Please make plans to join us next Thursday, January 18th, 12-1:15 p.m. in the Marty Center Seminar Room (Swift Hall, Second Floor), for our first workshop meeting of the quarter.
Presenter: Joel Brown, Ph.D. Student, Religions in America
Title: Redemption (Again): White Christianity and Resistance to Civil Rights for Racial Minorities in Twenty-First Century America
Author’s Comments: Thank you all for taking the time to read this essay. It’s going to be part of a festschrift (a very odd genre for which to write I’ve discovered!) for a former professor of mine to which I was invited to contribute a chapter. The book is being published by Eerdmans and is intended to be used in undergraduate classrooms as a kind of textbook on the interaction of race and religion and the effects of those interactions on the unity and division of Christian churches in American history. The chapter I was assigned aims to analyze the ways the interaction of “race” (or racism) and religion have influenced resistance to civil rights in the twenty-first century. What drives religious people to oppose civil rights or reject claims about systemic racism? What studies demonstrate religious connections to the perpetuation of (and opposition to) systemic racism?
Do I accomplish these aims? I covet your suggestions for better addressing the above-stated goals/questions. Also, perhaps one of my greatest struggles in the writing process was the issue of audience: does this read as something you would assign to undergraduate students? How can I better frame or translate otherwise complex theoretical issues about religion and race for undergraduates and a broader public not literate in religious or race studies (i.e., I’m not necessarily writing this for other scholars but laypeople)?
Greg Chatterley, Ph.D. Candidate, Religions in America, will respond. Lunch will be served.
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.