AM ST 140Y – Religion in American Life and Thought

Relevant clips from movies and television

January 15, 2013

The “Redemption” clip from The Mission (1986), retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzhhFRqjF_o on January 14, 2013

January 17, 2013

Trailer from the 1996 film The Crucible, retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUIAxTxrnCc on January 14, 2013

February 7, 2013

Discussion on Ghost Dances

This clip is from Paranormal TV, which may seem like an odd source for class, but I think it’s relevant in an American Studies context.  For example, a TV channel devoted to the paranormal provides a window into cultural fascination with the supernatural as well as its conflation with religion.  Thinking in terms of a final paper, students interested in television might investigate the variety of TV channels that broadcast programs of a religious nature and compare how the portrayal of religion differs, or the variety of aspects of religion that the programs emphasize.

This clip gives a nice overview of the Ghost Dance movement of the nineteenth century and also includes a variety of images from the period.

Video clip retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1Fslf3g2M on February 6, 2013

 

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Healthcare and the Social Gospel?
The less-than-efficient beginning of the federal healthcare marketplace this October has me wondering how one of our American historical figures would have regarded the Affordable Care Act.  Walter Rauschenbusch was an important figure in the Social Gospel movement within liberal Protestant Christianity in the early twentieth century, and wrote Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) to point out the various ways that the Church could and should be involved in promoting social justice in the U.S.
During and just after his life (1861-1918), Rauschenbusch was sometimes criticized for a too-optimistic view of the coming of the Kingdom of God through the dedicated work of socially-minded Christians, and also for what some critics viewed as a version of Christian socialism. However, later in the twentieth century, and now certainly in the twenty-first, scholars of American religion are reexamining the ongoing influence of many of his ideas and works.  As Douglas Ottati says in the Foreward to the 1991 reprint of Christianity, “Rauschenbusch’s optimism now seems more complicated than it once appeared.  With respect to human sinfulness, one of his most original contributions was to emphasize the role of communities and institutions in the formation of persons.”
Rauschenbusch was just as much a critic of the enthusiastically individualistic tendencies that he saw in his beloved Church as he was of those he saw in society, observing in Christianity that “It will take a generation or two for the new social comprehension of religion to become common property.”  While by no means denigrating the importance of the individual effort and determination by members of the Church or of American society, Rauschenbusch called for his generation to acknowledge that social forces and power structures are sometimes too great for an individual to overcome alone.  As healthcare continues to be reformed and debated in twenty-first century American society, I think that Rauschenbusch is a useful figure for us to consider and put in conversation with figures of twenty-first century Christian thought.
Works cited:
Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianity and the Social Crisis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), xxv, 46.
Below are some sources on Rauschenbusch that you (my students) may find helpful for course assignments:
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