KKK Books and the Direction of History

Randall Stephens

Over at the New York Times, Kevin Boyle reviews two books on the Klan. Fellow blogmeister Kelly Baker's Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 is one of them along with Thomas R. Pegram's One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

The authors take different tacks. "While Pegram builds his book up from the experiences of ordinary Klansmen," writes Boyle, Baker "builds out from the Klan’s official declarations of religious devotion drawn from K.K.K. newspapers and magazines." What did the Klan's rise and fall mean? Was it an anomaly of the era or did it represent something darker, more continuous with America's past?

"Yes, the Klan had a very short life," says Boyle. He goes on:

But it has to be understood, [Baker] contends, as of a piece with other moments of fevered religious nationalism, from the anti-Catholic riots of the antebellum era to modern anti-­Islam bigots. Indeed, earlier this year, Herman Cain declared that he wouldn’t be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. It’s tempting to see those moments as Pegram does the Klan: desperate, even pitiful attempts to stop the inevitable broadening of American society. But Baker seems closer to the mark when she says that there’s a dark strain of bigotry and exclusion running through the national experience. Sometimes it seems to weaken.

These books and Boyle's review bring up some weighty issues within American historiography.

How do historians and religious studies scholars generally see these episodes within the context of the arc of American history? Whig historians, of one variety or another, view them as bumps or potholes on the road to freedom and greater equality. Prigs look at them as something more, throwing the whole idea of progress up into the air. (Of course there are all sorts of opinions on the spectrum, shading from one end to the other. Historians need not even be aware of their own views on the subject. See Christopher Shannon's critique of the profession, which we published in Historically Speaking some months ago.)

Take Slavery. How does it fit into the narrative of US history? In 1980 historian John David Smith wrote in the Journal of Negro History that "The importance of slavery in the racial thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been vastly understated by scholars. Yet slavery held an unusual attraction for historians, popular writers, editors, and polemicists in these years." His piece marked a trend in the field. Slavery, historians now wrote, should be taken seriously as integral to the economy and to life in the 19th century. The PBS series Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery spelled out this theme for a wider audience and included talking head historians like Eric Foner, James Horton, and Nell Irvan Painter. Says Foner, "Slavery was an immense political power in the country, as well as an economic power. The three-fifths clause of the Constitution gave the slave South far greater representation in Congress, and a far larger number of electoral votes, than their white population really would have been entitled to. So the South really had an iron grip on the federal government, down to the middle of the 19th century."*

Other historians have been grappling with the issue of religious freedom/intolerance in ways that parallel Baker's approach. How does one chart the story of religious pluralism and religious bigotry? On this matter David Sehat sees a bleak side to America's past. "What if U.S. religious history was not a history of progressive and unfolding freedom?" he asks in his The Myth of American Religious Freedom. "What if, instead, it was a history of religious conflict? And what if that conflict involved extended periods of religious coercion and the continual attempt to maintain religious power and control?"

On the 19th century Protestant establishment an essay by Ronald P. Formisano and Stephen Pickering sheds some light (or, I guess I should say darkness?): “The Christian Nation Debate and Witness Competency,” in the Journal of the Early Republic. Most importantly, they note:

Historians have examined closely the Founders’ intentions regarding the First Amendment’s religious establishment clause as well as the influence of Protestant Christianity in the public life of the early republic. The new national government, and particularly several states, often breached Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state. . . . In courtrooms across the country, well into the nineteenth century, judges allowed witnesses to be questioned regarding their religious beliefs, with some requiring belief in the “future state” doctrine of divine rewards and punishments before permitting them to testify.

Of course, one generation's dark moments are another's beacons of truth. From where we stand in 2011, we judge and think about the past in ways that are profoundly different from the perspective of historians and religious studies scholars half a century ago. (Think Mircea Eliade.)

If we pull back and gauge the whole, what is American history in general or American religious history in particular about? Do either have a direction or a larger point? What if--as Paul Harvey asked in his review of the PBS documentary God in America--"American religious history [is] about coercion and authority? . . . [W]hat if we make coercion, establishment, and repression as central to our narrative as freedom, disestablishment, and expression? What if this is a show in which Americans’ self-understanding as derived from Exodus is more critically examined than celebrated?"

Another Blog of Interest: History of Christianity from the ASCH

Michael J. Altman

While we are all aflutter over this weekends' American Academy of Religion, I would ask us to take a moment and turn our attention to another scholarly society--the American Society of Church History. Earlier this month the ASCH launched its very own blog that is open to contributions from any of its members (ahem, AAR are you listening?) So far there has been some quite interesting content covering Christian history in America. Yesterday's post from W. Clark Gilpin, "Wanted: A New Chronology of American Religious History," especially caught my attention.

Gilpin points out that one of the central tasks of the historian is to track change over time and this requires some sort of chronology. How one builds that chronology, though, will depend on what one sees as the engine driving change.

In no small measure, decisions about periodization depend on the issues that a given author or group of authors have identified as the principal engines of change. Historians who link American religious history to immigration are likely to produce a different chronology from historians focused on the intersection of religion and politics, or the history of religiously motivated movements of social reform. And yet, a moment’s reflection will also suggest that these three sets of concerns display interesting chronological convergences, for example, with changes in U.S. immigration law and movements for civil rights during the 1960s.

The entire post is worth a read, but this point was especially interesting to me. As we think about the narratives we tell about religion in America, what are the engines driving our chronologies? What do they allow us to see? Where do they give us blindspots? For my current work I'd have to say "religious difference" drives the narrative. Gilpin names immigration, politics, and reform. Lately on the blog we've been talking a lot about the market. Are there other engines we've yet to put to use? Where could they take us?

American History Now, American Religious History Now

by Carol Faulkner

I first read The New American History (originally published in 1990) in graduate school. Its early 21^st century counterpart, American History Now, edited by Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr, is now available from Temple University Press, and perfect for a new generation of graduate students studying for exams. The essays survey the state of the field, emphasizing new historiographic trends across and within chronological periods. In this edition, included among the “Major Themes,” is John T. McGreevy’s essay on “American Religion.”

McGreevy explains the impetus behind this inclusion of American religion with an amazing fact: “more historians now identify themselves as historians of religion than as social historians, cultural historians, or even political historians.” And kudos to our blogmeisters for this site, which, McGreevy observes, “steer[s] the scholarly conversation.” (And, somewhat surprisingly, this may be the only reference to a blog or other internet resource in the entire book).

But McGreevy notes something unusual about American religious history: “The term ‘field’ may be a misnomer. Fields mean coverage, certainly, but at a practical level fields are defined by arguments as much as by the day-to-day trudge of the survey course. And in American religious history courses, and the scholarly literature upon which they rest, arguments are elusive.”

I have been thinking about those lines since I read them. Do others agree? If so, what does this tell us about the study of American religion? Despite its newfound popularity, even centrality, to American history, is it underdeveloped or undertheorized?

McGreevy acknowledges different methodological approaches, dividing those focused on “lived religion” and those attempting to integrate religion into “the main narratives of American history.” But, as McGreevey writes, the “field’s organizing principle is diversity,” the dynamic and vast “marketplace” of religions.

This edition includes a cheering essay for women’s and gender historians. In her article on the field, Rebecca Edwards states that “The real triumph of women’s history, then, can be found elsewhere in this volume: almost every author, whether writing on a specific period or a major themes in American history, incorporates findings in women’s and gender history.” McGreevey’s essay is a good example, mentioning scholarship by Kathleen Cummings, Ann Braude, Catherine Brekus, Victoria Brown, Anthea Butler, Maureen Fitzgerald, Marie Griffith, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Amy Koehlinger.

And, for graduate students searching for a dissertation topic, McGreevy notes that “surprisingly little scholarship has appeared” on “religion and sexuality,” though he praises two studies, Leslie Tentler’s Catholics and Contraception and Cynthia Gorney’s Articles of Faith.

What do you think of McGreevy’s essay on the “field”?

Religion Enters the Academy, Looks for Emergency Exit

Paul Harvey

And I don't know if I can do it,
Oh no, I've said too much, I haven't said enough.
REM, "Losing My Religion"

"Jason Kidd is . . . savant-like."
Rick Carlisle, Coach, Dallas Mavericks, on ESPN

My previously promised post reflecting further on one particular session of the 2^nd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture isn’t going to happen today (tonight) as planned. Besides, Curtis Evans’s comment on yesterday’s post concisely summarized most of what I was going to say anyway.

But briefly, the discussion at the conference about interpreting supernatural events/experiences/”abundant events”/whatever you want to call them brought my mind to one of the classics of the field, William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. And that was coincidental, because on the plane to the conference I just read a slender and very entertaining new volume by James Turner, Religion Enters the Academy: The Origins of the Scholarly Study of Religion in America. And let me say, next time you have a 2 or 3 hour plane ride to a conference, bring along this volume. It’s substantive and meaty enough to make you feel like you’ve earned a scholarly pat on the back, but it’s also funny and entertaining enough to distract you from the 3 year old in the seat behind you screaming his/her brains out and kicking the back of your chair for the entirety of the route from, oh, say, Denver to Indianapolis. Just saying.

This work is the published form of some recent lectures Turner gave at Stetson University in 2010. Unlike my experience with the Lamar lectures, which I gave in 2008 and then spent the next 2 1/2 years piddling around with, Turner was prompt in turning in his manuscript and getting it right out there for publication.

I’m going to take the lazy way out and plagiarize from the book’s website to give you a brief summary, one which captures the argument if not the dry wit and entertaining prose of the book:

Religious studies—also known as comparative religion or history of religions—emerged as a field of study in colleges and universities on both sides of the Atlantic during the late nineteenth century. In Europe, as previous historians have demonstrated, the discipline grew from long established traditions of university-based philological scholarship. But in the United States, James Turner argues, religious studies developed outside the academy.

Until about 1820, Turner contends, even learned Americans showed little interest in non-European religions—a subject that had fascinated their counterparts in Europe since the end of the seventeenth century. Growing concerns about the status of Christianity generated American interest in comparing it to other great religions, and the resulting writings eventually produced the academic discipline of religious studies in U.S. universities. Fostered especially by learned Protestant ministers, this new discipline focused on canonical texts—the “bibles”—of other great world religions. This rather narrow approach provoked the philosopher and psychologist William James to challenge academic religious studies in 1902 with his celebrated and groundbreaking Varieties of Religious Experience.

Turner concludes by writing, “Long recognized as a classic, Varieties now became something of a model. To be sure, the great majority of scholars of religion today study religions in ways far different from James, but many religious-studies experts do follow a Jamesian path to understanding religious experience.” He then goes on to cite a number of works, including Ann Taves’s Fits, Trances, and Visions, as examples of how James “stretched the map of religious studies in America" -- all the way from Boston to the experiments of the 60s to the pluralistic vocabulary of describing brilliantly "in the zone" point guards as savant-like -- an instance of neither saying too much, or not saying enough.

Then, late last week, I was talking to an academic editor for Bedford Books, and we were discussing some of the volumes in the wonderfully classroom-usable Bedford Series in History and Culture. I asked him what else was forthcoming in that series, and guess what he told me: Robert Abzug of the University of Texas is putting out a Bedford edition of a trimmed-down, annotated, sizable excerpt of Varieties of Religious Experience.

Will wonders never cease? This particular editor was a little skeptical of the project, but one of the series editors, the historian David Blight, apparently told one of the Bedford people that James's book had "changed my life,” and for that and other reasons the founder and head of Bedford Books became a major champion of the volume. So, apparently it is on the way.

True confession: I first read James in college, hated it, and gave up about halfway through. Of course, at that age my tastes in a number of things (excruciatingly rancid 3.2 beer, Herman Hesse, Quadrophenia, and those blobs of nothing that passed for "tofu" in the 1970s/early 80s) were very questionable, so it’s no wonder it took me some time and mentoring to understand James and some other classics of that sort. If the Bedford series volume succeeds, it will be the kind of introduction to the text that I didn’t have but needed. Here’s hoping.

In his discussion with Richard Bushman, which Chris Jones wrote about on our blog here, Robert Orsi discusses how we need a new language to interpret religious experience in a way that is neither overtly confessional or crudely reductionist. Bushman suggests that James provides one model, to which Orsi replies that that’s still too individualist (read: Protestant) a model, a point he elaborated on at the conference by noting how the understood subject of religious studies is the “autonomous subject.” Reading Turner’s history of the discipline, it’s easy to see how this became the case, and given the obstacles to its development (cultural, intellectual, political, etc.), it’s a wonder that “comparative religion” ever developed as a discipline in America at all. But it did, and now it's everywhere, in everyday vocabulary, hence Rick Carlisle's brilliantly offhanded description of Jason Kidd's mastery over the psychology of his team, and his mastery over the more talented Heat.

More on this as the week progresses, I hope, but as someone who has spent some time studying folks whose "abundant events" are less than politically neutral or benign, it makes me wonder how Orsi's attractive theories and wonderful discussion with Bushman affect work on religious intolerance and violence in America. Just a quick example comes to mind: sitting in the Southern Historical Collection archives in Chapel Hill years ago, I came across the letters of a white southern Spiritualist, who was writing correspondence to her deceased son in the way that nineteenth-century Spiritualists did.

The Spiritualists in Ann Braude's classic book Radical Spirits are, in a sense, easy to root for: they are women finding their voices, arguing for abolitionism and women's rights during their trances, and so forth. But this particular woman (who initially interested me because Spiritualism was almost totally a Northern thing in the antebellum era, so I was trying to figure out how it made its way South) was writing about a son who was involved in the massively repressive violence that was overturning Reconstruction in Mississippi -- specifically, her son, whom she now saw addressing her from the interplanetary realms in her own rationally inexplicable but emotionally/spiritually powerful event, was a white Redemptionist who was killed trying to deny the vote to black men in Clinton, Mississippi, in 1875, one of the "autumnal outbreaks" that President Grant famously grew weary of as the experiment of Reconstruction ran its course and the fateful federal compromise with southern white supremacy took hold.

This woman's experience clearly was real and powerful "to her," and I don't mean "to her, and she was crazy." I'm no Spiritualist, for sure, but can recognize culturally sanctioned forms of mourning as part of religious experience. But her experience was of hearing the voice of her deceased son who also happened to be a violent white supremacist.

I don't know what to make of all of it, but the fascinating discussion at the first session of the conference and continued online elsewhere just made me recall that reaction to that particular document in the archives.

Women, Vatican II, and the Remaking of American Catholicism

I'm very happy today to post this guest contribution from Julie Ingersoll, well known for her contributions to Religion Dispatches, where lately she's been following the doings of Christian Reconstructionists and Tea Party Patriots (and the connection between the two). Julie is the author of Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles, and is currently writing a book on Christian Reconstructionism.

But today's post is about something very different. Below, Julie gives some thoughts on Colleen McDannell's new book The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America. Colleen will be well known to many blog readers here for previous works such as Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, and Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression. Colleen's new book is both an academic as well as a very personal reflection on the role of Vatican II in the lives of American Catholics. Also, for some other reflections on the book (and interviews with the author), see here, here, and (from the Salt Lake Tribune paper) here. A bit down the road on the blog, our contributor Kathleen Sprows Cummings will give us her thoughts on the book as well, but for now, thanks to Julie for these reflections.
_______________________________________________________

Women, Vatican II and the remaking of American Catholicism

by Julie Ingersoll

“Where are the people?”

That’s the question historian Colleen McDannell always asks. In her new book, The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America, (Basic Books, 2011) she gives us a distinctly new view of those reforms to America’s largest denomination. Part institutional history, part social history, part family memoir—and in places strikingly funny-- McDannell’s story has a very special person at its center: her mom, Margaret.

Instead of a traditional “church history” that explores the history of doctrine and the conflicts and negotiations among church leaders --all of them male—McDannell traces the impact of Vatican II on the people in the pews. This shift in focus gives us a glimpse into the religious lives of laypeople, especially women.

McDannell begins with the daily life of Catholics under Vatican I with Margaret’s immigrant grandmother who came to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Margaret herself grew up during the rise of the parochial school system intended to keep Catholic children separated from Protestantism. The practice of Catholicism was formal and stiff; ordained men were in charge and laypeople rarely questioned them. The Mass was said on behalf of the people, in Latin, by a priest with his back to the congregation.

Women’s roles were so limited they were even prohibited from participation in the choir that sang during mass. Of course, no women were part of the Vatican Council’s deliberations (toward the end some women were permitted to listen). McDannell writes:

None of the reporters who covered the opening of the Council noted the irony of the crowd of over two thousand men dressed in lace and silk solemnly striding into St. Peter’s on the feast day of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary without being accompanied by a single woman.

Vatican II brought an emphasis on lay leadership; the priest now faces the congregation; the Mass, in the US, is said in English. Women serve as lay leaders and the roles permitted to lay leaders, whether male or female, are greatly expanded. Traditional hymns are now often replaced with contemporary music and church architecture represents these changes materially.

With this shift in authority toward laypeople, Vatican II empowered women and created in them a sense of the significance of their own voices in terms of parish life, religious practice, and even political issues. While remaining conservative, Margaret’s views on issues like the anti war movement and the civil rights movement were tempered by her church life. Catholics came to see themselves, as McDannell describes them, as “deciding people” even on official church positions on issues such as birth control:

“As father Bill was finishing up Mass with a list of announcements, he looked out at his uncomfortable flock. “Well…regarding…and then came a pause and a big smile; “Big Daddy says no!”

Nancy (one of McDannells’ interviewees) never forgot the moment. “The place roared and everyone clapped and laughed,” she reported. Pope John Paul VI had just announced that artificial birth control would remain off limits. “that was the sign of the times,” Nancy observed, that so few at St. Jude’s took the pontiff’s conclusion seriously that day.”

This is a great book on the impact of Vatican II in the daily lives of American Catholics’ as well as changes in the Catholic influence on American culture and politics (there’s so much more than what I can include here).

McDannell also raises important questions about what counts as “religion.” We often privilege the ideas of leaders without even realizing that those make up the religion of only a few. And religious leaders are all too happy for us to consider them the sole authorities on what counts in their traditions. But, in de-centering religion to examine the cultures, practices and material dimensions, McDannell gives a much more complete picture—a picture that includes real life Catholicism.

After the Historical Revolutions: Or, When the Tree Falls in the Historical Paradigm Forest, Does Anyone Listen?

Paul Harvey

A review of (and an announcement of) some challenging new works in earlier American History, and the history of the American West, got me to thinking about the changing of the historical paradigm guard -- or whether those guards get changed at all by scholarly revolutions. These are questions which affect the course of American religious history, but bear with me for a short detour before discussing that further.

These thoughts first came from reading Charles Mann’s review of Daniel K. Richhter’s new book Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Past (Harvard Press) in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (yes, Virginia, I do read the Wall Street Journal! But I'm not sure if the link will let in non-subscribers; if it doesn't and you want to read, I'm happy to send it to you).

I know nothing about this book other than this review, but I am a big fan of Richter’s earlier work Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America, a favorite of mine to use in class for its wonderful illustrations of how changing one’s angle of vision creates an entirely different historical sense of a period. Richter also engages in some deft analyses of early American documents of religious history from the European-Native encounter, including John Eliot’s bizarre but fascinating Indian Dialogues, of course the Jesuit Relations, Indian conversion narratives, and various ceremonial encounters at treaty negotiations.

In his review of Richter’s new book, Mann writes:

“Every few decades, historians develop a new way of looking at the past. I am not talking about ‘revisionism’ but unifying conceptual schemes, the sort of mental framework that Frderick Jackson Turner created in his argument for the importance of the frontier to our history or that Bernard Bailyn established in his studies of the American Revolution’s ideological orgins. Historians debated Turner for a long time and continue to debate Mr. Bailyn. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were arguing with Mr. Richter a decade from today.”

When I become King of the World I will permanently ban the word "revisionism" and its variant "historical revisionism" (as I have already banned the words "bias" and "politically correct" in my classrooms, since they have become barriers to thought and discussion), since they have been rendered meaningless for precisely the reason Mann explains there.

But the revolution in understanding is not just in the early America of Richter. My longtime friend Anne Hyde, Professor of History at my sister institution Colorado College, is about to publish her magnum opus for the West of the first half of the nineteenth century, Empires, Nations, Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860, part of University of Nebraska’s outstanding series History of the American West series. If this this means anything to you, as it will to some of you, the immediate predecessor to Anne’s book is Colin Calloway’s monumental work One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark.

(As a brief aside, when Anne and I were in graduate school, she always made it to the library at 8:00 a.m. sharp, while I was lucky to drag myself, half hungover and ears still ringing from some too-loud jazz concert the night before, by 10:00 or 11:00 at best, which explains a lot about the great scholarly discipline it took for Anne to finish this huge work, while I was busy watching the Mavs beat the Lakers).

Anne’s work may suggests a paradigm for understanding the history of the West in that era, in a way such as Richter and Colin Calloway have done for earlier American history. Her work also features chapters fully integrating the Mormon West into the larger picture, and too much else of interest besides to even begin to summarize here.

All of this is exciting as an historian. But all of it also makes me wonder how, whether, and when any of this affects public consciousness of earlier American history. Lately we’ve been talking about Barton et al., and of course the bookshelves at your Barnes & Noble are full of everything Founding Father related. I understand that, but considering the impact of the works above – great on historians, perhaps little on anyone else – makes me wonder about similar questions for religious history.

The older paradigm of American religious history will be familiar to many blog readers here, and most are familiar with its more recent challengers, summarized in works such as Tweed’s edited volume Retelling U.S. Religious History. I once saw Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, God rest her soul, blast away at that book at a Young Scholars in American Religion conference, with most of the authors in that book in attendance; it quickly became clear she was itching for a fight with a group that had no interest in fighting with her on the alleged evils of “postmodernist” history, since that debate was long since old and tired at that point; at the end of it, Diana Butler Bass got up and urged her to give up swinging at phantoms since none of us were in the ring with her. Sitting in the back row with Diana, I gave her a big high-five for trying to extricate us all from such an unproductive conversation.

Much of the newer paradigm seems to come from removing religious history from the specific story of the American nation-state, and using categories that engage religious experience at its own level rather than as some proxy for political parties or current day culture wars. We've blogged here extensively about some recent classics that move American religious history/studies well down this path -- by Leigh Schmidt, Robert Orsi, Kathryn Lofton, and numerous others.

Again, however, for religious history as for the studies of earlier American history mentioned above, one wonders whether and how this affects any sort of public consciousness or discussion, and whether it’s the job of religious historians to evangelize for these perspectives that challenge or disrupt how we perceive the American religious past (and present). Or maybe scholars should just do their work, let popularizers who are good at popularizing disseminate this stuff to the general public (like happens in science all the time -- neuroscientists do their thing, and then someone like Oliver Sacks explains a little bit of it to us), and trust that over a generation or two it will find its way into the more general understandings. That's a comforting and easy role to take, but it leaves not much excuse for complaining about why some pseudo-historians advise presidential candidates while the rest of us get to advise freshmen how to raise their grade from a D to a C.

As usual, I have no answers, only questions. You're welcome.

[Sutton -- sorry about your Lakers. Not].

Gender and American Religious Historian, Part III

By Kelly Baker

And the beat goes on (and on and on). As I continue to put together the list of my favorite scholarship/scholars on gender, women's history, and masculinity for NWHM, I find that hesitate more and more about my choices, their inclusivity/exclusivity, and what they say about me as a scholar: What have I read? What do I need to read? What do I leave out? Why do I like Protestants so much? (That one has an easy answer). What is my lingering fascination with American Catholics? How might I find the good gender scholarship beyond my own research interests?

As commentators have noted, my list is primarily filled with scholarship about white Protestants and Catholics, which is certainly true. I write primarily about white Protestant men and women, so my list does skew that way. This does not give me a free pass, but our readers should know that the list is my favorite hits in gendering American religious history, and thus, it is not a universal, or even close to canonical, list nor should it be viewed as such. These are works that I have deeply respect, admire and even love. They urge me to be a better gender historian. Their questions become my lingering questions. As I write about masculinity and femininity, I reflect on these as lessons on how to do gender analysis, as models for emulation, and as nourishment and encouragement in my own attempts to make gender a primary category of analysis within my religious studies training. Overall, the series functions for me to highlight what I consider to be good work on gender and religion (often Christianity) and encourage you to enjoy the scholarship I list.

What this means is that I hope our readers will continue to list their choices in the comments section. Several folks have already contributed via comments and email, so THANK YOU! I will post your suggestions as an addendum to the Gender and the American religious historian series (available here and here). Please continue to list your favorites or email me your picks.

11. Tracy Fessenden is one of my favorite American religious historians, hands down. Her Culture and Redemption was an inspiring work that challenged the secularization thesis by showcasing how secular can functions as “stealth” Protestantism. She is also the co-editor of the The Puritan Origins of American Sex. In my classes, I assign her “The Convent, the Brothel, and the Protestant Woman’s Sphere,” from Signs, in she argues that anti-Catholicism functioned as tool to maintain the Protestant domestic sphere, so enforcing boundaries on nuns and prostitutes became a way to preserve pure, white womanhood.

12. Marie Pagliarini’s “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America,” from Religion and American Culture documents how analyzing gender helps us understand historical practices of intolerance. Moreover, religious intolerance works best when historical actors seek to protect innocent womanhood from some dangerous, religious threat. I cannot wait to read her article entitled, 'And the Word was Made Flesh': Divining the Female Body in Nineteenth-Century American and Catholic Culture" in the same journal.

13. Julie Byrne’s O God of Players is a cultural history of Catholic women’s basketball, which emphasizes the physicality and joy of play for these Catholic girls. The Immaculate Mighty Macs negotiated their identities as young Catholic women in the physicality of the sport but also understood the game as a Catholic enterprise. Byrne’s work showcases the fluidity of religious identity as well as the ways in which basketball problematized as well as reinforced notion of Catholic womanhood. I’ve blogged about the book previously here.

14. Heather Hendershot’s Shaking the World for Jesus is not only a good primer for those of you interested in evangelical use of media, but also contains one of the best interrogations of evangelical chastity programs for teens. Using Focus on the Family’s teen magazines for boys and girls, Hendershot shows the dangers of “eruptive” male bodies and “contained” female bodies, and importantly, documents how teens negotiate chastity in their own lives. Chastity events prove to be some of the only co-ed excursions, but the emphasis on purity for teenage women is a larger burden to bear than their male counterparts.

15. Kristy Nabhan-Warren’s The Virgin of El Barrio appears often of my Religions in the U.S. syllabus. It is an ethnography of Estela Ruiz, her vision of the Virgin Mary, and her activism and missionizing. Nabhan-Warren documents Ruiz to showcase not only her life and her visions, but also the blending of Catholicism and evangelicalism in Ruiz’s ministry. Moreover, Nabhan-Warren doesn’t shy away from gender dynamics of the ministry, and she illuminates the complicated relationship between Ruiz, the Virgin Mary, and her family.

16. Margaret Bendroth’s Fundamentalism and Gender was one of my earliest endeavors into understanding the relationship between Christian women and fundamentalism. Her work traces the idea of female subordination in fundamentalist practice, and she demonstrates how the idea of subordination, which seems so necessary to fundamentalism, oscillates between a mandate placed upon all women to loosely enforced dictate, especially when women are needed to fulfill quasi-leadership roles. Moreover, she stresses the fundamentalist attachment to masculinity as necessary to the Christian doctrine as well as the masculine nature of recruiting. This book was one of the first to make me realize how gender is a necessary category of analysis in religious studies. In addition to this work, she is also the co-editor of Women in Twentieth Century Protestantism and the author “Why Women Loved Billy Sunday: Urban Revivalism and Popular Entertainment in Early Twentieth Century America” in Religion in American Culture.

17. Janet Moore Lindman’s “Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia” in William and Mary Quarterly is an excellent discussion of how white evangelical men in the South redefined masculinity in Christian terms. Southern manhood did not necessarily fit with the evangelical norms of piety, and thus, these evangelical men redefined themselves as suffering saints rather than gambling toughs. Evangelical manhood was defined in negative terms, in the ability to abstain rather than give in to worldly pleasures. Moreover, Lindman documents how evangelicalism, however, embraced the hegemonic power of white manhood despite the emphasis on suffering and Christian soldiers.

Also, on another NWHM note, go check Historiann's review of Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower. Here's an excerpt:

White and her contributors explain the many struggles that black women faced as they began to enter the profession in the 1960s and 1970s–the obligation placed on many to serve their communities rather than their intellectual ambitions; the scoffing and disbelief they faced in white and black male mentors who were mostly hostile to their interest in women’s history; the stresses of entering work environments in which the other people who look like them are all secretaries or janitorial staff; the racism and sexism of students who walk out of their classes and refuse to recognize their intellectual and professional authority; the cluelessness or plain old racism of overwhelmingly white feminist scholarly communities; and the never-ending suspicion of other historians that black women’s history can never be “objective” if it’s written by black women.

Gender and American Religious Historian, Part II

By Kelly Baker

This is my humble attempt to document those scholars who use gender as a category of analysis in American religious history. The first four on my list were the scholars whose work has most deeply influenced my own. The rest of my list includes scholarship I love as well as scholarship that I need to know (and you do too!). My current goal is to list 31 scholars for the 31 days of NWHM. Let's see if I can do it!

So, the list continues on:

5. Catherine Brekus, the editor of The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past and author of Strangers & Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845, is one of the strongest voices about the inclusion of women in American religious history. Her introductory piece to The Religious History of American Women pulls no punches. She writes:

More than thirty years after the rise of women's history alongside the feminist movement, it is still difficult to 'find' women in many books and articles about American religious history...[M]any seem to assume that women's stories are peripheral to their research topics, whether Puritan theology or church and state. They do not seem hostile to women's history as much as they are dismissive of it, treating it as a separate topic that they can safely ignore. Since 'women's historians' are devoted to writing women's history, those who simply identify themselves as 'American religious historians' can focus on topics that seem more important to them (1).

Brekus makes it clear that American religious history needs to attend to gender and her contributors showcase how studying the lives of women change the tenor, strategies and narration of American religious history. I reread her introductory essay, whenever I need a kick in the pants to do good gender analysis as a method to improve my scholarship. Women's history is not just the purview of women's historians.

6. Evelyn Higginbotham is the author of Righteous Discontent:The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church: 1880-1920(1993). While I am not the most familiar with her work, I should be. Harvard University Press describes this ground-breaking and award-winning work:

In her account, we see how the efforts of women enabled the church to build schools, provide food and clothing to the poor, and offer a host of social welfare services. And we observe the challenges of black women to patriarchal theology. Class, race, and gender dynamics continually interact in Higginbotham’s nuanced history. She depicts the cooperation, tension, and negotiation that characterized the relationship between men and women church leaders as well as the interaction of southern black and northern white women’s groups.

Righteous Discontent finally assigns women their rightful place in the story of political and social activism in the black church. It is central to an understanding of African American social and cultural life and a critical chapter in the history of religion in America.

7. Amy Koehlinger, a contributor to The Religious History of American Women, the author of The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (2007), and one of my mentors, helped me wrestle with Judith Butler's Gender Trouble as well as informed my approach to 1920s Klan femininity and masculinity. Amy's work on Catholic nuns and their struggles in the Civil Rights movement analyzes race and gender in tandem and demonstrates how nuns negotiated their new roles during the advent of Vatican II. Her new project, titled Rosaries and Rope Burns, explores importance of boxing for Catholic men as well as examines how the sport influenced performances of masculinity. This isn't first time she's tackled masculinity. Her essay, "Let Us Live for Those Who Love Us': Faith, Family, and the Contours of Manhood among the Knights of Columbus in Late Nineteenth-Century Connecticut" in the Journal of Social History, takes to task Mark Carnes's work on fraternities in the Victorian era for focusing solely on Protestant men's attempts to move away from domesticity. The Knights of Columbus, on the other hand, imagined their fraternal work as an extension of their family life.

8. Lynn Neal is the author of Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction (2006) and a co-conspirator when it comes to all things religious intolerance. Romancing God explores the relationships of evangelical fiction to evangelical romance novels, and Lynn takes seriously the piety and devotional reading of these Christian women. Rather than disparage the romance novel, she explores the complicated relationships evangelical women have with the books that they read and how this genre influenced their practices of Christianity. (I've blogged about Lynn and Amy's work long ago.)

8. Kathleen Sprows Cummings is the associate director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, author of New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era (2009), and contributor to The Religious History of American Women. Kathy also blogs at with outr much beloved crew at Religion in American History. Her work employs case studies of Catholic women to demonstrate how debates over Catholic identity during the Progressive era were also negotiations of gender roles. She has written deftly about the place of women religious in Catholic infrastructure.

9. Anthea Butler, who I follow at Religion Dispatches, is the author of Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World (2007). Butler's work engaged me as soon as she cataloged the fashion of the women of COGIC and discussed the ways in which fashion cleared up the problem of sanctified women's bodies. Here's what I said about her book at the Journal of Southern Religion:

Moreover, fashionable dress might present a gender-confused body. For members, "the Spirit could not move into a body that was 'confused' about its gender identity," which meant that women policed the clothing of other women to guarantee one could become sanctified (79). Additionally, dress was the preferred method of controlling men's sexual behavior. By dressing modestly, COGIC women differentiated themselves from prostitutes and appeared "respectable" (80-81). For Butler, dress is also the signal for changes within the denomination. Restrictions of dress emphasized the importance of self-sanctification, and the embrace of more fashionable attire signaled the engagement of church mothers with the larger world. To become civically engaged, these women had to retire plain dress and be "a smartly dressed, well-coiffed and well versed church mother with a vocabulary steeped in scripture yet attuned to the social realities on earth, rather than heaven" (136). The evolution of the Women's Department from 1911 to the 1960s could be traced sartorially. Their dress signaled their spiritual concerns, and their clothing shifted from a material artifact representing inner purity to smart clothing that symbolized a concern with the larger world. For Butler, by the 1970s, clothing had been stripped of much of its religious meaning, and well-dressed women were no longer engaged, but submissive to the commands of male leadership.

Her careful attention to the sartorial and the complexity of gender performance for COGIC women makes this one of my beloved examples of Pamela Klassen's assertion that the history of religion is a history of clothing.

10. Bret Carroll's article on the mediumship of John Shoebridge Williams is one my favorite academic articles, which is not a title I pass around lightly. Carroll uses the diaries of Williams to show how the medium faced conflicting norms of masculinity in Spiritualism but also larger 19th century American culture. Williams had a peculiar dilemma, in that he believed he was growing breasts because his daughter, Eliza, possessed him. I recently taught this article in my gender seminar, and my students were a bit flabbergasted. Yet, the complexity of masculinity, femininity and the problem of androgyny appear in this well-written and humorous article about one male medium's struggle with his gender performance. Feel free to rush to JSTOR for your reading pleasure.

Note: The University of North Carolina press is not influencing my choices with any monetary gains. They just rock when it comes to gender scholarship in American religious history.

Gender and American Religious Historian, Part I

By Kelly Baker

As mentioned in my post recently, I want to highlight the scholars who take gender and women seriously in American Religious History for National Women's History Month. Below, I have provided my first four scholars, and these are the folks that I find most pivotal when I think about the power of gender history to inform and change American religious history. As one might tell, I have favorite pieces of scholarship from each, and each has a large body of scholarship to draw from. The ones I highlight are the ones that influence me most deeply as a scholar.

Here are they are:
1. Ann Braude, of course, is at the top of my list. Her works include Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-century America (2001), Sisters and Saints: Women and Religion in America and several edited collections, notably Transforming the Faiths of Our Fathers: The Women Who Changed American Religion. Her essay, "Women's History is American Religious History"(1997) is required reading. In this piece, she argues that women's history is central to the narratives of American religions, and that common descriptors like secularization refer to men's roles and decreasing presence in churches rather than abandonment wholesale of Christianity. For Braude, religious history looks different from the perspective of women, and this needs to be accounted for in our tellings and retellings of American religious history. Again, I wonder how many have taken seriously her call of the gendered nature of our categories of American religious historiography.

2. Pamela Klassen's work on religion and maternity is one of my currently most assigned pieces in my gender classes. While I don't assign the whole of Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America (2001), I do assign her “Sacred Maternities and Post-Biomedical Bodies” from Signs. Klassen's analysis of home birth tackles one of the most problematic areas for feminist theory, pregnancy. Her article presents the ways in which home birthing women describe their bodies and what is "natural" as well as what is supernatural about birth. Her explorations of what is at stake in the natural clearly shows how pregnancy is socially constructed and biological. Just because we assume biology doesn't mean it is. Klassen deftly showcases how the biological becomes paramount in the case of pregnancy, but home birthing women graft social and religious meaning on their bodies as well. They might be "postbiomedical bodies" but they are social bodies as well.

3. Marie Griffith's work on Women's Aglow also appears quite frequently in my classes in American religious history and gender. Much like with Klassen, I don't assign the whole of God's Daughters:Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (1997).Instead, my students read "Submissive Wives, Wounded Daughters, and Female Soldiers…” from David Hall's edited collection, Lived Religion in America. This haunting piece on the power of submission to God in the lives of women often troubles my students. That discomfort allows for good analysis and equally compelling discussion. I am also deeply in love with Born Again Bodies (2004), which emphasizes the importance/significance of bodies and food in American religious history. Griffith's assertion of the danger of slimness in religious circles to emphasize certain white, female bodies and the corruptedness of differing bodies stayed with me long after I finished this work. The centrality of bodies to theology also made me rethink my own approach to white, male bodies in my own work. (Griffith has just been named the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.)

4. Robert Orsi's “ ‘He Keeps Me Going’: Women’s Devotion to Saint Jude Thaddeus…” in Religion in American History: A Reader is another constant in my classes. This article is a portion of Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1999), which is my favorite book, hands down, by Orsi. Every time I read this article, I find some new layer of complexity from the lovely interweaving of immigrant history, the Catholic Church's position on women in newsletters, and the material relationships of the women to St. Jude. He writes, "Women...created and imagined themselves, manipulating and altering the available grammar of gender" (349). Moreover, Orsi poignantly notes, "Women believed that they became agents in a new way with Jude's help" (349). Women believed in agency, but Orsi seems less convinced. This line proved particularly fruitful to my students this semester as they struggled with the question of agency and the desire to see agency even if there is none. Belief in agency startled them and me, and we wondered how St. Jude operates. We pondered what does the attachment to the patron saint of lost causes really mean for women, for Catholicism, and for our class.

Also, stay tuned for additional posts on the same topic here.

[Cross-posted at kellyjbaker.com]

Gender Matters: My Lesson for Women's History Month

By Kelly Baker

Okay, so I am a little late to the party. It is already March 14th, and I am just getting around to my own reflections on National Women's History Month (NWHM). I even missed International Women's Day, but I think President Obama had it covered. (Historiann, the better blogger, already commented on the sausage fest that is the National Endowment Humanities Medal winners.) Timely, I am not.

The theme for NWHM this year is "Our History is Our Strength." As a historian and as a woman (I wonder why I feel the need to say both?), this theme resonates. History, we know, functions as a legitimator to claims about men and women in our public culture as well as scholarly cultures See Bonnie Smith’s The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998) for a rousing discussion of how history as praxis is gendered. Moreover, the reclamation of women in history, the analysis of the fluidity of gender in different historical spaces and places, and the ability to analyze how gender functions as code for power relations are all crucial to understanding not only the place of women in American culture but also the constructions of womanhood/manhood and the consequences of these constructions. History becomes a possible tool of empowerment and agency because of its weight, its veracity, and its power to present our pasts to us. Women’s history month as a concept bothers me, though. Much like the critiques of Black History Month as separate space/history, I fear the limiting scope of one month as women’s month. The tagline in my head proclaims, “Women’s History, just a month every year!” My criticism is not original or new, but the concept of one month as the stand-in for the whole of women’s history is problematic. And it encourages the popular belief about history as “his-story,” a tired joke that still matters. One month a year cannot possibly d0 justice to the lives of American women and women globally, but I will take one month if the other possibility is no inscription of women’s history on our calendar year. I want celebrations of women’s history as history, unavoidable and required, rather temporary, demarcated and different. Women’s history is American history, and it is clearly American religious history.

Recently, I find myself describing my work as not just American religious history but also gender history. The mantle of gender historian is not new for me, but there is a new stridency. Yet, I find myself reading recent historical works and asking, "Where's gender? Where are women in religious institutions, movements and practice? Why don’t we discuss masculinity more?" When I feel really sassy, I ponder, "How can one do work in the twenty-first century without at least gesturing to gender?" I am not asking for much, an awareness of the social constellation attached to sexed bodies would be a good start. Perhaps, a glance at Judith Butler's Gender Trouble or Bodies That Matter, an occasional use of Michel Foucault on power, or hell, a nice lengthy description of how men and women in a variety of religious movements practice, believe, embody or “live” religion in relation to their gender. Gesturing to gender is better than ignoring the centrality of social and religious value attached to sexed bodies. Religious folk are not just what they believe or do. They have bodies. Bodies matter. Sexed bodies matter.

My teaching has forced this issue, like so many others. There is new pressing urgency to the import, and likely centrality, of gender to religious studies. Since I am teaching a gender and religion course, I feel like my whole semester is a women's history celebration while simultaneously a desperate mission to emphasize the centrality of women's history and gender history to religious history. Much like Catherine Brekus in her introduction to The Religious History of American Women, I wonder why American religious history still seems impenetrable to women's history, gender theory, and my current pet peeve, discussions of masculinity and men constructed as men. Gender matters, but convincing one's peers can be a zero-sum game. (To see my take on the problem of women and leadership, click here.) Why, I wonder, is it possible to ignore Ann Braude's salient and punchy statement, "Women's history is American religious history"? She's right. Almost fifteen years after her essay appeared in Retelling U.S. Religious History (1997), what gives? Braude eloquently showcases the sheer presence of women in American religious spaces. Women were the “people in the pews” for the majority of American history. By dismantling the popular thesis of feminization, Braude showcases that women did not “feminize” churches because their presence was the constant, not the presence of men. Braude’s insight should be foundational to explorations of American religious life alongside critical theories of race, class, and market. Perhaps, my stridency rears its ugly head here or not. What I want, if I could convince the historiographies of American religious history to bend to my will, is honest engagement of the impact of gender on the religiosity of American men and women as well as increasing attention to fluidity of gender identity in the historical past and the contemporary period.

Moreover, I want to pass out Joan Scott's famous essay, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" (1986) to anyone who doesn't attempt to describe and analyze (or please theorize) gender. Scott's masterful article articulates how gender had evolved as an analytical tool from studies of women to an idea that the study of women was the study of men to how gender was viewed as a cultural construction. For Scott, descriptive analysis was not sufficient to affect historical paradigms. Descriptive analysis cannot cut it, so Scott critiqued previous models that centered on origins of patriarchy, which relied on physical differences between men and women and perpetuated essentialism, Marxian analyses, which explained gender as only the by-product of changing economic structures, and the prevalence of psychoanalysis, which was influenced by French post-structuralists and object relations theory. Scott called for a historicization and deconstruction of the binary opposition of gender rather than relying upon an assumption that exists. Scott proposed a new definition of gender, which was an element of social relationships based on perceived sex differences as well as a “primary” way of articulating power relationships. Thus, Scott threw down the gauntlet rather than assume gender in our analyses, we must question the opposition between male and female and to see what is at stake when gender is used to legitimate a position. What Scott is proposing is to see how gender is constructed and how it is deployed. She urges historians to examine what happens when someone invokes gendered language. What's at stake? What’s gained by invoking gender? The better question might be: What is at stake in avoidance?

Thus, to celebrate women’s history, I will be posting blurbs about my favorite women’s and gender historians in American religious history for the rest of March at my website. Please feel free to send your suggestions to me.

[Cross posted at kellyjbaker.com]