Please make plans to join us for our first workshop meeting of the year next week on Thursday, October 12th, 12:00–1:15pm, in the Marty Center Library.
Presenter: Karl Kuehner (MA, UChicago)
 
Title: “Modern Warriors: Jerry Falwell, The New Christian Right, and the Experience of Modernity”
 
AbstractThe emergence of the New Christian Right (NCR) in the late 1970s has led historians to grapple with how to characterize the history, motives, methods, goals, and implications of this new mode of politically-oriented, conservative religion. Similarly, scholars of modernity and secularity have struggled to generate a theory of modernity that adequately accounts for the presence and influence of religiously-motivated political actors in a “secular” society where religion was thought to be in decline. This study attempts to bring these two scholarly fields into conversation with one another. I contend that marrying an historical analysis of one of the central figures of the NCR, Rev. Jerry Falwell, with Marshall Berman’s theoretical conceptualization of modernity, found in All That is Solid Melts into Air, productively addresses this theoretical problem and offers new insights into the nature of the NCR. First, it demonstrates the essentially modern character of both Falwell and the NCR. By emphasizing “the experience of modernity,” rather than the institutional or philosophical characteristics of modernity, Berman’s theory defines the essence of modern life in terms of the paradox of ongoing creation and negation. This emphasis enables the observer to interpret and explain the often contradictory actions and attitudes of Falwell and the NCR as stemming from their modernity, not simply as a sign of their uniform hostility toward it. Second, this approach reinforces more recent scholarly challenges to “classical” narratives of modernization and secularization that predict the unidirectional decline and ultimate demise of religion in the modern landscape. This study suggests that scholars need to embrace a formulation of modernity that is capacious enough to include a wide variety of religiously-motivated groups, such as the NCR, within the notion of “modernity” and attempts to provide such a formulation.
 
Diane Picio (PhD Student) will respond. Lunch will be served.
NOTE: The paper posted is Mr. Kuehner’s full thesis. Please focus your reading on the following sections: Introductory paragraphs, Sections II.A., II.C., and III. (i.e., skip sections I. and II.B.). Of course, you may read the additional sections if you are so inclined, but our discussion will be limited to the suggested reading.
The paper can be accessed and downloaded via the “Papers” tab (password protected) on the RAME Workshop website.
Please contact Joel (joelabrown@uchicago.edu) if you any questions or trouble accessing the paper.