The minnesota congressional delegation. The u. S. Forest service. The United States ceremonial the United StatesNavy Ceremonial band. And also, the lighting of our capitol christmas tree. Merry christmas everyone, and good night. [applause] i our queue and a program is 10 years old. To market decades of compelling conversations were featuring one interview from each year. The president and chancellor of the university of houston on u. S. Competitiveness in the Global Economy and the role of colleges in preparing you for the work place. That starts at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Then remarks from jeb bush and Supreme CourtJustice Samuel alito as they discussed the Founding Fathers and the bill of rights. It marks a new exhibit at the inional Constitution Center philadelphia. That starts at 8 00 eastern on cspan. On cspan2 it is book tv in primetime with authors who have revered on you have appeared on afterward. Karen armstrong discusses fields of blood religion and the history of violence then James Mcpherson talks about his book embattled rebel. That is on cspan2. Sunday on a day, the washington checker columnist on the biggest binoculars of 2014 award. Upsetats tend to get more at them. They have bought into the method of the liberal media, and think the media is on their side. Inublicans firmly believe the myth of media. It is a reporter from the Washington Post and they will not be fair to me. I hope that over the last four years, i have done enough back and forth, treated both parties with equal fervor, that people say,come to begrudgingly ok, you are someone we can do business with. I know that the Senate Majority pack, which is affiliated with they stopped answering my questions midway through the campaign season. They were not getting a fair shake from me. Aint lost sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Religious,sant on politics, and social issues. History ofok at the christianity, muslims in america, and how religion influences the immigration debate at the Southern Methodist university in dallas. It is an hour and 25 minutes. Morning. It is a great pleasure to be here from st. Louis. I am lori c. Is to briefly introduce our panelists for this session. Im keeping the introductions brief. Ive cut out the nobel prizes and other things they have done to make sure we get to their talks quickly. Here we go. Is a professor of history at San Diego State university. He is the coauthor of the color of christ, the son of god, and the saga of race in america 2012. And the author of w e b to boys 2007. An profit he has been awarded the award in the humanities by the council of graduate schools for the best first book by historian published between 2002 and 2009. The peter seaburg award for the best book in civil war studies in 2006, and the dissertation prize. His writings have been featured on cnn. Com, the atlantic newsweek, and the New York Times. His presentation this morning is entitled in the bowels of a free and Christian Country. Be next presenter will rebekah guest, associate professor of history and new york university. She received her phd and 2006 from harvard university. A historian of early north america, she specializes in the history of race and slavery. She has interest in the history of the atlantic world, and comparative colonialisms in north america and the caribbean. Graduate andn the undergraduate level on aspects of American History. Her first book, the baptism of early virginia, how christianity graded race was published in 2012. She is a crazy cat lady and despite living in new york city remains a rabid red sox fan. Talk today is called baracks main obama, the first muslim president. Where she is an of latinadirector church studies. Her first book latina andecostal identity evangelical self and society won the Hispanic Theological Initiative book award in 2005. She is authored more than a dozen articles and chapters on the subject of latino and latina pentecostalism and has served as a media outlet for the new york. Imes, the wall street journal she serves as an expert on latina history for the pbs series religion in america. Sanchez walshs current projects include a project on the cost of them in america. She will be talking about immigrant sanctuary and divine borders today. Finally Kevin Schultz from the university of illinois at chicago. He is an associate professor of history, catholic studies, and religious studies and a chair of the department of history. His native from los angeles and teaches 20th century American History with special interest in religion, and no racial history, and American Intellectual and cultural life. Monograph, how postwar catholics and jews held america to its protestant promise, of the ideadecline that the United States was a christian nation, and the subsequent rise of the notion the country was premised on judeo christianity. His current work examines the fascinating intertwined lives of William Buckley junior and Norman Mailer as a way to better understand the pivotal decade of the 1960s. He has had essays in several flagship journals including the journal of american histories, the American Academy of religion, and labor histories as well as other distinguished outlets. Distinguish his talk is entitled the blessing of american pluralism. Good day. Is the United States a Christian Country . Was it one in the past . Will it be in the future . If we look high and low, near americanse can serve asking, answering, and debating these questions. They are disputed online. Plastered on billboards. Mentioned during news programs. And addressed by leading politicians. Answers rattlend with disagreement and tension. Instance,ma, for answers them one way before he was president and differently afterward. In 2008 he told a group in washington dc, we are no longer just a christian nation. A are also a jewish nation, muslim nation, a buddhist nation, a hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. Years later, speaking as president obama, and to a different audience in turkey, obama explained we do not consider ourselves a christian nation or a jewish nation, or a muslim nation. Pluralism had been reconfigured into neither. Or repudiation of particulars most political and christian conservatives share their disapproval of obama right. Speech, cried glenn back. To defend the United States as a christian nation. Book faith and danforth senator john maintain that some people have asked if america is a Christian Country. Be, no. Er must to call this a Christian Country is to say that nonchristians are a lesser order, not fullfledged citizens of one nation. These recent debates and disagreements are not new. The problem of what it means to be, or not to be, a christian nation has been a touchstone of conversations about religion and politics for two centuries. I wanted take us back to the age of revolution and turn our attention to a cast of forgotten founders. A group of men who harnessed the language of Christian Nationalism in poignant and meaningful ways. This small and overlooked code bostonians aof offer a new way of us to consider what is at stake when we address, when we speak, the vexed political problem of the nations religion. Was 1777. The month was january. A particular petition on behalf of a great number of blacks was resented to the newly formed massachusetts a state legislature. It was signed by 8 men and declared we are detained in a state of slavery in the bowels of a free and Christian Country. The bondsman borrowed freely from the language of the declaration of independence was itself only six months old. They have in common with all other men and natural and unalienable right to the freedom which the great parent of the verse have this stowed universe has bestowed on all men equally. They have been unjustly dragged to this land. They have been brought here to be sold like beast of burden. Among a peopleed professing the mild religion of jesus. What these men experienced, they called worse than nonexistence. We could engage religion and politics in their petition from a variety of angles. Their description of the religion of jesus as mild could lead us to consider the potent lies of methodism and its musical inventions of songs like. Gentle jesus meek and mild our what it means have a mild faith in a time of war. The implication of natural rights leads us to wonder about the theological tensions between days him and christianity that animated so much of the revolutionary. Revolutionary time. I would like to zero in on 2 words. And beasts. They discussed this not as abstract ideas or beliefs, that its concepts of flesh and bone. These were human activities that took place with, within, and through bodies. The rhetorical emphasis on bodies encompassed the private and public, the allegorical and literal, the biblical and civil. Ets begin in the bowels at hallmark destination of medieval and enlightenment discourse. Want a structured his poem in for no as a journey that began in the mouth, flowed into the stomach, and culminated in excremental expulsion. Popen luther describes the repeatedly as a starting rear rear end. A farting john lockesame time was putting together his second treatise on government he was pending at chapter on the importance of going to stool regularly for some thoughts concerning education. When slaves situated themselves rhetorically and the bowels of the country they presented the nation as a body. Backdrops christian for this kind of corporal mapping. Paul told believers it is by one spirit we were all baptized in one body. Whether we are jews are gentiles, founder free. Hands and feet, of eyes, of years, it is not one member that many. Bodies are main of many parts, the pieces are equally valued and valuable within the one body of faith family. Parties were crucial civil metaphors as well. European kings were thought to have two bodies. The physical body could decay, but the body politic, that they symbolized, was understood to be timeless, immutable, and composite. The visual front is peace. Presented the top half of the sovereign facing the viewer. The top half of the sovereign was actually hundreds of small individualized bodies. While viewers looked upon the face and chest of the crown sovereign they witnessed only the smallers of depicted bodies. Which we saw from the rear. Members of society based into the sovereign, they constituted the body politic, they were absorbed into the sovereign, and put into motion by the sovereign. Bodies within a body. The apostle paul did not mention the bows in his list of body parts. Did. When discussing the things that we can do commonwealth he lashed out at the number of corporations. It were there were many lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater. Theyre like worms in the entrails of a natural man. Place tore terrible be, but they were also a danger to the rest of the body. In colonial massachusetts, and elsewhere, slaves were often feared for poisoning their masters in ways that upset their bowels. Crippling and killing women and men slowly, through what was put into their mouths that then came out at other locations. What took place in and through the bowels could upset the entire body. The reference to bowels took us within bodies. The mention of being sold like beasts of burden makes us think with bodies. Done dehumanization and animal is a are crucial aspects of making a slave culture. Linguistic and physical activities often rendered that enslaved as a can or equal with domesticated animals. Generation after generation of African Americans damped their treatments to that of animals, claiming the ultimate goal of enslavement was to transform humans into beasts. Beasts of burden were particular entities in english husbandry. It differentiated the people who traveled with one beast of burden or more. It constructed a hierarchy of poverty, who should get help. Beasts of burden were recognized as doing one or two things at a time. They could carry things on their back and they could haul cargo. The petitioners were the only one using the language of the aboutof burden to speak human relationships. Scottish minister and historian robertson when he wrote about the discovery of america he denounced native american men for treating their wives as no better than a beast of her group. All the men loiter the women are condemned to incessant toil. The King James Bible was complete to references of beasts and burden. In the book of isaiah too heavy a burden was placed on cattle when they were asked to carry idols. In the book of daniel there are four terrifying beasts. Of revelation the beast was a leading figure. The beast was well known to colonial and revolutionary ministers. For earlier Massachusetts Church leader Cotton Mather and the humanity of slaves, and not their beastly nests, was an embattled point their beastly beastlyness was an embattled point. Izing slaves will render them afraid of speaking or doing anything that may justly displease you. Hes writing to masters. Masters will have more work done better done, then those inhumane masters who have used their negroes worst than their horses. The question of whether negroes have rational souls mather exploded, let that brutish insinuation never be whispered again. They are men and not beasts. Inhumanity, brutish ness are characteristics of slaveholders behaving badly, not essences of the enslaved themselves. For the petitioners, animalization was general and particular. They are not just beasts, but beasts of burden that kerry metaphorical and literal weight. Bid carries heavily on the contents of some whites like Cotton Mather. It is a weight petitioners hoped they could leverage with the legislature. Im close to out of time. I want to suggest that taking the insights of these thationers and our present it may provide new bridges for us to cross the political what if we began where the petitioners did, and bodies connected to other bodies, and then moved to our ideas about whether the nation is or is not christian or religious . From this vantage point, starting with bodies, i would like to suggest that glenn beck, senator john danforth, and barack obama stand together. They respect bodies. In faith and politics, senator danforth expressed profound frustration with the use of teri schiavo, the florida woman who remained hospitalized in a vegetative state for 15 years to make political hay. The sanctityas for of her body and the wellbeing of the bodies around her, family members, friends, doctors. Danforth was not interested in this case with the body politic that was the republican party. Glenn beck cherishes the Founding Fathers like George Washington in part as he sees George Washington as a defender of Jewish Americans and their right to their religious freedom, and that defending their religion is also about defending their bodies to practice that religion. Finally, its clear that bodies loom large in Barack Obamas political and personal imagination. His fathers absent body, the bodies of dead children, of abortion protesters, the bodies of religious communities, they animate the audacity of hope and other key obama writings and speeches. Danforth and beck disagree profoundly on the theract notion of whether nation is religious or christian or what that even means. Where wey agree, we could begin and what we may take from the petitions of the 1770s , its not just that everybody has a body to invoke Martin Luther king jr. , but that everybody is part of an connected to other bodies. When we think of body second and abstracted ideologies first, we run the risk of putting intangibles before tangibles, nonexistent before existent. Problem these massachusetts petitioners, their families and their friends they knew all too well. A struggle to see bodies before ballots, to see bodies before budgets, to see bodies before beliefs. What these forgotten founders of the 1770s they called their struggle a glorious struggle. It was one that valued and needed every body. The time. For thank you for your time and myng to this body connections to lots of bodies here and elsewhere. Thank you. [applause] good morning. Until very recently i lived in houston, texas. This is my first trip act in over a year. Its good to be back home. There are approximately 3 million muslims in the United States, a somewhat controversial and unofficial estimate, since the u. S. Census does not count the population by religious affiliation. American muslims, like every other religious group in the country, are a diverse group. They follow a variety of traditions. Or they sunni, shia, follow homegrown american islams such as a nation of islam. American muslims are racially and ethnically diverse. They are africanamerican, asian, south east, arab and west african descent and an increasing number of the sums identify as latino or white. 11, 2001,ember american muslims lived in relative obscurity. The advent of the war on terror catapulted american muslims into the public eye. The election of barack obama in 2008 further spurred interest and notoriety of american muslims. Obamas middle name, hussein, and hisan father, childhood spent in indonesia filled fueled speculation that obama himself was a secret muslim. The enormous diversity of islamic beliefs and practices in this country, both 9 11 and obamas election have proved to be focal points for often vicious critiques of islam. Islam and christianity arrived on the north