AN INTERVIEW with STEPHEN PROTHERO Conducted by Randall J
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12 Historically Speaking • May/June 2008 RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN PROTHERO Conducted by Randall J. Stephens STEPHEN PROTHERO’S RELIGIOUS LITERACY: WHAT EVERY unlike Europeans, Americans know very little about ancient and modern religions that American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t (HarperOne, 2007) calls for re- have shaped the East and the West. Chair of the department of religion at Boston Uni- newed commitment to religious education. A New York Times best seller, the book versity, Prothero has authored a number of other books and articles on American re- is a forceful critique of the growing ignorance of religion and religious history. U. S. ligious history. Associate editor of Historically Speaking Randall Stephens recently citizens are markedly more religious than their secular European counterparts. Yet, spoke with Prothero about his work and the state of the field. Randall Stephens: How has the field of Amer- Know—And Doesn’t (HarperOne, 2007). Not long ican religious history changed in the last few ago I spoke on the subject at the University of decades? Florida. Religious studies students asked, “Why don’t you do more with Judaism?” And my answer Stephen Prothero: Ethnography has dominated re- was, “Because it doesn’t matter as much. It doesn’t ligious history since the 1980s. Robert Orsi’s The have the same influence that Christianity did and Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Ital- does.” That was a historian’s answer. I wrote more ian Harlem, 1880-1950 (Yale University Press, 1985) about Christianity in Religious Literacy because 85% had a major impact. Scholars started teaching that of Americans are Christian, because all the presi- and Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Vodou dents have been Christian, and because Christianity Priestess in Brooklyn (University of California Press, is the language of American politics. 1991). Then Thomas Tweed wrote the influential I think about the issue of content and empha- Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban sis in terms of the courses I teach. In my American Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford University Press, religion class I talk about the various efforts to 1997). About five years ago I looked at a number of come up with a religious character of America. It’s syllabi for American religion courses, and I noticed a Protestant nation. It’s a Christian nation. It’s a a shift away from meta-narrative to ethnographic Judeo-Christian nation. It’s a Judeo-Christian-Is- studies, which often have a historical component. lamic nation. The idea of a religiously united coun- try has a history. But then there is another image, Stephens: How then does Mark Noll’s sprawl- which Diana Eck lays out in A New Religious Amer- ing history, America’s God: From Jonathan Ed- ica: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s wards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford University Most Religiously Diverse Nation (HarperOne, 2001): Press, 2002), fit into the field? we’re secular by law, pluralistic in reality. So there’s a tension between the two, between the unitive im- Prothero: It doesn’t fit. And one of the things that pulse and the more pluralistic impulse. The unitive intrigues me is that evangelicals are more willing to impulse keeps getting broader. After 9/11 it went to do meta-narratives. I’ve wondered why. Is it because the Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea. That was an inter- they live inside meta-narratives, or perhaps because esting conversation: “Are we Judeo-Christian-Is- they’re not as tied into the fads of the profession? lamic or are we multicultural?” The Hindus got in Illustration by Randall Stephens there and sent a letter to George Bush that asked, Stephens: Is there a sharp division in religious “Why aren’t we at the interfaith gatherings? Why is studies between those who rely heavily on the- tury Pentecostalism.” A religious historian from the it that Christians, Jews, and Muslims define the na- ory and those who don’t? history side, like Yale’s Harry Stout, does not oper- tion religiously?” I occasionally ask my students at ate with the same set of questions and constraints. Boston University: “Is the United States a Christian Prothero: Those who do American religious his- Historians seem classically allergic to theory. country?” The Christians always say no and the tory come at it either from the history profession or Jews always say yes. The Jews tend to reply, “Are religious studies. The latter are trying to tell you Stephens: Are there other concerns that shape you kidding me? Of course it’s a Christian country. something about religion in America, but they’re how religious studies scholars work? I feel that every day, I have the sense every day that also trying to tell you something about religion in this is a Christian place where we get Christmas off, general. And I think that’s where theory comes in. Prothero: We don’t really have a discipline like his- but we don’t get Passover off.” If you look at the journal Religion in American Cul- torians do, so we’re always ripping things off from ture, the articles always include some theory. In other people. Religious studies still has a lingering Stephens: One of the reasons my American re- other words, it’s not enough to tell a story and pro- status anxiety problem. It has had to justify itself. ligious history students liked your book Amer- vide an explanation. You have to make some That’s less the case since 9/11. Obviously it’s harder ican Jesus: How the Son of God Became a broader connections, so that somebody who does for administrators to ask the stupid question: Why National Icon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003) Hinduism in India can read the article and think, should we study religion? I discuss this in my book, was because it shows so much change over “Oh that’s interesting, what they did with 20th-cen- Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to time. It’s primarily a work of history. May/June 2008 • Historically Speaking 13 Prothero: A religious studies treatment of the topic Prothero: Because academics are secularists. And I Stephens: Something similar has happened as would have been more synchronic. The tension be- think we all have the tendency to extrapolate from evangelicals stopped singing hymns steeped in tween history and religious studies is essentially be- our own experience. So you have a bunch of pro- theology and started singing simple choruses tween anthropology and history. fessors at Harvard or Princeton who aren’t moved or love songs to Jesus. by religion, and they find it hard to imagine anyone Stephens: What drew you to the study of reli- else who is. The academy, the law, and the media Prothero: Religious literacy involves doctrinal and gious history? are the three strangely secular areas of American narrative knowledge. One should know the Bible culture. stories and the teachings of the church. Both of Prothero: Ever since I was young I those have been replaced by an expe- was interested in religion. In college I riential engagement with Jesus. That’s just met a lot of different people one feature of American evangelical- who had a lot of different religious ism. perspectives—friends who were athe- ist, friends who were Jewish, friends Stephens: And another aspect of who were secularist. I had a kind of evangelicalism centers on moral- crisis of faith in college, actually. I ity? was studying religion and politics, and I took a course with Richard Prothero: It’s a morality of the bed- Wightman Fox in American history. rooms. Though, when I read the From high school I thought that his- Bible I don’t see a preoccupation with tory was the most boring subject that. imaginable. In fact, when I went to Yale, I said I was going to take every Stephens: Why since the 1960s subject except for history. Memoriz- have certain moral issues preoccu- ing dates and names did not appeal pied conservative Christians in to me. Richard taught me that history America? is as much about argument as it is about the past, which to me was ex- “Christ Stilling the Tempest,” painted by James Hamilton; engraved by Samuel Sartain, Prothero: I think it’s because the re- citing. And so I debated with others Philadelphia, 1867. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction ligious Right defined itself against the about views of the past. number, LC-DIG-pga-03265]. counterculture. The counterculture as I entered the field through a defined by rock music and sexual per- combination of losing my faith, missiveness received special attention. being interested in religious questions, and then As such, academics have largely misunderstood Much of what conservative evangelicals saw in the finding history as a way to ask those religious ques- fundamentalism. I praise fundamentalists for being 1960s had to do with sexuality: the emergence of tions without the assumption that I had some great intellectuals in Religious Literacy. They have taken re- sexuality in the public sphere, the acceptance of ho- answer to the theological questions. ligious thought seriously. There are so many stereo- mosexuality, rising divorce rates, premarital sex, and types of fundamentalists, and one is that they read the pill. Stephens: Have you encountered any opposi- the Bible literally. That’s ridiculous. How do you tion from religious groups or devotees who feel read a text like Revelation literally? Stephens: There is a generational component that they have been misrepresented in your here, right? Are younger evangelicals as moti- work? Stephens: Your work on representations of vated by some of these issues as their parents Jesus through American history sheds light on were? Prothero: Well there has always been that sort of believers across the spectrum.