Rethinking American Religions: Failing to Explain America or Continually (Re)Shaping It?

Posted on by Richard Newton

This week we feature the work of Andie Alexander, a Religious Studies graduate student at University of Colorado-Boulder. She challenges us to probe narrations of the history of “American Religions.” With cutting insights into the scholarly literature, Alexander surveys scholarly claims on the past to question the politics of sophisticated selective memories. This post has been … Continue reading Rethinking American Religions: Failing to Explain America or Continually (Re)Shaping It?

Words We Mean By

Posted on by Richard Newton

A year ago I led an undergraduate viewing of the 2015 film, The Central Park Five. The movie chronicles how the New York City law and order establishment wrongfully imprisoned a quintet of black youth for the sexual assault of a white woman in 1989.

The Tenure of Scriptures: Interpreting Wheaton College (Illinois)

Posted on by Richard Newton

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same god? The answer matters at Wheaton, but why does the question?

Star Wars as American Religion

Posted on by Richard Newton

If one’s working definition of “religion” is more capacious than “beliefs in supernatural powers,” if the purpose of the course is to view American history and culture through the lens of “religion” – as a category of analysis, rather than a found thing – then new possibilities emerge.