Week 14 = Dialogue and Reconciliation

M 12/7 Principles of Interfaith Dialogue
Reading: Eck, Ch 7

In-class links: Meet Eboo Patel, Houston Dinner Dialogue, PC(USA) Interfaith Toolkit

W 12/9 Reconciliation
Reading: Feldman Ch 7-8

Final Project Due in Class - since class is cancelled due to severe weather, please submit your project by email or upload it to the Digital Dropbox on Blackboard. Thanks for a wonderful semester!

Week 13 = Islam in America

M 11/30 What is Islam?
Reading: none

W 12/2 Muslims in America
Reading: Eck Ch 6

F 12/4 American Muslim Community After 9/11
Reading: bring an article that discusses Muslims in America, from within the past 2 years

RP #4 due in class

Week 12 = Family Values, Family Feuds

M 11/16 Why "Family Values" is a Religious Issue
Reading: Feldman, Ch 6

Handout: Supreme Court Decisions [pdf]

W 11/18 Family Feuds
Reading: Bring 2 recent newspaper articles to class, both from the past year. One should be about the abortion debate and the other about the same-sex marriage debate. Both articles need to reference religion in some way.

F 11/20 Exam #4 in class

M 11/23 Religion in Popular Culture
Reading: none, we will screen an episode of M*A*S*H in class

W and F 11/25 and 11/27 - No Class, Thanksgiving

Final Paper - Guidelines & Sources (due 12/9)

Your final project in this class is a compare/contrast research paper analyzing two documents in the history of American religion. Choose any two from the list below.

By giving you this list, I’ve eliminated one of the early steps of research for you: finding appropriate primary sources that are significant in American religious history. Your task will be to understand each document in its historical context (starting with who the author is and why s/he is important), analyze and understand the documents’ contents and arguments, and then compare and contrast the two documents, making useful conclusions about religion in America that incorporate your learning from across the semester. In other words, just because I’m giving you the sources doesn’t mean this is intended to be an easy assignment. The documents themselves take some dedicated puzzling before they will yield meaning. Your paper must be thoughtful, substantive, well-written, and demonstrate critical thinking skills.

Here's a helpful 3-page PDF handout produced by Princeton College’s writing program, titled “How to Write a Compare-and-Contrast Paper.” You don’t need to follow its instructions exactly, but if you haven’t done one before and you need some guidance it is a good place to start. My advice is, do not procrastinate this assignment until after the Thanksgiving break. Get started on it early. It will take longer than you think. I am happy to talk about it with you during office hours or look at an early draft or an outline.

There will be no leniency about the due date. The paper should be 7-8 double-spaced pages. It needs to be correctly and thoroughly sourced, using MLA or Chicago Style citations. It should have an evocative title, page numbers, be spell-checked and proofread. Paper is due IN or BEFORE class on 12/9/09, the last day of class. It will be docked for lateness if I receive it any time after the last class period ends.

Grading: Worth 15% of your final grade

The paper will be graded for historical accuracy and understanding of the historical context, quality of your research sources, creativity and thoughtfulness of the comparison and contrasts you identify between the documents and/or their authors, quality of the paper’s structure and writing, and relevance of your conclusions to the overall learning goals of the course.

Document Links:

John Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689 (Also on Google Books).

Roger Williams, Plea for Religious Liberty, 1644

Maryland Act of Religious Toleration, 1649

James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

James Madison (writing as "Publius"), Federalist 51, 1788

Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1802. Page image: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/f0605as.jpg (source: LOC's virtual exhibit, "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" which has JPG images of many of the originals, but only their title pages). His draft (forensically recovered by the FBI) is here: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpost.html, and the final version as sent is here: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html

Angelina Grimke, "Appeal to Christian Women of the South", 1840

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, 1865; additional resources on this text here

Billy Sunday, "Broken Down Altars" (n.d. but he undoubtedly gave this many times in his career between 1880-1920)

Martin Luther King, Jr. letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963 [PDF]

Mitt Romney, "Faith in America", 2007

Week 11 = Religion in the Civil Rights Movement

M 11/9 Malcolm X, Part 1 (Chapters 1-12).
In-class link: How Long, Not Long! and The Price of Freedom is Death

W 11/11 No Class

F 11/13 Malcolm X, Part 2 (Chapters 13-19)

RP #3 due in class

Week 10 = Case Studies in Freedom to Worship

M 11/2 Hindus
Reading: Eck, Ch 3
In-class link: Diwali09, Apu

W 11/4 Buddhists
Reading: Eck, Ch 4

F 11/6 "Legal Secularists," Jehovah's Witnesses
Reading: Feldman Ch 5

Week 9 = Catholicism and the Melting Pot

M 10/26 Catholicism and AntiCatholicism in America
Reading: Feldman, first half of Ch 2 (up to p. 99)

W 10/28 Melting Pot Pluralism
Reading: Eck Ch 2 - skim 41-48, then read 48-61 closely

F 10/30 Exam #3 in class

Week 8 = Radical Redefinitions

M 10/19 Shaker
Reading: The Shakers' Brief Eternity" [PDF]

W 10/21 Oneida
Reading: Oneida Documents [PDF] - the article starts on the middle of the second page, but I included the first page because of the engraving of the buildings at the top (in other words, ignore the fiction story on that page, it's unrelated). Then continue to follow the story as best you can through the cut & pasted columns on the next few pages. You're reading not only for information about the community, but about how they were portrayed by curious outsiders. This PDF probably won't print well, it's best read on a screen where you can magnify & reduce the image.

F 10/23 Mormon
Reading: Feldman, second half Ch 2 (pp. 99-110), and Beechwood, "A Mormon Woman's View of Marriage" [PDF]. Link for class: Romney family interactive timeline

RP #2 due in class

Week 7 = Religion in Worcester

M 10/12 No Class

W 10/14 Religion in Worcester
Reading: none - Site Reports are due in class

F 10/16 Digital Project Upload Day
Reading: none - we will meet in a computer classroom, room S-209.

Week 6 = Exotic Plants of the Antebellum Spiritual Hothouse

M 10/5 Transcendentalism
Reading: Essays in "The Dial" - choose 1 of the following 4 (search by author):
Emerson "Transcendentalism" or "Prayers" (Vol 2) or Thoreau's commentary on Confucius (Vol 3) or Charles Lane, "Life in the Woods" (Vol 4)

W 10/7 Spiritualism
Reading: none

Paper #2 is due in class (Film Analysis)

F 10/9 Exam #2 in class

Week 5 = the Antebellum Spiritual Hothouse

M 9/28 (Myth of) the Protestant Century
Reading: R. Laurence Moore, Post-Protestant Culture, [PDF]

W 9/30 American Revivals
Reading: "Revival" in North Carolina Digital History

F 10/2 Antebellum Slave Religion
Reading: Albert Raboteau, "The Slaves' Own Religion" [PDF]

Links for class today:

• Slavery and the Making of America original documents
• WPA American Slave Narratives
• LearnNC - Spirituals
• Documenting the American South
  

Week 4 = Founding Parents

M 9/21 Founding Parents
Reading: Feldman, Ch 1
AND we'll talk about the "Hidden Objects" Slave Religion website & what we learn from it

W 9/23 Founding Documents
Reading:
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779 written, 1786 passed)
Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance (1785)

F 9/25 Exam #1 in class

RNS's Friday Religion Roundup

More news of the week in American religion from the Religion News Service. And Happy Rosh Hashanah. And NPR had a very interesting story this morning about Muslim HS football players during Ramadan - only 3 minutes long, worth a listen.

Links from our discussion of the Puritans

Check out the Wednesday Religion Roundup on the RNS Blog from today to follow those current event stories I mentioned.

And here's the MA Bay Colony Seal, which was used from 1629 until 1684, when the colony's charter was revoked & it was rechartered in 1691 as a royal colony (i.e. Anglican again). Historian Jill Lepore writes of this image,

"we ought to understand that this engraving is just as fanciful as Frederick Cook's photograph of himself, sporting a furry parka, braving the Arctic snow.

"The original seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay Colony seal (the model, of course, for our state flag) tells a fascinating story, a story of a place named by its inhabitants "Mattachusets," and considered, by newcomers, to be part of a "Nova Anglia." In that place, these newcomers claim to have found naked men who greet them with open arms, peaceably, with weapons exposed and arrows facing down. These naked men are begging for help. "Come Over and Help Us," this "savage" pleads, "share with us the good news of your savior, who will be our Lord. We have here an empty land, an Eden, yours for the taking."

"The vision of pagan natives peaceably and eagerly awaiting the good news of the gospel is, of course, the Puritans' fantasy, their fondest wish. When John Winthrop's ship, Arabella sailed across the Atlantic in 1630, the Puritans on board hoped to found a "city on a hill," a beacon of Christian truth and piety, for all the world to see. Part of their piety would derive from their devoted reading of the Bible, their daily prayerfulness, and the ecclesiastical ordering of their lives. And part of their piety would derive from the swiftness and gentleness with which they would convert the native "heathen" peoples to Christianity, thereby saving the Indians' souls, and enlarging the realm of Christ on earth. But this part of the Puritans' piety, alas, was never realized. The colony seal was a fantasy, a vision of a miracle, and little more." ("Whose History Is It?" remarks at the 1998 First Annual Community Forum on Historical Records).

Image source: http://www.irwinator.com/126/wdoc36.htm

Week 3 = Origins

M 9/14 The Colonial Context
Reading: Eck, Ch 2 - skim 26-32, then read 32-41 closely

W 9/16 Puritans
Reading: (yes, ALL of this)
Anne Bradstreet poems (choose any 2)
Mary Rowlandson's Narrative (read the Intro, 1st, 2nd and 20th Remove)
John Winthrop, Modell of Christian Charity (1630)
Charles Hambrick-Stowe, "Puritan as Pilgrim" [PDF]

F 9/18 Quakers, Slaves and Dissenters
Reading:
Maryland Act for Religious Toleration (1649)
William Penn, Frame of Government (1682)
Hidden Objects: The Spiritual World of Slaves (requires Flash player)