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Gen Z, Millennials, and religion: three studies

Here are three recent studies on how Gen Z and Millennials relate to religion:

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Recently read: Junior and Schipper’s “Black Samson”

Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper, Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon (Oxford: OUP, 2020). (Amazon; Bookshop)

As I’ve aged, reception history/reception studies of the Bible have become more and more interesting to me. As much as I can enjoy a good socio-historical study of the Apostle Paul and his epistles (e.g. Barclay’s “Paul and the Gift” or Barber, et al., “Paul, A New Covenant Jew”), one has to wonder how much more can really be said about Paul from a historicist perspective (or Jesus, or, closer to home, John the Baptist). People are interested in the Bible primarily because of what it means to us now and what it has meant to people in the recent past, not because of what it meant to the earliest audiences (even studies about the Bible and its meaning to earliest audiences are attempting to answer contemporary questions about the Bible by connecting them to ancient ones). Judaism, Christianity, and Islam aren’t inherently more interesting than Zoroastrianism or Mandaeanism but there are more scholars of the former than the latter because of the influence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam upon the majority of the modern world in contrast to the (direct) influence of Zoroastrianism or Mandaeanism.

A recent example of an excellent study of the Bible’s reception is Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper’s Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon. This book traces the depiction of Samson as a Black man throughout the history of the United States. As you read it becomes apparent that this theme of “Black Samson” is everywhere. I had no idea.

Junior and Schipper begin with early American commentary on how this nation is a “Temple of Liberty”. From a variety of angles, people began to connect how Samson was placed in the Philistine temple of Dagon only to bring it down upon the Philistines with how slavery (as represented by Black Samson) could be what pulls down the Temple of Liberty if not addressed. This imagery was used by abolitionists and defenders of slavery alike, though with very different intentions (see Chapter 1, “Black Samson in the Temple of Liberty”).

Chapter 2, “Black Samson of Brandywine,” traces the mythology around a enslaved man named Samson who is depicted as having fought against the British in the Battle of Brandywine. Chapter 3, “Samson and the Making of American Martyrs” shows how people who died, often having fought for the abolitionist cause, were remembered as a type of Samson: this ranges from John Brown (who is now the focus of Showtimes’ limited series “The Good Lord Bird”), to Frederick Douglass, to Nate Turner, and others. Chapter 4, “Black Sampson and Labor Movements” traces the theme’s relation to labor movements, popular song, and discusses the tension between African Americans and labor movements that often sought to exclude African Americans or saw them as undermining their cause.

Chapter 5, “The Samson Complex,” may have been the most fascinating to me. It focuses upon how “African American intellectuals and activists” who sometimes “claimed that the younger activists had a ‘Samson complex’ that would ultimately result in nothing but self-destruction” (p. 68). In this chapter we encounter Malcom X, Elijah Muhammad, Dr. King, and others who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and debated the best way to go about fighting for their rights.

Chapter 6, “But Some of Us are Strong Believers in the Samson Myth,” examines how Samson-imagery finds its way into discussions around “the intersection of race and gender” (p. 93). Chapter 7, “Visual Representations of Black Samson” is self-explanatory and discussed the one example of Black Samson that might be familiar to many: Samson as depicted in The Bible television miniseries produced by The History Channel. I show this series to my students and they have noticed that Samson is depicted as a Black man while most of the other figures are white.

This book is exemplary. It shows the power of the Bible as part of culture making. Also, it shows how diverse interpretation of the Bible can be. For those interested in reception history or the intersection of the Bible and American culture, the Bible and race, the Bible and gender, the Bible and art and film, etc., this is a must read.

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The Latter-day Saints and modern America

I just finished McKay Coppins’ wonderful article “The Most American Religion” (for The Atlantic). It’s about how the Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. “Mormons”) have adjusted and assimilated to American culture only to find that modern America is changing. The main case study might be how LDS voters responded to the last president when juxtaposed with how white Evangelicals responded to him. Here’s the take-away paragraph:

What happens when a religious group discovers that it’s spent 200 years assimilating to an America that no longer exists? As their native country fractures and turns on itself, Mormons are being forced to grapple with questions about who they are and what they believe. And a loose but growing liberal coalition inside the Church is pushing for reform.

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Recently read: Jennings “After Whiteness”

Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). (Amazon; Bookshop)

Willie James Jennings (Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University Divinity School) has written a challenging reflection on the current state of theological education and what many institutions value in how they train students. His main concern is with the formation of students: What does a graduate become? What values do they receive? For Jennings, most institutions are preparing their students to function in a world that values “whiteness” which he defines not as “people of European descent” but “to a way of being in the world and seeing the world that forms cognitive and affective structures able to seduce people into its habitation and its meaning making” (p. 9). This is exemplified by “White self-sufficient masculinity” that “is a way of organizing life with ideas and forming a persona that distorts identity and strangles the possibilities of dense life together” (pp. 8-9). If I’ve understood him correctly, education, and even theological education, aims to create the self-sufficient man (and yes, I think our culture’s visions of masculinity is key), the Lone Ranger-type.

One example he uses is the Paterfamilias of the colonial plantation who is the self-sufficient center around which everyone else circles (see pp. 78-83). The foundation of the type of education that has been passed along to us was designed first and foremost for that male heir; that mythological “great man”. Jennings describes it this way:

A vision of the self-sufficient man—one who is self-directed, never apologizing for his strength or ability or knowledge, one who recognizes his own power and uses it wisely, one bound in courage, moral vision, singularity of purpose and not given to extremes of desire or anger—is a compellingly attractive goal for education and moral formation.

p. 31

In contrast to this elite man, Jennings writes:

We have failed to see that this is the ground of theological education and of all education that aims at the good. It is the crowd—people who would not under normal circumstances ever want to be near each other, never ever touching flesh to flesh, never ever calling in unison upon the name of Jesus, never ever listening together to anything except Roman edict or centurion shouting command, now listening to the words of Jesus. Yet the crowd is not Christian, nor is the crowd exclusively Jewish. The crowd is not a temporary condition on the way to something else. The crowd is the beginning of a joining that was intended to do deep pedagogical work.

p. 13

I don’t teach in a theological institution (though my school is supported by The Episcopal Church). Also, the book reads like you’ve sat down to have a chat with Jennings. He shares stories and poetry that weaves through his insights. It’s the type of book I’d never “review” because while its true that all acts of reading are subjective experiences, this one is subjective in the way a conversation is subjective. If each reader sat down and talked to Jennings about this same series of topics it would be a different experience depending on your identity and affiliations.

I don’t think you have to teach in a theological institution to learn from this book. Some of his insights on institutions in general were all too relevant, real, and challenging for me and I teach a very demographic than the one Jennings teaches. But if you’ve wondered about the model of education that’s primarily about the individual and not the community—the one that aims to set you up for success rather than bringing us together—then you’ll benefit no matter what age or topic you teach.

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Published: Teaching Tactic in “Teaching Theology and Religion”

I submitted a 6,000+ word conference paper to the editors of the journal Teaching Theology and Religion. They were interested in the practical exercise mentioned at the end of the paper, so they asked if I’d rework and resubmit that portion. The result is a 600+ word “Teaching Tactic”. I’m grateful to have had this published. I hope it inspires some teacher, somewhere. The article (entry?) can be accessed here: “Teaching digital discernment to emerging generations” as part of the digital version of Teaching Theology and Religion 23/4 (December 2020).

Last time I checked, Teaching Theology and Religion is open access though it does seem to be asking for more when I go to the website. Maybe it’s a hiccup or temporary.

If you’re interested in the theoretical material from my paper that the editors didn’t want, here is a redacted version that gives you everything except the exercise itself, which is what I signed over to the journal:

Reading the Bible with iGen (redacted)Download

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Recently watched: “Hail, Satan!”

Next semester, I teach my “Religion in the United States” class, so I’m watching a few documentaries over the break to increase my knowledge and understanding. One of the topics I cover is American Satanism: both The Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple. The value of this particular subunit is that is stretches students to think critically about the concept of “religion”, what counts as “religion”, and what our motives are for labeling something a religion, denying that label, or dismissing a group as a “cult”.

Earlier this year, I read Joseph P. Laycock’s Speak of the Devil: How the Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion (Oxford: OUP, 2020), which I reviewed on this blog (see “Recently read: Laycock’s ‘Speak of the Devil'”) and highly recommend, and I interviewed Laycock (see “Interview: discussing The Satanic Temple with Dr. Joseph P. Laycock”). Today, I’m watching “Hail, Satan!”. It’s R-rated, so won’t make it into my classroom, but it does get me thinking about something that parallels what another colleague of mine teaches when he has students read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good people are Divided by Politics and Religion. He has them think, based on Haidt’s writings, about why we find certain things immoral and then pushes them to explain it. An example might be incense, which has the “ick!” factor, but is hard for people to explain in terms of morality. Similarly, The Satanic Temple (as highlighted by Laycock in his book and discussed in our interview) causes many people more problems that the earlier founded Church of Satan because (1) The Satanic Temple is almost uniformly non-theistic (i.e. Satan’s valuable as a symbol but isn’t a metaphysical reality) and (2) The Satanic Temple, as the documentary highlights, wants to rectify the wrongs done to people during the “Satanic Panic” by doing widely recognized good deeds (e.g. collecting socks for those in need, especially those who are homeless).

What Laycock covers brilliantly in his book is covered quite well in documentary-style in “Hail, Satan!” This topic is a fascinating exploration of the boundaries of religious freedom, our interpretations of the First Amendment, and related topics. Whether one comes out of this discussion seeing Satanism as a legitimate religion, a mockery of religion, or whatever, the questions raised by The Satanic Temple need to be addressed by our society.

Related, for those interested in the development of the presentation of Satan in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish literature, and the Christian New Testament, see my quick summary of Ryan E. Stokes, Satan: How God’s Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans, 2019): “Recently read: Stokes’ ‘Satan'”. Stokes does an excellent job covering a breadth of literature.

Next up, I plan on watching “I, Pastafari: A Flying Spaghetti Monster Story” which is available on Amazon. It’s 13+ rating means it could make it into circulation for my “Religion in Global Context” class where I introduce Pastafarianism and Dudeism as a way of introducing questions about the boundaries of the word “religion”.

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Recently read: Stokes’ ‘Satan’

Ryan E. Stokes, Satan: How God’s Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans, 2019).

I began reading Ryan E. Stokes’ Satan this summer. I was teaching a class on the Hebrew Bible at the time. It made me have to revisit my lesson on the Book of Job in order to update how I presented Ha-Satan. And I felt like each chapter had that effect on me. It introduced new ways of looking at the figure of Satan and his evolution that I hadn’t considered.

Chapter 1, The Origin of Satan focuses on his this character is presented in Numbers 22, Zechariah 3, and 1 Chronicles 21. My key takeaway is that Stokes argues that this figure is an “Attacker” more than say as “Adversary”. I always thought of him as being a prosecuting attorney-type but his role seems to be more sinister.

Chapter 2, The Satan and the Innocent Job stood out to me because it showed how the Attacker, usually of sinners, is presented as attacking an innocent, righteous man. This is a major development, especially in the Hebrew Bible’s approach to theodicy.

The development of this figure (often by different names, though Stokes makes many observations that indicate that the same figure is in view) is traced from the Hebrew Scriptures through other works of Second Temple literature, most importantly in Chapters 3-8: Chapter 3, Demons, Evil Spirits, Fallen Angels, and Human Sin; Chapter 4, The Prince of Mastema and His Deceptive Spirits; Chapter 5, The Prince of Mastema, Enemy of God’s People; Chapter 6, Demons, Evil Spirits, The Satan, and Human Responsibility for Sin; Chapter 7, Belial, Sin, and Sectarianism; Chapter 8, Belial and the Power of Darkness). In these chapters there were several topics of importance in my view. First, as mentioned, the presentation of these different figures as being different expressions of a single figure (the one called “Satan” in the New Testament) was helpful. The role of determination and human will factors into most of these chapters. And ancient approaches to what we can theodicy runs throughout.

The final chapter, Chapter 8, The Satan in the New Testament was briefer than I anticipated but felt more like a capstone. For some reason I imagined it would be the main focus of the book but the emphasis is evenly spread across the various collections of literature.

If you are interested in the figure of Satan and his development, this is a great book.

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#SBLAAR2020: See you in San Antonio!

The (online) 2020 Annual Meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion have come to an end. I wish I could have seen y’all in Boston but it’s 2020, so the pandemic has ruined everything. Hopefully, I’ll see everyone next year when it comes to San Antonio, where I live!

I only caught pieces of sessions the past couple days since the school year is winding down simultaneously and I’ve been busy with all that entails. If there’s anything good about this conference it’s that I have access to the recordings. I’m sure I’ll find more sessions to watch in the coming days. But online sessions can never replace the in-person meeting, so let’s hope this pandemic is toast by next November.