“God in America” study
Posted on December 18, 2011
Filed under Education | by David 10 Comments
Our Adult Education group is currently watching and discussing the PBS series “God in America” (you can watch all six episodes online here). This post will provide a place to continue the discussion – each episode will be added below with a link to its study guide. So if you’re unable to attend the sessions (3rd Sundays of the month at 9:45 am), you can still watch and participate – all are welcome!
Episode 1: “The New Adam” (November 20)
The New World challenged and changed the religious faiths the first European settlers brought to it. In New Mexico, the spiritual rituals of the Pueblo Indians collided with the Catholic faith of the Spanish Franciscan friars who came to convert them, ultimately exploding in violent rebellion. In New England, Puritan leader John Winthrop faced off against religious dissenters from within his own ranks, and a new message of spiritual rebirth from evangelical preachers like George Whitefield swept through the American colonies, upending traditional religious authority and kindling a rebellious spirit that fused with the political upheaval of the American Revolution.
Episode 2: “A New Eden” (December 18)
America’s experiment in religious liberty involved an unlikely political alliance between evangelical Baptists and Enlightenment figures such as Thomas Jefferson as they forged a new concept of religious freedom, first in Virginia and ultimately in the new nation, as written in the Bill of Rights. These new freedoms had a significant impact on the country as it pushed westward, creating a vibrant religious marketplace where new religions started to take root and new Protestant denominations began to overtake the old. But the definition of freedom was contested, and its meaning ignited political conflicts between Irish Catholic immigrants and the Protestant establishment in New York over the reading of the Bible in public schools.
Episode 3: “A Nation Reborn” (January 15)
How did religious beliefs shape the origins of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s actions during the conflict? As Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders clashed over the question of slavery, each side turned to the Bible to argue its cause. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist newspaper editor, despaired that people who called themselves Christians could defend the evils of slavery. Protestant denominations fractured, with each side declaring God was on its side. Meanwhile, Lincoln, who had put his faith in reason over revelation, confronted the mounting casualties of the war and the death of his young son. In his anguish, he began a spiritual journey that transformed his inner life and changed his ideas about God and the ultimate meaning of the Civil War.
Episode 4: “A New Light” (February 19)
During the 19th century, the forces of modernity challenged traditional faith and drove a wedge between liberal and conservative believers. Bohemian immigrant Isaac Mayer Wise embraced change and established Reform Judaism in America while his opponents adhered to Old World traditions. In New York, Presbyterian biblical scholar Charles Briggs sought to wed his evangelical faith with modern biblical scholarship, leading to his trial for heresy. In the 1925 Scopes evolution trial, Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan faced off against freethinker Clarence Darrow in a battle between scientific and religious truth.
Episode 5: “Soul of a Nation” (March 18)
In the post-World War II era, rising evangelist Billy Graham tried to inspire a religious revival that fused faith with patriotism in a Cold War battle with “godless communism.” As Americans flocked in record numbers to houses of worship, nonbelievers and religious minorities appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to test the constitutionality of religious expression in public schools, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a modern-day prophet, calling upon the nation to honor both biblical teachings and the founders’ democratic ideals of equal justice.
Episode 6: “Of God and Caesar” (April 15)
The religious and political aspirations of evangelical conservatives found expression in a moral crusade over divisive social issues. They worried that the nation was adrift on a secular sea, unmoored from its Christian foundations, and they wanted to change the culture. Their ambitions were large, and they succeeded in transforming the religious and political landscape of the country. Their embrace of presidential politics, though, would ultimately end in disappointment and questions about the mixing of religion and politics. Across America, the religious marketplace expanded as new waves of immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America made the United States the most religiously diverse nation on earth. In the 2008 presidential election, the re-emergence of a religious voice in the Democratic Party brought the country to a new plateau in its struggle to reconcile faith with politics. God in America closes with reflections on the role of faith in the public life of the country, from the ongoing quest for religious liberty to the enduring idea of America as the “city on a hill” envisioned by the Puritans nearly 400 years ago.
The next session, a recap of the whole series, will be held on May 20, 2012 at 10:00 am.
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FYI, I highly recommend watching episodes online. I just watched episode 2 since I missed the beginning this morning, and it loaded right up and played through without interruption – even with my sometimes sketchy internet connection. Fear not!
Didn’t get to see the first one yet… but the second is FANTASTIC HISTORY! And what amazes me is that while the characters have changed… some of the rhetoric remains the same. Folks who keep saying that this is a ‘Christian’ nation founded on ‘Christian’ values… and somehow want to take us back to some non-existant moment, would do well to be in touch with this series!
It does seem to be the same pattern over and over: The Anglican Church tries to silence the Baptists (who are doing it all wrong), which backfires. Then the new dominant majority tries to silence the Catholics (who are doing it all wrong) – and that backfires.
A group of people can only be lied about and disparaged for so long before they find a way to organize and get their voices heard – that’s what happened in both of those cases. And I think that’s what we’re seeing now. To expand on what I said Sunday, the common thread I hear in the conversations I’ve been having with local atheists is this: They are tired of being talked about by people who don’t know anything about them or what they believe. People who have no knowledge and no authority to speak for them are telling a fundamental lie: That not believing in an external, supernatural “God” is the same thing as not thinking it’s important to live a good, ethical life, to be a person who treats other people well and leaves the world a better place for having been part of it. That is a profound and defamatory lie, and it’s the same kind of lie the majority believed and spread about Catholic immigrants because they didn’t read the “right” Bible.
And it’s hurtful to have people assume such a horrible thing about you. When we are tempted to wish that the response to that defamation was less provocative we should remember that.
Good point David about the unintended consequences of establishing religious views and then attacking those who disagree. The fact that St. James was born out of the reform movement 275 plus years ago and against the established church in Virgina (Anglican) illustrates where we stand historically. This rich history of dissent is a valuable heritage and a worthy foundation for our walk in the world today.
One more point, I was also impressed by the courage, creativity, and values of those who sought to end the establishment of state churches in Virginia. The Baptists and Thomas Jefferson were wise in calling for an open market for religion, not state support. In doing so they made religion stronger, society more diverse, and the government more just. What a major transformation they led. With so many countries around the world struggling with this issue and with our own difficult struggles in Loudoun County, I am impressed with how ahead of their times proponents of religious freedom were.
I just saw your church listed as a GAY friendly church on gaychurch.org.
To accept sexual deviancy as normal is a sin.
You put your soul in danger of eternal damnation for welcoming unrepentant homosexuals into God’s house. You blaspheme the Name of God.
Homosexuality should be criminalized. Homosexuals commit crimes against God, against nature, against the Holy Bible and against the human race.
Because of your church, I now know why God wrote:
Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Romans 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Dear “don” – I tried to figure out why you posted this comment on this thread (or anywhere else, for that matter), and finally concluded that it was just random. You seem to be a troubled person, and you should try to figure out what is really bothering you. I see from the email you also sent that you represent a domestic terrorist organization. That can surely lead to nothing that would be pleasing to God, and I hope that you will seek counseling to find a better path.
You are correct about one thing, although you may not realize it: For a gay person to pretend to be other than who they are is precisely a kind of sexual deviancy – they would be deviating from the way God created them to be in order to please men. Accepting such a thing as normal would indeed be sin. Good luck to you, it is never too late to repent.
From the Episode four summary: Historian George Marsden has famously observed that “a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something.”
That sounds about right, no? Our visitor above is Exhibit A. Looking forward to this morning’s session, so timely coming on the heels of Evolution Sunday.
Hi David, I like what you said about the nuanced portrayal of W.J. Bryan. PBS in general does that well (with the possible exception of Downton Abbey
I was glad to be introduced to the Pastor and scholar Briggs. “Truth fears no light.” What a great idea to explore why the Bible needs to be protected and cosseted.
And this final episode looks as if it will really drive home that point. What we have seen unfold over the past three decades or so – the politicization of evangelicalism – seems based entirely on fear, and could not be further removed from the repeated admonition of Jesus to “be not afraid.”