have been trying to figure out what religion is. That's been a very important dimension of the study of religion these days because we don't all mean the same things when we say religion. My handy dandy religious definition is that it includes what I call the Three B's which are believing, behaving, and belonging. So when you're looking for what is religion in society you look for what do people believe and hold the most direct as a concept, usually, that has something to do with God but not always. How do they behave? What are their rituals? What do they do? Do they go to church? Do they construct altars in their houses? Do they go to synagogue or mosque? Do they do family rituals at home? What is it that people do that makes this connection to their beliefs? Then how do they understand themselves belonging? Christians see themselves belonging to church communities, Jews see themselves belonging to sometimes ethnic communities, but always related to Jewish practices. Belonging to a synagogue or to a Jewish Community Center, same with Muslims belonging to mosques, or Buddhists and Hindus making their connections to their temples. So it's behaving, belonging, and believing, and if you take that framework and put it in a context of sports then it becomes very clear. Sports, politics, patriotism, and other phenomena in our society also function in this quasi, in this same way that religion functions.
Rebecca: Say you're a fan of the Washington National football team, it was very, very hard to give up their name. Why was it hard to give up their name? Who cares about the name that they had? Well, it was hard to give up their name because that was a means of connecting for them. It's almost like saying to a Jew or Christian, “stop calling yourself Jewish” and call yourself by some other name. We don't like your name anymore. We don't think that you should have that name anymore. That power of connection, the power of feeling like you belong to something, looking at a symbol. When a Jew looks at a Jewish star they feel something special, they feel some kind of connection. When a Christian looks at a cross they think this is a powerful symbol that's part of my tradition. The fans of the Washington team also felt that same way they looked at those symbols and they didn't see what I see, which was a kind of pejorative of the experience of Native Americans. They saw their special symbol, something that may be holy or not in the full meaning of that word, but certainly powerful in a way that evoked a sense of connection to a group. Belonging to a group, believing in a certain set of values and not values that I happen to agree with, but values that really matter to them. I probably don't even have to mention when people think about how people behave around Sports. Not this year but in other years all you have to do is to drive to a stadium when there's a football game happening and just look around. You don't even have to go in. You see what's happening, people are eating together in parking lots and having a whole set of rituals that define who they are as a group. Again this is where those parallels exist and this is why some people think of sports as a religion. If something is the most important value to you, that's probably what your religion is, or at least that's what Paul Tillich says.
Chris: Okay, I think listeners would love to hear some examples from some of these similarities between religion and sports. You mentioned some of the book: ruling Patriarchs, these are all religious terms but you're suggesting that there are analogous Sports terms, or Sports individuals, ruling Patriarchs, Saints, high councils, and ritual and material. Can you give us a few examples of those similarities?
Rebecca: Yeah. Well, that wasn't mine actually, that was another author was making that suggestion. Actually, I don't think a lot in terms of Christian symbols, that seemed to me like what he was saying was that it's just like Christianity where they have Patriarchs and they have high councils and so on and so forth. I'm not sure I buy into that particular framework. I was kind of using that example as a way of saying different people have taken this idea of Sport as religion and used religious use their religious understandings to explain that relationship.
Chris: Fair enough.
Rebecca: Yeah, but again in terms of material culture all you got to do is look for those baseball caps and sweatshirts. People spending tons and tons of their money to buy Little Filly Fanatics, bobble-head dolls, books regarding sports, or whatever it is. What does it mean to have Pete Rose's bat? Like, why are these things valuable and why they become holy objects?
Chris: Okay. What would you tell us that we need to know about Michael Novak's 1976 book, "Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Basketballs and Consecration of the American Spirit". For the purposes of our discussions today about the interconnectedness between religion and sports in America?
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean Novak actually was a great scholar of religion and that book was really a very important book for the beginning of this analysis of sports as a religion. He looked at these the three, the Trinity, baseball, basketball, and football. And began to talk about it. I mean his language was precisely the language that I've been using here. He's the one that really made these definitions. Even more importantly this whole idea of the joy of sports, this whole idea that one can really experience something outside oneself, a real connection to Ultimate Reality which is the argument I think that he was really making. That sport brings you to the same place emotionally that religion can take you.
Chris: Okay now I think it's important to bring up that some scholars do not see sports as a religion or as religion and in fact one author you quote labeled, "Sports as religion narrative a version of semantic abuse". Can you elaborate a bit on these scholars' perspectives?
Rebecca: Well, that's a sensible other side of this argument. They want to keep the word religion for those particular, to keep those phenomena that we define as a religion as only those historical religions, only those historical religions. These Scholars reject any notion that you can have religion be anything except Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, and all of the historic religions that redefined us. So anything else is just blasphemy. I mean, they don't just see it as something that's not good they really see it as blasphemous. That somehow you are saying that religion is something broader than that concept that historic religions are.
Chris: Well, it's good to see that perspective and understand it so we have this in context. I'm going to go back to the whole discussion of your book on religion and sports and their interconnectedness. You quote a 1993 book called, "Religion and Sport: The Meeting of the Sacred and Profane", this statement, "It is both proper and necessary to call Sport itself a religion. It is also reasonable to consider sport the newest and fastest-growing religion far outdistancing whatever is in second place". What do you think about that statement Rebecca?
Rebecca: Again these are these are people who feel very passionate about sports and I guess if you count the numbers of people who go to attend sporting events versus the numbers of people who actually go to church, synagogue, or mosque; sports would win hands down, especially since sports is televised and interviewed. If you start just looking at that numerically, that's a sensible argument. Whether or not Sports has replaced religions, Sports in that place in people's lives. I mean again, we're looking at that particular place in people's lives. What's the most important thing to you? What do you value the most? I would say probably most people would say that Sports is not really their religion, that it's not that essential to them.
Chris: Well and I think Scholars looking at the historical record have helpful things to say to us, Right?
Rebecca: Indeed and challenging too. I think what a lot of Scholars like to do is put out new ideas and let people think about them, learn about them and decide for themselves. That's the most important thing.
Chris: Yes. We are talking about the interconnections between sports and religion with Rebecca Albert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for the future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Rebecca in the section of the book entitled, "Does religion have a place in sports or Sports and religion", you give a history of their interconnectedness. What was the attitude towards Sports when Europeans landed in the Americas up to the mid-19th century, give us that historical detail?
Rebecca: So in that earlier period we were dominated by a group called the Puritans, pretty much in terms of the way the people understood their religious obligation. We had religious freedom in theory but in practice, they were very powerful. I mean, we never established religion, but if you were not Protestant, if you were not in the North Puritan and in the South Episcopalian, you probably weren't going to get anywhere. You weren't going to be tolerated I guess as opposed to having equal rights. That mindset was actually not in favor of Sports at all. That particularly Puritan mindset and the Puritan way of looking at Christian Living said Sports is a waste of time. Maybe they actually knew that Sports could become the most important religion if they didn't watch out, but they were not pro-religion in any way. I mean people bowled and they certainly did sports but they couldn't do it on the Sabbath. There were strong prohibitions against Sports on Sundays and a lot of tension for people who were interested in sports and liked sporting activities, they were considered not exactly taboo, but certainly not a value.
Chris: Okay, but then we hit mid-19th century and some things begin to change, you explain a concept or a phenomenon called “muscular Christianity.” It came into vogue, I guess first in Europe about that time. When it became a phenomenon in the United States, how did it influence the relationship or the intersection of sports and religion here?
Rebecca: Well “muscular Christianity” was the essence of the intersection between sports and religion. There was again this growing sense among Protestants that there was this competing set of values. Sometimes it's better to join them than try to beat them.
So very smart concept, the idea that Jesus and Paul, really were strong muscular figures. I mean, the Christian leaders saw in sports an opportunity to really make religion more powerful and recognize that you didn't have to be sissy if you wanted to be Christian. That you could in fact embrace being a powerful person and being someone who was athletic, and that could be part of your Christian identity and they didn't have to be separate phenomena. So that really was the essence of muscular Christianity that there's a muscular Catholicism as well that began to develop. Being Catholic was very different from being Protestant and being Jewish was very different as well. Catholics and Jews also found ways to assert that their religions were also compatible with sports.
Chris: Okay. You write about that. Now, I found it interesting and fascinating that at that time churches began to build gymnasia and sponsor that their own teams. Then you mentioned a particular Church in New York, St. John the Divine, how it commissioned stained glass windows with figures in sports poses. What other examples are there of the ramifications of muscular Christianity in the United States?
Rebecca: Well, I just think about the YMCA. The YMCA was really and ultimately the YWCA and then ultimately the YMHA, the young men's Hebrew Association as well—that was a way of saying that gyms and sporting activities were in fact under the umbrella of religious organizations. The YMCA was that young men's Christian Association and yet most of what happens in Ys were basketball, swimming, and other sports. That was a way of bringing these things together and that movement was very powerful. Then mostly the game of football was played in colleges and it was mostly played in Ivy League colleges, which were not that strongly associated with religions. Then Notre Dame decided it was going to get into the sports activities and other religious institutions that were affiliated with different religious denominations also started having Sports as a central part of their programs.
The connection between sports and religion grew, the evangelicals were actually the last to get on board, but there were people like Billy Sunday who was a former baseball player and Evangelical preacher. He began to talk about why those connections were really important and why being a religious person meant being a strong person, Making the Connections. I think as you know in Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism, between the body and the mind, a strong body mental strong Spirit, and a strong body meant to a strong mind. If you got involved in doing sports then you would be strengthening your connection to God.
Chris: It sounds like just from this perspective, Sports had quite an effect on American religion.
Rebecca: For sure, there's really no question that Sports just became a very important part of understanding how one was able to express oneself as a religious person.
Chris: Right. You detail the development of a new version of muscular Christianity in the mid-twentieth century which Frank Deford labeled, and I may be getting the pronunciation wrong as I've never heard it, but I've seen it written, "Sportianity". Can you tell us about this and its ramifications including what we learn from De Ford's 1976 three-part essay, "Religion in Sport" in Sports Illustrated?
Rebecca: Well, I think basically what he was saying is, he like Novak, they were beginning to stretch out what it meant for sports to become so central to the religious project. The fact that it went overboard, the fact that people made these connections to strongly perhaps, and maybe we're beginning to do that thing that people got really scared about which was substituting sports for religion or turning their sports connections into the center of their religious practices. Also, the opposite, which was the effort of Christian groups to make Sports so much a part of what they were doing, that they changed the nature of their own message.
Christen: So in a word, what was Frank Deford saying in that three-part essay?
Rebecca: “Maybe this isn't so good.” I mean, maybe there's too big a connection between sports and Christianity to the point where it became "sportianitty". It's like Christianity was being taken over by these connections to sports.
Chris: Okay, so Rebecca, we're now going to turn to religion and sports and how they don't get along, for lack of a better phrase in the United States. You write that "One of the major sources of friction between sports and religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been when the times for religious observance conflict with sporting events". Tell us what we need to understand here.
Rebecca: So, I think I mentioned this a little earlier The Puritans were very clear that on the Sabbath you do holy things and you don't do sports. But the world of sports has taken over Sundays, hasn't it. So the choice between going to church and going out to do sporting events was problematic for many Christians for a long time. Until they actually had a move the times of the football games and the baseball games and make sure that they weren't in conflict.
People say, how do you spend your time? How do you make enough time for both Sports and religion, something has to give. So they had to make compromises. It's harder actually, when you think about Muslims during Ramadan, how do they manage to observe their fasts and play sports at the same time? I mean we see that some of them do. But it's very difficult and it can certainly cause conflicts. How about an Orthodox Jewish team that won't travel on the Sabbath, how do they get to their games? When their Sabbath is on Saturdays? How can they participate? So there's always this tension of like what's more important? What comes first? I remember as a child the Jewish High Holidays are always during the World Series. So technically, Jews are not supposed to be paying attention to other things during a holiday like Yom Kippur which is the most solemn day of the year, but you know the Yankees were playing so what do you do? How do you resolve that conflict? You make a decision for your religious practice, or do you make a decision for your sports practice? A lot of kids go to Sunday School and if they have soccer practice at the same time as Sunday school, what do we choose? These are hard questions for sports enthusiasts who also want to keep their religious practices.
Chris: Well said. You explain that one point in this section of your book about public displays of religious commitment and sport, that "Manufacturers have also been working on modest clothing that is suitable for swimming and other sports and special hijabs have been created for sportswear". Since the printing of your book, I think this has actually happened. Can you share some stories about this? This does not conflict now of “time” but this is “displays of one's religiosity” and the problems that come with that, and sports.
Rebecca: This is actually a complicated question in terms of hijab, people don't think of the connection between Islam and sports. But in fact, Islam has a very positive attitude towards Sports. Positive attitude towards women in sports as well, but that women have to be separated from men because modesty is extremely important. So how can a woman dress modestly and still perform her Sports? Well, we live in a world where things change and people think about these things and there have been hijabs created modest clothing for women created for just about every Sport. Muslim women are now very actively involved, in you'll see that they've won fencing titles. The first woman in the Olympics for Saudi Arabia was a woman who was wrestling in her hijab, doing Judo I mean, I'm sorry sometimes I get these Sports confused. There has really been an effort to make sure that women can both observe their religious practices that are dressed modestly and at the same time be involved in sports practices as well.
I guess it's not just a question of wearing modest clothing because a lot of sports figures who are religious themselves also want to have their religious affiliation emblazoned on their body. So I don't know if you know and it may be old news now but Tim Tebow used to write John 3:16 under his eyes when he was playing sports particularly playing football in college and they made him stop doing that. Why? Because there was too great a connection between sports and religion and sports really was a venue for him to exercise his free exercise of religion. Although it came in conflict with other values related to freedom of religion, which is freedom from being oppressed by someone else's religion. So there was a decision at a secular university that he couldn't have those kinds of displays of religion.
Again, this is a pretty complicated set of stories and it comes up fairly often. How do you express your religious beliefs in the context of a secular sporting event?
Chris: Right, which some people see as very religious.
Rebecca: That is the religion of sport.
Chris: Yes, exactly. Rebecca, when addressing religion and ethical dilemmas in sports, which was an interesting section, you begin by saying this, "Modern sports were founded on the idea of the fostering of good values, including healthy lifestyles, teamwork, sportsmanship, and equal opportunity in the form of a level playing field, But that in recent years this great “sport’s myth” (which you have in quotes in your book) ‘the great sport’s myth’ has begun to crumble". This is a pretty important statement in your book, covers a lot of ground here. What are the manifestations of this and the ramifications for the country?
Rebecca: So we've seen incredible cheating scandals in sports. Had the pandemic not taken over, the fact that the Houston Astros lost their title because they were cheating during the World Series. The New England Patriots deflating the footballs, people bending the rules, has given the lie to this myth that sports are all about fairness or fair play and equal opportunity. The fact that gambling has always been very closely associated with sports; the fact that sometimes sports less in our country, but certainly around the world, fans die at soccer matches by being trampled to death. There's a lot of things that happen in the context of sports, the kind of racism that we've seen on display. The kind of unevenness between men and women's opportunities and experiences in sports. The fact that poor people have a very hard time getting to getting to achieve things because it's so expensive. Children's sports are so expensive for families to engage in. These are the kinds of negative elements of the sport that sports fans who believe in the great “sports myth” - that it's the best thing in the world are not really willing to come to terms with.
I'm not saying that religion is not also riddled with all of these things. We've seen so many instances of sexual violence, corruption, gambling, and all kinds of things in every realm of every religion in the United States. We often associate these evils with the Catholic Clergy, but in fact, they are broad. But religion again makes a claim to certain sets of values that may be the realm of sports is not always amenable to. So they've there have certainly been tensions and very often religious leaders, if you listen to their sermons, you hear them talk, they will be very critical of the kinds of evils that take place in sports.
Chris: Thank you. You write, Rebecca that while, "Sports have been understood as a safe arena that has replaced religion as a location for ritually enacted violence that provides a necessary catharsis for society, some argue that violence and sports give permission for violence in society". Can you talk to us a bit about violence in sports and religion?
Rebecca: Yeah, the last time I taught my sports and society class I had a wonderful student who decided to tackle this question in youth hockey because he had played youth hockey and he saw the kinds of violence that is permitted. I mean hockey is a terribly good, terrible/good example of the kind of violence that exists in sports and there are you know, he was looking at youth Christian hockey leagues and the way that they tried to come to terms with the fact that their sport was very violent. He actually discovered some Christian Youth Hockey Leagues that eschew the violence, that don't permit the kind of fighting that exists in hockey in mainly the United States but also Canadian Hockey. And tries to teach anti-violence in sports.
But anybody who's sat under the basket at a basketball game or watched a melee in a baseball game or watched any play in professional football, realizes that violence in sports not only is an intrinsic part of sport, but has also, as we become more aware of concussion and more aware of the kinds of physical harm that particularly professional but even lower levels of athletes have done to their bodies because the sport is so violent - it gives us pause and makes us wonder how Sports can be held up in the kinds of ways that it is, as again the great “sport myth.” So particularly religious organizations that sponsor sporting events have had to come to terms with this whole question of how violent sports are and how to help that along and how to make it better.
Chris: So have religiously affiliated schools ever made statements regarding the violence of saying hockey and football, which seemed to be sort of the most violent perhaps, in religious terms?
Rebecca: I don't think you find that in official circumstances, but I'm very aware of, again particularly for youth trying to make sure that the kind of message is that we don't want to harm our bodies, we want to strengthen our bodies. That's muscular Christianity. Right? It's the strengthening, empowering, and making people feel connected. Connecting their bodies and their spirits and not hurting others. It's possible that there are official pronouncements that I actually don't know. I haven't seen any though.
Chris: Well as we conclude here Rebecca, you know an hour is definitely not enough time to cover this area of sports and religion and I think in my mind that we could have a whole series about sports and religion. That would be of great interest and I think as we discussed before, there's a lot to learn about the country when we look at sports because it's so pervasive and so popular. As we conclude this, I would say first deep dive into religion and sports, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book or from this topic either in terms of important historical transformations, you were charting? Or even just in terms of helping us better understand the country's present moment?
Rebecca: In terms of the present moment, I was unbelievably inspired and again, these are my particular politics and I know everybody wouldn't necessarily agree with them. But the Women's National Basketball Association, of all of the different groups that had to contend with the police brutality issues, they stood up and they spoke out and made a difference in our society. The fact that one of the owners of the Atlanta Dream, the women's NBA team in Atlanta was defeated for her Senatorial race in Georgia. Just this week or so. I give those women of the NBA a lot of credit, they really stood up to her and they express their feelings and because they were public figures they got attention. Because they were willing, and the men of the NBA as well, willing to financially they put their money where their mouths were. Along with work very hard to make a change and work very hard to be very public about their political views. This is not new, there was Muhammad Ali, there was Jackie Robinson. There were figures in American Sports history who stood up and said this is what's right, and I'm going to try to change things. I'm going to make things right and I think that we need to give our sports figures a lot of credit for being willing to say, "I don't just play basketball". "I don't just play football". "I don't just coach a football team". "I'm a public figure and I have a right to make public statements".
That has changed drastically. I think everybody kind of understands now that to get back to religion and sports, when Colin Kaepernick took a knee, he wasn't doing anything different from what Martin Luther King did on the bridge, right? They were both expressing their Christian beliefs, that their obedience was to God and not to another authority. That God in their understanding of God, God wanted peace, God wanted integration, God wanted to make sure that everybody in this country had a fair opportunity to do well. To live in peace and not be brutalized or murdered by police in this particular case and actually in the case of Martin Luther King as well. So I like making those connections and I like seeing that these things are happening and that Sports isn't only an opportunity as it has been for military planes to fly over stadiums at the Super Bowl. But it's also an opportunity for individual sports figures to stand up and say, "In my belief, this is my firmly held belief, this is not right and I want to make a change".
Chris: Okay. You had the last word. We have been talking about the interconnections between sports and religion in the United States with Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction in Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit storyamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under our signup tab.
At the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States. Seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us and doing the really hard work of researching and writing a book that helps us all understand America better. It's been very enlightening for me and our listeners, I'm sure and I hope you've enjoyed the time with us as well.
Rebecca: I very much enjoyed it, Chris. Thank you for reading my books.
Chris: You bet, it was great. I have to read your others now. All right, Rebecca. Thank you.
Rebecca: Take care, Chris.
Transcript: "What Counsel are America's Places of Faith Offering During the Pandemic?"
Chris: Welcome to Religion in the American Experience, a podcast series of the National Museum of American Religion. Our history is clear. Religions and their leaders have always inspired Americans during times of national tragedy and crisis with their inspiring words, their sermons that give their people hope. Today, the country faces a raging global pandemic now going on twelve months and its staggering effects, death without loved ones near, unemployment, hunger, shuttered public schools, uncertainty, isolation, fear, and closed temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches. What counsel have religious leaders been offering to their people in the face of such a pandemic? We thought that Religion in the American Experience could both capture history in real time and be of service to the country by convening a panel of American religious leaders to share what they have told their congregations and believers with a broader national audience. Today's panel consists of ten religious leaders, some with national scope and others with regional or local scope. And we thank them for their willingness to be with us. I will introduce each as we move through the hour-long discussion.
Chris: The startup National Museum of American Religion will be both the place of convening in Washington DC for discussions about current national issues where religion or the idea of religious freedom is in play, as we are doing today, and the nationally recognized center for presenting, interpreting, and educating the public about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion including the history of the revolutionary and indispensable idea of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States. Join us in building the National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital to open in 2026 on the two hundred and fortieth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words: "Almighty God hath created the mind free.", capturing the American essence of religious freedom by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.
Chris: For a contribution of two hundred dollars or more, you will receive a free signed copy of the book, "When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter" by Melissa Matthes, Professor of Government at the United States Coast Guard Academy. Her forthcoming book reminds us or will remind us that, in the face of national crisis, faith leaders have incredible power to help Americans endure, even flourish, and further the work of improving the imperfect yet noble American experiment in self-government.
Chris: Panelists, thank you so very much for being with us. We are going to start with Rev. Margaret Rose, who is the Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Deputy to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in New York City, and she is also a Priest Associate at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City. Rev. Rose, thank you for being with us. Uh tell us briefly about your congregation that you serve, and then what you have been saying to your people about how to endure this pandemic crisis.
Rev. Rose: Thank you so much, and thank you to all ten of us being here because I think the kind of learning that we will have together will be something that we can offer to congregations and the faithful around the country. As Chris said, I serve at the national level as well as a Priest Associate at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City. Heavenly Rest was formed just after the Civil War to give rest to returning soldiers and to a wounded country, for their families to people who were looking for a kind of reconciliation. And it has carried that emphasis throughout its life. It is a large episcopal church now on Fifth Avenue and 90th street in Manhattan, New York City. And its close neighbors are Harlem, Central Park and what is locally called the Museum Mile. Not exactly inner city, but there is a lot of traffic there.
Rev. Rose: From the beginning of the pandemic like all churches, 2020 was a moment of pivot. First and foremost, how to figure out what to do when ninety-nine percent of programming with the exception of email is in person and then how to do ninety-nine point nine percent of programming and engagement online and virtual. From the beginning of that pandemic at Heavenly Rest, the question has not been so much what we might say that will help people endure, but how we can strengthen the community around us so that together we can endure and even flourish amid the grief and loss, especially amid the knowledge of so much that is being exposed in our country where we once thought we might be immune, strengthening that community meant for us listening to science, telling the truth and acting in solidarity with those most at risk, and most of all, that commitment and effort meant staying connected to use every resource possible to do that.
Rev. Rose: Old-fashioned ones, like old lists and phone calls and phone trees as well as email and walking door-to-door, care for those who might be alone, communications via email were ra- ramped up every day offering prayers and programs and resources. And so, first of all, it was connect and engage with each other, and then, connect and engage with the neighborhood and the city. We created the fund for the not-forgotten, sharing resources with schools, assisting neighbor parishes with technology names, joining with other faith groups to work together to care for children who needed laptops, for example, or school lunches. Connect and engage with the world beyond ourselves, noting that this is not just a community pandemic but a global one and is exposing the many pandemics around the world, but mostly within our own country of healthcare disparities, racial injustice, to name just a few. As we traveled this road together as a parish, our community was and is being transformed. In those traditional ways, of course, by prayer and those ways that you might expect but also the fact that technology somehow allowed the quiet voices. Those who often said not so much in a pew, now offering webinars and forums, the stories of their lives which helped they themselves to endure and offering those possibilities to others.
Rev. Rose: What had been a rector-clergy-focused parish albeit with extraordinary late leadership is becoming one digging deep and discover how that label leadership works even more in partnership with clergy extending beyond the walls where we gather and, indeed, into the city and the country and beyond where we are located. This crisis has meant that we must look both deeply inward as well as beyond ourselves. We see that in a way as a sign of hope. The church-wide denominational level as well has met that unlikely partners have been able to gather together. In the parish, we have had connections with the synagogue that we had begun, but now are even deeper than ever. But the church-wide level virtual iftars and satyrs, for example, have helped us get to know each other.
Rev. Rose: Inter-religious engagement has made it possible even now for us to partner with one another to offer our spaces for vaccines or also for COVID tests. All of these, I think, are signs of hope and remain even and, in times that we are remaining polarized as a country, we are moving forward together. So that, if we have the courage to connect, we will create not so much a new normal but a new way of being. As Arundhati Roy said to us, "This time is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our data banks and rivers and dead ideas. We can choose to walk through it, dragging our old carcasses of prejudice and hatred are dead Banks and rivers and we can walk through lightly with little luggage ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it." With our congregation together, we are imagining together another world with our neighbors and with those global partners that we were beginning to know in new ways. Thank you.
Chris: Thank you, Rev. Rose. Rabbi Jacobs.
Rabbi Jacobs: Thank you. It is an honor to be with all of you, my faith colleagues and those who are with us, wherever you might be. I am Rabbi Rick Jacobs. I serve as the leader of the Union for Reform Judaism, which is the largest and most diverse community of uh Jews in here in North America. We were founded in 1873 right after the Civil War, so a nice connection to Heavenly rest, and in our name is Union. And there was anything but unity at that moment in American history. So our founder, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise wanted to put it in our name to be an aspiration that we could in fact create more connection and more sense of common purpose. Uh we in the Jewish tradition, we look around and we see the brokenness everywhere we look and we also see the very same moment more acts of love and healing and kindness than we are trained to look at coz we tend to see the brokenness more.
Rabbi Jacobs: Our Jewish tradition teaches us that we are to do repairs of that which is broken, healers of all that ails not just ourselves but our community and our world. In the Hebrew Bible in Second Kings, there is a word for crisis. The word in Hebrew is 'mashber', but it literally means a birth stool, that little modest stool upon which for millennia babies were born. Now my wife tells me I am not allowed to comment about the pain of childbirth. I was just in the birthing room as a coach, but I can testify that the pain of childbirth throughout history has been not only overwhelming but deadly but what we know about that moment is also a moment of enormous possibility and hope. So at this very same moment that we are morning so much death and experiencing so much fear and loss, we are at the very same moment experiencing perhaps a rebirth of what it might mean to be a person of faith in this twenty-first century. And I would just state the obvious that we have so many people here in America who are not at home yet in a faith community and maybe feel even a touch alienated. So this is a moment where we have experienced people who have not had faith commitments but have longed for a anchor in this turbulent time.
Rabbi Jacobs: They have longed for a spiritual practice to ground everyday with concrete ways to not just cope but to find a way to thrive amidst it all. We know that this is a time when, frankly, some of the people who we longed to reach as religious leaders have maybe been more open than ever before. This
is a moment to extend the tent of our faith communities and maybe a moment to grow what it might mean to work together as this beautiful collection of religious leaders uh testifies to. I also wanna say that it is very possible in a moment like this just to focus in on ourselves or maybe our families or our most intimate circle of community, but I know in the Jewish tradition, we worship a God who is impatient with injustice. And so, in the midst of having to very often educate our children in the very same rooms where we are trying to earn a living, that we not pause our justice work. That is critical to what it means to be a person of faith. And given all of the uncertainty, we know that we have to actually stand up and be counted as people who can focus not just on ourselves and our needs but the needs of those around us, maybe some who we do not know.
Rabbi Jacobs: What we are certain of is that the death toll continues to grow and that it does not discriminate and yet it does. The plague of racial Injustice has been so deadly and we know that those dying of COVID-19 are disproportionately black and brown and native people. We know that essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic are often without adequate access to healthcare. No, we know this is a moment of racial Justice uh and a call to conscience. We know that our faith uh has to say something about the critical issues facing our world and, if our faith, our collective faiths do not have something to say about the the killing of all Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, then frankly, I would have to say that our faith does not have anything to say, and I know our faith has so much to say.
Rabbi Jacobs: We also know in this moment where our neighbor could be the one in need or the one to help us that diversity is divine. It is not a problem. It is a gift that God has created all of us in God's image without distinction, without exception. There is a beautiful passage in the Book of Zechariah, the prophet, that to me has three words that I would build not just a homily but a daily and weekly and monthly practice for our community. It says, "Love, truth and peace." Uh you could leave out one of those words and a lot of us maybe spend our time loving truth, which means that we could sometimes overwhelm those around us with the clarity and the certainty. Some people only wanna love peace. They just want everybody to feel good but do not wanna stand for something, do not wanna be accountable for the truth of what we do. But Zechariah says, "Love them both." Bring them together and that is the work. I know of being a faith community.
Rabbi Jacobs: There is a psychologist, Richard Tedeschi, who has a theory called Posttraumatic Growth. We know about posttraumatic stress. We are all experiencing it and our communities are experiencing it. Posttraumatic growth means that in traumatic experiences, like a global pandemic like a moment of racial injustice. We actually can have moments that our growth is is catalyzed and we are able to explore new ways of thinking, new ways of being. So I think this is a moment to reimagine what it means to be a faith community. What does it mean to know the borders of our faith and our community or not the walls of our sanctuaries, but the breadth of the earth that God calls us into leadership. We are- we are called to be not caretakers of institutions, but people who live our faith in caring lovingly for those around us, loving not just the ones who are like us but the once who are not like us at all. That that is part of what it means and so I would conclude with the Judaic notion that our world is um always in need of repair and what we do in our daily prayer and our faith, in our reflection, in our study, in our works of kindness to those around us, in our acts of social justice, we become partners with the Holy One to repair the world and to create a world from end to end that is filled with wholeness, compassion, joy, justice and peace. Thank you.
Chris: Thank you, Rabbi Jacobs. Pastor Davis.
Pastor Davis: Awesome, so glad to be here. So, my name is Pastor Demetrius Davis. I am Lead Pastor of CityPoint Community Church in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood. Uh I am a Christian pastor. Our congregation is uh mostly made up of uh black millennial professionals uh from uh around the country and uh the pandemic has evolved us into what we are calling a digital-first church. So rather than uh whe- rather than see it as problematic, the challenges that we are facing, we have decided to double down and lean into the the opportunity that being digital has has offered to us. Um theologically, we tend to lean toward a social gospel and, that is, this belief within Christianity that um one must examine what one has to do as a result of one's faith. How do- how does one impact uh the way one's neighbor lives? How does one impact the children in one's community um the schooling opportunities, the equality opportunities that are available to everybody as a result of our beliefs. Uh and so- um and so, that is a bit about my tradition.
Pastor Davis: One of the things that I have encouraged our congregation in- from the start of the pandemic, um there is uh uh an Old Testament scripture from my tradition that comes from Jeremiah twenty-nine where the people are effectively facing uh facing exile and their prophets that are telling people, the people that this will be over shortly. Everything will be back to normal. But then they receive this prophetic word that, in actuality, you are gonna be in this for a while, but the way that you should deal with it should not be to deal with it in despair. But that you should um you should effectively deal with it understanding that um that God still has a plan for your life. And so, that is a lot of what I have been encouraging our congregation around is that, although we are uncertain about how all this turns out, that based on our faith, we do believe that God is certain uh about the future and he is certain that there will be a future. Um and so- and so, I have talked to them about I- I would say just several points when I think about how I frame these things for them.
Pastor Davis: One is for them to consider that, according to our belief, that God was using disaster for development and we have absolutely been uh seeing this in some ways that we have been I I think given an opportunity to reimagine the world that we have created the society that we created. I think that the pandemic gave us all the chance to be forced to slow down and to settle down into to rethink how we are relating to one another uh and rethink what our priorities were as as a nation uh and as a world. Um also caused us to take a- have to take a step back and consider that, as Dr. King said, "What affects- affects any of us directly, affects all of us indirectly." And so, we recognize that the world is a neighborhood and an outbreak in one part of the world can impact us in a different part of the world.
Pastor Davis: And so, the idea of isolationism, the idea of- of only thinking about what is good for us as a society uh is not good enough. And so, I have been pressing uh pressing that up on our congregation uh to begin to just reimagine this world that we have created and ask ourselves the question, is the will of the Lord being done on Earth as it is in heaven? And if not, what is the role that we need to play in shaping that um as uh people of faith who get a chance and get the privilege to participate in a democracy? What is the society that we are creating and is it really being informed by our beliefs? Is it coming out in our vote? Is it coming out in our political participation? Is it coming out in in the policies that we support uh or are the policies that we support um running counter to our faith? And so, I have been pushing them in- in those ways.
Pastor Davis: One of the second points that I have made to them was to consider that God um may have been, as we thought about that that story in Jeremiah- look, I may have been effectively inviting them to settle into their circumstances um and for us, similarly, while we have wanted the pandemic to be over quickly, we do recognize that it is not as quickly, it is has not ended quickly and there is a settling into a new normal and deciding that we are going to live in the midst of this rather um than rather than just pack up and sit on the sidelines until things are over but that we must continue with life that we must uh continue to, you know, we have had congregants who have been engaged and they have, you know, realized that they could not have their dream wedding, but that life goes on. And so, they have had their private ceremonies with three people, but that I have been just pressing up on them to continue to live uh in the midst of this.
Pastor Davis: Uh and then, finally, that delay is not denial that, although the situation has extended a long time and- and it seems like we have been God-forsaken or God-abandoned um to really realize that, just because we are experiencing delay, does not mean that God has forgotten about us uh in the midst of this. And so, I- I have used this illustration with them and I will- I will close my time uh by sharing it with you. Um the movie, "Back to the Future" uh predicted things and- and in some ways, it predicted some things that- that actually ended up- ended up happening, you know, some years later. But what is really interesting about that movie is that, in "Back to the Future" uh specifically "Back to the Future II", they are- Marty and Doc Brown are effectively like going uh going back into the past. Um um they are going back into the past with this understanding of the future and they are manipulating in some ways the past based on how they want the future to play out.
Pastor Davis: I talked to them about how that there are similarities with how we believe that God operates that, while we are in this present moment struggling with the pandemic, that in actuality, he has 2025 in mine. He has plans for 2030 and understands what life looks like there. And so, while we may feel hopeless at times based on our current and present experiences, realize that we do believe that we have a God that knows the future, has a plan for the future um and that um that we can be hopeful in that. So, thank you.
Chris: Thank you, Pastor Davis, very much. Imam Magid.
Imam Magid: Uh thanks so much for inviting me to be among this great leaders um religious leaders. Um I want to share with you that [throat clearing] my own transformation uh during this pandemic. I- I think I have become more- more mindful of the responsibility is given to religious leaders. I have been always mindful of it but become more mindful of the- how much uh do you know we are responsible of the well-being of people. Decided to close even the mosque for months and tell people that we will not be able to have congregation prayer because of the pandemic. That was very heavy decision but meant to save people life. The responsibility of telling people the right information about vaccine and not have them to listen to fiction and WhatsApp group information because have them to resist the vaccine can lead to many people losing their life.
Imam Magid: The responsibility is to serve people at the time where you cannot see your loved one because of COVID-19 and then you come as a religious leader to try to negotiate with hospitals uh you know, nursing home, how can they see or how they can connect with their loved one through internet, phone, other other means? Also responsibility of continue to teach the shared wisdoms of the scripture while people staying at home, learning how to use Zoom, learning how to use Virtual Space. It is not easy. And but also to counsel people, the criers people who were grieving the loved one by seeing them only in your computer where you cannot give them- able to give them a hug. This was not easy.
Imam Magid: Was not easy for us to make sure that we deliver food to those who are in need, those who lost their jobs and to knock on their doors, especially people have been uh impacted by COVID-19, and to bring the food to the- to their- to their door, volunteers from our community worried about their health, worried about their safety, but all of us who thought that it is very important for us to deliver those food and the need for those who are in need. Also, I came to know that uh you know, my colleague, the pastor, the rabbis, they are my safety social [laughter] support. I have been calling rabbis and pastor, you know, all the time. How are you doing? How are your community doing? And sometime, I text a rabbi and he said to me, "Your text brought tears to my eyes because I just came from the cemetery. We buried another loved one from our community of COVID-19."
Imam Magid: And they do the same thing for me. That is how we create a support system in this beautiful country of ours. The other things I want to say that, also it has been challenging to realize that how much we have neglected the people in need in our communities. This pandemic have expose us, expose the whole nation of this how many people have been ignored and that is why we need to have a vaccine against the- the- the- the COVID-19 but vaccine also against racism, discriminations, and we need to bring- heal the nation and that my hope, my prayer in this moment, in the history of our beloved country that we come together and says no more. For those who have been neglected, those who have been overlooked and we we want to call it together because the pandemic have showed us no one is immune and we, as a community, by providing vaccine in our community clinic, by providing Social Service for those who are in need, we create a healthy, compassionate, caring community.
Chris: Thank you, Imam Magid. Pastor Platero.
Pastor Platero: Thank you, everyone. And uh it is customary in our uh Navajo um way to introduce ourselves in our native language. So [foreign language]. So I have any relatives out there that are watching, hello. Yá'át'ééh! Um I wanna begin by saying that nobody warned us. Nobody said that the Navajo Nation would be hit um and one of the hardest um would be one of the hardest hit areas in America. Nobody warned us that we would lose people at a disproportionate rate um or above any other people group um in- in- in our nation. Nobody said that we would lose a- a good majority of our senior pastors and lead pastors all across the Navajo Nation. Nobody told us that we would have to uh shelter in place uh for days on end and uh almost uh get to a point where we were rationing our food. Nobody told us that um we would be losing um great elders, great leaders, great thinkers of our people group. Uh nobody warned us.
Pastor Platero: And when we were hit with the virus uh and when it hit- hit us, it hit us hard. Not only did we um begin to rethink who we were as a um as a people, we began to think about what our next steps were and what we were gonna do to uh mitigate the- the spread of the- the pandemic on our Navajo Nation. Imagine if you would living in a- in conditions akin to a third world country and uh knowing your neighbors um are miles and miles away, and then imagine uh having to check on those neighbors and finding them uh deceased in their households. These are some of the stories that we um had to deal with- with the uh uh pandemic here on Navajo. And as we began to see the uh tragedies unfold, we began to- we began to lose hope.
Pastor Platero: We began to be reminded that uh sometimes uh Navajo people and First Nations people, the host people of the land uh of America, are sometimes the forgotten people or sometimes people that are pushed aside and maybe not have thought of in- in- in- in- in the way that we would like to be. And then imagine if you would people turning their attention to us on national news and inviting us into panels like this and saying, "We want you to be a part of the discussion because you are not forgotten because we see and we understand you." Imagine people saying, "Thank you for being the host people of the land and for uh inviting us into the conversation." Uh as we begin to think about these things and- and see these things unfold all across Navajo, we began to get a sense of hope and a sense of longing for times that we are- we are better than uh what we were seeing in front of us.
Pastor Platero: One of the big things that I have encouraged my- my people to do my uh uh congregation is not as um diverse as some of yours. Uh my congregation is not that uh uh as big as- as some of you but um you know, my sphere of influence uh revolves around those that are young um and I struggled a lot with what to say to them. I struggled a lot with what uh to inspire with them than having seen all of the travesty around Navajo, but then having to be the one to inspire hope. And the one thing that came to mind was a verse from First Peter uh which reads [throat clearing] uh in uh First Peter 4:10, "As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." Uh each one of us have had uh a tremendous amount of um uh ways that we have responded the pandemic and we have seen so many uh Navajo people step up uh and we were- for so many days- for so many years. we have been uh seen as a mission field and now we are being seen as a mission force.
Pastor Platero: And that was my encouragement to young people uh to people all across our land that um as hard as we have been hit, we have an obligation as the host people of the land uh to go out, to begin to uh help one another regardless of um faith, regardless of uh uh orientation. Uh one way or the other, we are called to help people, to serve people. Our faith demands that we made the physical needs and the spiritual needs of people. And so, uh it has been a tremendous- the- the one thing I can say to uh all of us here and those listening is that the Navajo Nation uh those First Nation uh people of the land that uh we are mobilizing, that we are caring for you, that we hold you in our prayers, that we uh we see you as- as you have seen us.
Pastor Platero: And as you have sent aid, we are sending aid, and what a tremendous hope to give to people that we can change the- the direction. We can turn the head of our nation if we come together, if we mobilize, if we begin to uh take up the great responsibility that we have been given. And uh I- I- I wanna say to you all on- on this panel how honored I am to be uh among you. I wanted them to have a voice in this because you are saying, by virtue of listening to me and by virtue of having this conversation that our- my people, the Navajo people, are not forgotten um and that you are inviting us into the conversation. I wanna thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. I want to say in our native language [foreign language] with great gratitude. I give this report to you. So thank you all and uh God bless you.
Chris: Thank you, Pastor Platero. And I failed to introduce our panelists. I am gonna take a minute and uh tell you who has spoken to us. That was Pastor Platero. He is the Chaplain at Broken Arrow Bible Ranch on the Navajo Nation. Before him was Imam Magid. He is the Executive Religious Director at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society or ADAMS Center in Sterling, Virginia. Before Imam Magid was Pastor Demetrius Davis, Lead Pastor at CityPoint Community Church in Chicago. And then, before that was Rabbi Jacobs, Reform Rabbi and the President of the Union for Reform Judaism. And before that was Rev. Rose and I believe I did introduce her. So we will go now to Rev. Chebon Kernell. He is Muscogee Ceremonial Leader and Executive Director of the Native American Comprehensive Plan of the United Methodist Church, and he is in Oklahoma City. Rev. Kernell.
Rev. Kernell: Thank you, Chris. Um as my relative uh Pastor Platero was saying, it is customary to do our- our introductions in our language so that all of our ancestors and those who may be watching will know who we represent and who we speak of. [foreign language] So I just shared with you a little bit of my responsibilities uh to my community of Muscogee people and Seminole people of Oklahoma, and also just letting you know who my clan relatives are uh in that little uh few lines that I shared with you. Um it is my pleasure. Once again, as everyone has said to- to be here with each of you relatives talking about the impact of this pandemic on our respective communities and I am uh particularly touched by our [?] relatives and our Navajo people in what they have gone through and I am thankful for the- the presence of Pastor Platero and others that have labored through what um much of the world is just now beginning to understand what we go through as Native American people day-to-day because, unfortunately, this is not the only trauma that we face day in and day out.
Rev. Kernell: And really, when we think about what have we been sharing in terms of our message to our people, um you know, as a community for- for myself and- and my role having served or- over the past twenty years and two capacities as uh a pastor of a church, but right now in more of an administrative role where I am responsible for training all of our communities within the United Methodist Church with that impact Native American and indigenous peoples um you know, it is very- we have to be very honest in what we try to say because before we can get into anything prescriptive of what we can be in ministry and in life, we have to be descriptive. We have to describe actually the trauma that we are going through day in and day out and that is really what we are facing today. When we think about- we are just now getting the statistics on how this pandemic is hitting people of color throughout the United States and it is heartbreaking.
Rev. Kernell: I think even one of our institute has just uh yesterday put out uh a statistic of how that thirty-five percent of COVID-related deaths are from young people, Native Americans under the age of sixty, which is quite opposite of what you see going on across the country, you know, we already know, you know, the six times, the seven times higher rates of infections in Native American communities and the reality is, much of our people uh much of the world I should say, had- does not quite realize what that means for communities that represent one percent of the population were making up an enormous percent of the people that are actually getting sick from the virus. And even as I have been on call after call, conference after conference, I have actually implored of people to realize that I am not so sure what our community will look like when we are past this, that we have to at least acknowledge at some level the trauma that we are going through.
Rev. Kernell: Even just uh a couple of weeks ago. I was called to do and I know this is how pastors and clergy all over uh the Native American communities are- are- are what they are going through. I was called to do four funerals in the amount of eight days and three of those, of course, were COVID-related. One was one of just our elders had passed away, but we are still called into situations where we might find ourselves um I am- I am not gonna say put in harm's way, but uh where we might be exposed to this virus. And for our world, you know, one of the things that it is very difficult for us to understand a cosmology that is different than looking at the intimate communication between human-to-human and human-to-creation is that our churches, our communities were kind of hybrid in our understanding of the world and our faith is that, number one, we do have for those that are finding a spiritual home and Christianity, they do have tenants and Christianity are very much the same as what we have heard on our call.
Rev. Kernell: But we also possess spiritualities that um you know, we have been performing and engaging in understandings of the world that have been in place for uh thousands of years and it is those things that are still tugging at as for when- when we look at a Zoom call or a meeting such as this, it seems somewhat artificial. So we tend to want to be in each other's presence, to be in each other's uh you know, to see each other, to talk to each other. And that is one of the things that we have continued to do, you know, throughout the country and, unfortunately, it has had a- an enormous impact on our um on our health and well-being as Pastor Platero had said, many of our ministers have have passed on and even in our- many of our communities here in Oklahoma um it has been the- the- the same thing.
Rev. Kernell: So we have been trying to- the message that we have been trying to share is that, because we might uh we are gonna believe in science and what is being said um from- from uh reputable sources, it does not take away from our faith to not go and meet in person in church settings. It is not gonna take away from our faith. And this has been a work in progress. It has been, you know, a little bit of- of a teaching that we have had to engage in to say it is gonna be okay if, you know, if we do not have uh a Sunday morning service that might expose us to the virus unnecessarily. Um but I must say, there is challenges, you know. Not all of us have the- the- the computer hardware to be on a Zoom call. Not all of us even have um uh uh cell phone reception to even have uh uh an internet connection.
Rev. Kernell: We have relatives in ministries uh all over the country. Sometimes, they have to drive about a hour to get uh a good connection to even make a call. So these are the kind of challenges that we are facing. So we are just trying to say though, take it seriously. Take the numbers that we see seriously. You know, we are trying to provide for our community the- the quality information such as our Imam- our Imam was sharing about, you know, trusting the vaccine, trusting, you know, the recommendations from the CDC, things of that nature and saying this is something that is gonna be okay. And the message that parallels with that message about science is also a message of faith that things will not always be this way.
Rev. Kernell: This will not last forever and even reminding our communities in Native American uh churches and uh uh faith community, spirituality groups, whatever it may be, that even the way that we are living in more of a- I am not gonna say isolated but in smaller communities, is how indigenous peoples have overcome so many obstacles over the centuries. That it is okay to stay amongst your family. It is okay to, you know, to be there for your children day in and day out and even ask myself. I have young people in the other room that I have to go with their elementary lessons here in just a little bit for school. It is okay to do that. And in fact, that is a gift that is being given to us that sometimes even someone like myself has overseen because I was jumping on an airplane, going across the country, going to another meeting doing this. It is okay to do that.
Rev. Kernell: And so, that is what we are hoping is that we can be reminded of all of those things, of using our language with our children using uh you know, this way of- of living and existing with our- our families and strengthening us and that this moment in time will not be forever, that there will be a day when we can see each other again. There will be a day when we can embrace again and that is not gonna be um you know, too far in the future that uh that there will be that time when we can break bread together once again as we have in the past. And so, those are kind of the messages that we are trying to share and bring home to our communities.
Chris: Rev. Kernell, thank you very much. Let us turn now to Pastor Jim Denison. He is the Pastor at Harbor Chapel uh Possum Kingdom Lake and the President of Denison Forum in Dallas, Texas. Pastor.
Pastor Denison: Uh thank you, Chris. Such a privilege to be in this conversation with these leaders from across these traditions demonstrating the hu- the unity of our humanity and uh our need for hope and for faith together. I serve a global online community as well as a local community and my message has been in many ways similar to that of Pastor Davis who spoke of God using disaster for development. I have been encouraging us to look for ways that God redeems what he allows. I am convinced that we serve a redeeming God. He is holy. He is all loving. He is all powerful. He is sovereign. I am convinced, therefore, that his character requires him to redeem for greater good all that he allows or causes. I am not suggesting we understand that redemption this side effect. We look through a glass darkly, but one day face-to-face. I do not understand the internet. I do not understand airplanes. I do not have to understand to believe that and to look for ways that God is redeeming even this horrific crisis.
Pastor Denison: So how could he be doing that? In our tradition, we obviously focus on Jesus as our Good Shepherd as he spoke of himself, and I have been thinking of Jesus in the context of the twenty-third Psalm and the Shepherd that we find there and the three ways that Jesus shepherds us. First, he goes before us. The Psalm speaks of God leading us in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Then he goes beside us. The psalm speaks of God being with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We will fear no evil for you are with us. The psalm speaks of God going behind us. Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. So we have been focusing on ways that Jesus is redeeming this pandemic by going before us and beside us and behind us. He is going before us. He is leading us. He is leading people to himself. Uh he is using the horrific mortality of these days to show people their need for faith, their need for hope, their need for something beyond themselves. I know of a church in California that had eight thousand in their online services before the pandemic, one point two million online for Easter Sunday.
Pastor Denison: Read the other day of the leader of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK who says that, typically, about five percent of the British people are in church before the pandemic, twenty percent had been in online services, God redeeming us, leading us to himself. He is redeeming this by being beside us and calling us to be his representatives and the Christian tradition to be the body of Christ, to be his hands and feet. As other faith leaders have said, this has been an opportunity, a- a horrific opportunity, to walk with hurting people to demonstrate God's grace and ours is compassion and hours, to reach out to people and to show them God's compassion for them. As Pastor Platero talked about, to say that none of us are forgotten, that God knows us in all of our languages and knows us and all of our needed. We can be the presence of God in places of hurt. And then last, to trust him with our own hurt, with our own pain, to know that he is going behind us, that when we do not see him, he sees us. When it is hard to trust him and understand him, he still understands us.
Pastor Denison: One of my favorite movie scenes is from that place in The Count of Monte Cristo where the prisoner says to the priest, "I do not believe in God." and the priest says, " That is okay. He still believes in you." And so, it is this invitation to trust God, to go before us and lead us, to go beside us and redeem our pain and even go behind us and surround us with his grace. That has been the message, the encouragement uh looking for all the ways that God redeems what he allows. And then last, to claim the promise at the end of that famous song. We will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That is God's invitation. That is God's promise. And that is the promise that we are claiming in these really tough days. So it is a real privilege to share that and uh share this time in this conversation with the rest of you.
Chris: Thank you, Pastor Denison. Let us uh move to Pastor uh Ramos, although I think-
Pastor Ramos: I am here. Thank you so much for this opportunity...
Chris: Okay.
Pastor Ramos: ...uh to be part of this group. I am a Pastor of Baliuag[?] Church that represents around eight uh different countries uh Latin countries and one of the things that um that I tell the church uh knowing that most Latin countries will emerge um with the concept and understanding that um that superstitiously is part of the culture, that entail sometimes fear. So I tell them that- that uh we are experiencing what psychologists call the effectively heuristic. It is a concept, which says that people make decisions based out- of events that causes fear. And I am dealing with that situation trying to- to find out um how to help the church when it comes to fear. I have told the church that we should not fear the coronavirus but our Lord. And as- as COVID-19 crisis continues, there is- there is one thing that- that uh we must be very diligent about and that is depression um both in our children and in ourselves uh feeling depressed in times of- of force, in activity and in constant uncertainty is inerrable[?].
Pastor Ramos: And most of us are struggling to stay positive um so I encourage the church to continue to seek God in- in the midst of these tragedies and, in one of the questions that uh they are constantly I hear from the churches, is God punishing us? I do not know if some of my colleagues have heard that before but- but I have and- and I- and I try to tell the truth. But first of all, we must bear in mind that God continues to have control of history in nature. And I think it is good that the church is the first to recognize this, believe this, and announced it. Uh there are many biblical passage that speaks of these sovereignty of God and his intervention through- throughout the history of mankind. Um throughout history, God has always spoken to us in many ways, according to Hebrew 1:12, and the master was always centered toward the people of Israel and later to the early church.
Pastor Ramos: For example, the matches to the seven churches of Asia and the Book of Revelation is not for the world, but it is for the church. So today, I tell the promised church or our pastor[?], God is speaking to us again at this time in a- in a different, unusual way but always within the scope of his sovereignty and it is highly efficient. This process before the challenge of- of making a deep analysis of what has been done, of how we have fulfill the mission and carry out the will of God and, in that sense, we must make no less reflection. I tell you what. We must consider is the first- in first place that- that within the permissive will got allowed COVID-19. And the first thing he points out to us is how fragile we are, how weak we are as human beings, and how vulnerable we are. And the Bible say that a fool is he who trust in himself. Proverbs 28:26. Instead, he counsels us. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and not lean to your own understandings." Proverbs 3:5. The church is not ours that told the promise. It is God. He is the Lord and head of the church and therefore continues- continues uh uh with the history and- and- and- and- and with our lives maintaining the control of everything.
Pastor Ramos: Secondly, I- I read an article by one- one of- of the evangelicals named John Piper that tells us that we- the coronavirus crisis as with all other calamities God has given the world a physical representation of the moral as- atrocity and spiritual ugliness of the world, seek that de- despise God. So I told the church to still continue to be the source of the world's calamities and uh atrocities and this shows us the consequence of sin. Uh the Apostle Paul summarized it in a massive way in Romans 5:12 where he says, "Through one man, sin enters the world and through sin enters death." This is how death happens to all humanity because all have sin.
Pastor Ramos: And finally, I told the truth that COVID-19 shows us a new revela- um revelation in the most exact sense of the term. God was surprisingly able to get our attention. The I- the geological position of each one in relation to the last things, we must recognize that we live in a time that is not necessarily apocalyptic. But yes, we are in an apocalypse revelation nec- uh necessity for the church. God began to reveal to us a perspective of the church more similar to that of his heart than to our personal or institutional appreciation. That is why, in short, as I conclude, we return to the starting point to the church, in the houses, to a more personal relationship with God, to a faith not mediated by development but by the work of the Holy Spirit. So I told The Promise Church, God is still in control in the midst of this pandemic crisis. Thank you.
Chris: Pastor Ramos, thank you very much. Uh let us move to Father uh Dominguez. He is the Program Director at the Don Bosco Center-Youth Apostles of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington in Arlington, Virginia. Father.
Fr. Dominguez: Thank you very much. I am also honored to be a part of this uh conversation and sharing. Um I am a priest as was mentioned in the Catholic church and I run a program that works with a principally at risk Hispanic young people, after-school, mostly grades five through high school. Uh however, I also serve at a number of other uh parishes, churches in the northern Virginia area. Uh basically, we- we accompany these young people as they uh make their way through this Earth towards, obviously, towards their heavenly goal. So I wanna begin with just a little passage from- from Hebrews- Hebrews 6:19. Um this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope of sure and reliable and one which enters within the veil.
Fr. Dominguez: Um as has been said, this time of pandemic is um has turned ordinary conventions upside down and- and even young people whom I work with um are longing for that hu- human, genuine human interaction uh that- that they would get even, you know, at school, you know, God forbid that they want to go to school and their friends and other social activities. And my message to them has been one of encouragement as well as one that has sought out to uh put in play structures that have helped them to stay connected yet also to remain safe. Um I have seen good people of faith unite together uh to serve those who have been adversely impacted.
Fr. Dominguez: We had, you know, some that would start up food distribution centers, you know, just on their own. They are not part of a- a church or something that they just felt it was the right thing to do uh and they have done that and- and they are helping uh feed people, hundreds of people. Um we have also helped to set up um students' virtual learning centers where they come uh to our after-school program and we- we help them to- to learn by providing um other stuff to help them to navigate this uh thing. I mean they are- they are used to video games, but it is different when you actually have to learn something that is being taught to you. That is not always the most exciting. Um there have been great losses uh due to death as well as losses in support of loved ones uh those who are isolated because they are older.
Fr. Dominguez: They are in different places that you are not able to access. That is- that is even very traumatic. Even- even just travel has been difficult like, you know, going to see your grandparents, for example, in a different country. A lot of the restrictions have impeded this- this movement that would have been very normal and natural and supportive. But there have also been unexpected blessings uh some of these virtual platforms have allowed uh me, for example, to be able to connect more uh readily with people uh who are further away from the physical distance and- and draw them in uh to conversations, into sharing and being more part of the- their life. Um and we also uh my message also includes uh, you know, we can certainly see the hand of God uh present in the world from the success of the rapid deployment of the- the new vaccine to uh awakening of many for their need to pray, to look beyond the material goods and the routine of things in this world. Um all too often, it has- it has been very easy to say, you know, well, it is too easy- too busy to pray and, you know, to care for each other.
Fr. Dominguez: Now, they are looking with social venues shutting down and other normal things that kind of clutter our lives um people look and say wow, you know, I- I need something that is real. I need something that is true, something beyond the veneer of social media and things like that. Symbol that I like uh to- to speak, too, is- is the anchor uh the anchor as a symbol of hope. Uh when you look at that, it is a- it is a hope that is not very theoretical. It is a hope that is uh solidly grounded. Uh for example, you know, the tempest that is the world, you know, the ship being our life, you know. When you look at anchors and ships and when there is a big hurricane or something coming, the ships do not stay in the harbor.
Fr. Dominguez: It is actually a dangerous place when they head out to sea and they- they drop their anchors out there because if they are in the harbor, they can get damaged on the pier or on the shore and then different things can happen and they head out and they drop their anchor out there. And we see in the Bible uh time and time again how uh Jesus walks in the midst or is present in the midst of times of a tempests and oceans and storms and he is there calm and, you know, the disciples called him and he says, "I got this." And- and so, you know, as a Christian, I encourage them uh to- to put their faith, their hope in Jesus Christ.
Fr. Dominguez: But time and time again, you know, we- we just need to go back to that idea of connecting to him, holding onto that line that is connected to our anchor, the one that- that helps us, you know, as a- as the Bible says, you know, his strength- strength and his grace are enough for us. I have encouraged my community to- to hold on to that hope that things will move and God has a plan for each of us in these difficult moment. Uh I also believe that we must do so together. Um as a people of faith, we are called to look beyond ourselves uh and to see in our brothers and sisters that image of Christ. Um and as we- if we live and love in this way, then we make a difference and we act as a beacon of hope in this world. And so, I can close with another quote from Romans 5:13, 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you all with all joy and peace in believe him, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Thank you.
Chris: Thank you, Fr. Dominguez. Well, lastly, we will turn to Sr. Melanie Tag, who is the President of the Ashburn Virginia Stake Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Ashburn, Virginia. Melanie.
Melanie: Thank you, Chris. What a beautiful hour this has been. I have- I have learned from each of you. I have felt uplifted by you and through ways that I believe are only divine. I feel a love for you- people that I have never met and even more so for the wonderful people that you serve. Um our Relief Society is an organization of women whose primary aim is to ease human suffering, relief, to give relief to others. We are- we are seven plus million strong around the world and I have the humble blessing of leading about twelve hundred of those good women locally here in Northern Virginia.
Melanie: I would say that the primary message that we share is one that is not unique to the Chri- Christian tradition, but it is certainly the foundation of the cre- Christian tradition. And that is the two great commandments: the commandment to love our God with all our heart mind- mind and strength and to then in turn love our neighbor. We have- we have encouraged our members in the interest of loving their God and in their grief at not being able to meet together in sanctuaries and chapels and temples, to look to find ways to make their home whether they live their individually or with a group, a sanctuary as much as possible, a place of prayer, a place of fasting individually and collectively um and a place of learning, place of gospel learning and that we believe like all the rest of you that, when those are our devotions, God empowers us and enables us to withstand the challenges this pandemic being one great example um that- that beset us.
Melanie: A- a specific practice that our prophet encouraged us during this pandemic to practice that I found personally moving, as I know millions of others did, and that was to practice gratitude openly and on a daily basis. And it is counterintuitive and it is amazing that in our extremity, as we express gratitude openly and outwardly, we find that all things do work together for good for those that love the Lord that in fact he can sanctify our sufferings to our benefit and to the benefit of those around us. I do not speak Greek. So I am not sure that what I am about to say uh has a good foundation in the Greek but, in the New Testament where it says, to love the Lord and as the first great commandment and that the second one is likened to it.
Melanie: In my mind in English, what I hear is, the second one is just like it. The second one is the same as it. So in some way that I cannot describe but that I have experienced, when I love my neighbor, I know my Lord. They go together. They cannot be separated. We have encouraged our dear members to love their neighbor by wearing a mask, by getting vaccinated by socially distancing in practical secular ways. But we have more extremely encouraged them to seek ways to- to directly ease human suffering, small and large.
Melanie: As a church, we have sent humanitarian aid around the world um but I am more moved by smaller and simpler acts of kindness. Um Rabbi Jacobs' reference to the fact that sometimes we are the givers of aid and sometimes where the receivers of aid is not lost on me. The beautiful Christian New Testament parable of the- of the Good Samaritan teaches us that sometimes in our lives, we identify with the man taken of thieves in the ditch and sometimes, we identify with the Samaritan who pours in the oil. The- to me, the beautiful Nexus Point that we offer to our members between loving God and loving our neighbor is to encourage them to go to their God and ask him, who can I help? Which neighbor can I run to and how can I help them?
Melanie: This sometimes is institutionally huge and we affiliate ourselves with big, strong, good projects and it sometimes is um miniscule, if that is all we have to offer. Neither is lost and each is powerful and eternally significant. Um I- I uh I am not thankful for a pandemic, but I am thankful to a God that has sanctified a pandemic to the good of those that love him and seek in that love, to love every neighbor within their circle in ways large and small. Thanks again for a great hour, and I offer that message to you in Christ and in love. Thanks, Chris.
Chris: Thank you, Melanie Tag. We had been listening to a panel of ten American religious leaders share what they have told their own congregations and believers about faith in the pandemic with a broader national audience. This is just a snapshot of what American religious leaders have always done to help a country in crisis. Listeners, please join us in building the National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital to open in 2026 on the two hundred and fortieth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words, "Almighty God hath created the mind free." capturing this American essence of religious freedom by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute. Again, for a contribution of two hundred dollars or more, you will receive a free signed copy of the book, "When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter" by Melissa Matthes, Professor of Government at the United States Coast Guard Academy. Her forthcoming book will remind us as we have been reminded today that in the face of national crisis, faith leaders have an incredible power to help Americans endure and even flourish and further their work of improving the imperfect yet noble American experiment in self-government. Uh to each of you faith leaders, thank you so very much for being with us today and sharing your beliefs and ideas on how your people and really the entire country can endure the pandemic that now moves into its second year. Thank you very much.
Transcript: "What Is the Relationship Between Religion, Race and Sports in America?" With Jeffrey Scholes
Chris: Sports are everywhere in America as we all know. The Super Bowl, the Masters, The World Series, The Stanley Cup, The Olympics, the NBA, the MLB the NFL, Youth Travel Sports, and the list goes on and on and on. So, if we understand sports, we may understand something of America. For us on this podcast series, the question is, does religion factor into sports? It seems the answer is a loud 'yes'. In 1976, Sports Illustrated published a three-part essay by the famed sports commentator Frank Deford titled "Religion in Sport", in which he analyzed the cozy relationship between Christianity and sports in the United States. And it was in this article that he coined the term 'sportianity' writing it this way, "It is almost as if a new denomination has been created. Sportianity. While Christian churches struggle with problems of declining attendants, following contributions, and now, even reduction in membership. Sportianity appears to be taking off."
Chris: That same year Michael Novak published the "Joy of Sports", articulating the religiosity embedded in the playing and cheering on of sports. Today's discussion will help us all better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom is as a governing principle to the United States, and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
We have with us today, Jeffrey Scholes, to talk about religion and sports. He is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and author of the upcoming book Christianity, Race, and Sport to be published next year by Routledge Press.
Professor Scholes' interests include the relationship between religion and sports and American political theology. He is the author of Vocation and the Politics of Work: Popular Theology in a Consumer Culture and co-author of Religion and Sports in American Culture. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Jeff, it is wonderful to have you with us today.
Jeff: Wonderful to be here, Chris. Thank you so much.
Chris: This is an absolutely fascinating topic. Those two--the book and the articles, quoted earlier were from a long time ago, but from what you write, that sort of started this whole study off on how does religion influences sports. And a lot has happened from that time, but I think those probably established pretty important markers in this field. Before we dive into your particular angle on this intersection of religion and sports in America, could you tell us about a couple of the most prominent ways observers of American culture have linked religion and sports? To provide something of a framework for our listeners to what we will discuss today.
Jeff: Sure. If you go back to 1976, as you did with, Novak and Deford both of them were attempting to try to talk about sport and religion as kind of a, separate entities. And Novak is arguing that sport is as, as he says, 'somehow a religion'. So, he is looking for religious qualities in sport itself. So, he is making an argument as a Catholic theologian back then. He passed away a couple of years ago. That in fact, sport is a type of religion despite what others may think of sport being a--a purely secular activity as opposed to religion. Deford as you suggest, is--is arguing that this coziness between, in particular, Evangelical Christianity and its fascination with sport which still continues today, is a problem. But he is still conceiving of sport and religion as kind of two separate entities that come together very badly and poorly and--and should be critiqued. So, his angle is more of a critical analysis of the relationship, whereas, Novak is trying to--to link the two together. You know, through the 80s and 90s, you had kind of what--what I will call it kind of a second wave of the scholarship of religion and sport. Whereby, kind of DeFord's critique is continued, but there is more of a historical approach to it.
Jeff: There is an emphasis and a looking back at this phenomenon called Muscular Christianity. That was really taking shape in England and the United States in the late 19th or early 20th century. That helped form the YMCA, uhm, and it--it--it argued essentially in the Victorian age, United States, and England that in particular, white boys were kind of getting soft or coddled and mothered too much. And are working in factories and not on the farm, and therefore, to make the argument that Jesus was somehow muscular and athletic, was meant to prod or to connect religion or Christianity to athletic activity, which it had not been so in the past. In fact, Puritans frowned upon sports as an activity, as something that would take you away from spiritual activities like reading the Bible and praying. So Muscular Christianity attempted to reverse that and put them together.
Jeff: So, in the 80s--in the 1980s and 1990s, you see looking back and trying to reconnect with where we are now based on the past in particular in relation to Muscular Christianity. To position, like, my work the book that is coming out next year, and I also have to give a plug for a book that I am co-editing with Randall Balmer called "Religion and Sport in America". It is an edited volume, so we have essays coming in. And almost all those essays also kind of fit in what I would call a third wave, which I would argue that we are in right now, of the scholarship of religion and sport. That brings that is not just satisfied certainly to silo religion and sport in an attempt to put them together. But to argue that religion and sport are co-constitutive, they helped form each other. You cannot separate the two. Just as I argue in my monograph book, you know, race and religion are also constitutive of each other. So, is, sport and race certainly. And as a result in--i--in response to, an emphasis on intersectionality, to bring in race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, even the transgender movement, in particular with cases like Caster Semenya, the runner. You know, whether she needs to have testosterone test in order to compete with the women. All of these other issues that are really kind of political are now brought to bear in the sporting world and to look at the role that religion plays in, either problems in the sporting world or good things in the sporting world, that is happening with these--with these other things. So, this third wave is much more, broad. In a sense that history is so brought in, but religion and sport are not taken as separate entities and that permits the introduction of these other, you know, again, gender or race. All of these are things that have been with us for a long time, but now, religion and sports scholars are much more likely to bring them to bear on their own studies.
Chris: Okay, that is very helpful as we move forward here. So tell us this, before we go to the three chapters in your upcoming book that we are going to discuss. How did the historical, well, I guess you are a philosopher, not a historian, right? Would that be...
Jeff: I am actually religious studies. They let me teach in the philosophy department.
Chris: Okay, so why did--I guess tell us this. Why did you feel like you needed to write about religion, race, and sports, instead of just religion and sports?
Jeff: Well, number one. As you mentioned at the onset, I have co-written a book on religion and sport, but there are certainly another one I--I could write about generally speaking. And the introduction to the co-edited book that is coming out next year is much more about religion and sport in general. But, I mean really one thing, well actually two things. One was the, Colin Kaepernick, kneeling for the national anthem in--in the beginning part of the 2016 football season. It allowed a new kind of, in particular, black activism to take place and solidarity with people of other races to join them. But it was the kind that we really had not seen since the 1960s and 70s with someone like Muhammad Ali, or you know, Jim Brown or, uh, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. So there is this gap really that Michael Jordan helped initiate where, commercialization and, kind of this generalized hero status that was apolitical. That was the way in which most African American athletes, uh, chose to be with the lead of Michael Jordan. That really has changed.
You look at LeBron James. Likely, maybe the most famous athlete in the world. He is incredibly political. He talks about politics all the time but I think he was given permission to do so largely by what Colin Kaepernick did. So that just got me to thinking--the second thing I was invited to, uh, write an essay on religion, race, and sport in an edited volume in 2018. So I--after writing that I thought, "You know, there may be a book in here." So, but it was really Colin Kaepernick that kicked off the idea that just writing about religion and sport and--and leaving out race or only including it minimally, would not do religion and sports justice. You just--you just have to. In the United States, you cannot avoid it at all and sure enough there--there--there was a book in there. So, that is--that is what kind of prompted it.
Chris: Well, thank you for doing that. It is fascinating and I think important for Americans, all of us, to sort of understand better.
Chris: Jeff, let us talk a little bit about, about civil rights in sports, race and sports. You write this in your introduction, uh, "Sports advocates have often laid claim to a kind of proto-civil rights record that sports possess in that teams, leagues, and governing bodies have allowed the entry of members of minority races onto its fields and into its locker rooms well before. The courtesy was extended at the doors of public schools, buses, and restaurants. And that it came through with a steep price." Can you elaborate on this as far as what the historical records indicate here?
Jeff: Yeah, you know, sport and sports advocates in particular, oftentimes like to think of its own industry as a colorblind meritocracy. Whereby, if you are good enough, no matter race, even gender, as we saw recently. There was a woman kicker for, Vanderbilt that actually got on the field and kicked--kicked off. If you are good enough, no matter any other quality, how rich you are, how poor you are, what color your skin is, you will make the team and you will play. So, therefore it is a meritocracy and it is supposedly colorblind. And there are examples of this. I think really first of all to, Jack Johnson, the great boxer in the early part of the 20th century. African-American from Galveston who for a long time was not allowed to fight white pla--white--white boxers, but finally was so good, that it--it began to concern the white community that everyone else was believing that no white boxer could beat him. So therefore, they had to find what they called the 'Great White Hope', to fight Jack Johnson. And Jack Johnson in Reno, Nevada absolutely destroyed--I think Jim Jeffries was his name destroyed him [chuckles], but then, was penalized afterwards. He was actually dating a white woman. This is in the early--this is the height of Jim Crow, and Illinois made up a law that said you could not, uh, bring like a--a--a mixed-race couple cannot cross state lines. So, when he did, they arrested him and put him in jail.
Jeff: So, there were ways of stopping that too, but that is an example of say, you know, really before African-Americans, had the Civil Rights Act passed, that Jack Johnson was allowed to fight white boxers. Say the same thing about Jackie Robinson in 1947 crossing the color barrier, you know, a good ten years before Brown versus Board of Education. So therefore, that allows sports advocates to--to argue again for not only sports being kind of proto-civil rights or before it, because it is fairer. But also, the reason for that is that it is a colorblind meritocracy.
I make very strong arguments that in fact, it is not a colorblind meritocracy. Uhm, the profit motive in the case of Johnson fighting and in the case of Jackie Robinson being signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945, and then, finally getting to play for the Dodgers in 1947, as Jackie Robinson said in his autobiography, Branch Rickey the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, if you have seen the movie, 42. Harrison Ford plays him and they chronicle this--this famous meeting that they had. But Jackie Robinson, in his autobiography, said it was about money. In fact, he said that people talk about how religious Branch Rickey was and he was very pious, but Robinson says that the God that he really worship was money. And therefore, putting Jackie Robinson on the field was going to bring African-Americans to the ballpark and other people as well, and they would be more successful and therefore make more money. So, it was not necessarily that Branch Rickey was, you know, a Martin Luther King type at all. It may be had that effect for a lot of people, but there is always a profit motive to this "colorblind meritocracy".
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Good. Okay, so now let us get into some details. As I said we are just going to cover three, of your chapters, Jeff. And the first one will be what you call the Domestication of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The second will be Religious Expression in the NFL for Blacks and Whites, and the third will be--and I love this title of the chapter, The Black Prophetic Fire of Colin Kaepernick. So, Jeff, you write that the world-famous American boxers, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, were angry and dangerous black men and they needed and then were tamed. And that was done employing the same reasoning used to treat black bodies in the American past with chains, rape beatings, and lynching often with religious justification. Can you tell this story for us?
Jeff: Yeah, so, the religious part of this domestication process, and by the way, as most people probably know, Muhammad Ali was, tamed or domesticated in a sense to no fault of his own through Parkinson's disease which he contracted for God, sometime in the 1980s. And he was not able to really speak or--or certainly move nearly as well, which is very evident in interviews he did. And maybe people remember him lighting the Olympic torch in the Atlanta games in 1996, but he can you know, barely walk. And in George Foreman's case it is--it is, you know, he has not been ravaged by Parkinson's or some physical disease, but, he becomes an entrepreneur selling these indoor grills. He becomes an evangelist. He converts to Evangelical Christianity in 1977. Becomes a pastor, he has got this personality where he is smiling, uh, patriotic, Christian, capitalist. So, in a sense that--those qualities tend to, make George Foreman palatable and safe for white audiences. So, there is a domestication process that has gone on there as well. So, two different processes of domestication, but nevertheless the effects of the same. What I argue is that the white, in particular white, Protestant community is more able to accept and even forget or "forgive" some of the actions or fear that--they--that was instilled in them certainly with Muhammad Ali with his, not only his punching power, but more so his mouth and his mind, right? He converts to Nation of Islam, uh, right after his, uh, winning the heavyweight championship in 1964, and is brilliant [chuckles] and frightening. I mean, no one had ever heard an athlete, white or black, talk like that. He was the most famous athlete in the world as well so his word carried a ton of weight, and the Nation of Islam, as--as many may know, based on the Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X as well, were arguing for a kind of, separatism there were different versions of that, whether it was to go back to--for blacks to go back to Africa or to create a separate country of their own because United States was hopelessly white supremacist and hopelessly, a white version of Christianity, which Ali rejects as he changes his name to from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.
So that fear instilled in the white community, based on not only a physical presence of a large, dangerous black body, which George Foreman certainly had as well before his conversion experience, he never smiled before. There is footage, by the way, for the listeners or viewers that The Rumble in the Jungle documentary, is, “When We Were Kings” is fantastic. The fight is between Ali and Foreman, after Ali, gets over his three-year suspension for refusing fight in Vietnam, yet again, another protest that frightens, it makes white Americans very wary of what is he really up to. But that fight brings them together, but really after that begins this kind of domestication process. Whereby, in particular like I say, white Protestants are more able to, think of Muhammad Ali as, you know, one of their own, right? Because he cannot do damage, because he cannot speak his mind anymore. And George Foreman just becomes "one of them". So, in a sense the domestication process performance is something that he did on his own. You know, he appears on the 700 Club. Muhammad Ali would never have done that [chuckles], right? On the Christian Broadcasting Network he is on quite a bit. And he is always smiling and talking and giving his testimony. So, he is doing things that, make many white Americans comfortable and religion plays a role in that. So part of my argument is the domestication process, in a--in a sense wants, these black bodies to be tamed and not to be scary anymore, essentially.
Chris: Right. So, so before--I do not know much about George Foreman, before his conversion to Christianity. He was--you are saying he was, uh, he never smiled, he was mean, there--there was a palpable fear, uh, of him and Muhammad Ali.
Jeff: Yes.
Chris: They were palpable, tangible.
Jeff: Well, yes. I mean even before the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire, mind you. I mean the--George Foreman at the time was the heavyweight champion. So, Ali beats him and--and I would argue the greatest boxing match in the history of the United States or the world. But Foreman was laconic he did not talk that much, but he did not smile. He brought a German Shepherd Zaire with him, who would be by his side, but he did his talking with his fists. He--he was like kind of like Mike Tyson could knock you out with one punch. Ali could not do that. Ali was a finesse boxer, could certainly punch, but he really tries to strike fear in you with his words. He called, you know, Foreman and all his opponents like these crazy names. Foreman just kind of sat there and took it but that elicited, well, at least for the journalist that were covering the fight, they did not give Ali a shot. They thought he was going to get killed in the ring and he ended up taking a lot of punches, but coming back in the eighth round to win it. So, Foreman struck fear in people because, in a sense, he did not talk with his mouth, but he talked with his fist and could knock you out with one punch. I mean he was an incredibly powerful boxer, much more so than Muhammad Ali. That was a part of it.
In addition to that, he comes from the streets of Galveston, got into a lot of trouble as a kid, ends up, taking a job in Oregon as a part of LBJ's Job Corps program. And that changes things to some extent, but he realizes that boxing is what is going to it is going to help him make his way. But the only way to do that was to present this image, and it was a true one of him at the time, of angry and, in a sense, quiet and was going to kill you in the ring.
Chris: And with Muhammad Ali, describe to us the fear that he gave Christian America, I guess we could say America, with his conversion to Nation of Islam and how he spoke of that, and--and--and what you say that was a surprise--that was sort of had never been done before. His sort of activism of a black athlete and what...
Jeff: Right, and certainly not of, in the 1960s, the most famous, perhaps person on the planet, right? So, you know, he starts off, in fact, the first press conference after the 1964 fight, when he announces that he is now Muhammad Ali. Which by the way, there were reporters from the New York Times who refuse to call him that into the 1970s. There is a--a--a boxer that he fights in the--in the 1970s who is calling him Cassius in the ring, and Muhammad Ali beats him up badly and he was saying, "What is my name?" Like he [chuckles] wants him to say his name. Right, it--it--it was--what he said--that was probably the most frightening or, uhm, offensive to many white Christians is that, uh, you know, he said, "Listen, I grew up in the Baptist Church in Kentucky”, believing in a--what he would consider a white male God, right? That is what African-Americans has been told what Jesus looked like for instance, and he just rejects all that with the Nation of Islam theology that states that, "Because Africans were the first human beings, those are God's chosen people." And therefore, we have bought this, uh, lie about who God is and about what Christianity is or the true God is. And therefore, a wholesale rejection of that for him meant joining the Nation of Islam which has much more of a black centered theology, uhm, and certainly a centralizing of Africans and African-American people as those that are chosen by God.
So, therefore, it has to be a full rejection of "white Protestant and Catholic Christianity" for him. It is not just a “I am starting a new denomination.” It is leaving Christianity and making claims about it.
Not that, you know, he does not believe in Jesus, it is that, "Your religion is flat out wrong and we have been lied to about this for hundreds and hundreds of years." Combine that with his political stance, which is the United States, is that which helps support and prop up white supremacy, and this kind of white version of Christianity. And therefore, "You are telling me to go to Vietnam and kill other brown people for white people. I am not going to do it." right? And it is his religion that is actually motivating him not to, but his politics and his--I mean politics are very tightly intertwined with theology of Nation of Islam. It is there from the very beginning. So, he was able to make a political stance by not going to Vietnam using his theology very easily. Whereas, say, Martin Luther King, you know, there was a little bit more trouble attaching his version of Christianity to say for instance, the Constitution. Which he tried to do quite a bit and he did it with some success, but with Ali, it was just baked into the Nation of Islam theology. But refusing to go to Vietnam and being a prominent African-American who is not doing what white America tells you to do, that is frightening to a lot of whites, certainly back then.
Chris: Right. Okay. Well, there is a lot there, we need to move on to the other two chapters because of time. But, the listeners should just pick up your book next year.
We are talking with Jeffrey Scholes, associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs about his book Christianity, Race and Sport, to be published next year by Routledge Press. If you have not already, please visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Jeff, under your--or in your chapter about, religious expression in the NFL, you begin by suggesting that there is a double standard between whites and blacks. Can you paint this picture for us?
Jeff: Absolutely, Chris. So, I start the chapter, uhm, by using this chapter of a book by David Leonard, called, Playing While White, where he says there is a double standard in the way in which fans, coaches, and even fellow athletes deal with trash talking in all the leagues. You know, a--a--a white player that does trash talking, you know, kind of talking down to someone or yelling crazy wild things to intimidate the opponent. Usually, when somebody has a lot of examples when done by a white athlete it is considered to be, you know, courageous and it shows his or her, fight that is within. And--and, so it is in another word--it is positive. Oftentimes, when African-American athletes do this same exact level of trash-talking, they are labeled a thug. They are labeled, you know, a--a--a sign of moral decline in the United States. So, right there you have a very clear double standard. And I wanted to write about, and I wondered whether there is a similar double standard with religious expression, in particular in the NFL, uhm, amongst African-American players and white players. And, uh, I--I argue that yes, indeed, there is. Oftentimes, and I kind of break it down with uh, these categories of religious expression in--that comes through sport, right? Uhm, [crosstalk] go ahead.
Chris: My next question was can you--I was going to list out those religious expression types and sports. You could explain each briefly and give maybe an example.
Jeff: Sure.
Chris: I apologize for interrupting, but you were--
Jeff: Yup [chuckles].
Chris: The first one you call, "It is just a game.". Second, “Billboard.” Third, “Glorification.” Fourth, “Soft Providential”, and fifth, “Hard Providential”. I hope I got those right.
Jeff: You did. I am trying to remember them too.
Chris: I can give them to you as we go.
Jeff: Okay [chuckles]. That would be great.
Chris: Explain that and then give us an example, maybe.
Jeff: Sure. So, "It is just a game.", is the kind of, attitude that, you know, God plus--in other words there--if--if, especially after a loss you will often hear and I give the example of Tony Romo. I am from Dallas so I am a big Dallas Cowboys fan. Our--our old quarterback Tony Romo, after a particularly hard loss said, "Well, you know, there are more important things to life." There are people that would certainly say, you know, their spirituality or their religion is more important than winning or losing a silly football game. So, you--you minimize the football game itself in order to maximize something else and that--that thing that is maximized most often is one's faith or family or something along those lines. So that is kind of the--it--it is actually a defense mechanism or protection from, uh you know, feeling the sting of a loss. [chuckles]
Chris: Right.
Jeff: You can say, "It is just a game.", then maybe would not hurt quite like that. That is one way in which, it is quasi-religious expression by saying, "It is just a game."
Chris: Okay, second, Billboard.
Jeff: Billboard. So, the billboard model is usually not necessarily a verbal expression, but, I have examples of Tim Tebow when he was at Florida. There is eye black that oftentimes players put under their, their eyes to absorb light so they are not as blinded by the sun. Tim Tebow would write Bible verses, or not the whole verse, but like John 3:16 on--on his--on his eye black. The NFL does not--used to not allow, any kinds of decorations on one's shoes, like, unlike the NBA. But it is now doing this. It is allowing it for certain games, and sure enough many NFL players will put, you know, religious messages on their shoes, Bible verse on their shoes. Carson Wentz, the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, I think it was something like, oh, I cannot remember the acronym he uses. But, uhm, anyway, I think--and I think it is like a verse from Philippians that is on the outside of his shoes. So, this is the Billboard model. I also think of, you know, that famous guy with the, uh, rainbow wig in the 1970s and 80s. We were at a field goal. He will be in the stands on the front row behind the goal post and he would have up John 3:16, like, for every big game. That--that is the billboard type. Which then leaves, you know, ideally, it is meant to provoke one to, you know, look up that bible verse or ask more about Carson Wentz. So, it is not an exact statement and you are not quite clear exactly what Tim Tebow means to say about John 3:16, or why he chose that verse, but that is what he wants you to go look it up, right? And so, we are trusting but it is more of a billboard style of religious expression.
Chris: And I read, uh, Stephen Curry has a scripture on the tongue of his shoe, which was interesting. I guess another billboard.
Jeff: He does. It is the, "I can do all things through Christ who..." yeah. On the--on the inside tongue of his shoe. I know [chuckles], so you get that along with the Steph Curry shoe.
Chris: Yeah, uh, number three is Glorification.
Jeff: Right. The glorification model is the athlete that states something along the lines of, "I play hard. I help my teammates. I even win the game for the glory of God. In other words, It is not for my own glory or, uhm, compliments that I get. It is all for God." I think I quote Roger Staubach. There are countless ones of these. Roger Staubach after, I believe the 1971 Super Bowl, who again, again, it is a minimizing of one's own ability, or the team's ability, or the coach’s ability, to--that say that, "If we did well, it is done for God's glory." And therefore, by stating that or by believing it, God is glorified, not us or the team or the sport or all these good things. So, it is similar to the, "It is just a game.", where you are minimizing your own effort, to some extent, by saying, "It is all for God's glory, not for fame or riches. Whatever else comes with winning."
Chris: Okay, and the last two are tied together, Soft Providential and Hard Providential, right?
Jeff: Right, so providentialism, as a theological term, uhm, in a sense just means, uh, uh, a God that intervenes in human history in some way. The soft providential model, are, it--it-it has athletes stating that, you know, they are praying for strength for God. They are praying for no injuries, you hear that a lot for the health of the players. Which means that if God is answering those prayers, God is in fact intervening, right? To, uh, you know, keep people healthy and to give you strength and belief that you are going to win especially if you are down, so that is kind of a softer version. Tim Tebow is a classic soft providential list, the quarterback--former quarterback for Florida, and for Denver Broncos, and New York Jets, and New England Patriots, and now a current baseball player, I think, in the Mets' farm system.
I mean a fantastic athlete, but a very vocal Evangelical Christian. He had that run in the 2012 playoffs, well, the 2011 season for the Denver Broncos that people were calling miraculous and--but he would downplay that, right? It is God that performs miracles, not Tim Tebow. So he would--he would in a sense say, "I pray." He gives glory as well at the end of every game to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but he would always say that, "I am not praying for wins. I am not praying for the ball to leave my hand and land in the receiver's hand. I am praying for strength...", again, "...health and belief." Intangible things that God still has to intervene in order to effect, at the same time too, it is much more difficult to identify, right? And then, obviously with both providential models, if you did not believe or there were major injuries on the field and you prayed for the health of all players, you know, God did not answer your prayer. But it is easier to kind of let God off the hook for either answering or not answering your prayer when you are praying for these abstract things. So that is what I am calling Soft Providentialism.
Chris: Okay.
Jeff: And then Hard Providentialism, is--is what I just suggested. Athletes that are praying for God to actually intervene in the game itself. And therefore, it is usually post-game where athletes will say, uhm you know, "God wanted us to win. God guided that ball into my hands. God allowed me to get that interception and run it back for a touchdown. That was God doing that." I have an example of Russell Wilson, the quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. They--they were in the NFC championship game. I believe it was 2017, maybe 2016, against the Green Bay Packers and, he threw four interceptions in the first half. They were way down but they came back in the fourth quarter and won the game. And what Wilson said he said, "That was God testing us." right? So, in other words God in a sense intentionally made him throw those interceptions to get them in a hole. So, these--it is like a trial and tribulation that God wanted to have Russell Wilson in the Seahawks overcome, right? So, there is kind of a hard providential, uh, way of talking about it. So anyway, so that is--that is the hard providential.
Chris: Okay, so now with that explanation, can you tell us how these are used and received along lines of race in the NFL?
Jeff: Right. So, what I argue in the book is that, this is--this is--generalization is certainly not true of all players, but for the most part, you are not going to see as many white NFL players using hard providential language. If they use a religious expression at all, it is going to be the glorification and they will use one of the top--of the first four most often. And also, most often, you do or you see a more preponderance of African-American NFL players that are using a version of hard providential language, to some extent, and it may not even be on the field. I will give an example of Reggie White the former defensive lineman for the Eagles and the Packers who passed away quite a bit ago. Maybe one of the greatest defensive lineman NFL has ever had. Very devout man. He was--he was--he was a pastor as well in the offseason. But, he believed that God would tell him whether to sign with the Green Bay Packers or not, right? God is going to intervene and--and tell him whether to, and if God does not--tell them no or does not answer, he is not going to join the Packers, So there is an example of--he is an African-American player. I talked a lot about this, uh, Sports Illustrated issue from 1998 leading into the 1998 Super Bowl between, the Broncos--I guess it was Broncos and the Packers in the 1997 Super Bowl. But they polled the Denver Bronco players in particular about, what is the relationship--they believe between their religion and sport. And of the seven, I think, Denver Broncos that they interviewed. I think there were two white players who use kind of soft providential language, and I believe maybe five of the six African-American players used very hard providential language that God brought them here physically, right? Helped them win the previous games to get them to the Super Bowl, and that God was also is essentially on their side and going to help them win the Super Bowl as well.
So, you have this kind of clear divide but then the Sports Illustrated article, so then I kind of get into the meat of the matter, the double standard part of it. The Sports Illustrated article then, uh, interviews, two white academics, but, I think one was the president of Yale Divinity School at that time, and then a couple white pastors that lambast this kind of theological thinking. Either saying, "This is bringing God into the messiness of a game where people can almost die on the field into a multibillion-dollar sport with celebrities that beat their wives. God does not care about football." right? "God cares about other things, so He does not care enough to come in and intervene in a game and enable a team to win." right? So, the rest of the article are for white essentially theologians that are bashing this kind of speech. They say that God perhaps provide strength, but God is not helping teams win or making other teams lose. God does not--God does not do that. God is greater than that. So, in a sense, there is--they are complimenting or they are okay with the expressions of the white football players, not okay with the expressions of the black players. But the double standard is in, to add what I argue is, both are forms of providentialism. God is intervening in some way. What is the difference? Right?
And then I kind of chronicle a history of African-American religious experience of God intervening, whether the Holy Spirit or to believe that God actually intervenes. Either, you know, free the slaves, to help out with, all kinds of problems in the black church itself. There is a long history of this kind of theology being very prominent and useful to many African Americans. Whereby, it is looked down upon by whites, who are not undergoing nearly the kind of struggle that African-Americans have and continue to go through. So hard providentialism is a--a--a very helpful theology for African-Americans. So, these NFL players are merely expressing that, yet, they express it to be shot down by fellow players. By the way, Aaron Rodgers was a quarterback that Russell Wilson was playing against and he had this some smug comment about Russell Wilson saying that God, you know, challenged them. God actually, you know, put them in a hole for a reason. And then Green Bay beat Seattle the next year and Aaron Rodgers was asked about and he said, "Well, I guess, you know God was on our side this time." in a very kind of smug way. Which is--which again is a critique of Russell Wilson's theology. By him, the white quarterback saying, "God does not care about football." right? In a--in--in a sense. So, I guess God wasn't on Russell Wilson's side this time so.
Chris: Right. Well, I do not think I will ever watch a sports game the same. This is very, very helpful. Very very - very helpful I think simply because sports are such a large part of American society. To see the religious thread in it is a benefit I think to us.
Jeff: I will say it--I will say this to you if you do not mind for what you are saying, you know, I think for a long time and one of the reasons why, you know, the religion-sport discipline did not really get off the ground to the mid-1970s, was that most theologians and or people doing religious studies just, did not consider sport to be as big as it is or as serious as it is. It is just a bunch of people running around, shooting a piece of leather, or hitting a piece of leather with a piece of wood. Why are we going to talk about that? But you do it at your own peril, if you do not. There are all kinds of connections, but one of the main reasons too, for religious studies scholars, I believe too, at least be interested in sport. Whether you like sports or not. it is the kind of impact that it has on people.
Chris: Yup.
Jeff: Positive and negative, right?
Chris: Right.
Jeff: I mean more people watch the Super Bowl than go to church on that Sunday, so, far more. Just for instance, so, yeah. It is a very big deal whether you like it or not. In fact, it is usually a big deal to those that hate it because it gets so much attention and these athletes get paid a lot of money too, but, anyway.
Chris: Right, right. Okay, Jeff, for the last segment. Let us turn to a fairly recent piece of religion, race, and sports history in the United States. The chapter's title is compelling, as I said before. It is Black Prophetic Fire of Colin Kaepernick. Can you share the story briefly? In case we have forgotten about it, and then we will move into some of your analysis.
Jeff: Sure. So, Colin Kaepernick, he brought the San Francisco for--he is--he is mixed race, but he identifies certainly as African-American. But he grew up, as an adopted child in a white family--with a white family in California. And really kind of came into, consciousness about race in college at the University of Nevada, in particular with the--an African-American fraternity that he was involved in. But he kind of kept quiet for this to be any part of his NFL season. He was a fantastic quarterback. He led the 49ers to, a Super Bowl in 2012. And then his place started to slip a little bit. By 2016, the beginning of that season, he was not the starter anymore but was still on the team as the second-string quarterback at that time. At that time, I believe it was, Eric Garner? Certainly, in response to some the--to the, Trayvon Martin killing. But there began to be a rash of police killings of--of unarmed black men and some women as well. Uhm, and this is in, I believe Aug--maybe late July in the preseason--of the first preseason game, in 2016. And Kaepernick sits down, now, there was no cameras on him. They cat--they catch it from a camera. Someone caught it. I think seeing Colin Kaepernick be the only one sitting down during the national anthem they play before every game. And so it began--the word begin to get out. He sits for the next game.
I believe it was the next game he talks with an ex-player named Nate Boyer who was also an ex-Green Beret who suggested that he kneels. Uhm, there are several--there are several reasons for this but one is kneeling is--there is, a sign of respect. Whether it is religious respect, like your genuflecting to some degree, or football players take a kneel all the time in practice. So, Kaepernick started to do that and got a lot of attention for it. You know, President Trump after he won the presidency in 2016, had all kinds of things to say about Colin Kaepernick, called him all kinds of names said, "Go." you know, "Why do not you leave this country if you do not like it?" Blah, blah, blah. It--NFL viewership was down, Kaepernick was somehow to blame for this. The main effect though, as I was arguing, is that other players started to follow. From high school ranks, middle school ranks, on all on up to other sports as well, not just football.
Kaepernick stays with the 49ers that season but is cut the following season and is yet to even be invited to a training camp since then. However, you could argue that his influence has been even greater because he has not been on the field. He is widely revered by many, many, many people. LeBron James has said flat out, you know, it is Kaepernick that has given him the courage to speak out. Kaepernick, obviously, with the Black Lives Matter movement, the killing of George Floyd earlier this year, has been one of the people that has been looked to for advice and he has given it. He started a non-profit that has been incredibly influential, in--in at least seeking and trying to minimize social injustice in our country. So that is kind of the setup for who he is and what he did.
Chris: Right. Thank you. That is helpful. So, would you help us with definitions of two things you used to describe Mr. Kaepernick and his protest? First, what is "black prophetic fire"? And second, what is the African-American jeremiad?
Jeff: Right. So, I am—I am taking black prophetic fire, it is not my--my term, from Cornel West who wrote a book about four or five years ago called Black Prophetic Fire. And what he is talk--he is talking about past civil rights leaders that had what he calls this black prophetic fire. And when he says that--the prophetic piece of it, is that they are not just talking about a kind of spiritual renewal. They are talking about rebelling against the powers. And for him--for instance in Martin Luther King's case what many forget, they remember that 'I Have a Dream' speech, but they forget that later on in his life, he was very much against certain forms of capitalism and the Vietnam War, right? I mean people either forget that or never even knew it because that is, not the Martin Luther King that they want to know. So, for Cornel West, this is the kind of profit that we are talking about that is willing to take on any power that is furthering social injustice.
For West and for a lot of these civil rights leaders, some of the "evils" of capitalism is what needs to be fought because it helps maintain white supremacy. It certainly helps maintain gender inequality, income inequality, and so what I am saying about Kaepernick, uhm, for those who just say, "Well, he is protesting police brutality.:" He says that and he is. But by kneeling for the national anthem at an NFL game, that is de facto a prophetic movement as defined by Cornel West as one that is a big thumb in the eye of not only capitalism, I would argue, but also of militarism. Because the NFL of-- amongst all the American sports leagues, is the one that is most closely tied to the military. The NFL had a--had a contract with the Department of Defense for about eight or nine years, and the Department of Defense was paying the NFL to promote the good things going on with the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Fox--the Fox sports crew would go to Iraq or Afghanistan and visit the troops, and they would show that at halftime. Still to this day, uh, coaches and everyone on the sidelines and some players are required to wear, uh, for a couple of weeks, a couple of the games, some kind of camouflage way in which their logo is still there, but it is that which is certainly supporting the military. But there is a very tight connection between the two. For Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem, is prophetic in the way that Dr. West defines it by going not only up against police brutality but also against, in a sense, the main big powers that be--that help support white supremacy, which in turn helps maintain a level of police brutality against unarmed African-Americans.
Chris: Okay. Okay. Now, let us move to the African-American jeremiad. Tell us about that.
Jeff: Right. So, a jeremiad, generally speaking is a literature genre that, it--it refers to the Prophet Jeremiah who, lamented quite a bit about the state of the--of--of the Israelites, but there was always a hopeful ending. So, it drew on the past, what we were, what we are now, which is usually not good, hence, the lament in the jeremiad. But given those the past and the present, where we can go hopefully in the future. So that is kind of the stages of a jeremiad. The American jeremiad, I mean, they are being told all the time, with our supposed glorious past of the era of the founding fathers. You know, a nadir certainly has a say to the civil war, slavery, all kinds of--depends on who you are talking to I suppose. But in order to breakthrough and move into a better next chapter, we have to reckon with these things in the past.
The African-American jeremiad does not have quite the same feel or tone as the general American jeremiad because it has been bad, and it continues to be bad. Has it gotten better? Sure. But it continues to be bad. So, what exactly is the African-American jeremiad relying upon in order to project a better future. I--I--I write--Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of Between the World and Me, and his kind of feud with Cornel West because, and actually David Brooks, The New York Times writer as well who writes about jeremiads and uses Ta-Nehisi Coates and says, "Ta-Nehisi Coates is giving us a very bleak future." And West and other say, "Yeah, he is because that is all he has seen up to this point." So, the purpose of using American jeremiads along with West's notion of black prophetic fire is to locate Colin Kaepernick in his protest. By his protest and by a lack of words frankly, he is really--he is really gesturing without his mouth, but really with his body in a kind of, uhm, in the posture of kneeling during the national anthem. But he is signaling a version of kind of an African-American jeremiad, uhm, to point out and critique what is going on with the hope that it will get better without stating what that will look like. He just wants the Injustice to stop, right? And that is more of a cleaner version of an African-American jeremiad. If the injustice slows down or stops, it automatically gets better. The American jeremiad has these kinds of, you know, dreams of the future or whether the utopian or perhaps their racist space. In other words, no more brown people in our country. Some people have that kind of--and to a jeremiad sadly. Uhm, so, by combining the black prophetic fire and the American jeremiad, I am--I am trying to kind of argue that Colin Kaepernick is just one of these athletes that is--that is able to bring both of them together in a very profound way.
Chris: Okay. Do you think he thinks that?
Jeff: I do not know. [chuckles] I--I--I wonder--I--he knew exactly what he was doing when he was kneeling for a national anthem during an NFL game. If you think about it, the owners are looking, the fans are looking, the owners by the way are up one hundred percent white in the NFL. The league is seventy percent black, so there is a clear discrepancy there. And perhaps it reminds some people of plantation, which has been--is--has been compared to sometimes. And then the draft looks like slave trade at times as well. But it is a, you know, a thumb in the eye, to a vast majority of white fans, coaches, general managers, owners by kneeling for the national anthem. So he knew--he was--he knew it was a big move. Whether he connect all the dots, I do not know. But he does not have to, you know.
Chris: Right.
Jeff: Maybe if he reads my book, he will--he will--he will know what he is doing now, [chuckles].
Chris: Right, right. Jeff, I know that we have not touched on all the important points in your book and there are many. But maybe in the last two minutes, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book? Either in terms of important historical transformations you are charting, or in terms of helping us better understand our present moment.
Jeff: Well, the main thesis of the book that tries to tie these kinds of episodes together, whether it is Serena Williams. Jackie Robinson, the two chapters we talked about, Dabo Swinney, the coach of Clemson, is this notion of order and the--the ability for, in particular white Protestant Christianity, to apply order to areas of the society that they feel is chaotic or causing chaos. And black bodies have historically been sites where they perceive chaos to be. So my quite--my overall question is how does religion do this, in particular, in the sports world.
The domestication of Muhammad Ali. The Sanctification of Jackie Robinson. I have a chapter on Serena Williams in the tennis umpire, from the 2018 US Open final which many people remember. She lost a game for, you know, certainly losing her temper. But there was an ordering that needed to go on of another black body in Serena Williams. So, all the chapters have to do with the NFL attempting to order calling Kaepernick by blackballing him from the league, right?
Now that there is a financial hit and the George Floyd murder, I suppose woke up some executives in the NFL now, they are kind of apologizing. But it was four years ago, they did not say a word, right? And actually, certain owners forced their players to stand, like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, for the national anthem. If you think about it, what could be more orderly than forcing players to stand with their feet on the line and doing this correct rituals for the national anthem, right? Of seventy percent African-American players who may or may not believe in some of these American principles that they are being told they should believe by white America. So that is the overall theme of the book. How does, in particular white Protestant Christianity, support the ordering of perceived areas of chaos in the sports world in the United States, and race automatically comes in them?
Chris: Well, I think it is a timely book considering the reckoning with racism that the United States has undergone, once again, this time in, 2020. I think you touched on something important as you bring that into part of America that is so prominent, the sports world. So, so, thank you for your insight.
Jeff: Thank you for saying that.
Chris: We have been talking with Jeffrey Scholes, associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and author of "Christianity, Race, and Sport" to be published next year by Routledge Press. Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that the listeners have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, and will see its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Do not forget to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the signup tab. Thank you, Jeff, so much for being with us. It has been very enlightening and I hope you have enjoyed the time with us as well.
Jeff: I have. I have, Chris. Thank you so much.
Transcript: "Why Does Religion Play So Prominently in the Saga of American Oil?" Darren Dochuk
From Edwin Drake's 1859 discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, to our 21st-Century entanglements in the Middle East, oil's influence on America is vast. Religion's role in this American oil story is outsized and relatively unknown. Understanding it will help us more fully comprehend what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion which is understanding America itself. We trust that at the conclusion of this podcast, listeners will have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States and will see to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Today we have with us Darren Dochuk, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.
Mr. Dochuk's primary research interest is 20th Century United States with an emphasis on the intersections of religion, politics, and the rising influence of the American West and Sunbelt Southwest in National Life. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of many books including From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, God's Businessmen, Entrepreneurial Evangelicals, and Depression and War, and Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics. Professor Dochuk received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Darren, thank you for being with us today.
Darren: Chris, thanks for inviting me. This is a great pleasure to be chatting with you. Thank you very much.
Chris: Darren, can you tell us why you wrote this book?
Darren: Thanks, Chris. Yes, that's, a great question. This has been a labor of love. It took me several years to write this book, but I enjoyed every step along the way and in part, because it was personal. I-- as I say in my epilogue or in my acknowledgments, I grew up on an oil patch of North America. Now, it wasn't American, it was Canadian. It was Northern Alberta, Canada. But I always, I guess, sensed there was some kind of relationship between religion and oil. I grew up not just on an oil patch, but within a religious environment in which oil was seen as in some ways sanctified, a divine blessing. And so, not consciously necessarily, but when I came to write about oil and religion I started thinking back about my own background. And so this was a case in point where I thought that the personal, you know, came in conversation with the professional. So it had to do with that. Professionally, in terms of an academic and scholarly progression, I had written my first book as you mentioned on the rise of evangelical conservativism in southern California, which focused especially on migration from Texas and Oklahoma oil patches of America.
And in doing research for that book, it seemed like every corner I turn there was, you know, something to do with the church or church steeple and oil or an oil derrick and there was also, of course, numerous individuals who are part of that story who were you know, generating a lot of profit through the oil industry and supporting very important religious and political causes in Southern California leading ultimately to the rise of Ronald Reagan at the state level and then the national level. So it occurred to me, well, what, what-- if we put these two entities in conversation with one another, is there a story to tell here about religion and oil and again, thinking back of my own kind of upbringing in Alberta, intuitively, I thought there might be something here. And so that's what encouraged me to take on this project. As I said, it's a project that's been years in the making but I'm quite excited with how it evolved and with some of the conclusions that the book makes. And I hope, you know, of significance to where we are today trying to understand where we are today, in North America.
Chris: Well, I'm glad you wrote it. I think you hit on something super fascinating but also very important and we'll get to a lot of that here. So thank you for that. Darren, you write in the introduction to your book that the, "Dual authority of oil and religion rests at the heart of America's modern moment as well as the fulcrum for so much schism in modern American life." That is a very bold statement, can you elaborate a bit?
Darren: For sure. It is a bold statement. Now, it's not necessarily as bold if you consider, the history of oil in American lives and I will say that you know, this is a subfield onto itself. I mean, there is plenty written on the history of oil, in the United States and, you know, most authors, most historians, most scholars of oil in this country will not suggest but claim that this commodity, this material resource has been absolutely essential to American power in the modern era. And that story begins in the immediate post-Civil War period, very telling right there. A nation that has been fractured by war, is going to be brought together, of course, by the late 19th Century, is going to enjoy a rapid economic rise on a global scale. Oil, the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, the control of that production, of that commodity on an international scale is going to be absolutely essential to the United States’ rise as an empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.
So going, you know, moving that through the 20th century, you know, we have historians, we have pundits in the 1940s who proclaimed the 20th Century Americans, the American Century, this was a century of American global hegemony. Much of that is because of its control of this resource on a global scale. So that's one half of the equation. But as a religious historian, someone who has been trained in, kind of, tracking religious and political changes since the Civil War, religion needed to be part of this story. Think about John D. Rockefeller. Think about the Rockefeller family in the extent to which this one oil family has shaped American Protestantism in such profound ways, but there are so many other family stories of that sort. Deriving from the history of oil, the production of oil from that kind of shaping the course of American Christianity, especially in the modern era.
So my decision-- my hunch was that there's more to say about, the authority of oil in American life and it had to do with a second-- a twin pillar if you will of American authority in hegemony, and that was religion, especially as I focus in the book on Christianity in the way in which Christianity was shaped, fueled, and found its kind of resources for expansion on a global scale through the commodity of oil. So that's why I say that if we want to understand why America developed in its post-civil war period of authority, of hegemony on a global scale, we need to bring these two entities - the church and crude into conversation with one another.
Chris: Well, it's brilliant that you did that. It's a very compelling story. So let's get into some of the details of what you write. You begin, Darren, with the story of Patillo Higgins in Texas though 40 years after the discovery of oil and you go back to that in Pennsylvania, why did you start with this particular story?
Darren: Well, perhaps, first and foremost, as an author you're looking for good stories to tell. As a historian, I, you know, my goal is to reach a broader audience to try to draw in a wider audience, certainly to say something substantive and substantial about American history that historians in the academy will be drawn to and will learn from but also to instruct and entertain a broader audience. And Patillo Higgins is just one of those characters that just kind of draws you in and, you know, in some ways by using his biography as an entry into the book, it was paying homage to someone I came across early in my research. In fact, Higgins has, there was an oral interview, a transcript of his oral interview at the University of Texas archives, and I was actually finishing research for my first book From Bible Belt to Sunbelt and decided to take a pause and just kind of read through his oral interview. And, you know, it's at that point where I really got excited about writing this second book on oil and religion.
So, you know, it was about my own encounter with this individual. Now, as I started reading and researching more heavily into the history of oil, I realized just what an illustrative character Patillo Higgins was. This is someone, kind of a plain-- plain folk, you know, individual from Southeastern Texas in the late 19th century who was just kind of looking for a way to make a living. He became obsessed with oil. He also converted to evangelical Christianity in the late 19th century. This is someone who came out of a pretty rough background and kind of organically saw oil and the potential for its discovery in Texas as a way for him to make not just his own life, and his own, kind of, professional vocation kind of flourish but to make his own community flourish as well.
So there is a sense in which Higgins represented this kind of utopian passion for oil, and see this material resource as a way to make life better for himself and for his community. And, you know, despite the odds against him, he promised that oil could be discovered in and around Beaumont, Texas, on the Gulf Coast of Texas and in the early 19th century the early 20th century 1901, January, he, in fact, proved that to be the case. Oil was discovered there. So, in Higgins, I see, so many of these, kind of, forces coming together, at an individual level, oil representing not just something about economics, something about financial gain, but something about reimagining one's community and its future and ultimately reimagining America's future, going forward in the 20th century and Higgins is someone who was very passionate in his devotion to that cause and to that vision.
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Let's go to Pennsylvania with the discovery of oil. And the way you tell it, Darren, religion seemed to be bound up in the discovery of oil and its potential uses for humankind. The oil town antebellum Reverend SJ Eaton of Franklin, Pennsylvania said this, "In this day of sore trial, not only blood but treasure was to be poured out like water in the nation's cause and in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Who can doubt but that in the wise operations of God's providence, the immense oil resources of the country have been developed at this particular time to aid in the solution of the mighty problem of this nation's destiny." Can you elaborate, Darren, on what this preacher's words represent?
Darren: Well, I think Reverend Eaton's words strike - no pun intended, but at the-- the kind of crucial importance of oil to an emerging nation, post-Civil War and it does so on two levels. First of all, Reverend Eaton again is someone who is based in Western Pennsylvania. This is where the first oil strike took place in the early 1860s and for the first 30 years of American petroleum progress and development and production. Western Pennsylvania would very much be the-- the epicenter of this operation. And so he spoke from a regional bias in many ways. He saw oil as coming to Western Pennsylvania. This is in the middle of Appalachia. This is a poor place. This was seen as providential to him, a reward to the faithful in Western Pennsylvania, those tucked away in the mountains, here because of their observance of Orthodox Christianity, and his case Presbyterianism, the people of this place for rewarded with the blessings of oil. And so this is where the providential nature of oil kind of fold it into a regional identity for him.
But more importantly, and this is a point I made earlier, you know, oil is discovered in this region in the Civil War period. I mean, this is a moment of great fissure and-- and devastation. A nation rent asunder by war and it's at that very moment that oil appears on the stage and initially, it's going to help, economically, but also politically. The North wins this struggle against the South. But going forward and most importantly as per-- as Reverend Eaton saw it, oil and its power as an economic and cultural and political force would be able to bind the nation together and allow the nation to reimagine itself as, you know, as a society on the rise. Something to respect and to celebrate as America moved forward not just domestically but again on an international scale. This was a resource that was a divine blessing as far as Reverend Eaten saw it.
Now, again, we can see this going, you know, taking place elsewhere at this very time. Britain, for instance, saw coal as its own kind of divinely blessed resource. This was its divine sanction in terms of its own imperial progress. But oil I think would be uniquely American from the very beginning and it would be seen as evidence that God had bestowed favor on this nation as it tried to rebuild and assert itself on a global stage.
Chris: You also write in your book that, you know, other resources such as coal and timber where oil was set apart from those because you didn't see it. You had to sort of summon it up from the bowels of the earth and just because of that, it adopted some religious flavors that perhaps coal and timber wouldn't or didn't, can you speak to that just briefly? What influence that sort of--
Darren: Right. I think you know, again, as much as other natural resources sparked this kind of religious fervor and this sense of divine destiny progress, oil was unique, and for the reasons you state, oil was under the ground. It had to be summoned. It had to be discovered. How to do so, really was especially in the first few generations of oil exploration, quite difficult to anticipate. The science of petroleum geology was going to be slow to develop and so, by the very fact that it was subterranean made boil a resource that had a certain mystery about it, had a certain supernatural quality about it.
And so for, you know, for the first few generations of oil exploration and it's going to welcome those kinds of wildcatters who are going to do whatever it takes to summon oil to the earth, to the-- to the surface, for many of them that's going to be about prayer, for many it's going to be about utilizing any type of device, spiritualists devices, divining rods, anything that can in their estimation allow them to locate where oil is and then to draw it to the surface. And so unlike timber, unlike coal, all visual there is, you know, a predictability about those natural resources both when they are discovered and when they are going to go away. Oil always elicited this kind of mysterious encounter and it's something as a result, as I say in the book, that made it from the very beginning at a very personal local level, kind of a spiritual endeavor, a spiritual encounter.
Chris: Okay. Well, let's move forward here a little bit. You write that in standardizing the early oil industry, John D. Rockefeller said, "Our efforts were most heroic, well-meant and I would almost say reverently Godlike. Faith and work were the rocks upon which Standard
Oil, [Rockefeller's company] was built." Darren, tell us briefly about the Baptist Rockefeller who married a Congregationalist and the influence of his and her religion on his business approach to the oil industry, which is-- it figures prominently in the book.
Darren: Yeah, it certainly does, and rightly so. And, you know, I did not set out necessarily to write a book about the Rockefellers, but it's impossible to write a book about oil and religion without the Rockefellers and John D. Rockefeller Senior was really part of a second wave of industrialists who moved into Western Pennsylvania. In his case coming from Cleveland in the late 1860s, early-1870s, post-war. He recognized fully just how important this new industry, this new material, this new commodity was going to be to American economic growth in subsequent decades. What despaired him-- what he feared, however, was just the just kind of how radical and decentralized the oil industry was at this point and, certainly, there's reasons we can, you know, go into in some depth, but for our purposes here, in the first 10, 15 years of the oil industry in Western Pennsylvania, it really was a laissez-faire, free for all because of American property rights, because of the legitimation of kind of individual entrepreneurialism. The quest to pursue oil, to find it, to drill it really led to kind of a really chaotic industry.
John D Rockefeller despaired at that and he said, you know, in his mind, it was important that some kind of order was imposed on this industry at that early stage. And that came in many ways out of his own kind of religious belief system. A very devout Baptist, this is someone who of course was a devout Christian. He also saw the workings of the Divine in very clear terms and in his estimation, the workings of the Divine meant bringing some sense of stability, common sense, and morality to this chaotic oil industry in Western Pennsylvania. And so this is why he devoted himself not just a building up a very powerful oil empire, but to consolidating, to bringing together the oil industry and in his mind doing so out of a sense of commitment to an orderly Protestant establishment in American society. Religion and capitalism fold together in one world view and he seeks to impose that on his particular industry of choice and that is oil.
Chris: Okay. And as we see in the book he brought in other organizations and people in the oil industry, that sort of joined him, right? But some resented what he was doing and did not join Standard Oil and so now we're going to move west from Pennsylvania to California in the 1890s where you write, "A major amplifier of oil’s allure in the West was the religious orientation of spiritualism." Darren, can you share with us what oilers moved there and why they moved, and what happened there regarding the story of religion and oil?
Darren: Well, you know, the story of the Rockefellers is one of consolidating and bringing together - monopolizing. And again, this is a familiar story to anyone who knows American history. The late, you know, the second half of the 19th century is-- in Western Pennsylvania are very much about the Rockefellers, imposing their control over the oil industry so-- so much so that by the 1890s, the Rockefellers, through their company Standard Oil is in control of some upwards of 90% of all refining capacities in the world. So this is a dominant oil monopoly, Standard run by John D Rockefeller and then ultimately, his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. You know, from one side of it, you can see Rockefeller trying to bring again, some sense of godly order as he saw it to this chaotic environment. But in doing so, what he's actually doing is stamping out the potential, vocational, professional potential of thousands of smaller oil producers who are in the region as well and because of American law and the “rule of capture”, which says they have access to any underground pool of oil, they too are pursuing this-- this resource with an effort to, you know, generate profits and to make it rich and to help their own communities, to help their own churches.
When Rockefeller comes to Western Pennsylvania and through the 1870s and 1880s, he basically wipes out thousands of small producers and forces them out of that region. Where are they going to go? Well, by the 1880s, 1890s they're looking west of the Mississippi River and, you know, many of those who are working with Rockefeller scoff at the suggestion that there could be oil west of the Mississippi. In fact, one of Rockefeller's chief executives, at one point in the 1890s jokes that he'll drink every gallon of oil west of the Mississippi. This is how certain he is that it doesn't actually exist out there. Well, he's going to be proven wrong, of course, and it's these small producers, these wildcat oilmen, as I say, those who are willing to take risks, those who are more independent, those who are fiercely individualistic in their worldview who absolutely abhor the monopoly that Standard and Rockefeller are creating, those are the ones who are going to move west of the Mississippi and first in California in the 1890s and then in Texas and Oklahoma are going to strike oil in that region and prove that the Southwest is actually the new epicenter of oil exploration.
So that is going to make, oil, kind of, remap oil in American life. It's going to shift it to the west and with that is going to come to a pronounced political and religious shift as well in the makeup of 20th century America and again, happy to elaborate on that through illustration.
Chris: I think we'll get to some of that here in some more questions. Let's see. I want to talk about Rockefeller's opposite, Lyman Stewart. Darren, opposite Rockefeller in the oil industry was Lyman Stewart, a presbyterian whose strong beliefs in sin, sacrifice, and punishment informed his approach to oil. You write, "Whereas Rockefeller rationalized, industrialized capitalism, [as you've explained], Stewart re-enchanted it." Can you help us understand the ramifications of what Stewart believed and did in the oil industry?
Darren: Well, Lyman Stewart was very much the opposite of Rockefeller and he positioned himself very deliberately in that way. This is someone who was very representative of the small oil producers in Western, Pennsylvania who felt threatened by Rockefeller in the 1870s. Lyman Stewart grew up in Western Pennsylvania, developed Presbyterian, and when oil was discovered just miles away from his home, he was one of the first on the scene to take advantage of this and-- and he did do quite well in the oil industry in the 1860s, 1870s. This is also someone who was a Civil War veteran who came back from the war and like so many wanted to remake himself and reimagine his future and that future of his community and of his church.
And, in fact, when he was discovering oil, he was relying heavily on the investment of his fellow congregants at his local church. So this was all again very much wrapped up - religion, oil, and his economic growth. Rockefeller comes along and basically stamps out his future and so he is going to look elsewhere. He is going to move to California where he is going to become a co-founder of the Union oil company, which will be the-- one of the if not the most successful independent oil companies in California, “Union 76” again, perhaps familiar to us. That's the legacy of Lyman Stewart.
Now, theologically, why is this important to the - in terms of his ecclesiology the way in which he's going to affect the life of the American evangelical church. Stewart is by nature very independent. He is fiercely individualistic in his approach to scripture, to God. This is an Evangelical, who says that "All rests on my own personal relationship with Christ. I need to accept Christ as my savior. I need to encounter and engage scripture on my terms and I need to bear witness to the world as someone who has been redeemed by Christ." And that mirrors really his own work in the oil industry. This is someone who's fiercely individualistic and this is what comes up against in both the church and in the oil industry up against this more kind of collaborative, collectivist view that the Rockefellers hold.
Stewart, then, is going to go to California. He's going to hit it rich and he's going to decide to build, kind of, an oil empire but also a more philanthropic religious empire that he sees as oppositional to the Rockefellers. He's going to fund missionaries in China and Latin America. He's going to build and fund a large tabernacle in Los Angeles. He's going to fund a bible school in Los Angeles. All in his estimation as a way to-- to roll back the liberal, progressive, monopolistic, and in his case, in his eyes, secular progressions that the Rockefeller family and their oil money seem to be encouraging in the late 19th, early 20th century. So from the West coast, looking East, Stewart is determined to use his oil profits to shore up what he sees as the fundamentals of the Protestant faith.
Chris: And what he built in California that you mentioned, was in opposition to the Rockefeller's University of Chicago, correct?
Darren: Very much. He grows-- Lyman Stewart, always anti-Rockefeller to the core. He thinks Rockefeller and Rockefeller-money is corrupting the church by making it more liberal, by centralizing it, and so as I said, he is going to look for any opportunity to build institutions that will fortify what he sees as the essentials of his deeply personal Evangelical faith, and that will include, again, a tabernacle - the Church of the Open Door, and it's also going to include the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which he sees as, and aspires to be, kind of the counter to the University of Chicago, which John D. Rockefeller Sr. funds at its creation in the late 19th, early 20th century. And again, this is also going to include missionary work abroad. We're going to see in the early 20th century, Lyman Stewart funding more conservative missionaries, for instance, in China and they are going to go toe-to-toe really in a theological and political battle with those more liberal missionaries funded in China by the Rockefellers and Standard Oil. So this is a battle that is local, it's national, and ultimately by the 19th, global as well.
Chris: Before we move, Darren, from-- by the way, thank you for all of that. Before we move from California to Texas, can you tell us a little bit about the spiritualism in California where “Oil” landed first there? That was a fascinating story and religion is wrapped up there a little bit. Can you briefly tell us that story? It's a fascinating one, I think.
Darren: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. No, I agree. I-- you know, I was quite intrigued I-- you know, moving into the research for this book. I was and this is perhaps a bit of a side note, but my first inclination was to follow the money and to tell the story of powerful oilmen like Lyman Stewart and John D. Rockefeller who were devoutly Christian. As I got into the research though, I became much more intrigued with both at the national level, what oil meant to the nation as a whole in the way in which it envisioned itself in kind of exceptional terms in the modern era. But then, ultimately, at the local level too, how oil would animate individuals and local communities and as they try to and--or aspired to-- to create kind of their own utopia on a very grassroots local level. And, certainly, out west in the late 19th, early 20th century, the pursuit of oil generated those types of ambitions and aspirations. And it's no accident, I think, that spiritualism, you know, this-- this broad kind of movement of spiritualist worship in the 1890s and 1900s, early 1900s, was very much entrenched already in western landscapes.
San Francisco was an epicenter of the spiritualism of the late 19th century, this movement that grew up in the second half of the 19th century. But as we move also into more remote locations, for instance, in the coal mines of Colorado of the Mountain West, many of those miners in their own right had kind of spiritualist beliefs. Again, the notion that they in their own work and labor had direct kind of contact with spiritualist forces, those forces that put them in direct communication with another realm of being. This is something that came from coal mines, for instance, in Wales in England. This is something that was practiced there. So, spiritualism, again in more general terms, was already implanted, very much popular in the Mountain West. And when oil is discovered and becomes a hot commodity, it's no wonder that the pursuit of this material resource, in turn, takes on its own kind of sense of spiritualist-- spiritual questing after a brighter future, something that is mysterious something that is of another realm, of being, and understanding.
Chris: Yeah, right.
Darren: Does that help? I was kind of rambling there a bit.
Chris: That does. That does. And I-- I think I'm accurate in saying that spiritualism got quite a bit of a boost after the Civil War because so many families were interested in trying to get in touch with their-- their, you know, sons who died in that war. So that's, I think, I'm correct. Is that-- is that right?