Faith and Politics in the Fall: McCain/Palin

Like many, I am starting to feel election season fatigue. Campaigning is well past marathon stage, and thankfully the finish line is in sight.

Nevertheless, I remain interested in the comings and goings of the candidates, keen to read policy positions and issue(s) statements, and attuned to faith and politics in the fall.

There has, of course, been tons written about this already but a few reflections from this week are worth posting. I offer these commentaries (in two separate posts) on the faith and politics of McCain and Obama. And here are a few posts on Palin by Grem, Sutton, Scholes, and Fea. UPDATE: with an HT to John Turner, Time has a piece on Palin and religion.

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[BB: The original article at Religion Dispatches has several hyperlinked sections. Click on the article title below to find those. HT: Paul]

John McCain: No God But Country (by Kathryn Lofton)

“I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it.” — John McCain

When talk turns to the intersection of religion and politics, religionists are a bore to have around; what you want is titter and amusement. But scholars of religious studies don’t offer much by way of demonstrative surprise at the obscenities of public faith. Like the manager of the strip club, they’ve seen it all before. Whisper to a religionist that the Christian candidate has a grandchild produced out of wedlock and you’ll get a game of one-upmanship. “Well, if you think that’s crazy, let me tell you about the nun in Dubuque who…the Hindu cleric who…the Catholic soccer mom who…the born-again President who…” Or, just as likely, you might get a little shrug, a roll of the eyes, and a tiny harrumph. “Religious people are just like nonreligious people,” one colleague remarked to me recently, “except religious people have whole cosmologies to explain their failures.”

What may seem like a flippant position is actually an elaborate argumentative vantage point that scholars of religion have been refining for over one hundred years. Religionists are, by their training, by their dispositional nature, less interested in the debunking of the religious subject (“I knew you were lying!”) than we are in the study of the religious subject (“Such a complicated way to understand the world!”). What religionists have learned through all this analysis is that there are no consistent or pure religious subjects. There have been men and women throughout history—of towering, articulated faith and of impressive, practiced piety—who have found ways to sin, prevaricate, and seemingly contradict the ideal postulate of their orthodoxies. It is no surprise that a man of Christian consensus might have an Afrocentric preacher, or an evangelical may have an impregnated teen, or a Catholic may have a weakness for plagiarism, or an Episcopalian may have a hankering for Charles Keating’s cash. These aren’t exceptions in the study of religion, they are the rules. Men and women believe even as they struggle, relentlessly, to behave.

So when I say that John McCain may not believe in God, I do so with serious thought, and with no small indifference. It matters very little to me (as a voter, as a thinker, and as a believer) that John McCain doesn’t articulate a deity familiar to any available denomination of Christianity (or Judaism or Hinduism or Islam). John McCain is, indisputably, a man of courage and intelligence. To suggest that he is not recognizably Baptist (nor ostensibly Episcopalian) is merely to demonstrate that our enterprise of discerning religion from political candidates misses, precisely, the realities of religion. In some contrast to the pursuits of journalism, the religionist does not anticipate the craven, presuming that all words of faith are pandering rhetoric meant to appease men with guns and girls with God(s). Rather, our job is to collect the available artifacts of religion (words and acts supplied in archive or public record) and render an analysis of the subject. For students of religion, this analysis is not an inherently apolitical exercise, but it is, at its best, one disentangled from theological prescription. Somehow, without a God (but not, as we will see, without a powerful creed) John McCain has forged for himself a moral mode, a discourse, a rhetoric of righteousness. What, then, ought it matter whether he is or is not, technically speaking, Christian?

It apparently matters to him, and to his opponent, and maybe it matters to you. McCain has noted several times that the “number one issue... that people should [use to] make a selection of the president of the United States [is] will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principle that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?” A person’s faith is, according to McCain, an “important part of our qualifications to lead.” Bracketing his dubious grasp of constitutional history, McCain’s words direct our assessment. How ought we estimate the existence of such Judeo-Christian principle? And is such a principle properly religious? As I proceed here with a study of McCain’s religious words and religious acts, it is worth noting that there is no test, no catechism, and no shibboleth (as much as the voting public may, for whatever reason, desire one) that will prove religious identity or personal commitment to a specific God. People say and do a lot of things they don’t actually mean. Trying to know what people actually do believe, or what they actually do mean, requires psychic skill far beyond the purview of most refereed journals, most tenured academics, and certainly beyond the polygraph limits of the American media. Remember (yes, you, Senator McCain; you, Senator Obama; and you, voting Americans): words of faith are precisely that: Words. To know a man’s religion as an observer (a voter, a journalist, a scholar, an outside believer) is to know, only and entirely, his language game. This is John McCain’s.

Acts of Faith

From the start, it should be clear that we don’t have a lot to study. The most consistent aspect of McCain’s performance of religion is his droopiness toward expressive devotion. When it comes to communal ritual and institutional affiliation—the social expressions of religious belief—McCain offers little more than a confusing hopscotch of churches and a sense of presumptive Protestantism. His strongest acts of faith have been political maneuvers, like his 2008 attempt to create alliances with evangelical leaders in an effort to convince the party’s base that he is a bible believer. This despite the fact that he denounced the Religious Right in 2000 as “agents of intolerance” and despite the definitional truth that he was not, by any useful meaning of that category, an evangelical. This is one of the many reasons the selection of Governor Sarah Palin was such a brilliant choice as a co-conspirator in 2008. Central casting could not have supplied a better religious beard.

Even in his 2008 convention speech McCain would not admire publicly Palin’s religious belief, choosing rather to note that “she knows where she comes from and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.” McCain’s rhetoric is littered with invocations of chutzpah and independence even as his has been a (theological and professional) career bent on a studied moderation. “Ultimately,” writes McCain biographer John Karaagac, “we may say that McCain’s life offers a study in appropriateness.” Yes, McCain has done what was expected of him: he, great-grandson of an Episcopalian priest, attended an Episcopal High School, matriculated to the Naval Academy, then devoted himself to military service before transferring his duty to elected office. In high school, he attended mandatory chapel every morning and mandatory church twice on Sundays. He learned every line of the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, acts of memorization which would later earn him the role of ad hoc prison chaplain in the Hanoi Hilton. When he married a woman more regularly religious, he followed her to church when they had time to go. He would listen, and nod, and think that there was something good about all this fellowship, all this love.

Such a rendition of McCain’s appropriate religious life fails to offer the fleshy, flashy McCain, the McCain of infamy and admiration. McCain’s life story (articulated in memoirs and stump speeches) is suffused with talk (and pride) for insubordination, fearlessness, and nonconformity. He fancies himself a “maverick.” Perhaps this is why he has such a hard time tying with a denomination, and why he doesn’t like talking about anything as singularly conceding as religious devotion. For some observers, the fact that McCain doesn’t talk much about his faith, about his Christianity, is a denominational inevitability. “McCain, actually, is being very authentic by keeping it inside,” writes voter Eric Gorski in a letter to the New York Times,” He doesn’t wear religion on his sleeve because he comes from a generation and upbringing—Episcopalian—that tends not to.”

Such a socially determinist explanation might apply if McCain had not made an abrupt move to a different church in the early 1990s. Although his campaign lists his affiliation as “Episcopalian,” McCain corrected a reporter in 2007, commenting, “By the way, I’m no Episcopalian. I’m Baptist.” That year—preceding his current national candidacy, just seven years after he was outfoxed by Bush in South Carolina—saw many oddly confessional claims from McCain on subjects religious. “It wasn’t so much a rejection of the Episcopal Church,” McCain said in October 2007 of his move to the North Phoenix Baptist Church. “I came into that church, I sat down, I got the message of redemption and love and forgiveness, and it resonated with me. I found going to that church was beneficial to me in my life.” He “got” the “message of redemption.” He’s been “going” to church. These are claims of some acceptance and presence, but not the conversion or holy abjection frequently described by individuals whose worlds have been transfigured by a particular reading of the gospel, a particular preacher’s poignancy, or a particular ritual process. Becoming Baptist was, by McCain's reckoning, a Sunday respite. Conveniently for him, this churchly idyll was found by quitting one of the smallest mainline denominations in order to attend the single largest Protestant sect, by leaving the land of Gene Robinson for the world of Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Mike Huckabee.

For people who don’t enjoy the intricacies of Christian denominationalism, McCain’s language of change may seem adequate. He once drove a Ford, now he drives a Chrysler: What’s the difference? For religionists (the sort of people who love the messy details of sectarian schism), McCain’s terse description of North Phoenix does not supply nearly enough explanation for what is a jolting swap, like trading the Jetta for a Suburban. Yet McCain supplies no wake-up call, no re-awakening of his spirit to explicate his substitution of Sunday affections. He offers no specifications of the kind of Christ that pressed him from a the Book of Common Prayer to the Baptist Faith and Message. Nor, as mentioned above, has he shown the increased piety of the convert. When asked how often he attends church McCain says, “not as often as I should.” When asked whether he has participated in adult baptism, a ritual requisite for converts to the Convention, McCain says no, calling it “a personal thing,” adding on another occasion that “I didn’t find it necessary to do so for my spiritual needs.”

McCain’s decision not to participate in a major ritual of Baptist practice may be laziness, may be diffidence, or it may be a desire to evade hypocrisy. If I don’t take communion when I attend an Episcopal church, it’s not because I am antagonistic to communion (or Episcopalians). I don’t take communion because this ritual act of belonging is not mine because I do not, properly, belong. Why does McCain choose not to belong where he claims to belong? If these rituals are not McCain's, which are? Are his prayers Nicene still? Were they ever? McCain’s acts of faith requires a return to requisite high school ritual. Or, as he would have it, a return to Hanoi.

Words of Faith

For most political leaders, God is littered about their speeches, press releases, floor statements, editorials, and memoirs like verbal pork barrel. Federal executives and legislators tend to collapse into predictable patterns of religious invocation, using lines from the Gospel of Matthew, images of David and Goliath, or talk of covenants to build a City on the Hill in order to flourish their claims of political power. Yet in his years of public service prior to 2008, John McCain’s speeches are models of secular aridity. He doesn’t just occasionally speak of God or faith or America’s Christian promise; he never does. Indeed, John McCain does not like to talk about religion. “I’m unashamed and unembarrassed about my deep faith in God,” he has said, “But I do not obviously try to impose my views on others.” When pressed, McCain has been known to snap back to interrogating reporters, “The most important thing is that I’m a Christian. And I don’t have anything else to say on the issue.”

When McCain does use religious metaphor, it is language cribbed from another belated believer. McCain likens himself to Reagan, a man whose faith made a surprise appearance only once he achieved elected office. In his 2008 convention speech, McCain called upon his party to return to the “party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan.” In 2000, McCain separated that same party from the party of the Religious Right, fatefully remarking: “My friends, I am a Reagan Republican who will defeat Al Gore. Unfortunately, Governor Bush is a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore.”

This Reagan Republican has come around on Pat Robertson politics, volunteering to sacrifice once again for his country a piece of himself. At the “Civil Forum on the Presidency” moderated by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church this past August, and on countless other occasions during the campaign, McCain has canonized one anecdote to answer every question about God, every question about faith, every inquiry about his religious devotion. This is, of course, the tale of the dirt cross at the Hanoi Hilton. McCain describes this period with rehearsed (always dry-eyed) poignancy, recounting how his commitment to The Code of Conduct left him to rot for five and half years, how trapped in solitary confinement he was allowed a minute or two outside on Christmas Day, and how one guard looked him straight in the eye on that day (that holy day) and “drew with his sandal a cross in the ground.”

In recent press events, this moment in Hanoi has become his road to Damascus, the tale told to shunt rumors of irreligion. Conversion narratives have become mandatory formulations in American politics, signaling simultaneously theological affinity with an important voting bloc as well as the character requisite to serve an executive post with populist humility. As political scientist David S. Gutterman has observed, words of conversion feed multiple audiences:


Those who have their own conversion narrative will be able to recognize themselves in another’s story, and those who are not saved will be hopefully seduced by the plot of the story, so that they may know themselves as chaotic and fragmented, needing only to follow the path laid bare by the narrative plot in order to experience Jesus and be made whole.

That conversion talk is so much more common in contemporary politics than it was twenty-five years ago can be paralleled with other signs of the triumphant solipsist, including the success of confessional talk shows, competitive reality programming, and the discovery that celebrities are “just like US!”

Even within this din of come-to-Jesus moments, McCain’s story is discordant, failing to supply some of the basic ingredients for a ritual confession of faith. It includes no mention of God (or Christ) as an actor in his life or even in that dirt-drawn moment. There are no searching first-person studies of his character, expelling moment of personal sin revealed, revelled, and renunciated. His reading of the story varies, most frequently returning to it as a common text for two people seeking fellowship: “For a brief moment, neither one of us were in Hanoi, we were just two Christians celebrating the birth of Christ together.” Another time: “We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.” Yet another: “I will never forget the fact that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there’s always going to be someone of your faith and your belief and your devotion to your fellow man who will pick you up and help you out and bring you through.” The story, and its retread morals, has stirred a bit of predictable controversy. Blogger Andrew Sullivan finds it bears a striking resemblance to a tale once told by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. There have also been intimations that McCain only added the story once he entered politics, due to its absence from his 1973 captivity narrative. And historian John Fea has noted, aptly, that no matter the truth of the tale, it “tells us more about the guard’s faith than McCain’s.”

Whatever the origin of the story, McCain can’t stop in the midst of this election cycle from telling it to us. The cross may have been marked in the dirt, and McCain may indeed have been filled with a certain form of communal wonder, but is that wonder a “Christian” awe? McCain’s unwillingness to format the story neatly into a born-again plot line may indicate his own reticence to propagate a rhetorical fraud. In his memoir Faith of My Fathers, McCain does not describe this incident as a conversion to Christianity, but as a conversion to country, as the time when he finally understood his “self-respect in a shared fidelity to my country.” The cross in the ground was a crossroads for McCain, but not from sinner to saved. Rather it was his turn from Lt. Commander Cad to Citizen McCain. He mentions the words “Christian” and “Christianity” rarely, but when he does, it is always—always—connected with an idea of “America” or “American.”

Consider these examples. When Rick Warren asked what faith in Jesus means to him, McCain replied: “Means I’m saved and forgiven. And when we’re talking about the world, our faith encompasses not just the United States of America, but the world.” Elsewhere, in a Time magazine rendition of the dirt cross story, he comments: “I will always remember as well the Christmas services that my fellow prisoners and I held in a cell, when I gave thanks to God for the blessings he had granted me with the company of men I had come to admire and love. In the life of our country, faith serves the same ends that it can serve in the life of each believer, whatever creed we may possess.” McCain admits to a faith, and suggests that this “faith” has been his total “salvation.” “The only reason why I’m here today is because I believe that a higher being has a mission for me in my life—a reason for me to be here.”

That “higher being” isn’t God. That higher being is America. Again, after another telling of the Hanoi Hilton conversion, he proclaims: “This is my faith, the faith that unites and never divides, the faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. That is my religious faith and it is the faith I want my party to serve, and the faith I hold in my country.” Later, in his 2008 convention speech, McCain becomes more explicit, saying that after Hanoi, “I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.” Salvation has but one source: “My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it.” Someone once called atheism an undetectable God. McCain’s God can be detected, it can be found: his God is the country for whom McCain survived.

The strident—near stunning—focus of his religious ardor has been to his nation. You won’t find McCain singing Baptist hymns. You won’t hear him weigh out the meaning of the Episcopal sacraments. You won’t find him doing these things because he doesn’t need them, nor does he (by all public practice and proclamation) want them. He has all the ritual and power, holiness and community he could want. Often McCain draws on images of Theodore Roosevelt’s frontier as his virgin paradise, a place where men followed the strenuous life to messianic effect. These men, the men and women who pursue such new lands and new struggles, are McCain’s parish, and their devotion is his ritual practice. His religion is the civil religion of America. “You know,” he explained at this year’s convention, “I’ve been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it’s meant as a compliment and sometimes it’s not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.”

This is the conversion of Hanoi. The cross in the dirt is religious talk, but it is the observation of a man who cannot make religious moments of his own, so he turns to the devotions of others to derive his piety. The real fall-on-the-knees moment is McCain’s conversion to self-sacrifice, to his nationalist orthodoxy. David Foster Wallace, who recently passed away, summarized this attitude with excruciating clarity in his account of McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign:

Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the nuts and having fractures set without a general would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened.

After a vivid portrayal of McCain’s torture (broken ribs, shoulder broken with a rifle butt, broken arm, teeth knocked out), Wallace places us in McCain’s position:


Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would cry out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer…Would you have refused the offer? Could you have?

That McCain did stay, that he did so against his obvious self-interest, in loyalty to the Code, might demonstrate, as Wallace puts it, that McCain is certifiably insane. But we also know...


[F]or a proven fact, that he is capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches now you can feel like maybe it’s not just more candidate bullshit, that this guy it’s maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and bullshit—the man does want your vote, after all.

The man does want your vote, after all. And so we return to where we begin. How do we ever know the mysteries of the man’s soul? And what, really, should those mysteries have to do with our political estimations? To declare that McCain is not Christian against his (once rare; now constant) protestations to the opposite is not intended to be insubordinate to his proudly proclaimed truths. It is merely to say that, like policy positions, religion has an evidence pool. If a man says he supports nuclear power, we can check his voting record and decide for ourselves if the votes support that position. If a man says he believes in God, the evidence is harder to find. Did Jesus die for your salvation? We take it as a matter of faith: McCain says so, then it is so. But for the religionist, this is a position that would garner no high marks. Scholars wobble, constantly, between our task of understanding the material (“What, precisely, does the Book of Mormon say?”) evaluating the material (“How, precisely, does this map onto broader patterns of religious behavior?”). John McCain calls himself Christian, yet his religious worldview (articulated in word and act) does not map anywhere near the Episcopal Church of his childhood, nor the Baptist church of his adulthood. Indeed, it is hard to find John McCain’s religion without a lot of conjure, and a lot of (dangerous, on scholarly grounds) imagination.

Yet he has conceded to a religious mimicry, invoking (lightly, never avowedly) from (what just happens to be) the most consequential Protestant voting block in the Republican Party. Contemporary culture, doped up on Daily Show smirks, is certain that all surfaces deceive, all tales are seductions, and all one-liners lie. To be sure, honesty is not the coin of the political realm, and we may be savvy to practice a vigilant doubt. It is tempting, then, to suggest that McCain’s dramatic turn to religious talk in the last few months is the world’s greatest cover-up, hiding the secret truth that this is no man of God. Someday we may find evidence that Rove edited McCain’s texts, that McCain resisted Palin’s Pentecostal panache and that, all along, McCain begged that he might never again have to tell the tale of the cross and the dirt. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll find diary upon diary authored by John McCain keening for Christ’s particular grace. Or maybe we’ll hear stories (from his daughters, from his sons) of how embarrassed, how mortified he was to be such a religious monkey, how certain he was that The Code of Conduct was all he should need, and how it was that that man, that eight-year President, made him be so very evangelical in order to win back the very party that (once upon a time, not so long ago) made him lose a primary by calling his daughter black.

But for now, we just have this man, this testifying and freewheeling man who has made his own choices (in word and act). He is a man running hard in the hardest race of his life, a man who believes in his country, who believes he would serve it well, who believes that he is the best American for the job, and since all Americans are assumed to be, at base, Judeo-Christian then it is no lie at all to say that he is, at base, a good Christian man. And so he is. A good Christian man. He says it, and we have to believe him. We, the scholars. You, the voters.

We believe him against the evidence because it feels better to believe that his life—his survival, bound and tied, long ago—is a testimony to Jesus’s mercy. We feel better believing that nobody would ever, or could ever, lie about a loving God, or lie about loving Christ. And despite our own schismatic compulsions (in daily life, in sectarian divide), we like to believe that all denominations look the same in the dark.

Finally, we want to believe that words of faith are different than words of politics, that when a man speaks of God he is more honest, more reliable, than he is when he speaks of policy promises. In short, we just want to believe that belief is. That’s what we want, and it’s what McCain now provides. Who among us could judge him? After all, it’s not in his self-interest: it’s in ours. McCain plays in a theater, with a script, that we designed (not without a little assistance from Them, from Rove and the Southern Baptist Convention and the RNC and the DNC). Despite his disinterest in the subject called Jesus, he dances for our pleasure, he sings a salvation song for us, for those who he seeks—always, relentlessly, with frightening abandon, self-deception, and self-sacrifice—to serve.

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This article was assisted by research completed by Anne Farris and Mark O’Keefe for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (see their religious biography of McCain, as well as the public record of McCain’s speeches).

Bald Guys and Bow Ties

This week is homecoming week at my school, and today was "twin day." After discussion and planning with my friend and history colleague Jim, we decided to be twins. This was Jim's second day in a row to wear a bow tie, so I like where this is going.

Eddie, if three's a crowd, then with your brains and bow ties the department would be unstoppable. We'll have to take another bow tie picture with you when you are on campus next.

Street Knowledge: Homeless Bloggers

A former student of mine, currently attending Belmont, recently brought to my attention the blog of Kevin Barbieux, a homeless blogger from Nashville. He blogs at The Homeless Guy.

After reading some of his posts, Kevin has a lot to say, and I like what he has to say--particularly about the topic of hospitality. I'm not sure if Kevin has kids, but his thoughts on hospitality and children, in my opinion, is right on. Here's a brief sample:

Nothing could be more crucial to parenting as hospitality. It is the most necessary aspect of raising a child. For with hospitality parents are required to recognize the person, and the individual that is their child, and to give this person full respect and consideration. It is striking how often parents fail to do so. And it is not at all surprising how messed up a child becomes when mistreated by a parent. Like the old saying goes, as the tree is bent, so shall it grow. Show me an adult that is lacking proper social skills, and I'll show you someone who was not treated with respect by their parents.


Read the full post here. And read another post about hospitality here. Reading Kevin's posts brings to mind another writer on homelessness, Fr. Gary Smith, whose Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor is perhaps my favorite book. And check out this site, Where's Brandt?, another homeless blogger.

Thanks for sharing your stories, Kevin and Brandt, and gracing us with your wisdom, insight, and perspective.

Travelblogging 3.0 from Atlanta

Google technology
CLOUD COMPUTING

RSS: “real simple syndication”

Connectivism

Network Literacy

METAPHOR
Google reader: Will Ricahrdson’s textbook for subjects related to networking, technology, and teaching; Will can update at anytime; he does not have a passive relationship with this textbook

(Book): Everything is Miscellaneous; creating “folkonomies” not taxonomies

Model: search term—what is your passion?
e.g.—mountain biking; first site Will pulled up had advertisement, so public site making profit….ended up being a personal blog.

Show students how to VET websites

Social Bookmarking

SUMMARY: This session was more about the application of the new connectivity programs; it was a real whirlwind; wish there would have been more time for the discussion. Good, but too short.

As promised, I'll be offering my narrative summary thoughts of the conference sometime over the weekend.

Travelblogging 2.0 from Atlanta

Don't have time to hyperlink notes, but here they are from Will Richardson's morning presentation. Finished up about 15 minutes ago. I'll follow up with narrative reflections as soon as I can.

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Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference (blog)—11 years old; example of young people living in a networked world

Metaphor: kids driving the technology school bus; driving is sketchy; adults holding on for dear life

Implementation in teachers’ own lives: this isn’t just a seminar about adding something to classroom!

Clay Shirkey: Here Comes Everybody: tectonic shift

Technology Review: "How Obama Really Did It"; new mantra—not “It’s the Economy, Stupid” but “It’s Networking, Stupid”

NPR: Internet Cartoon Pays Off For Kansas Candidate (8/12/08): Morning Edition

USA Today: Gray Googlers Strike Gold

Surf the channel.com—movie clips, etc.

What is the fine line between collaboration and plagiarism? (Nathan Barber recently blogged about this.)

“If you are not participating in this technology, conversation, you will most likely get left behind”
Literacies, nuances to participation in this connected culture

“Live Scribe” pens

Educational establishment largely opposed to new technologies; my question is why? The world is changing—get on board!

WR: besides having kids, blogging has changed his life the most

Do we address hypertext reading/scanning and textbook reading scanning? What’s/where the disconnect?

del.icio.us network

clustermaps

fanfiction.net—writers can add chapters to books, create sequels, etc.

Myspace.com: 85% of users have public profiles

To teachers: What are we doing to prepare students to get a job at my school in 7 years?

Who is teaching MySpace? (responsible use, thoughtful engagement, etc.)

Using technology: Difference between MODERATING and MONITORING; explain

IMPERATIVE: help students prepare for the global world; savvy, critical, connective, innovative
MIT opencourseware

Content is not scarce; content is not static

“The currency of information is paramount”

Raise kids who are editors….

Clarence Fisher—classroom with “thin walls” (technology)

SCRATCH

“The best teachers in the lives of my kids are the ones that they find”

The Flat Classroom Project

RadioWillowweb

“Be selfish” about using technology for yourself—learning it by yourself

What are my own learning practices? (compare/contrast with/to students: have a conversation)

SUMMARY: The main points of Will's presentation were to document that 21st century education, learning, and communication is here and emphasized the imperative for educators to know the new technologies and develop new literacies, or risk becoming irrelevant. The upshot of the PLP program in which I am involved (and which he and Sheryl co-faciliate), is to walk through a non-linear journey for the academic year to learn, discuss, collaborate, etc.

Travelblogging from Atlanta 1.0

Arrived here in Georgia after an uneventful flight. I've had some great conversations so far about curriculum development and collaborating across disciplines, and what kinds of teaching strategies my colleagues have employed over the years.


Also had a great conversation with the Director of Academic Affairs at my school about teaching full time the last 7 years with 6 of those engaged in doctoral study. I taught 5 classes each day, and two nights a week (with the exception of 1 semester) took graduate seminars.


Some background: I finished an MA in history in May 2001, and began teaching full time in August 2001. I spent 2002-05 taking courses and then essentially writing the dissertation since March 2007, when I took my final research excursion to New England.


The short of it is that it has been an amazingly rich time of interplay between teaching and research/writing. In the conversation earlier today I recounted how I bring teaching questions now to my archival research (or participant-observation)--essentially thinking about how I could teach using primary documents--and while I think of course about content, argument, structure, etc. with my writing, I also think deeply about communicating ideas--in other words, does my writing pass the muster of the scholarly guild and can one of my sophomore students pick it up, read it, and at least get the main arguments and structure? And of course the use of technology has been an ever present tool in the mix of it all. Such a schedule--teaching and going to school in the midst of a growing family--is insanely busy (how thankful I am for a patient and understanding wife!), but has been profoundly transforming and intellectually stimulating.


All these thoughts and observations come flooding back amidst the course of the conversations I had today. I anticipate it will continue tomorrow during the PLP seminar.

On the Road: Travelblogging

As I wrote recently, tomorrow I leave for Atlanta and the Powerful Learning Practice conference at the The Lovett School. I'm looking forward to meeting other teachers from across the country, seeing what they do, learning new things, and contemplating more ways to collaborate.


Connectivity is a term often used in the context of communications technology and mathematics, but it strikes me as an equally important term for 21st education. It's a term that's collaborative, generative, and participatory.


Since the PLP seminar is only one day, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to blog during the course of events, but I hope to compose a couple of posts while there.

W.E.B. and Wall Street

Thinking and hearing about the latest news from Wall Street reminded me of some of what W.E.B. Du Bois wrote many, many years ago.

Published in 1935, the year after Du Bois left the NAACP, these paragraphs from Black Reconstruction in America read like many of the creative religious parables and moralistic news stories he wrote while editor of The Crisis. (Read more about this book here; HT: The Proletarian.) And if Du Bois is an American prophet, then these words about religion, commerce, and global capitalism have a certain resonance with recent events. I’m not sure that history repeats itself—the human past and human experience are far too complex—but a wise person once wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. Du Bois, it is safe to say, certainly had an inkling of both.

Anyway, food for thought.

Suppose on some gray day, as you plod down Wall Street, you should see God sitting on the Treasury steps, in His Glory, with the thunders curved about him? Suppose on Michigan Avenue, between the lakes and hills of stone, and in the midst of hastening automobiles and jostling crowds, suddenly you see living and walking toward you, the Christ, with sorrow and sunshine in his face? Foolish talk, all of this you say, of course; and that is because no American now believes in his religion. Its facts are mere symbolism; its revelation vague generalities; its ethics a matter of carefully balanced gain….God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and blind with tears and blood…[T]he immense profit from this new exploitation and world-wide commerce enabled a guild of millionaires to engage the greatest engineers, the wisest men of science, as well as pay high wage to the more intelligent labor and a the same time to have left enough surplus to make more thorough the dictatorship of capital over the state and over the popular vote, not only in Europe and America, but in Asia and Africa. The world wept because within the exploiting group of New World masters, greed and jealousy became so fierce that they fought for trade and markets and materials and slaves all over the world until at last in 1914 the world flamed in war. The fantastic structure fell, leaving grotesque Profits and Poverty, Plenty and Starvation, Empire and Democracy, staring at each other across the World Depression. And the rebuilding, whether it comes now or a century later, will and must go back to the basic principles of Reconstruction in the United States during 1867-1876—Land, Light and Leading for slaves black, brown, yellow and white, under a dictatorship of the proletariat (pp. 123-24; 634-35).

(Y)ike(s): A Hurricane in Houston

It is now early Monday morning. I began typing my reflections early Saturday morning, as Hurricane Ike was making its way through Houston.

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Saturday, September 13
It is now about 7:30am, and I’ve been awake for 4 hours or so. I went to bed about 12:30am and woke up about 3:30am (Ike made landfall around 2am) to shearing winds and rain pelting the windows of my home. No more sleep for me.

I was surprised we still had electricity when I awoke. Between about 3:30am and 6:45am, the electricity flickered 7 or 8 times, but it has been off now for close to an hour. I was able to catch local newscasts and see the radar. Now that the power is out I’m listening to the radio.

We live in the far northwest part of Houston which means we are on the west side of the storm—the so-called “clean” side. Nevertheless, we are getting some high winds and heavy rain. (My guess is that the gusts are in excess of 50 mph.)

My parents and two brothers (and future sister-in-law) as well as my mother-in-law are on the east side of the storm—the vicious “dirty” side of Ike. My brother is in law enforcement on the east side of town, and my future sister-in-law is a nurse and on call in the medical center area of Houston. [At this point (early Monday morning), I've not talked to them, although I know they are both fine. And I have not talked to any of my teaching colleagues, so I hope they are all doing fine. I did get a voicemail from The Proletarian last night to say they were ok but without electricity. I've not talked with my two Religion in American History blog friends who are in Houston either, Luke Harlow and Gerardo Marti, but hope to connect at some point later on today. UPDATE: Luke reports in the comments that he's doing fine, and all is well with Gerardo as we spoke by phone this morning. Three of my teaching colleagues are doing ok, although without electricity. Haven't heard from everybody, though.]

The kids have been asleep downstairs through it all. They’ve hardly rustled, thankfully. Every so often I hear things pelting the windows and roof, and the general whistling and howling of the wind is a bit unsettling with the gusts. Power lines dot the north edge of the backyard, and they continue to whip and rock back and forth. I’m hoping they don’t snap.


Now that it is getting light outside, I see shingles around the backyard and a few in the front. Two sections of our backyard fence are down—similar to what happened (as I remember it) during Hurricane Alicia in 1983 (I was 6 at the time).

Monday, September 15
Once the rain stopped on Saturday we were able to survey the damage to our home. Thankfully, it was minimal. We lost significant numbers of shingles on the north and east side of the roof, and none of the tar paper (if that is the correct term) was torn, so at this point there do not appear to be any roof leakage. Four sections of our fence fell over due to high winds (the pictures you see), and so with some new wood, some nails, a saw, and a hammer it should be fixed soon. I've already talked with the neighbors, and I'm happy to say it was easy to arrange splitting the repair costs.

We were without electricity all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday. We listened to the radio to see what we could gather about getting electricity back, and to find out about the rest of the city. Our cell phone service was spotty, and so we could really only leave voice mails with family and friends. We hopped in the car to drive around the neighborhood to survey the damage and to cool off a bit, and did the same on Sunday.

Overcast skies prevented the house from getting too warm on Saturday, but by that evening it was a bit stuffy. It actually rained early Sunday morning and by midday the sun was out and things began heating up significantly. We had stocked up on water so were able to keep somewhat cool and the kids enjoyed melted pop sickles in the afternoon. Our food supply was getting somewhat low because, well, six mouths to feed is a lot, and because our ice in the cooler in which we had sandwich meat, pasta, milk, etc. was beginning to melt.

We passed the time by reading inside, and by playing outside, chatting with neighbors, and watching the kids run around and splash in the water with neighborhood friends. We saw some dear friends at the store this afternoon (while we were still without electricity), and they invited us over for some a/c, a wonderful meal (they had an industrial size generator installed at their home Friday morning, so they were in pretty good shape throughout the storm), and hearty fellowship.




Now that electricity is back on and we've been able to catch up with the news and with family (some of whom do not have electricity yet), we are fortunate to have escaped with minor damage and minimal discomfort without a/c for a day and a half. Volunteers are out in massive numbers helping those in Houston and surrounding areas who were hardest hit. Thoughts and prayers help at a time like this, no doubt, but so does food, water, shelter, a/c, etc. Many of the schools here will be out through Wednesday, and it appears most local universities will reopen on Tuesday (at this point).

In addition to my own two cents worth about Ike, there are some other news sites you might find of interest: A Houston Chronicle blog, Houston Independent Media's Ike stories (you may have to scroll down the page), a Weather Underground blog, and a local CBS affiliate's Ike site. Here's a resident from my town who posted some YouTube videos of Ike, another video of a neighborhood close to where I teach (about 40 minutes southwest of where I live), and some AP aftermath footage.

(Inter)Connecting the Past: Digital History

I recently came across an article in the Journal of American History that discusses the future of digital history.

In the round table discussion titled "The Promise of Digital History," William Thomas describes "digital history" this way:

Digital history is an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the Internet network, and software systems. On one level, digital history is an open arena of scholarly production and communication, encompassing the development of new course materials and scholarly data collections. On another, it is a methodological approach framed by the hypertextual power of these technologies to make, define, query, and annotate associations in the human record of the past. To do digital history, then, is to create a framework, an ontology, through the technology for people to experience, read, and follow an argument about a historical problem.....Digital history possesses a crucial set of common components—the capacity for play, manipulation, participation, and investigation by the reader. Dissemination in digital form makes the work of the scholar available for verification and examination; it also offers the reader the opportunity to experiment. He or she can test the interpretations of others, formulate new views, and mine the materials of the past for overlooked items and clues. The reader can immerse him/herself in the past, surrounded with the evidence, and make new associations. The goal of digital history might be to build environments that pull readers in less by the force of a linear argument than by the experience of total immersion and the curiosity to build connections. (Versus the narrative anticipation of what comes next, this is a curiosity about what could be related to what and why.)

This is a very thorough and helpful definition I think. In essence digital history uses computer and Internet technology as a tool to more quickly disseminate information about the past even as it exists as a participatory medium. The fluidity resident in it is an important variable in this equation, as it helps educators to (perhaps) more critically address the different learning styles that exist in our classrooms.

Steven Mintz is another participant in the digital history round table. Formerly at the University of Houston (but now at Columbia), Steve is a wonderful human being, kind soul, and innovative and critical thinker. Two years ago he graciously gave of his time when I organized a technology seminar for history graduate students at UH.

Whereas Thomas defines digital history above, Mintz chronicles the history of digital history brilliantly:

Digital history has evolved through a series of overlapping stages. Stage 1.0 consisted of communication and course-management tools, such as e-mail, online syllabi, Web-CT, and Blackboard, supplemented by content-rich Web sites (like History Matters, Lincoln/Net, and my own Digital History site) that made a treasure trove of high-quality primary source documents, music, historic images, and film clips available to instructors and students.

Stage 2.0 involved the creation of hands-on inquiry- and problem-based history projects designed to allow students to "do" history. Thus in Richard B. Latner's Crisis at Fort Sumter, students read the information available to President Abraham Lincoln from the time of his election on and compare the decisions they make with those that Lincoln made at critical junctures.

We have now entered Stage 3.0, in which the emphasis is on active learning, collaboration, and enhanced interaction. Wikis, blogs, mash-ups, podcasts, tags, and social networking are the buzz words. These technological innovations offer opportunities to students to share resources and create collaborative projects.

Stage 4.0 lurks just beyond the horizon. It includes three-dimensional virtual reality environments, which allow students to navigate and annotate now-lost historical settings. A stunning example is Lisa M. Snyder's reconstruction of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Stage 4.0 is informed by a "constructivist" understanding of learning, in which students devise their own conceptual models for understanding our collective past. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a colleague in instructional technology, Sara McNeil, and I, are completing MyHistory, which will allow students to create online history portfolios, in which they can develop multimedia projects, and construct timelines, annotate images, and keep notes.

While Mintz's Digital History site is cutting edge (I've used it tons in my U.S. history classes), I'm intrigued with his latest venture: MyHistory. Looks interesting.

This post could go on and on, and there is just loads of great material in the article for discussion. What have been some of your best experiences with "doing" digital history? Your most challenging? Why do you think digital history is important?

Du Bois Debut

While I've blogged tons and tons about Du Bois both here at baldblogger and at Religion and American History, my "official" Du Bois debut comes in November at the Urban History Association national meeting in Houston. This is my first face-to-face scholarly presentation on Du Bois.

I'll be presenting some of my research on Du Bois and religion. Here's my panel for Saturday morning November 8:

African American Editors, Urban Migration and Civil Rights During the 1920s and 1930s
Chair: Mary Lamonica, New Mexico State

Jinx Broussard, Louisiana State University, "Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: The Journalism of Alice Dunbar Nelson"

Jane Marcellus, Middle Tennessee State, "Representation of Employed Black Women in the National Urban League's Opportunity During the 1920s and 1930s"

Mary M. Cronin, New Mexico State University, "C. F. Richardson and the Houston Informer's Fight for Racial Equality during the 1920s"

Phillip Luke Sinitiere, University of Houston, "Sermons in the City, Parables of a Prophet: W.E.B. Du Bois, Religion, and The Crisis, 1910-1934"

Moderator: Breea Willingham, St. Bonaventure University

You can read the full conference program here. I'm glad to see that the history department at UH is well represented (and UH historian Marty Melosi is the president of the UHA), my co-editor Darren Grem from Religion and American History is presenting, and a host of other friends and colleagues will be there as well.

Of Hope, Humility, and Reconciliation

Over at God's Politics, some recent posts and conversations related to racial justice offer hope, humility, and the possibility of reconciliation.

Jason and Vonetta Storbakken, and interracial couple and founders of Radical Living in Brooklyn, recently challenged progressive white leaders of the New Monasticism movement to release the reigns of power, and listen more intently to the marginalized "minority" voices in their communities. Read their post here.

On the struggling road for justice, divestment of power and from privilege can bring hope, necessitates humility, and makes reconciliation possible. And it's hard for white folks to do.

Shane Claiborne has responded to the Storbakken's post (and here too), and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (who I intereviewed at baldblogging earlier this year in three posts; read here, here, and here) has posted as well.

With Shane and Jonathan (and others), I hope we can "pass the mic."

Connecting the Classroom, or Creatively Collaborating in Convergence Culture

I'll be traveling to Atlanta in a few weeks to attend a Powerful Learning Practices conference with several colleagues from my school. It will be held at The Lovett School.

I've followed some of the technology and teaching conversations over the last few years, have participated in it, and always discover new voices and new perspectives. One is from Will Richardson, author, blogger, and educational consultant; the other from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, blogger and consultant-collaborator. Both will facilitate the conversation in Atlanta. (Other perspectives I read come from Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, and Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing, among others.)

Anyone familiar with their work and/or approaches? I like what I've seen and read so far.

Going West

A few weeks back while browsing the stacks at UH's M.D. Anderson Library, I came across a new book on Cornel West and writing--literally the composition of text. I'm still contemplating how I will incorporate this into my history classes and pondering deeply about West's influence on my own writing and research agenda, but at the very least this book provides food for thought, and hope for the future.

Will you "go West"?

Also, it appears Cornel West has a new website, and some forthcoming material this fall.
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Here's a description for the publisher's website:

Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy identifies and explains key aspects of the work of Cornel West—the highly regarded scholar of religion, philosophy, and African American studies—as they relate to composition studies, focusing especially on three rhetorical strategies that West suggests we use in our questioning lives as scholars, teachers, students, and citizens.

In this study, author Keith Gilyard examines the strategies of Socratic Commitment (a relentless examination of received wisdom), Prophetic Witness (an abiding concern with justice and the plight of the oppressed), and Tragicomic Hope (a keep-on-pushing sensibility reflective of the African American freedom struggle). Together, these rhetorical strategies comprise an updated form of cultural criticism that West calls prophetic pragmatism.



This volume, which contains the only interview in which Cornel West directly addresses the field of composition,sketches the development of Cornel West’s theories of philosophy, political science, religion, and cultural studies and restates the link between Deweyan notions of critical intelligence and the notion of critical literacy developed by Ann Berthoff, Ira Shor, and Henry Giroux. Gilyard provides examples from the classroom to illustrate the possibilities of Socratic Commitment as part of composition pedagogy, shows the alignment of Prophetic Witness with traditional aims of critical composition, and in his chapter on Tragicomic Hope, addresses African American expressive culture with an emphasis on music and artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and Kanye West.

The first book to comprehensively connect the ideas of one of America's premier scholars of religion, philosophy and African American studies with composition theory and pedagogy, Composition and Cornel West will be valuable to scholars, teachers, and students interested in race, class, critical literacy, and the teaching of writing.

More on Teaching During the School Daze

Scot McKnight, a religious studies professor at North Park Univeristy in Chicago, recently posted some interesting thoughts about education and teaching on his blog. The reflections come from a blog review of Ken Bains's What the Best College Teachers Do.

With school starting soon, Scot's timely thoughts (although some of his questions and observations are more relevant to those who teach in church settings) give us all something to think about as we prepare for yet another year.

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Part I:

The beginning of August means I read a book on teaching, and my pick this year has been all and much more than I expected. It is by Ken Bain and is called What the Best College Teachers Do. This book deserves to be in the library of every pastor and church educator; parents would do well to let it shape parenting. There are two basic approaches to education:

Some think it is “information download.” Teacher knows; teacher informs; student doesn’t know; student absorbs. Student answers tests; teacher grades. This is the teacher model.

Others think it is about “motivating students.” The teacher may be the knower, but the student is a learner. The teacher’s task is to design an environment that puts students in learning situations so they can learn, the teacher can give feedback, and then assess or evaluate the student. This is the learner model.

Questions for the teaching dimension of church ministry: Is the role of the pastor a teacher? Is preaching teaching? What happens if churches reshape their “educational” programs according to the “learning model”?

You may think the teacher model teaches learning, but it doesn’t. It imparts information and rewards memorization, etc., which has its place but it’s a long way from turning students into learners. What the learning model does is to shift responsibility from the teacher being the informer to the student being the learner. The latter is bingo! for genuine education. Yes, information is acquired — but in context. We learn by doing, not simply by listening.

The learning model asks what students can do with their learning; the teaching model asks what students can produce on an assessment/test. The evidence clearly shows that focusing on absorbing information will get clear evidence but there is a major dysfunction here: most information we absorb is not remembered and neither is it transfered into usable skills. Skills is where the big game is played.

Example: if you want to learn how to putt a left to right break on a golf green and someone tells you to keep your putter square and don’t open it up because it will put even more side spin on it, you might amass the information. But, real progress is measured by not only amassing information but being able to put the knowledge to use: did you open up your putter face on the left to right putt? Teacher models emphasize the knowledge of the teacher and the ability to download that information into students; learning models emphasize what students can “do” as a result of the course.

Apply this to the church: do you want parishioners to “know” theology or “do” theology? At home: do you want your kids to “know” right moral decisions or to be able to “do” right moral decisions? The answers to these two questions are obvious. What is amazing is that the predominant form of “education” in churches is the “teaching model” instead of the “learning model.” I could go on.

If you want a good example of the latter, this book is it.

What this book does is something I’ve not seen: it studies the best teachers. So, you ask, who are the best teachers? Good question. Here’s Bain’s answer: those who “achieved remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how those students think, act, and feel” (5). That is, they found teachers who had a substantial influence on students and figured out how they went about the business of teaching.

I’ll be sketching what good teachers do in the weeks ahead.

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Part II:

The first question Ken Bain discusses in his book, What the Best College Teachers Do, is “what do good teachers know about how we learn?”

How about some feedback from pastors and Sunday School teachers about this stuff.

You’d be surprised how many teachers, pastors, and parents think that learning takes place in a simple two-step process:

The teacher figure (teachers, professors, pastors, parents) informs; The student absorbs and practices it.

And how many of them think that if Step One has been done (”I covered that, don’t you remember?”), Step Two is inevitable.

Wrong. Evidence proves that this is not how we learn.

Good teachers, pastors, parents know how people learn: we learn in context.

First, good teachers know the history of their discipline.
Second, good teachers cobble together from experience the rudiments of recognizing the best insights on how humans learn.

The key concepts Bain and his associates discovered are these:

1. Knowledge is constructed, not received: as we put things together on the basis of experience, so do students. So, teaching is helping students construct models on the basis of what they already know.

2. Mental models change slowly: good teachers create environments where change can take place progressively. Facts need to be learned as a student learns to use those facts. I recently had a pastor tell me this very thing: I’m giving folks time to think this through themselves. The authoritarian model and the learner model are not always friends!

3. Questions are crucial: good teachers stimulate students to discover and ask and answer their own questions. Our questions, we must remember, are not always the questions of others. Perhaps I should say this more forcefully: often our questions are not theirs!

4. Caring is crucial: good teachers know students must care about the discipline if they want those students to develop and grow and learn. Good teachers get students to care about the discipline.

Here’s another point this chp makes: external motivating factors, like good grades, can spoil the conditions of the internal dynamic of learning. How the students see the rewards shapes the whole process. If they feel they are being manipulated, learning decreases.

So he gives this kind of advice:

Avoid extrinsics; focus on intrinsics (the value of learning).
Give students as much control as possible.
Be interested in that student’s development.
Nonjudgmental feedback that can help students learn and improve.
Encourage cooperation and collaboration; minimize competition.
Give everyone the opportunity to achieve the highest standard and grade.

A final point — this is one of my lines: the difference is whether we are teaching a “subject” to students or teaching “students” a subject.

Teachers Teaching Teachers

Paul Harvey, no not that Paul Harvey, teaches history at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and recently won a Teacher of the Year Award. Kelly Baker over at the Religion and American History blog--which she and Paul co-edit--posted about it.

Since I'm always eager to learn something new and hear what good teachers have to say, I'd like to highlight some important parts of Paul' interview (read the full interview here) with the Colorado Springs Record. Call it teachers teaching teachers. (Full disclosure: it was Paul's class blog in the spring of 2007 that, in part, inspired me to start blogging in my own classroom.)

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CSR+: Congratulations on being awarded Teacher of the Year at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs 2007-08. It is a great honor that recognizes you an academic leader at UCCS and in the community. What has contributed to the quality of your teaching excellence?

Paul Harvey: I have compared teaching history classes to my favorite musical form: jazz. Teaching is taking a theme, making sure that theme is explored, but allowing plenty of room for improvisation, and most especially for those moments when a student conversation or insight “takes flight”, and something totally unexpected emerges. Being rigorously trained in the discipline, being clear and firm on the standards expected in the classroom, but also being open “to the moment”—all of these combined are required, I believe, for the best teaching. It requires a careful blend of discipline, structure, and spontaneity which never stays the same from one class to another. One also has to have a lot of patience and forgiveness, both for students, but also for one’s own self; every day is not going to be a shining moment of teaching brilliance, and sometimes your most valued and ostensibly impressive teaching experiments will just flat-out fail. That’s fine, as long as one always learns from the experience.
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I've not quite heard teaching described that way--like jazz. I like the image that brings up and while I attempt to maintain a structured environment in the classroom, staying tuned for improvisation can make for some riveting moments of teaching and learning. And I like Paul's humility about it--everyday is an experiment in one sense, so get to work and see what happens!

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CSR+: You are an international scholar. You are a great teacher as well. How do you balance your teaching and research? Would you be willing to share your secrets of success with our readers?

Paul Harvey: Work your butt off, don’t sleep . . . wait, that’s not very helpful. The key, I think, is always integrating teaching with research, so that when I’m preparing for class I’m also preparing my research, and when I think about my research I’m also in effect preparing for class. For example, the idea for my book “Religion, Race, and American Ideas of Freedom” came from my teaching – I saw again and again how the expansive ideas of religious freedom in American arose at precisely the same time as the huge explosion of slavery, racism, and genocide practiced against Native Americans, and I began to question why that was. Likewise, when I began writing my part of the book Jesus in Red, White, and Black, I constructed a course in part to help me think through ideas for the book, and also to present those ideas to students. The result was one of the most successful classes I’ve ever taught. So, I never teach classes the same way twice; I always try to bring in new ideas from my research, and that makes me more excited about research and keeps my classes fresher and more engaging, or at least I hope so.
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Ed Blum said something like this in last summer's interview at baldblogger, and ever since I've thought how my own research and teaching has evolved. There can be extraordinarily rich interplay between research and teaching if one is open to it--in my case partly a result of teaching full time and working on a Ph.D. "part time."

I recently commented to this effect regarding researching/teaching Du Bois, and as I look back on the last 4 or 5 years, much of my teaching has pushed my research in new directions (e.g., religion in world history and Sudan) and the expansion of my research agenda throughout graduate school has filtered into the classroom. I hope to retain this dynamic in the future; it keeps one fresh, it prompts revising and reframing of approaches and strategies, and it makes both teaching and research more delightful, enlightening experiences.

Thanks for the inspiring thoughts, Paul, and for inspiring the foregoing thoughts--and congrats again on the teaching award!

Blogging History

My author-teacher-administrator-scholar friend and colleague Nathan Barber, who runs a blog on educational leadership, recently interviewed yours truly about the use of blogs and teaching. I'm certainly not the only one doing this, and would love to hear what my readers have to say. If you are so inclined, join the conversation here and here.

I thought Nathan asked some good questions--to which I hope I gave satisfactory answers. And his posts always give one something to think about.

And speaking of blogging and teaching, I just posted some thoughts on teaching W.E.B. Du Bois and religion over at the Religion and American History blog.

Where in the World is American Religious History?

Commenting a few weeks on one of John Fea’s latest posts over at the Religion in American history blog, Mike Pasquier commended historian Trevor Burnard’s recent article, “A Passion for Places.” And Fea recently offered his own thoughts on Burnard’s article, situating it in the context of early American history writing.

Their thoughts, and Burnard's essay, inspired some thinking of my own.

Despite an overuse of words like “trajectories” Burnard's provocative and enlightening essay asks, “Why are early Americanists so obsessed with region—with geography, in short—rather than with chronology?” He discusses many books in the article, and notes as well that recent trends in early American historiogroapy—the middle ground and the Atlantic world—as well as borderlands studies—privilege geography. But Burnard also documents a trend in which early Americanists are reading in other fields. About this trend Burnard writes:

“What does this mean for practicing early American historians? It mostly means reading more history about other parts of the world. The most noticeable feature of the geographical turn in early American history has been a greater than normal involvement with the work of other historians in cognate fields. It has expanded our horizons, extending our historical geographical reach, and narrowed our focus: the time we spend reading other histories is time we are not spending catching up with developments in other disciplines. Maybe I am speaking only for myself, but I find I am increasingly absorbed in trying to master the historical literatures of many parts of the world, from Europe to Asia to the Americas, and sometimes even of the world itself."

Burnard implicitly criticizes narrowly-focused scholarship and tiny (i.e., geographical) research agendas that fixate on the triumphal development of the nation-state in the context of offering a very telling confession, “I need to try and connect my area of expertise with what was happening elsewhere in the world at the same time."

Finally, Burnard goes on to suggest that early Americanists would do well to "make more of an effort to interrogate their assumptions about space. They might find what geographers have to say about space and place useful starting points for reflections upon the unceasing desire of early Americanists to expand the spatial frontiers or boundaries of their subjects."

I really like Burnard’s article—it prompts me to (re)think all of my assumptions about geography and chronology in my dissertation on church conflict and pastoral dismissal in eighteenth century New England, even as it nudges me to think differently about another project currently underway—notions of space and place in the religious musings of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Yet, Burnard’s article, for all of its challenging insights and helpful suggestions, makes no mention of the field of world history—what I read to be the real foundation of Burnard’s keen reflections on notions of space. And what’s more, Burnard fails even to mention the work of Thomas Bender, one of the leading lights in the global transformation of the study and practice of American history. Here I’m reminded of some of Bender’s more important observations from his book A Nation Among Nations: "If historians want to educate students and the public as true citizens, they must think more profoundly about the way they frame national histories…in ways that reveal commonalities and interconnections..." and "If we begin to think about American history as a local instance of a general history, as one history among others, not only will historical knowledge be improved, but the cultural foundations of a needed cosmopolitanism will be enhanced.”

Even with my quibble over Burnard’s fine article, I see hope on the horizon for what he suggests. The theme of the 2009 AHA meeting, “globalizing historiogrpahies,” is sure to play host to many intriguing and engaging discussions, and the 2009 WHA meeting with the theme of merchants and missionaries in world history will no doubt consider the place of America and American history in its formulations of the past—particularly since the meeting is to be held in, of all places, Salem, Massachusetts.

So I end with some questions, none of which I have definitive answers to, but if there’s interest would love to discuss with the blogging community.

What would early American history look like framed in global perspective—even beyond the Atlantic framework (which I think allows for something of a segway into global history)? What writing exists to this effect already? More specifically, I wonder what the field of (early) American religious history (and other periods too) would look like framed in a global perspective? What kinds of amazing conversations about theory, practice, and teaching could historians of American religion and world historians have?


Let the conversations begin....

Words (to the) Wise

One of the foremost antiracist authors, activists, and speakers, Tim Wise, reports on his website that there are two new DVDs available, one about white privilege and its deconstruction and one titled "The Audacity of Truth: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama."

There are also two new books, one titled Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male, a "best of" collection of essays, and he's at work on a book about the politics of race and the emergence of Barack Obama. Here's the note from his blog:

Just a note to let folks know: City Lights has agreed to publish my next book, tentatively titled, "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Race and Whiteness in the Age of Obama." The long-form essay, which is to be published in early Spring 2009 will examine how the political rise of Barack Obama (regardless of outcome in November) will influence notions of race in the U.S., especially in terms of the way "whiteness" is lived and understood. What does Obama's success say about racism and white privilege in America, and what does it not say? How will the presence of a black presidential contender, and perhaps president, affect white racial attitudes and behaviors? Will Obama's success lead to an increase in white racial resentment, a reinforcing of white denial (as in, "Obama proves racism isn't a big deal anymore"), a newfound faith in aspirational color-blindness, with all the problems that could entail (overlooking real inequities that are still rooted in color, for instance), or the beginnings of an honest dialogue on the nation's history of racial division? These are among the questions to be explored in the book...which now I need to begin writing! So, off to work I go...

I've regularly read Wise's work (a great place to start is his memoir White Like Me), and he's a perceptive, cogent, and prophetic writer (although I wish he'd discuss the religious investments of whiteness more).

I look forward to more of his work. For more books to read on the topic, here's another good list.

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.