American Studies event

Tomorrow afternoon (Friday) there is an American Studies event with cakes to eat and books as door prizes.  No doubt many AmCon students will be there.  There will be lively, interesting conversation.  Alas, after dropping off my pumpkin spice bundt cake and some books, I will dash off to Tomson Hall to talk to "Lang & Lit" about Lars W. Boe.  In view of Boe's interest in fostering students' self-understanding as Americans and their participation in American life, somehow it seems wrong to be talking about him rather than participating in the American Studies event. 

What is the starting point?

Yesterday in my American Religion class we discussed Sylvester Johnson's article on nationalist, African American religious groups, e.g. Nation of Islam and others.  His assertions about the legitimacy of these groups as religions and their ethnogenesis offered a new angle on much of American religion.  In particular the repeated motif of some American's as the "new Israel," however, I have a hunch that there is much more to reconsider.

Perhaps I mentioned Marcus Garvey and Rastafarians in 1984.  Frankly I don't recall doing so.  But even if I did I'm certain that I was not able to consider that they, and similar movement, offered an instructive lens on the Pilgrims or Italian Roman Catholics.  Nonetheless, there is much to learn if we begin with the expectation that all religious groups in the USA are, in some sense, inventing an identity and a mythology to support it.  Some, like Joseph Smith, find buried resources, others make do with what they bring in their luggage, but everyone uses what they can put their hands on to cope with the [new] world in which they find themselves. 

The article also caused us to back up and ask about what various American groups have expected from their religion and to notice how this has shifted over time even within the broadly defined group that descends from those Pilgrims.