Transcripts For CSPAN3 Religious Influence On U.S. Politics 20240713

American history article john butler challenged historians of modern america to Pay Attention to religion. In particular, he noted, religion of the continuing importance in 20th century american politics deserves sustained attention and analysis. Scholars of american religious history have proliferated over the past 15 years, yet in political history, religion has often retained a jackinthebox quality colorful, surprising, anomalous, idiosyncratic, but left on the periphery to pop up occasionally rather than systematically. Today, our roundtable will address how religion matters in american political history, and we will do so in three ways. First, i will ask each of our panelists to focus on a way in which religion matters that is, in their own research, how religion plays a role in spaces that they are working on, but also how centering religion in these spaces gives us a different narrative, a different story than if it were on the periphery or ignored in an way. Second, we will talk about butlers provocation why have political historians remain somewhat reluctant bystanders about religion in American History, and why does religion still get left out of papers, courses, syntheses, or as someone joked today, there are a few of you stalwarts, which we appreciate, but not as many people come to something when religion is part of it. And we will discuss the ways in how religion is everywhere in our current moments, the religious left, the evangelical right, and the monday movement are some of the things we see regularly today. We also see how religious freedom has become the catchword of the current administration, as well as opponents to it. How can and should we explain this as political historians, and how might political and religious historians Work Together to his store size the present moment . With me is the downforce cinch in st. Louis, his awardwinning first book was preaching on racks, the photograph in the making of modern African American religion. He is currently working on a book about religion, the fbi and the natural Security State which is under contract with Princeton University press. To his right is lauren turner, and assistant professor of history at university of san antonio. She is writing a book to bring religion to all nations which will be out by cornell soonish. There is also kate rosen glad, a visiting assistant professor of the History Department and Religion Department. She is working on a mag you script cooperative battlegrounds religion and the search for economic alternatives, under contract with columbia. And i am roni stall with the university of california my first book came out last year, and i am now working on a project on religion in American Health care. With that, i will turn to our first question and ask each of our scholars to talk about the role of religion in their own work and the way in which thinking about religion has changed the way we understand these certain aspects of American History. Thank you roni for that, and what she left out of her own introduction is that her book is also an awardwinning book, the Church History prize for the best first book in american religious history. So, thanks for bringing us all together. My Current Research project examines the fbi and its relationship to religion during the directorship of longtime director J Edgar Hoover from 1924 to 1972. The focus on religion in the project illuminates under studied yet vital aspects of the bureaus internal culture and practices, and how that ethos shaped the Public Perception of the fbis political work and in particular the fbis understanding and american understanding, more broadly, of the relationship between religion and National Security. Existing studies at the fbi have strongly dismissed the role of religion in the making and shaping of the bureau. The role of religion has been more prominent in political history in postwar america, displaying how the cold war shaped americas religious landscape. Yet these studies of religionin the cold war tend to downplay the role of the nations top listed Security Force and the cold war watchdog that was the fbi. In fact, all too often in these studies, hoover is working both literally and figuratively on the margins. In my research, i focus on the research between religion and hoovers fbi. I will discuss the things today that this reveals about american politics and political history. First, J Edgar Hoover himself. Examining the role of faith in the life of J Edgar Hoover reveals hoover became a central figure in American Religion, expressing beliefs in Sacred Symbols and the public sphere. Without looking at religion in the life of J Edgar Hoover, we will miss a number of things. For example, in his childhood diaries, they show, as well as his experience as a teenage sunday school teacher, and also that he explored a call to ministry. All of this reveals how religion shaped hoovers world view long before he became the director of the fbi. His faith remained when he became the director of the fbi. He was a trustee and member of the National Presbyterian church, sharing a pew with president eisenhower and john foster dulles, and remained in contact with his pastor for the remainder of his life. All of this reveals that hoovers understanding of religion is a calvinistic understanding of religion, and only viewed how he shaped america and executed his job in protecting america. This is evident in his speeches, the books in which he began framing patriotic christianity as the sole antidote to communism, and how he organized the bureau which i will adress next. Scholars and casual observers alike might doubt this is very of his faith, but americans at his time did not doubt that faith. Every major Christian Faith community from the Catholic Church to the african methodist episcopal church, to even protestant and mainline churches alike crown hoover with awards stained glass, and deemed as a champion of american politics. He can be seen as arguably the high priest of american civil religion. This title has normally been reserved such as hoovers coreligionist, dwight eisenhower. In fact, for almost half a century, hoover led the bureau and for countless americans, he was the person to look to for all things for god, flag, and country. Second, a keen eye on the importance of religion i revealed the bureau it under hoovers offices, the fbi instituted private Worship Services, spiritual retreats, and communion and Prayer Breakfast exclusively for fbi agents, and even when the fbi admitted africanamerican agents to these Worship Services and private religious affairs, they were exclusively for white agents only. The culture borrowed from protestant and catholic forms, including the militant aspect of jesuit spirituality. This was seen as more than federal bureaucrats, but as pious soldiers drafted to embark on a crusade against all things subversive and ungodly. Indeed in the context of the cold war, americans began to see their god fearing fbi agents as a clearinghouse of true faith and allegiance. They are filled with letters you mr. Hoover that, which church should i attend . Is billy graham a real question . Mr. Hoover, is Martin Luther king a communist . Should i attend a church led by a woman . Is that subversive . These letters fill fbi files. Americans may have look to their pastors, priests and bishops to be able to address theological disputes but many of them interested the fbi for wavier matters of politics. The history of the fbi can be seen and rewith an as digital cater of true faith and political allegiance in 20 a century u. S. Politics. Something contemporary observers of the fbi know all too well. Finally, focusing on religion illuminates all to influence important aspects of 20th century politics hoover and his fbi were working professional and working relationships with leading clergy, President Trump s pastor norm index. Appeal, billy graham, and the chaplain of the united clans of america, reverend george dorset, as well as the first clergy member to have his own television show, elder lightfoot solomon. The fbi worked with these men and all because hoover did not recognize female clergy. They all worked together to bring about a certain ideal of what the proper relationship was between religion and politics in the nation. Indeed, they preached and published it as a gospel. They privately worked with the bureau to employ Christian Faith and racialized rhetoric to construct a shared ideal of religion and National Security specifically and policy ideas more broadly. The fbi and its Christian Network worked in concert to promote antichristian rhetoric and communist for. Those that supported such causes were discredited as domestic and subversive at best, and destructive at worst. Hoover used this christian syndicate to make sure those folks were kept outside of the realm of what was considered american. With all of this in mind, whoevers faith and religious formation of the bureau and his fruitful partnerships with leading clergy, we can use this perhaps to rewrite American History in the post war era. Hoover and his fbi are important actors and factors that contributed to the rise of the modern religious right. In the end is just not replace narratives and studies at the fbi in american politics, but highlighting religion, it adds more texture to the story, brings more historical actors to the already crowded stage. It gives a clear picture to its role the fbi in american politics. This naming in framing might just help us to better understand todays fbi and its relationship with religion and National Security. Specifically american politics more broadly. Thank you. So i am a historian of u. S. Foreignpolicy with a focus on politics and religion, and my forthcoming book looks specifically at how conservative evangelical christian groups sought to influence u. S. Foreignpolicy on a range of issues, around religious freedom and human rights to International Trade and foreign aid. Starting in the 1970s and moving through the 1990s. In the process of conducting this research, one of the things i have found is that religion is a particularly fruitful avenue for analyzing not just politics, but also policymaking. I find in particular it helps shed light on the formation of ideology and national values, and helps policymakers and domestic Interest Groups promote those values. Religious beliefs had enduring elements of American Culture and ideology, shaped and continue to shape the worldview of leaders as well as the public. They helped to steer our National Discourse and in some cases that the parameters of what is acceptable and policymaking in terms of Foreign Policymaking. One of the key arguments i make in my book is that longstanding anxieties about religious repression and persecution and totalitarian regimes, and the threat that persecution posed to the Global Missionary agenda of evangelical groups led to a powerful policy lobby in the United States starting in the late 1970s. Owing in part to their particular theological beliefs, i found that evangelical privileged religious freedom, by which they meant their freedom to evangelize and the freedom of others to hear their even libation as the most fundamental human right. Concerns about religious persecution and other abuses against the faithful led evangelical groups in the United States to advocate for a christian foreignpolicy, one that upheld core religious values and protected american missionaries as those that they evangelized. I look at a number of case studies to demonstrate this. One set is going to of course be very familiar, the cold war, the soviet union, there is a lot of concern about persecution against religious believers in the soviet union, cases like the siberian seven who were very famous in the 1970s and 1980s, but there are number of cases as well that i look at. There is a considerable amount of activism by evangelicals, often that aligned with reagan era policies, but evangelicals also at times went against reagan era policies. With romania, for example, where the Reagan Administration sought to have a differentiation policy and extend trade, evangelicals were uncomfortable with that given the ongoing religious persecution there. There is interestintg activism that happens. These views, which were for promoting religious freedom in the soviet union and other totalitarian states, at times as friendly to their objectives. This is where things get interesting. This perception enabled evangelicals to interpret state violence and authoritarian countries as acceptable and sometimes even desirable efforts to combat this spread of communism and therefore prevent religious persecution. This is where we see support for genocidal dictators in places like guatamala being framed in human rights and religious freedom. Support for constructive engagement, the reagan policy of constructive engagement in south africa as an effort preventing the spread of communism and religious persecution, to protect Christian South africa. There is different ways in which this line which of human rights comes into play. Evangelical lobbyists were adapting and adopting human rights language into their Advocacy Campaign and congressional testimony about central america, africa, the middle east, and elsewhere. In using this language, i found it was shaping how certain policymakers, particularly politically conservative policymakers, were interpreting violence and oppression abroad. Ultimately these evangelical activists and Interest Groups were able to exert an influence on official decisionmaking on a range of vital foreignpolicy issues. Everything from military aid to guatamala is a trade relations with the soviet bloc and diplomatic relations with south africa. In terms of politics at home, this includes really significant lobbying efforts to strike down the comprehensive antiapartheid act in 1986. They are not successful in doing it, but they play a significant role in the efforts to oppose it. All this to say that evangelical foreignpolicy advocates, their Global Network really mattered. It had a substantive effect on u. S. Policymaking, and bringing religion into our study of politics and foreignpolicy really matters. It reminds us of the way the policymakers and politicians understand the world around them. It reminds us that religion is often a part of how they shape their world view. It is integral. Deeply held religious belief motivate grassroots political activism not just on issues like abortion, but foreignpolicy as well. I found bringing religion into the study of human rights activism and into politics, foreignpolicy is critical. These groups may be offering a different vision of human rights than the one we may typically think of as being offered by liberal human rights activist, but they like liberal human rights activists, they are often couching their activism in explicitly religious terms. There is a sense they are embracing that morality and freedom of religion should be fundamental parts of u. S. Foreign policymaking. There should be explicit goals. For us, one of the things that this pushes us to keep in mind, is that when we think about the history of foreignpolicy, it is not just a realist calculation of power, often religion is a foundational aspect of shaping what policymakers think of as a National Interest and think of exporting morality or Core National values and seeing the ways in which religion is tied up and incomplicated into those particular values. Bringing the history of religion into the excuse me, conservative religion into the study of human rights helps us think about the ways that human rights history and political history around activism. A lot of these terms are fluid and contested. Human rights as a term was fluid and contested in the 1970s, and shows us the ways activists can use language of human rights and shape the parameters of debate and shape the parameters of politics. In the 1980s, the views, the ways of thinking about human rights that conservative activists put forth and up shaping the politics of the Reagan Administration and shaping the way human rights policies look in the 1980s, it was quite significant. So, religious differences, religious conflicts all have an impact in politics. Basically, we should be keeping this in mind is essentially what my work shows. I am a historian, a modern u. S. Political and labor historian, but the popular language today, i am a historian of capitalism. In particular, i write about cooperative corporations, cooperatives which are usually dismissed as some variant of communalism, but instead i write about them as cooperatives. Not only as cooperatives, not only that, but cooperatives are democratically organized. One member, one vote, and they are oriented around Service Rather than profit. The historiography on corporations tends to suggest when we talk about corporations, most people point to a private business corporations, but corporations suggest that they emerged as the dominant organizational form of economic rights in the u. S. , and this literature largely describes corporations as rational and indeed natural bureaucratic forums that simply aim to maximize profit for shareholders. The problem with this is you miss a lot when you dont ask questions about how and why people deploy their financial resources. I take seriously the idea that americans across the 20th century used criteria other than profit as motivations for their pocketbook politics and importantly religion was one such metrics used by americans to shape how and where to use their financial resources. I write about jewish workers in new york city who built 2500 units of cooperative housing between the late 20s and early 1950s. I read about finnish immigrants in the Northern Midwest who built massive agricultural cooperatives that are still alive and well. They are immensely successful. I write about catholic it hadherence of the social gospel, who looks towards cooperative models, and all of these groups, a wide range of americans, look to religious texts, they look to teachings and to their clergy to reduce what i would call a moral political economy. In order to allow people of faith to use their religious traditions and apply those teachings to the complex social problems of the day. So by the 1930s, the central conference of american rabbis, the federal of churches, and the American Catholic welfare council, conference altogether embrace cooperative models with the possibility that these kinds of corporations could produce a more humane capitalism, a capitalism that was not as extractive as private business corporations. They also really embraced the idea that you could within capitalism produced accumulation without concentration. In other words, they imagined that there are ways, not through anticapitalist activism, but through reformist capitalist politics to produce a system that could more equitably distribute the wealth of the nation. Indeed, though of course the 1 has become the language post occupy, this language being deployed by workers and by farmers across the United States in trying to highlight the ways in which capitalism simply was not working for them and doing so long before a public consensus that there were challenges with capitalism. Bringing religion that is sort of there as a category of analysis allows historians and religious studies people that is something i think we can talk about, why that divide exists, it allows us to complicate prevailing understandings of the rise of and formation of american capitalism and ultimately that people of faith have always remained central to american visions of social change, and that americans religious traditions at various times and places have concerned themselves not only with personal salvation, but communal redemption, and have to do that through largescale corporate organizing. Thank you. My turn to give a little bit about my own work, which draws on many of these strands mentioned by my fellow scholars. As i mentioned earlier, my first book was about the military and now i am working on health care, so two major institutional actors in American History, and when i think about the military, i want to suggest that, well, first of all, when i started the project, the most common reaction i got was oh, i have never thought about that before. Why would religion have any role in the military . Sure, maybe individuals were religious, but end of story. What i discovered was a massive Government Institution and enterprise dedicated to not just thinking about the religious lives of soldiers and officers and war, but also an institution that shaped religion itself. The carrots and sticks and incentives and disincentives for precipitation in the chaplaincy, did a lot to challenge some religious groups and also facilitate access to power for others. To take just one example that was mentioned, look at someone like dwight eisenhower. Midcentury American Religion requires understanding eisenhowers role in the military. What he brought to office, when he became a member of the Presbyterian Church in washington, d. C. And was part of that political scene were certain understandings of military religious clerics is a clericiscm, that a basic acceptance of god and morality was enough. You did not have to dwell on the theological details. In many ways, that was a vision that Many Americans coming out of world war ii shared, but it was also a vision that could be coopted by others who sought to use religion for other purposes, sectarian more divisive ones, because someone like eisenhower understood the perceived shared understanding was not, in fact, shared, but used by others for different ends. If you look at that moment, it is also the moments when more conservative, sectarian oriented religious groups wanted to enter the military, and in fact made very distinct decisions to, for example, create their own seminaries so they would be able to meet the militarys education requirements, then enter the military and be in a space to shape policy. We have both the ways in which religion in the infrastructure of the military could shape the military itself, and people within that space could make religious arguments, and also make what might appear as not religious arguments to shape the Space Government itself had a role whether to holding two lines i think to understand the dynamic of american religious politics in the 20 century, we have to think about that conservativeliberal backandforth. The military was one space i will just add that if we are thinking about government and governance, i am working on a different project on hospitals and health care and i have come to believe that you cannot understand the shape of the American Health care system without understanding the role of religious hospitals and religious groups in it. By that, i do not mean the current debate about abortion or contraception or endoflife care. The flashy moments that involve disagreements i was in the archives this week looking at a number of papers about hospitals about the 1930s, 1940s, 19 50s, and one thing that was really clear with our Narrative Around Health insurance and the prospects and absolute erasure of the possibility of a national Health Insurance program. The traditional narrative is an impossible resolution due to pressures from unions and the american medical association. Beyond that narrative, religious hospitals would publicly say that it is absolutely vital to provide health care to poor people. This is necessary and is tied with our religious beliefs. At the same time, they thought a government Health Care System would destroy their own Hospital Systems they did not want any part of a government Health Care System. This is an area in which it does not necessarily seem to be about religion or theology but hospitals are businesses and corporations and groups that were heavily investigated in the Health Care Industry were making calculated decisions around health care and healing. It is this contradictory nature that i think deserves far more sustained attention, not just by me, but by others because it is so complex because there is not a single party line about what religion is in the space and also all religious groups themselves, a lot of backandforth between the National Conference of catholic bishops disputing exactly what should or should not be acceptable in Catholic Health care and what it meant if catholic hospitals were serving a pluralistic population inlcuding patients that were not catholic. The theologians were far more interested in pluralism than the bishops. The fact that they were willing to call some of the positions of the hierarchy a disaster, i do think it is worth attention. Thinking about these intrareligious debates and religioussecular debates that emerged in these formative institutions of American Society is critical to understanding american politics in the 20th century. I will turn to the next question i asked everyone to think about, which is, we have made claims for the ways in which religion tells us something about american politics and American History in the 20th century that is not necessarily evident or clear if we do not pay specific attention to religion itself. Why is this still a struggle to get religion into spaces, into courses, into syntheses . I regularly see fascinating calls that list a very long list of subfields in history and religion is still not mentioned. Even with religion clearly around us. So just to reflect and think about why this is and how we might rethink how this works. Anyone can i will offer up two responses to that question. They are simple and short. The first reason i will offer, perhaps it is an issue of definition. Perhaps the reason why political historians fail to engage religion is that we struggle to understand exactly what is religion. Where does one look for religion in sources . Is religion static . Is it Church Attendance . Consumption habits . Relationship to capitalism . Philanthropic . What exactly is religion . This is such a debate, those of us on this panel and field are still debating exactly what religion is in the debate ranges from people. Religion can be seen as a system of symbols by which people locate themselves and others in the world with reference to ordinary powers, meetings, and values. Perhaps that type of definition can help us wade through. Since religion is usually not clearly understood in this way, it is usually treated as a jackinthebox, an epiphenomen a secondary experience or spectacle that is caused by and accompanies a physical phenomenon but has no causal relationship to it whatsoever. Religion, as john butler once said, pops up colorfully on occasion, appearing as a momentary idiosyncratic thrusting of pulses from a distant american past. Armed with the more robust definition of religion, if we have a definition that deals with the every day and everyday life, perhaps we can listen new to our historical actors and get down to the nittygritty to what they believed. How J Edgar Hoover understood it. Perhaps this can help us avoid our misunderstandings of religion or reading into our actors and our own biases as it relates to religion. Perhaps another thing that hinders the study of religion and political history, the idea that it is exclusively confessional. This idea that the popular notion among scholars, that those who study religion are not only those themselves religious and pious or to defend the faith. Few understand that religion like race, sexuality, gender can be approached as a subject of historical inquiry. I often avoid discussing my research when i am on planes, trains, and automobiles and casual venues. Is heaven and hell real . Will i go there, even mundane questions like to adam name the dinosaurs . These are questions that i am not making up. They actually happened to me. This informs the truth of what scholars of religion do. People actually do study these questions but that is not the exclusive fear of religious inquiry. Especially when were talking about political history. Often times, folks who study religion are not even religious themselves. Myself and my colleagues heathens t we have more historians studying religion that can help to dispel the myth that the study of religion is done on confessional terms. Even yet admit that religion can be colorful and surprising at times but it should not be left on the periphery. It should not be left to pop out of a confessional box occasionally, usually surrounding a president ial election. We shouldnt gave religion as a common but transfiguring force in american politics. One that is worthy it a triumphant narrative, nor one that is relegated to periodic disdain and neglect, but a rigorous and consistent interrogation into political narratives. Instead of a jack of the box perhaps we could let religion enjoy an extended performance not as a standalone performer on the historical stage but alongside other aspects of the american experiment in democracy. I am going to start framing myself as a heathen historian. Briefly i think there is an assumption that historians who work on religion are religious. That is definitely not necessarily the case. One of the challenges that i think historians fand politics face when they seek to challenge religion, it is challenging to see how a faith or worldview leads to a specific policy. ,. How do you prove that it was faith and not an appraisal of power or National Security that was the driving force in shaping a particular decision . It may not always be possible to do that but it adds a lot when we consider the ways religion has influenced policies. Perhaps not the only factor, but an important factor. One might not always want to go in the direction when you get a lot of pushback. I have a few thoughts on this structural related to the academy as a person who thinks about capitalism a lot, there has been this resurgence, new history of capitalism. Of course, it was not that historians were not doing great history on the economy. They used different language. In reframing how History Departments operated, the 1970s and 1980s, economics departments claimed economic history away from History Departments. I see something similar with respect to religion. History departments have jettisoned any sort of specialty in religion to religious studies departments. Which is fine to some extent but if we want historians to do religion, we have to hire them and History Departments. A radical idea, i know. It is in fact about where you are structurally located in the university. I am historian based in a Religion Department at an institute for jewish studies and i love when people ask what i do. I say, i am a political historian. Just to let them think, how do these things connect . It always confuses them, i get a good chuckle. The second thing that shapes this, historians who ignore religion, will herbert seems to have a real outsized influence and it is the kind of weird thing where everybody sort of assumes that he is right and always seems to me that the underlying thought process, he got it. He got out right so what is their left to say . This is wrong in a lot of ways. I think it is important to place herbert in his political context which is in the world of consensus history. He was proscriptive not descriptive. I would argue about the way by the time he writes in 1955, the structure itself is almost collapsed. Almost a decade later that Time Magazine can ask on its cover, is god dead . It points to how problematic it is that we accept the idea of a judeochristian tradition. Now it is popular these days to invoke that. As an historian, i am not even sure what that means. By the 1950s, there are a range of other faith traditions that are banging at the door of the state for resources and acknowledgment. Buddhists, hindus, atheists and evangelicals are critiquing that structure. Even so, historians, particularly those who do not do religion, when they try to do religion, they reference herbert and move on. That might be part of why it is historians are ignoring it. The last thing i would say is that it seems connected to teaching. It is really hard to teach religion. Insofar as, a student of mine comes in and they Say Something i would consider to be in the vein of white supremacy, i know how to combat that. Faith claims are really different. You neither have to believe or agree with them but you do have to respect them. My first time teaching in religious department i was at emory and i had only taught history classes and no student had ever claimed their religion to me before asking a question. In my classroom now, at least half of my students say i am or i am not x. It requires deafness not all of us, we are not trained to have in graduate school, many of us have cobbled together skills to be able to teach religion. I think it is hard to teach religion and that is a real barrier. The kind of question about finesse and how we work with students or sources and one of the things ive been thinking a lot about, it is trite to say that religion is complicated. So in many ways race, gender, sexuality, capitalism, other categories that we regularly engage. If you do legal history, you learn law. If you do medical history, you learn about medicine. If you do business you learn a lot about business methods part of what it means to do religion well is to become fluent in a number of different religious languages to be able to discern the difference between what certain words mean and different faith traditions and what they are signaling, to be able to think about what it is those words are signaling to a Faith Community and what they may be registering quite differently with other faith communities and with other communities in general. I think that is a real challenge. Figuring out the religious literacy necessary to unpack and work with terminology that often is not necessarily intentionally coded but speaking in many different registers at once and understood in many different registers at once and i think that is a challenge that religion presents. Methodologyically, we do a lot of work in hostory and trying to think through sources in deep and sophisticated ways and religion often challenges what that looks like in ways that other categories also challenge us but not in quite the same way, not with the need to learn another language in the same way. Similarly, the challenge that religion presents, which is a wonderful challenge but still can be difficult, is that religious groups do not necessarily adhere to conventional political alignment. How do we look at the africanamerican church that is very much on the Progressive Left when it comes to racial justice, but maybe is not necessarily when we are grappling with gender. It is a really challenging to think about how a space is a space for liberation but is also a space of supression these are both operating at the same time. I was reading recently these pamphlets of right wing Catholic League for civil and religious rights. So to the right that the bishops did not like it. Amidst the need to support vouchers and parental rights and education in an overwhelmingly antiabortion, anticontraceptive stance, in 1979, an article arguing against any effort to stop the flow of immigrants. This does not fit necessarily how we understand politics of either the present or past and that does give us a lot to work with it if we are willing to work with it. It can be set aside because it does challenge some conventional narrative. It brings us to the present moment, in many ways politically, religion is around us. It is invoked constantly it is generating a lot of policies of the trump administration. Whether it is with the muslim ban or the set up the office of the division of religious freedom and the office of civil rights within health and human services, we see religion playing clear roles in the administration. We also see Democratic Candidates talking about religion. We see reverend William Barber organizing the moral monday movement. We look at the sanctuary movement, it is led by religious leadership. The question is to think about, how do we work with this and how do we explain this politically and religiously . What does this do to our notions of narratives of history in the 21st century and to think about historical antecedents or how do we get here . What is changed . What is different or not about this moment . One thing i would say, thinking of the long trajectory of history, we look back and there are moments in time when religion is salient, influential in politics and Foreign Policy and it kind of ebbs and flows. My sense there is more salience in religion when i think of the gilded age and progressive era, religion has more salience in politics. When there are these moments, it seems religion and religious actors, either because there is a built in locus for organizing or because the nature of the theoretical arguments can be applied. Religion can be a way to understand the problem and to propose what seemed to be god ordained answers. It can also be a way to argue for keeping things as they are, right . Barbara behrens, who made arguments for the reason things were the way they, imperialism is great because she could make this an argument on each sides. It is not just the left or the right. Really do religion is inherently malleable. Who is the outside arbiter to tell you that you are right or wrong . This question of the language of religious freedom in our current political debate, how do we see religious conservatives and religious liberals making arguments about religious freedom . They are talking about completely different things. Being forced to provide services equally to everyone is seen as an infringement of religious freedom. At people being attacked for their religion, that is an infringement of religious freedom. The language is powerful. Because these terms are so malleable, it is a challenge but it also means that we will keep saying this particular moment. It is not going away. Me . I am not sure i have a great answer. In some ways, my inkling is to ask about money. I think perhaps one of the things that can help explain our political is how deeply seemingly disinterested academics are in american religious beliefs. Those people were not ambivalent in those beliefs. They invested heavily. They give money. They tie their labor to their religious commitments and they build institutions. Part of the reason religion is so powerful today, they have a lot of capital. They have other kinds of capital but they have a lot of money. They use that money and those resources in pursuit of their political worldviews. Without paying attention to religion, we are getting a thin understanding of americans and their political commitments and where they come from. One thing that raises for me, thinking of institutions and also tv, radio, and other media, universities and colleges, the other question is thinking forward. What is the rise of people who do not study religion these groups have a tremendous amount of capital. Religion does exist as a protected constitutional category. I think belief is the most protected category legally in the United States. You can believe whatever you want, the expression and action is of course where the challenges are. I think what that gives rise to is a lot of people, if my belief is protected i should be able to do whatever i want with the belief. On the one hand, but of course as we have seen, particularly with immigration and migration what happens on the border, who gets labeled a terrorist in this country these are questions that tie into american understandings of religion, which i think has been as much shaped by government as by religious groups themselves. We want to leave time for questions from the audience, challengesf or things you think are interesting to discuss. Debate or otherwise. If you could just say who you are. My name is paul and i teach at stetson university, a liberal arts college in florida. I am interested in all the presenters here. Very helpful for so much and teaching also. My question is about the attention to religion beyond confessional terms. It is tacit throughout much of the panel here. That suggests a way of thinking about religion beyond church and theology toward lived experience. At the same time, it is a tacit acceptance imminentism or things along those lines. I wonder about your thoughts on whether through methodology, a kind of tacit acceptance of this broader range of religiosity and for extra credit, if anyone is interested in commenting on how that might make some conservatives rather upset. Let me maybe give an example. One of the things i have been thinking about lately is jesuit spirituality. The jesuits are all about what they see as cooperating with god in the world to help bring humanity back to god. That, to me, is a very lived experience. This is the idea that everything we do is related somehow to worship of god. It is not necessarily about going to church, not about how much you pray, but it is about the kind of actions that you do in the world. This is why, in my own research, i find that J Edgar Hoover finds it helpful for his fbi agents, because their action in the world can be framed in such a way that they are cooperating with divine to bring america back to god or keep america on track. I am very comfortable with that, because it helps me as a historian to track these ideas and these actions that are stemming from certain religious categories and ideals that have reference to transcendent ideas, but are really lived out in the world. I am comfortable with that, and i think that those of us who are living in the world today and watching the news understand that even the religious right has this idea that everything they are doing in their political activism is somehow for them rooted in a certain kind of religious commitment to god in that regard. I will leave the extra credit to other folks. I sometimes tell my students that we study not earthly matters, but matters of the earth, as a play to emphasize the extent to which questions of faith are always connected to questions of politics. In fact, i think they are insepable and, i am not sure everyone agrees with that, but. Johns hopkins university. I really enjoyed this pnell and i have been putting a lot in my effort to achieve religious literacy and fluency in thinking about what to do with institutions and churches that are funding projects, or thinking aot about the language of religion being as important as the langue of music. I wonder if on the dilemmas of religion as a language is there seems to be some sort of methodological peace that throws it down there, that category of analysis did some work, if there is a moment where you need that piece to really hold onto historians who would benefit from having religion and other fluency is that they have. That is a general question for the panel to respond to. Very specifically, i will reduce this to one, i want to get professor martin to respond to the news cycle around the documents being scrawled around Martin Luther king. For those less familiar, a historian felt it was his duty to release some salacious info that had to do with speculations from an unnamed author in the fbi who thought dr. King had been pay to or a member of a crime of sexual violence. It is an extraordinary revision of the fbi to think of it as a religious asked institution and think of it as the moral fbi. I have records of my great grandfather who was a reverend. I am grappling with this in my own writing and thinking about the news cycle and where you come down on what we may credibly infer on a moral fbi, about what the character of the organization might be and what it tells us about the nature of state surveillance and what to do with these kinds of claims, when we have a bundle of documentation that is talking about the Spiritual Life and morality on one hand, but we also know the fbi is trying to clearly engage in preemptive strikes against black radicals and the likes. Where are we supposed to balance your findings with what these historians are comfortable speculating . I guess we will go backwards. I will do mlk thing. Thank you for raising that. I appreciate the comments that i read that you made about this as well. I have to say that i was disappointed in the way that the historian, who i count as a colleague, i was disappointed in the way he framed his findings. If you dont know his wonderful work on the fbi and Martin Luther king, we know that the fbi was out to get martin king. There is no doubt about it. I am presented that he presented the research while leaving most of that context out. For folks who havent read his books, they dont know that the fbi makes a claim in 1963 to J Edgar Hoover in a 70 page report saying martin king is not a communist. The communists dont have any influence on the Civil Rights Movement. Hoover was upset. He writes back that this is absurd, ridiculous and after martin kings march on washington, they push for further analysis. They told mr. Hoover, you are right. We cannot count on this is key, and i wish he would have cited this we can no longer count on evidence that would stand up in a court of law or congressional committees in order to discredit Martin Luther king. We have to go beyond that sort of evidence. He doesnt mention that and i think it is important that the fbi is aiming to find anything they can to discredit him, including as i mentioned in my own work, funneling and having ministers launder information about Martin Luther king as if he is a communist when they said they have no evidence. One of the things i think he could have done in the article is mention the broader background that the fbi has decided that they will not depend on evidence that will stand up in a court of law or before a congressional committee. The second thing i wish he would have done is put the fbi surveillance of martin king in a broader history of surveillance of black sexuality and black bodies. We know that in lots of records, in lots of centuries, the way that africanamericansbodies, especially talking about sexuality, is always characterized as unnatural or something that is abnormal. For the fbi to make this claim, they are in a long tradition of doing that in america. Finally, the framing of the article was made in a kind of me too format, the idea that martin king had sat back and given advice while a woman was sexually assaulted. It was framed in a way to be pulpable for the me too moment, but that has taught us that we need to listen to the voices of women around these issues of Sexual Assault, especially around people in power. Men in power. We dont have these womens voices in this article. We have the fbi and marginalia written by an unnamed person on a transcript of an audio recording. That is a lot of steps. An audio recording that we will not have access to until 2027. It was framed in a way that was innapropriate with the evidence available to us right now. I think if he had done some of those things, he could have engaged the claims, but instead, it was presented in a way that i think was unfair to the historical evidence. In 2027, perhaps we will have the tapes and be able to judge for ourselves. It may be a sexual encounter, but the way it was described by fbi agents has to be understood in light of the longer campaign against king, as not concerned about evidence. If that was the case, if the fbi actually had martin king on tape, evidence that he was sitting back watching a Sexual Assault occur, why not turn that over to the local authorities in d. C. , and then you have martin king, supposedly with evidence, being part of a crime that was committed. I question if that was the case why the fbi did not use that material to do the very thing they wanted to do. Again, i think if it was framed in a way that was more truthful to the evidence with more context, with a broader historical narrative about the fbi, africanamerican activists, i think the article could have engaged in a way, but instead, it was presented in a way that i would argue was salacious and not always true to Historical Records within the context of historical record. The wonderful question about an article being dropped, i will just say, yes. [laughter], i am burnt shannon, isnt one of the reasons in secular academia why religion and politics is not discussed, a number of historians and other scholars are intrinsically hostile to any form of religious expression, and is it also possible that reluctance to discussing religion and politics in other sectors of life is a misplaced fear that engaging in such discussions would involve establishing religion or promoting any form of religious expression or preference . I think it is certainly a longstanding convention that the explanation for historians not engaging deeply with religion is that they are not religious or extremely hostile to religion, but that doesnt explain why religion has retained importance in early American History. You dont do early American History without paying attention to religion, so i dont think early americans are somehow more religious than modern americans i dont think religion is always the central category, but it is usually present in most sociological studies that it hasnt been in histories. I dont think as a group i wouldnt put money on sociologists being more friendly to religion than historians either. I think there is probably some disinterest or disinclination, because it doesnt seem personally powerful perhaps, or because it seems less critical to certain ways of understanding the past than other categories do, but i think that is why at least some of the explainations we got today, you have offered today help get out some of the other structural difficulties, because i think mere indifference, if it were mere indifference, then there are lots of other not everyone comes to graduate training in history with an intrinsic interest in race, gender, class, sexuality, and yet, you could not get away with not engaging in those categories, i dont think. The question to me remains, why this one, and i think, some disinterest may explain part of it, but i think there are other dimensions. That sort of captures it. Im just not sure why it is not inherently interesting. I am not religious and i find it fascinating the way peoples worldviews and beliefs shaped their engagement in the wider world. It is so significant in the past for so many different groups. It seems surprising to me that we dont talk about it more in the 20th century. And it is still significant today. I will just add, in teaching, i taught american religious histories this semester and a number of students said this explains things that i recognized but didnt understand. I teach in california, they are like, this is not the narrative of cesar chavez you get. There are a lot of things you dont get about cesar chavez in Public Schools in california, but paying attention to his catholicism does explain certain aspects of his organizing farmworkers and the ways in which why when he sets up health care clinics, they dont provide contraception. There are a lot of registers that are important, or california has finally done away with the build a Mission Project in fourth grade, which is incredibly problematic for imperialistic reasons, but also the implicit understanding of the role of missions in california, but students would say to me, even just understanding the geography of california and the politics of california, it is important to understand the legacy of Spanish Colonial missions. Students are really thankful for this, so one of the things i would urge is, this is an opportunity that students, in my experience, are really attracted to. I say this also as the first person to teach American Religion at berkeley since 1980. I would only add to that, thinking about the classroom, i think this is where professor connollys point is so important. I find students in the classroom struggle in the same way that they struggle to talk about race in sophisticated, informed ways, i think our students also struggle with talking about religion in sophisticated and informed ways, especially in the midst of this country, with our students, if they are inundated with religion, it is mostly the groups that are the loudest and that is mostly the religious right. When students hear religion, they think religious right, and when you introduce them to someone like martin king or fanny hamer and they are saying, this is not what i thought religious people did, i think we are confronted with a wonderful opportunity, but to professor connollys point, we have to be clear about giving them a language and discourse and how to talk about these ideas in the classroom. I dont know if this is true, but my sense is that a lot of students on the engagement on American College campuses is usually related to the arabisraeli conflict and about jewish groups and muslim groups disagreeing and now, nobody wants to touch that stuff with a 10 foot pole, so, i pitched a class on american zionism and all of my colleagues went, they would let me teach it, but they are looking at me going, youre opening a bag of worms that you dont want. My sense is that we cannot underplay how much that conversation has hijacked any sort of serious engagement around religion for fear of inflaming tensions that already exist and that universities so poorly managed to begin with. inaudible i always take religion very seriously. My question comes out of teaching as well. I will start from my own personal experience. I teach at will lit university in oregon. It is small it is the west, they are very unchurched for the most part. They dont know the reformation. Most of them. Not all. Part of me in trying to understand the reticence, students have difficulty talking about religion and i will frequently have this occasion, where a student will be talking about religion in class and afterwards will come out to me as being religious. I myself do not identify as someone with faith, but they sense that this is a safe space where they can talk about the fact that they go to church and that is ok. It is stunning to me that they feel that sense that it is not ok and i wonder how much of that has to do with this narrative of americanism and the cold war. I think of the ways in the 1970s and 80s, there was the protestant and cathelic and the jew and we are all americans, because we are not communists. Then that goes away and there is this polarization in general in the way our identities have gotten so stacked and polarized and students, much like around race and other issues, i get the sense that students are just afraid to say the wrong thing and there is not that space to create a shared sense of openness with difference. It is ok to be of different faiths and talk about that. Inot sure how im supposed to teach religious history. How do you do that . What have you done that has enabled students to release some of that pressure and be comfortable sitting with each other in a diverse setting of people with different faiths . I dont know if you have ideas about that. I would be open to suggestions of how to do that. When i teach religion and politics, a senior level seminar, it is sometimes the first time that my history students are reading about how pluralistic American Society was from very early on. Some of it is just introducing them to notions of different religions interacting, islam early on, native American Religions, there is so much happening. Just giving them a space to think about pluralism and the way that comes out in founding documents, some of that gives them a space that is so far removed from the current polarization that i think they feel safe talking about it in earlier American History. We Start Talking about the religious right, there are politically leftleaning evangelicals. Theres a whole group of them. Most students dont realize that, so trying to pull them out of this sense that the only religion is this kind of religious right and it is very polarizing and they dont identify with it, many of them. I think introducing this idea that there has always been such a wide diversity of religion in america gives them space to talk about, what does this mean for politics and the laws how did they get past . Why do some groups that might be small in numbers but very loud have such outsize influence and what does that mean for us now. Primary sources. Having them start with a piece that is not related to them or maybe even to me allows them the ability to Start Talking and eventually they do begin to assert their own opinions and thoughts, that they have sothing to start with that is in black and white and i think they appreciate that. A person who is religious has a deficit, especially the secular students. They say this person doesnt understand the world we are in. This person has a set of beliefs that blinds them, but i of course, see the world how it is. It is kind of the bill barr silly agnostic so getting the students out of that space to respect it, then when you add politics onto it, they are like, i dont want to get into that. Not only is that a deficit, they are someone i dont like and dont agree with. Bursting that bubble i find is incredibly hard. Not to really go after herbert today, the truth is the the bulk of 20thcentury american religious history is a history of contestation. Despite discussions and attempts to make everything seem very consensus and united, it is actually difficult to find sources that if we take out the protestant, catholic, jew ones, it is difficult to find anything these brotherhood weeks, these organized one week per year, usually city or been a civil events. If you just reveal the past to them, you cant escape it. It is so painfully obvious that protestant, catholic, jewish does not in any way get at the complexity, diversity, and deep deep discontent between and amongst and within we even talk about these religious groups, denominations as if somehow they are unified and they are going at each other, too. Understanding that this kind of religious history is always a battleground is key to being able to combat that kind of ecumenical civil religion, that kind of we are all in this together, cold war kind of thing. I will only add to what my two colleagues just wonderfully pointed out that the one way i try to point out with my students, we have a religion and politics minor and what i have been finding is increasingly that students, while some may doubt the importance of religion or some may view it as some type of deficit, i have also found at this age, and im sure that you have found it to that students age 18 to 23 are also trying to figure out who they are and there is a way that i think studying religion for some of them is a way to help them figure out who they are, who they want to be and the type of world they want to live in. One way that i do that is to expose them to folks who felt compelled by religion to engage in progressive politics. I do that particularly in a class called religion and the Civil Rights Movement. I try to expose them to folks in the modern Civil Rights Movement who felt compelled. In our seminar, that wouldextend to other folks, the catholic worker movement, things of that nature. I have found that in my context in the midwest to be very helpful for students to see that there are other religious voices than those that i view as being regressive in some way, it actually being more progressive. That helps with the contestation and help students to understand that religion can be used not used, but religion has been involved in a number of projects progressive and liberal and conservative and otherwise. One final question. Really just a comment or shoutout for the panel. I asked the question that in the brevity of the question was a binary between transcendentalism, when you answered, showing ways in which there are intersections, the jesuits and evangelicals and others, that is a microcosm of how each of your presentations was adding contextualization is a more benign word, to understanding religious history. Just a shout out to say thanks. Well, thank you. Thank you all for joining us today