Spending the Summer with Du Bois, Again, Part 2

While this post by no means ends mention or discussion of Du Bois here at Baldblogger, it does conclude my follow-up interview with Professor Blum.

I can't thank Ed enough for giving his time and thoughts to multiple (and many!) questions about Du Bois and other matters related to American religious history here at Baldblogger. So thanks again, Ed!

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Baldblogger (BB): Last year’s interview at Baldblogger discussed your thoughts about teaching Du Bois. As a result of your research, did you teach Du Bois differently this year? As you’ve corresponded with people about Du Bois and religion since your book’s publication, what is your sense of how others are teaching Du Bois and religion in high schools, colleges, and seminaries?




Ed Blum (EB): The biggest change to my teaching is that I no longer worry about “disproving” the notion that Du Bois was irreligious or anti-religious. While some people have heard of Du Bois as an agnostic or atheist, most individuals I have encountered seem to know intuitively that there was more to him than that. So now I just jump right into what he has to show us. I also pay a lot of attention now in my teaching to the religious importance of his fight against greed. I think the evils of capitalism were so invidious to him – and invidious in a social gospel way – that we can only understand his overarching religious critique of western world with a focus on his approach to money, gain, and wealth.




BB: A two-part question: Regarding the aim and argument of W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet, and its distillations in your lectures and presentations, what part of Du Bois’s religious life do you find resonates with those who see or hear a new Du Bois? What is your sense about what impacts those who come to Du Bois for the first time through the pages of your work? To put it another way, what are the main parts of your book that readers most readily “get,” and what part of your interpretation do readers miss or continue to resist?

Second, your bold historiographical arguments in the book claim that Du Bois’s reflections on religion mark the genesis of liberation theology, womanist theology, the sociology of religion. You also maintain that Du Bois is an abiding, enduring, and central figure in American religious history, and that his life and witness testify to the remarkable religious past(s) of those on the left—and in this sense you call him a “religious modernist” (p. 160). I wonder if you could elaborate on Du Bois as a religious modernist?




EB: By religious modernist, I meant that Du Bois did not put faith in any one belief (like Christianity, for instance) because of its claims to sacred intervention. Thus, he paid little attention to the “miraculous” of any particular religious faith (God parting the Nile; Jesus healing hemorrhaging women; a divine presence destroying the world and rebuilding it). It was not that Du Bois claimed that these events were impossible; he never took the atheist position that there was no God, no sacred, no divine. Rather, Du Bois recognized that human beings could not rely on such intervention or else it led to an immoral passivity. Thus, he looked to the ethics and morals of religious traditions for guidance on how to live, how to change society, how to interact with people and nations. That said, Du Bois over and over acknowledged the role, power, and possibility of God in the past, present and future.

People seem most to get that Du Bois had a righteous rage against racism, racial discrimination, misogyny, economic inequality, and needless war. I think that resonates with people because they themselves believe those to be immoral or wrong. Some readers seem to resist the idea that a person could be on the left politically (so liberal or radical) and be connected to and concerned with issues of religion and the spiritual. Our society fundamentally misunderstands the concept of openness when it comes to religious faith. Du Bois was not only open to many faiths as their own entities, but he was open to bringing them together, having them speak to one another ... all with the hope of creating a more just world.




BB: Other interpretive dimensions of American religion include religious pluralism and popular or lived religion. Without slipping into anachronistic interpretation, I wonder about Du Bois’s thinking regarding religious pluralism, or perhaps even popular or lived religion in America? To what extent was does his work on religion engage with or reflect such interpretive concerns? Was he a leading interpreter in these fields as well?




EB: Du Bois was amazingly pluralistic in his own writing. He regularly fused – in fiction and nonfiction – examples from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. And to this, he broad a religious approach to political and economic systems – like liberalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. In our modern world of such pluralism, Du Bois would be amazingly helpful because his breadth and depth of religious knowledge was so terrific. There are so many layers to understanding his religious insights that certainly more work can be done to examine Du Bois’s approach to religious pluralism. I would say that he lived and studied Diana Eck’s Pluralism Project (of Harvard University) long before anyone else had that kind of idea.


BB: As you’ve had time to think and reflect over the past year about how you approached (and approach) Du Bois as a subject in American religious history, what is the best thing about composing a religious biography, and what are some of the limiting aspects or the most pressing difficulties of this genre? Could you see yourself attempting such a project again?

EB: I would definitely like to write another religious biography. The only drawback is that sometimes readers become too concerned with the individual belief of the individual, and miss the important points about religion in society and culture that I am trying to make. I’m just not sure of whom the subject would be. I considered Langston Hughes, but Wallace Best of Princeton University is already well into a study of that nature; I considered William Jennings Bryan, but Michael Kazin of Georgetown University has already done that so well. Perhaps Richard Nixon; perhaps Mark Twain. I definitely hope to write another religious biography to seek to illuminate elements of American religious history (and I would probably get involved with issues of the physical body – weight, obesity, sexuality – and with something about race, gender, and class). I’m just not sure who to write about.


BB: Any concluding thoughts?......

EB: My only final thoughts are to thank you – the Baldblogger – for your support of the project and if any readers would like to contact me about the book, please feel free to. I would love to discuss issues of race, religion, American nationalism and imperialism, and/or W. E. B. Du Bois with you.

Blogging Bonanza

Recently, I put together yet another blog: One Nation, Many Faiths. It is a class blog for my upper-level U.S. religious history class at the University of Houston. Stop by and feel free to join the conversations. Let me know what you think, too.



I've also been reading the new blogs of several folks I know. The former dean of students at Second Baptist School (now of Parkview Baptist School), a close friend, consistent confidante, and prolific author Nathan Barber just started a blog about educational leadership in the 21st century. The conversation is really good there.


Jim Brown, one of my new colleagues in the history department at Second Baptist School (and frequent guest over at The Proletarian), is blogging over at The Agora. I look forward to getting to know Jim better, and reading his great thoughts.


A former student of mine is doing a college-for-high-schoolers program at the University of Mississippi and is blogging about it. It is great to see such a deep desire for learning.


And, as I indicated in a previous post, John Fea, my friend and co-editor at Religion in American History, has started a blog about his first book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home. The posts have been, much like John, witty, insightful, funny, and informative.

Spending the Summer with Du Bois, Again, Part I

It has been a calendar year since the release of Edward J. Blum's W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet.

Within that time, Blum's book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, a Grawemeyer Award in Religion, and received Honorable Mention last December at the Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards. (His first book also received honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center.) Blum also lectured on Du Bois at Rice University, the University of Houston, Morehouse College, University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, and UC-Riverside, among other venues. Blum also presented a paper on Du Bois at the American Historical Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

He’s continued to publish on Du Bois, with reflections in the journals Fides et Historia (Winter/Spring 2008) and The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Autumn 2007). He’s been interviewed on 3 blogs about Du Bois (interviews here, here, and a 7-part interview: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, consulted about contemporary matters of race and religion with Newsweek, and of course the scholarly reviews are starting to pour in: JAH, AHR, Progressive Historians, Fides et Historia, H-AmStdy, Church History, and Christian Century, among others. Blum also has edited a collection of essays on Du Bois and religion, due out next year with Mercer University Press.

Given the attention Du Bois has received on this blog, I thought it would be fun, interesting, and intriguing to conduct a follow up interview with Ed Blum. Thanks Ed, yet again, for your time.

This is the first of two posts.

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Baldblogger (BB): It sounds like it has been a whirlwind year, but also a time of considerable attention to the understudied and overlooked aspects of Du Bois and religion. With regard to this, can you briefly summarize your thoughts on the year?

Ed Blum (EB): It has been a crazy year; I spent so much time reading on airplanes that I started blogging with recommendations for air travel. Just about everywhere, the audiences have been tremendous. At Rochester, a young Buddhist student immediately went off and searched for poetry by Du Bois and Langston Hughes about religion; at Houston, several students wanted to know so much more about race and religion that they trekked over to the library to get my book and others. It’s been a fun time, and I’ve been so honored by the attention to the book. It confirms what I knew was the case: that if we opened ourselves to Du Bois’s religious teachings, we would learn so much, have new questions and insights, and feel like we understood our spiritual, sacred, and religious worlds better.

BB: As you look back on the laborious period of researching and writing W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet, and now a year after its publication, what is most gratifying for you?

EB: Most gratifying has been the notes I’ve received from random individuals who talk about how their minister mentioned the book or that they heard Cornel West talk about it on Tavis Smiley. These folks usually write to say just how much Du Bois has helped them at this moment spiritually, especially with all that has happened with Barack Obama, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Hilary Clinton, and the politics of the moment. It has been so gratifying to know that my work on Du Bois has helped some people make sense of this trying time and as we try so desperately to believe in hope.

BB: In a recent interview, you discussed the audiences for whom you wrote. Scholars and researchers will read the reviews in academic journals, so I wonder if you can give us a glimpse (to the extent that you can) into the reception W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet has received by popular audiences?

EB: It is apparent to me that a number of ministers have either mentioned the book during their Sunday sermons or in church bulletins, because I’ve received a bunch of email where the individual referenced their minister or church. Also, a number of people wrote to me after reading about the book on a blog. It’s been fun to interact with moms and dads, with church elders and high school seniors – all whom seem touched and moved by the book.

BB: If you had to choose, what is your favorite chapter in the book? Why? Is there a chapter you’d like to rewrite? If so, why?

EB: My favorite chapter by far is the fourth chapter on Du Bois’s approach to violence, religion, and the story of Jesus Christ. I think it is so hard to come to religious grips with the levels of human violence in this world, especially when we consider racial violence. Du Bois’s ability to weave together the story of Jesus with that of embattled African Americans I find so inspiring on so many levels. I also think that is the chapter that is written the most elegantly.

But chapter 4 is also the one that I would change. It is too long, I think, and probably should have been divided into two separate chapters. Thank goodness that there are section breaks!

BB: In a previous interview you discussed some of the material you had to leave out. I wonder if you might elaborate on some of this—perhaps Du Bois’s funeral and the “spiritual love” for his children—and discuss how it would further establish Du Bois as an “American Prophet,” or more clearly unveil Du Bois’s religious selves?

EB: I wish that I had spent more time on Du Bois’s personal life and his religious belief. There, we would have encountered not a perfect individual (he most certainly had marital affairs that he never told his spouse about), but his love for his children seemed rooted in a religious belief. I think we would have found him to be again so similar to older prophets – not perfect, but nonetheless believing that he was speaking holy words.

BB: Regarding the subject of Du Bois and religion, if you could ask him one question, or make a statement to which he’d respond, what would it be? Why?

EB: First, I would tell him that I and we miss him; that I wish he were still here, that I wish he were still walking physically on this earth to interrogate and to teach. We need him, I believe. Then I would just thank him; thank him for all that he did and all that he was. My question would be simply, what shall we do to be saved?

Remembering the Revolution

There are always interesting news items and stories about history that show up on July 4 every year. My friend and fellow contributing editor at the Religion in American History blog John Fea, history professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvnia and author of the recently published biography on Philip Vickers Fithian (buy this good book here), points to several in a nice list of op-eds on his newly created book blog.

I'd like to add one to the list--an editorial on Benedict Arnold, the famous Patriot-turned-Loyalist, or as some have it, Patriot-turned-Traitor, during the American Revolution. My Ph.D. advisor James Kirby Martin, author of one of the leading biographies of Arnold, offers his perspective in the article. [Update: see Martin in "Why the Patriots Really Fought."]

Says Martin: "This was a man who began in 1775 as the most ardent of patriots, but he grew to feel that turning back to England would be the best course for the country."

"Virtue is a key concept in the Revolution, and Congress repeatedly insulted Arnold's virtue."

"The only sensible course, in Arnold's mind, was to return his political loyalty to the British parent nation before everything was lost."

"[George] Washington knew that they had to destroy this guy top, bottom, and sideways, and forever associate him with treason."

"The tragedy of Benedict Arnold is that his incredible acts on behalf of the cause of liberty have been washed away and basically forgotten."

Reviving the Great Awakening, Part 3

This is the final post of Baldblogger's interview with Tommy Kidd. We finish covering the historiographical significance of his book, and turn the converstation toward teaching and future projects.

In addition to expanding the scholarly definition of evangelicalism to include the work of the Holy Spirit and thus consider academically the manifestations of the unseen, Kidd's focus on the radical evangelicals and their view(s) of the social order adds much to the understanding of evangelicalism's history.

Thanks to Tommy Kidd for sharing his thoughts with us.

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Baldblogger (BB): Your periodization of the Awakening and categorization of its historical situatedness adds much to the historiography. One of the most important contributions of this line of thinking—in essence the second main argument of The Great Awakening—is your focus on the radical evangelicals, and the egalitarian ends to which they took their faith. (This formulation in essence trumps the Old Light/New Light dichotomy of a previous generation of scholarship.) Your line of argument suggests that evangelicalism has had a radical strain from the beginning (and therefore one might connect it to the work on radical reformers of the early 19th century, and perhaps 20th and 21st century movements). Can you comment on this?


Tommy Kidd (TK): Although I acknowledge an important role for the “Old Lights” like Charles Chauncy, I think that their opposition to the revivals was futile. The more important question was what evangelicalism was going to do, or become. Moderate supporters of the revivals welcomed mass conversions but rejected social changes emerging from the awakenings. Radicals saw the Great Awakening as a great new season of spiritual power for the common people, sometimes including women, children, the poor, African Americans, and Native Americans. That tension, it seems to me, has continued at the heart of global evangelicalism and pentecostalism through the present day.



BB: You published The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents simultaneously with The Great Awakening. It is a bit unusual to publish a documents book in tandem with a monograph, and as such this suggests questions about pedagogy. How do you teach the Great Awakening (or American religious history more generally), and what strategies/best practices might you offer to fellow scholars and educators on this point?


People interested in how to teach the Great Awakening may want to read, or even assign, The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents. I taught the book myself this semester [Spring 2008] in my introduction to U.S. history course, and it went very well. I do explain to students that the “Old Light” versus “New Light” dichotomy has limited utility. I also draw out the radical manifestations of the revivals--which are extremely interesting to students--and show how moderate evangelicals opposed them. [BB: See Kidd's syllabus he composed for a course in American Religious History while a Young Scholar in American Religion, Class of 2004-05.]

BB: What projects are you currently working on, and how do you envision their contributions to the field of American religious history?

TK: Thanks to a year-long fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a semester leave from Baylor, I have been able to make good progress on several other projects. One is the book A Christian Sparta, which I discussed earlier.

Another book that will be out later this year with Princeton University Press is American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Global Terrorism. That book will analyze the way in which American Christians have engaged with Islam through eschatological speculation, missions, and conversion narratives since the early colonial era. Beyond the obvious contemporary interest in this topic, I hope that this book will move beyond a literature on Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations that tends to focus only on very recent history, and show the deep roots of American Christian thought about Islam.

Finally, I am continuing my work on politics and religion in the colonial and Revolutionary periods with a biography of Patrick Henry, which I am also writing for Basic Books. This biography will examine the great political controversies of Henry’s life, with particular attention given to his beliefs about religion and virtue in American civic society.

Practicing Pentecost: The Church Across the Color Line 3.0

This, unfortunately, is the final post of baldblogger's interview with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. His book is of enduring importance. The interview has been fun, and illuminating and challening in so many ways. Let's continue the conversation.....


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Baldblogger (BB): In chapter 7 (“Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”) you offer extensive meditations on Du Bois, and presume much of his writing to be religious and/or spiritual. You write, in fact, that “In many ways his whole life was an attempt to articulate a new religious ideal for the black community” (p. 149). This is a keen point to make, especially in light of many of Du Bois’s biographers (with this notable exception) essentially arguing the opposite. I wonder if you could tell us about your journeys with Du Bois—what prompted you to read him “religiously” as it were, and what does Du Bois have to teach us today?



Jonathn Wilson-Hartgrove (JWH): I learned to read Du Bois from J. Kameron Carter (and here). When he publishes his work on Du Bois as a religious thinker, it will be a gift to us all.

But I think the case is solid: Du Bois's concern was for the “souls of black folk.” He thought “soul” was the distinctive contribution black people had to offer this country and the essentially religious project it represents. Ultimately, I don’t think Du Bois’ religious vision is a Christian vision. Like Gandhi and other advocates of social change, though, he could see his way through the problems to the ultimate questions. In that sense, he knew that race was a spiritual problem.


BB: Your book is part memoir, part spiritual meditation. It seems to me that this is part of a growing number of books written by white males (books by Timothy Tyson, Chris Rice, Charles Marsh, Robert Paul Wolff, Robert Graetz, and Karl Lutze, among others) who have essentially come to terms with white privilege, white supremacy, and what it means to be white in America—and who work, write, live, hope, dream, and practice change. Some lived during the Civil Rights Movement, for example, while others lived after—and in your case long after. I think this genre of autobiographical writing is significant in a scholarly sense, but also it seems that among some there is a deeper kind of reckoning going on. Any thoughts on this trend? What is different, if anything, in your opinion, about someone from Generation X (and I am part of this generation as well) writing about racial justice?




JWH: I love many of those writers you’ve mentioned. But my real inspiration in terms of writing is Thomas Merton. After I’d read a number of theological essays about the importance of “narrative,” I picked up a copy of Merton’s Seven Story Mountain and said, “This is it!” Narrative theology, so far as I can tell, is about telling the story of God’s involvement with the world.


Du Bois knew that the problem of race demands an imagination that pushes writers beyond the standard genres. The Souls of Black Folk was a generic experiment, mixing sociological research with critical essay and personal narrative. So the white writers you mention, including me, may just be following the example of a black man who led the way in facing this problem.



BB: You suggest several times in the book that for white Christians to understand racial justice, they (we) have to drink deeply from the wells of the black church. It seems that one place to begin the journey is to change reading habits, and displace or replace former (white) theological heroes of the faith. Who should we read? And how do we read these books without falling into a kind of evangelical hyperindividualism that works to absent us from application of knowledge in the wider Christian community? Or, to put it another way, what and how do we read to decenter our white selves?


JWH: I’ve learned a lot from reading Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, Cornel West. And Martin Luther King, of course. Most of us know so little of what King actually said.


But it also matters who we read with. Especially when we read Scripture. The people I mentioned are all intellectuals. Great thinkers can be a gift, but most people never read monographs or novels. Most Christians read the Bible, though. We can decenter our white selves by sitting down and reading what Jesus said with our black brothers and sisters. If we ask what it means for “us” in that context, the new us is itself decentering. Jesus might even have a chance to slip in and insert himself at the center of our lives.

Dialogue on Race and Religion in Houston

Next Saturday in Houston there is a race and religion forum at Lilly Grove Missionary Baptist Church from 10am-2pm. Michael Eric Dyson and Michael Emerson are two of the noted speakers. Should be an interesting and engaging conversation.

Reviving the Great Awakening, Part 2

Back to blogging now, after a brief break. Also, thanks to Paul Harvey over at Religion in American History for linking the interview.

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Baldblogger (BB): Keen readers of your work may notice that The Great Awakening is something of a sequel to your first book, The Protestant Interest. Your first book was about the creation of evangelical identity in America, and the second about identity and practice forged in the fires of revival. Is this an accurate observation, and if so, what do you see as the key connection between the two? (Perhaps the Christian Sparta book will constitute a trilogy—comment on this if you like too.)



Tommy Kidd (TK): The Great Awakening is something of a sequel to The Protestant Interest, although each book stands on its own. The Protestant Interest is concerned with the emergence of pre-evangelical culture in New England, and shows how New Englanders became particularly receptive to revivalism by the 1720s and 1730s. The Protestant Interest explains the cultural/intellectual background to the Great Awakening, while The Great Awakening is focused more on the revivals themselves, not only in New England, but across North America. My book A Christian Sparta: Evangelicals, Deists, and the Creation of the American Republic, which should be out with Basic Books in 2009, also expands on The Great Awakening by demonstrating that America’s religious culture, profoundly shaped by the Great Awakening, also heavily colored America’s rebellion against Britain.

BB: The Great Awakening is the first synthetic treatment of this event in many, many years, and as you point out in the introduction, scholarly snapshots of the colonial revivals have appeared consistently the last 20 years or so. In your own scholarly journey, when did you identify the need for a book such as this, and what was the process by which you carried out sketching the project and organizing it? Connect the dots for us.

TK: As was finishing my dissertation, which became The Protestant Interest, I began thinking about doing a book on the Great Awakening. Historians have noted for twenty-five years or more that the Great Awakening lacked an updated synthesis. This, to me, seemed a remarkable omission in the literature, given the Great Awakening’s status as one of the seminal moments of the American colonial era. As I looked more closely at the literature on the Great Awakening, however, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the usual interpretive framework of “Old Lights” versus “New Lights.” That rivalry just didn’t ring true to me, as I saw just as much feuding between different kinds of evangelicals, whom I call radicals and moderates. My hope is that this book both synthesizes the massive literature on the Awakening, and gives it an improved taxonomy of competing positions.

BB: If you can nail it down, what was the most important archival discovery you made in researching The Great Awakening? Why?



TK: The primary sources on the Great Awakening are fairly well raked-over, but I found that there were many sources, especially on radical evangelicals, were underutilized. I uncovered at least one source that was entirely neglected--the narrative of the miraculous healing of Mercy Wheeler, of Plainfield, Connecticut. I published an article on this episode in The William and Mary Quarterly in 2006, but I also discuss it in the book. Her healing perfectly illustrates the agency and creativity of radical laypeople in the Great Awakening, and shows how mystical experiences could empower lay women and men in the revivals.

BB: One of the points you make early in The Great Awakening is that contemporary accounts of the movement overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelical revivalism. This speaks on the one hand to questions surrounding religious practice (i.e., “manifestations” of the Spirit), while on the other hand it brings a focus to the role of “enchantment” (to use a sociological term) in this history of evangelicalism. You effectively sustain this line of argument throughout the book. What exactly does understanding the role of the Holy Spirit add to our understanding of colonial evangelical revival and religious practice? (Reading between the lines here, are readers right to identify this angle of analysis a silent commentary on your own faith tradition?)

TK: The Great Awakening was shot through with mystical manifestations of the Spirit (trances, dreams, visions, healings, spirit journeys, etc.). Historians have often not known what to make of such episodes, and have only recently begun to look seriously at them as an integral part of evangelical history. Historian Douglas Winiarski has probably done more than anyone to alert us to the teeming presence of the miraculous in early evangelicalism. My sense is that the mysticism of the revivals fed their intensity, subversiveness, and individualistic tendencies. The belief in the Spirit led many common people to believe that they had a more profound experience with God than many of the state-supported, college-educated pastors. I certainly also have personal interest in the ways that experiences in the Spirit tend to fuel a kind of Christian egalitarianism.

UPDATE: Robert Orsi, from a popular Catholicism perspective, addresses this line of thinking and analysis in a 2007 article explaining religious mysteries and human encounters with the transcendent. For further reflections readers might also wish to read Orsi's 2006 interview in Historically Speaking. And of course in this context we should not fail to mention two recent books that help scholars to ponder analysis of the unseen: Orsi's Between Heaven and Earth and Thomas Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling.

Du Bois Documentary

I recently came across the documentary W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices. I was not aware of it before, and a brief Internet search indicates it is only available through California Newsreel--a solid company that does fabulous work but whose documentaries are often prohibitively expensive.

Has anyone seen this? Used it in the classroom?

Practicing Pentecost: The Church Across the Color Line 2.0

Here's part 2 (of 3) of my interview with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.





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Baldblogger (BB): In conjunction with your peacemaking efforts, you write that you and your wife had to “become black” to start to more fully understand your life at St. Johns’s and to more fully understand who Christ is. I wonder if you could briefly elaborate on this, and perhaps explain how this has influenced your understanding of the Bible and your own devotional habits. And a question for parents: besides embodying justice in terms of where you live and worship, and how you speak, how will you “teach” racial justice to your child(ren)?



Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (JWH): In the story that I tell, I try to take seriously James Cone’s claim that white people need to “become black.” Of course we can’t change the color of our skin, and the point isn’t to “act black” or “talk black.” Cone’s point is that just as Jesus was “numbered with the transgressors,” those who want to follow him in America today must be willing to bear the stigma of the oppressed. We aren’t called to “fight for the poor” as much as we’re called to join the struggle of those who are systematically excluded in our world.

All of our deepest convictions about who we are and what we want to be come out in parenting. My friend Amy Laura Hall has written about this in her book Conceiving Parenthood. For me, parenting is about continuing to learn the racial reality we live in. My son is black, so he has to face challenges that I did not have to face growing up. I don’t know enough to teach him all he needs to know. But that means I am dependent on others in the beloved community—black brothers and sisters who can teach him both how the world will hate him and how he can love his enemies. It always takes a village to raise a child, but Leah and I know we need our church and community in very real and practical ways.




BB: Your meditations on the practice of hospitality as it relates to your move into Walltown reminded me of the numerous conversations I’ve had with black friends and colleagues who are also committed to reconciliation. They surmise that race reconciliation is a noble goal, but that without economic justice, it is difficult if not impossible for what we might call collaborating for justice. In light of this, is there hope for those millions of Americans who live in suburban America? Or, perhaps are there other issues to deal with for those who do reconciliation work in the suburbs?



JWH: The suburbs are complex, and I don’t want to simplify them into the enclave of middle class success. That’s how we’ve idealized them in public discourse, but in most of our major U.S. cities, first ring suburbs are where the poorest of the poor now live.

But you’re right: reconciliation is always about economic justice. And economic justice is never just about “those people” fixing the system. It’s about all of us repenting of the ways we use some people so that others can be comfortable. You have to reckon with that whether you live in the suburbs, in the inner city, or on the farm.

Reconciliation is about setting out together with people who are not like you toward a way of life that is good for all of us.




BB: In Michael Eric Dyson’s newest book, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America, he observes that King said that after the death of white privilege black equality would emerge (p.17). It seems that this is one part of what you argue in Free to Be Bound, stating more specifically that white encounters with various forms of “death” may bring new spiritual life. Is this a correct reading of your work—and can you respond to these thoughts?



JWH: King articulated this so clearly: the legacy of a slave economy is a pattern of life that depends on someone else to do the dirty work of the middle class. The Poor People’s Campaign was about saying to America, “We cannot live without our sanitation workers, our cooks and our farm workers. If we refuse to acknowledge the dignity of poor people, America will go to hell just as sure as the rich man, Dives.”

This is the message we as a country rejected when we killed King. But King’s willingness to die for this cause gives me great hope that the gospel does have the power to transform us even now. Beginning on the ground where we are, we can receive the gift of God’s love and make sacrifices for the sake of our neighbors, building the beloved community King dreamed of. We don’t need another King so much as we need an underground movement of little communities who live the subversive gospel under the radar, showing the world that another way is possible.




BB: Your chapter on connecting the history of racism with contemporary immigration concerns is just brilliant, and you offer a hefty criticism of multiculturalism and its discontents. You write: “Another way of saying this is that the language of multiculturalism makes it harder for the church to speak in tongues” (p. 181). I wonder if you could elaborate on this powerful thought—perhaps figuratively or metaphorically what it means for white Christians to speak in tongues?

JWH: Speaking in tongues, for me, is talking with people who aren’t like me. It means listening even when I don’t understand and trusting God for a miracle. It also means speaking when I’m not sure I’ll be understood.

Joe Biden got in trouble for calling Barak Obama “articulate” at the beginning of his presidential campaign. It’s not PC to say it, but Biden was just saying what multiculturalism assumes: black people are safe so long as they talk like white people. I worry about multiculturalism because it seems to reduce everyone to the common language of middle class values.

But that’s not what the Holy Spirit does. God makes it possible for us to understand and be understood by people who are not like us. Cone says white people need to “become black” in the sense that we need to identify with the oppressed. But I also have to admit that I’m always white, just as my black brothers and sisters are always black. By miracle, we can understand one another and live in community.

Reviving the Great Awakening

Today's post features the first of a three-part blog interview with historian Tommy Kidd, associate professor of history at Baylor University. The recipient of numerous grants, teaching awards, and named in 2007 as a History News Network "Top Young Historian," Kidd's latest book is a synthetic treatment of the Great Awakening--a series of religious revivals during the eighteenth century--and is the main subject of this interview. We'll discuss scholarship, spirituality, and teaching.


The term great awakening itself has a rather long history--first used in the nineteenth century to describe the eighteenth century religious revivals--and has received recent press via Jim Wallis's latest book by the same title. The Great Awakening was an important moment in American religious history, and remains a salient topic of discussion and fruitful area of research, writing, and teaching.



Baldblogger (BB): For those unfamiliar with your work, or for first time visitors, if I may I’d like to begin with some autobiography. If you don’t mind, briefly trace your academic journey through your undergrad years and grad school. Any formative teachers? Why were they so influential?

Tommy Kidd (TK): I am a native South Carolinian, and received a B.A. in political science from Clemson University. During my undergraduate years, I became more interested in history, and decided to take a M.A. in history at Clemson. From there, I went to the Ph.D. program at Notre Dame, where I studied with George Marsden, who undoubtedly has had the most profound influence on my writing and intellectual development. Readers will note that The Great Awakening is dedicated to Marsden.

Marsden taught me that Christian perspectives in academia are not so “outrageous” (to use his term) as one might think, despite the secular bent of most major research universities. He also taught me that there is no point in writing history from a Christian perspective unless one first writes good history. In 2002 I joined the faculty at Baylor University.






BB: What inspired your interest in the history of Christianity—and evangelicalism in particular?

TK: As a practicing Christian, the Great Awakening--along with American religious history generally--holds obvious interest for me. I hardly think that Christian historians should relegate themselves to religious history, though. My own interests, for example, are shifting somewhat toward political history. But I also believe that the history of religion, and especially religious practice, is fascinating and has exercised deep influence in the forming of American culture.


BB: If it exists, what is a “typical” day for you at Baylor?

TK: On days that I teach, I typically spend most of the day in class, preparing for class, or grading. I try to reserve non-teaching days largely for research, especially in the morning. I typically spend several hours each of those mornings working on my current book project or revisions to a manuscript.

BB: Just for fun—if you were not a historian, what do you be doing?

TK: I’ve always thought I would love to be a color commentator for the Atlanta Braves. But unfortunately, as Jerry told George on Seinfeld, they usually get such announcers from within the baseball business!

Remembering Emmett Till, Again

Since I posted once about Emmett Till before, readers might be interested to read what's posted on one of my class blogs--Till researcher Devery Anderson has responsed to some of my students' questions about the Till case. Fascinating stuff, and it speaks to the continuing relevance, and witness, of Till's life.

Practicing Pentecost: The Church Across the Color Line 1.0

This post begins a blog interview with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove about his fantastic and important book Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (NavPress, 2008). Thanks to Jonathan for his wilingness to particpate in this electronic conversation and dialogue.

I take the short title for this series of posts from Anthony Smith's chapter of the same title in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope and in recognition of teaching and inviting me to be part of the church beyond the color line.

Baldblogger (BB): A previous post introduced you to readers; we read some about your background, upbringing, and recent work and writing. Is there anything about your life and/or work you’d like to add? If you could, if it exists, what is a typical day at Rutba House and at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church?

Jonathn Wilson-Hartgrove (JWH): Most important thing is that I’ve become a dad. Leah and I adopted our son, JaiMichael, who is now 3 and a half. He’s a joy—and a bundle of energy. If we ever had a typical day, we don’t any more.

At Rutba, we try to start and end the day with prayer together. In between, we do our work, answer the door, eat together, listen, and play. Most of these things get interrupted. But sometimes grace is in the interruptions.

BB: Now, a writing question. Your first book was published in 2005, and, impressively, you’ve published two more books within the span of a year and will have some more books published soon. When and where do you write, and from where does your inspiration come to write? In other words, any tips for good and effective writing? For interested readers, any projects in the works?

JWH: I write because I have to. I don’t know what I think until I see what I say, so I sort out my life in words. The incredible gift I receive from readers is that they consider it worth their time and money to think these things through with me. So I’m not alone. And, by grace, the bills get paid.

The challenge, then, isn’t so much to find the time to write as it is to remember all the other things that are important. Words are powerful, for sure. But we live in an information age that is flooded with disembodied words. Unless the word is made flesh, it rings hollow.

As I said, I write my questions. More and more, I’m writing the questions I live with others. For a few years now I’ve been in conversation about a new monastic movement in the contemporary church. My book New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Brazos) will be out next month.

Shane Claiborne and I have a book on prayer coming out this fall. We’ve been talking for years about the connection between action and contemplation, while praying and getting in the Way together. Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers (IVP) is a little meditation that invites others into that conversation. We’re just about finished, and it will be out this fall.

I’m starting to write about money. Jesus said you can’t serve God and Mammon, which sets up an interesting either/or. Sometimes we talk about “stewarding” money well. But on the whole, I think we have a hard time seeing money as a power here in the richest nation to ever exist. Prosperity gospel gets good air time in this country, but we don’t have much of an alternative. So I’m working on that right now.

BB: Specifically, what inspired you to write Free to Be Bound? The subtitle of your book of course brings to mind the famous phrase from Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk (1903). Was it W.E.B. Du Bois specifically? Can you briefly explain the title of your book? It is catchy, punchy, yet deeply profound all at the same time.

JWH: I wrote Free to Be Bound because I needed to go deeper into the question I’d first asked at 16, when I met some black Christians—namely, why have I never met these brothers and sisters before? Following that question led me to join a black church, move into a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and, among other things, read Du Bois. He said the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line. My experience showed me that the color line was a dividing line in the body of Christ.

Forty years ago, the civil rights movement taught America that we’re bound to be free. This resulted in news laws liberating black people from second class citizenship. Forty years later, though, the question we have to ask is, “Free for what?” Christians have for the most part used our freedom to stay in race-based churches and pursue middle class success.

The good news of Jesus is that we’re free to be bound together in a beloved community where the rich are no longer rich and the poor are no longer poor because we all share our resources so that no one is in need. This book is about what it might mean to be that kind of community.

[Photo credit here.]

Something Funny for Friday

I guess these were the days before RateMyProfessor.com......

[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]

Du Bois in the Lone Star State 2.0

Last Thursday SDSU's Edward J. Blum gave a lecture/book talk at the University of Houston's Central Campus. The History and African American Studies departments co-sponsored the event. Thanks to Dr. Bob Buzzanco and Dr. James Conyers for making this event happen.

Ed's talk was titled "The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois," and discussed lynching and the way W.E.B. Du Bois worked to find redemptive value in this violent expression of white supremacy. Ed discusses this in great detail ch. 4 of his book W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet. (On a side note, the University of Pennsylvania Press has a unique deal for adopting Ed's book for your course--open access to the author who could conduct an email exchange about the book, conference call dialogue, or face-to-face interaction with your students.) The lecture also covered Du Bois's short stories, religious art from the Harlem Renaissance, Jeremiah Wright, and even religiously-themed artwork relating to the life of Tupac Shakur and Barack Obama (and here), among other topics.


Listen to the lecture here (53.5 MB). Ed used the image below--"Christmas in Georgia, A.D., 1916," by Lorenzo Harris, and taken from the December 1916 issue of The Crisis (pp. 78-79)--to begin the discussion. The caption reads: "Inasmuch as ye did unto the least of these, My brethren, ye did it unto Me."

As I remember it, these were the Q&A question topics (question are hard to hear on audio):

1) religion/hip-hop/"G" not gangsta but reference to "God/deity"

2) LeBron James/messianic images

3) Du Bois's use of religion for strategic, pragmatic purposes only

4) religious imagery/Nation of Islam/civil religion

5) Du Bois's "lost voice" prior to/during the Civil Rights Movement

6) Is Du Bois spiritual and/or religious? Neither? Religious not spiritual; spiritual, but not religious?

7) religiously-sanctioned violence (Christianity)

8) secularization and narratives of American religious history

Ed Blum, Baldblogger, and The Proletarian.

[Photographs courtesy of Caleb Alexander, African American Studies Department, U. of Houston.]

A Meditation on the "Ebony Disciple": Martin, Memphis, and Memory

Today is the 40th anniversary of MLK's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.

I haven't really spent time canvassing the Internet in search of stories, but Ed Gilbreath offers his usual insightful commentary about contemporary affairs--in this case MLK--here.

A few weeks back I began to make my way through Michael Eric Dyson's latest book: April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, Death and How it Changed America. Dyson will discuss this book on C-SPAN2's Book TV live on Sunday, April 6.

Dyson examines the end of King's life, offers a literary analysis of his sermons, and discusses black America 40 years after King's death. Dyson also address black leadership in the wake of King's death, with chapters on Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama--and most interesting of all takes creative license to write an Afterword titled "Interview with Dr. King on His 80th Birthday." It is the most intriguing part of the book. [UPDATE: Ed Gilbreath informs me that this interview is available over at The Root.]

Here’s a memorable King quote, whom Dyson calls Jesus’s “ebony disciple,” full of prophetic insight and admonishing encouragement: “I wish today, that Christians would stop talking so much about religion, and start doing something about it, and we would have a much better world. But the problem is that the church has sanctioned every evil in the world. Whether it’s racism, or whether it’s the evils of monopoly-capitalism, or whether it’s the evils of militarism. And this is why these things continue to exist in the world today” (pp. 126-27).


[Photo credit here.]

Du Bois in the Lone Star State

And find out more about the lecture here.

What's In Store: The Spiritual Marketplace

Readers of baldblogging may remember previous posts about various issues dealing with today's spiritual marketplace. I've commented about it in the context of my teaching, documentaries, the installation of a Cardinal, recent scholarship (here too), and religious celebrity (be sure to read this scholar's work on religious celebrity and keep an eye open for her forthcoming work on the religious celebrity of Oprah). Darren Grem has some keen thoughts on the topic as well, in addition to what looks like a great dissertation on related subjects.

Well, I'm happy to announce another "offering" on the subject--a book titled Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace. Co-authored with friend and comrade Shayne Lee, a sociologist at Tulane University and author of T.D. Jakes: America's New Preacher, New York University Press will publish Holy Mavericks in 2009.

Holy Mavericks uses the theory of religious economy to study contemporary religious trends in the United States. It imagines this country as a spiritual marketplace where religious firms offer spiritual goods and services to religious consumers.

The result of nearly three years of research and extensive participant-observation in Connecticut, Florida, California, Georgia, and Texas, our project explores the extraordinary appeal of five evangelicals who make strong cases to replace Billy Graham as America’s leading preacher and evangelist: Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Brian McLaren. They pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism.

They write best-selling books and draw thousands of people to their conferences. They are fixtures on the airwaves, appearing as special guests on television programs. Newspapers report on their vast influence. Thousands of websites, blogs, and chat rooms dispatch their names throughout cyberspace, both praising and chastising their ministries.

Through the power of their appeal, rather than the authority of ecclesiastical positioning, they assemble multi-million dollar ministries and worldwide renown. With weak or no denominational ties, they are free agents who make their mark on contemporary American society.

When the time comes, get your copy here.

[Photo credits here, here, here, here, and here.]

For Those With Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

Svend Akram White, who blogs over at Akram's Razor, recently published this article on responses to Barack Obama's recent speech. Thanks, Svend, for prophetic clarity in these times of fog and haze.

Scholar Jon Pahl also has some insightful points--a Holy Week meditation on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Ed Blum muses about prophets and politicians here.

God's Time

God's Time

"I've only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can't refuse it,
Didn't seek it, didn't choose it,
But it's up to me to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it,
Give an account if I abuse it,
Just a tiny little minute,
But eternity is in it."

Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays
(Be sure to check out Randal Jelks's forthcoming book on Mays. Click here to watch Jelks's February 19, 2008, lecture on Mays at the U. of Kansas. You may have to scroll down to find it.)

Knight is Right, Too

In the previous post I argued that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's denunciations of white power and white Christianity were right. In this post, I suggest that some of what Steve Knight observes about the Wright/Obama controversy is right on as well.



Steve blogs over at Knightopia and routinely has insightful posts and keen insight into the complexities of faith and culture. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the Emergent Cohort in Charlotte, NC. Steve also arranged things for Brian McLaren's stop in Charlotte for his Everything Must Change tour.

On Monday, March 17, Steve and Anthony Smith (a.k.a. the "Postmodern Negro") taped a conversation--in the context of the Wright/Obama controversy--about the implicit whiteness that shapes and forms North American evangelical theology on the one hand, and on the other the imperative for white Christians to read deeply in black theology and literature and culture to understand, for example, why the Rev. Wright said what he said, and made the claims he made. Smith discusses key elements of how many African Americans see the church and the world and explains what an Afrocentric theology actually looks like. Knight discusses white privilege and how it plays out in politics and in the church, and suggests that white folks own up to the history of privilege, what it looks like today, and why a deconstruction of it matters. There's also a discussion of the black Jesus. These are simply a few highlights of the conversation; the entire discussion deserves a good listening.



In sum, Knight offers these thoughts: "The bottom line is: White Christians need to work harder to understand the history and complexity of the black church tradition and the role of prophetic voices (like Rev. Jeremiah Wright)."



I couldn't agree more. Like Wright, Knight is right.



[Update: read the text and watch Obama's Philadelphia "race" speech here, and check out Obama's discussion on the Tuesday episode of ABC's Nightline. Ed Gilbreath offers up some good commentary, as usual.]

[Photo credits here and here.]

Wright is Right

"The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority."


The Internet is abuzz with stories, columns, and musings about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments regarding the United States and 9/11, as well as his criticism of white America in the context of his support of Barack Obama. Some pundits are even calling the seasoned pastor and prophetic cleric a racist.


Denial and amnesia are unfortunate, and today seem to afflict the rich and the powerful. Truth telling and prophetic witnessing, yet again, scream from the margins. For those with ears to hear, and with eyes to see....

All of this is interesting in light of the attention Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads have gotten. Some of the saner, more illuminating posts on Wright come from historians Ralph Luker and Ed Blum (HT: Paul Harvey) and religious studies scholar Jonathan Walton. Diana Butler Bass also offers important thoughts over at God's Politics. Anthony Smith weighs in here, and antiracist activist Tim Wise clarifies matters, too. Jim Wallis crafts a customary illuminating response here, and Adam Taylor discusses the context of prophetic preaching here. And Ed Gilbreath muses about events here and here.

Wright's criticism of America--and indeed criticism of white America and white Christianity--not only took place in the context of a black church, but also is part of a long history of prophetic utterance and righteous indignation. Wright spoke the truth--and he did it with rage, and screaming, and with what we might call a performative utterance--but he spoke the truth that many still refuse to hear. And, the Christian church possesses the concepts and categories to work toward reconciliation, and this is one of the aims of Wright's church. Reconciliation can't come about without truth-telling, and truth-speaking--and truth-seeking.

Do you remember.....Richard Allen, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, David Walker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, James Baldwin, etc.? The list goes on and on.


Luker and Blum trace out the history of these folks, and Bass adds key thoughts to the retelling of this story (and Wise is his usual contrarian, prophetic self), but I would like to highlight the work of David Walker, a free black man deeply involved in the abolitionist movement and who worked in Boston at a second hand clothing store in the early 19th century. Famously, he published in 1829 An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and shipped the pamphlet South. Word spread about Walker's Appeal, and it is to this document I appeal in 2008. It is simply one part of the history about which Luker, Blum, and others offer reflections.

Like Rev. Wright, Walker spoke in the context of the prophetic Christian tradition.

Here is Walker:
"Are we MEN! ! -- I ask you, 0 my brethren I are we MEN? Did our Creator make us to be slaves to dust and ashes like ourselves? Are they not dying worms as well as we? Have they not to make their appearance before the tribunal of Heaven, to answer for the deeds done in the body, as well as we? Have we any other Master but Jesus Christ alone? Is he not their Master as well as ours? -- What right then, have we to obey and call any other Master, but Himself? How we could be so submissive to a gang of men, whom we cannot tell whether they are as good as ourselves or not, I never could conceive. However, this is shut up with the Lord, and we cannot precisely tell -- but I declare, we judge men by their works....The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority."

Jesus said that you can judge a tree by its fruit.

Walker continues: "Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies...."

And finally:
"What nation under heaven, will be able to do any thing with us, unless God gives us up into its hand? But Americans. I declare to you, while you keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support you and your families, we cannot be your friends. You do not look for it do you? Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy people. The whites may say it is impossible, but remember that nothing is impossible with God."

Indeed, nothing is impossible with God.

Read more from Walker's Appeal here.







And on a final note.....I don't remember where I read or heard this [Update: found it.], but I can't recall seeing or hearing anyone denouncing the inflammatory statements made by San Antonio minister the Rev. John Hagee, the fiery parson who recently endorsed John McCain. Hagee has thrown his full support behind the nation of Israel, and recently called for a U.S. invasion of Iran.



Once again, Wright is right.


[Photo credits here and here.]