Bielo, “Act Like Men”

Posted on May 2, 2014 by anthrocybib

Bielo, James S. 2014. Act Like men: Social Engagement and Evangelical Masculinity. Journal of Contemporary Religion 29(2): 233-248.

Abstract: This article contributes to ongoing public and scholarly debates about evangelical social engagement in the United States. I illustrate that, for some conservative evangelical men, activism is fused to the cultural construction of masculinity. My central argument is that, despite becoming invested in ‘new’ acts of social engagement, these conservative evangelicals continue to rely on a familiar cultural script that uses individualist logics, rather than structural logics, to address social problems. My primary example is a relatively recent men’s movement, Acts29, and its commitment to anti-human trafficking campaigns. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and textual data collected between January 2009 and March 2011.

Bielo, “FORMED”

Posted on October 30, 2013 by anthrocybib

Bielo, James S. 2013. “FORMED”: Emerging Evangelicals Navigate Two Transformations. In The New Evangelical Social Engagement. Edited by Brian Steensland and Phillip Goff, 31-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Excerpt: This book asks a vital question. Is there a sea change happening on the social, political, and cultural front of evangelical social engagement? And if so, just how is that sea floor shifting? These questions are important due both to the significant influence of evangelicals in American public life and to the received wisdom among academic and mainstream discourses about evangelicals’ public presence. There is a familiar story at work here. American evangelicals are culture warriors, obsessed with abortion and homosexuality, who seek to elect their own into public office so they can codify religious morality. They create Christian alternatives to every imaginable form of popular culture and democratic institution. And they do service work with people who are socially disadvantaged and marginalized, largely from the comfortable confines of middle-class suburbia.

We might read this volume as a call to take seriously the complexity and tensions within the amorphous category “evangelical.” As Steensland and Goff outline in the Introduction, evangelicals have recently made waves on their own shores and those of secular media outlets for appearing in unexpected places: taking up arms in debates about sustainable development, climate change, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, and global peacemaking. This chapter proceeds from the assumption that while platforms and agendas are indeed up for grabs, the future of evangelical social engagement will not unfold on the basis of specific public issues. It will unfold along the cultural contours that give expression and direction to evangelicals’ ongoing public influence.

Any comparative analysis of a new social engagement must confront the institutional and ideological changes that evangelicals have produced and wrestled with in recent years. The diverse movement known as the Emerging Church exemplifies such changes and was the focus of my ethnographic research from October 2007 to July 2011. In this chapter, I highlight one institutional invention among a small group of emerging evangelicals in Cincinnati, Ohio, to consider how views of social engagement are tethered to ideals of spiritual formation.

Elisha, “All Catholics Now?”

Posted on October 30, 2013 by anthrocybib

Elisha, Omri. 2013. All Catholics Now? Spectres of Catholicism in Evangelical Social Engagement. In The New Evangelical Social Engagement edited by Brian Steensland, Philip Goff, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Excerpt: “Addressing an audience of conservative leaders and lobbyists in February 2012, evangelical pundit and former governor Mike Huckabee boldly announced, “We are all Catholics now.” The surprising rallying cry, coming from an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, was in response to a controversy over an Obama administration proposal to require private employers, including religious organizations, to provide insurance coverage for contraception. Catholic bishops came out vigorously opposing the measure, and Huckabee’s show of solidarity, in the name of religious liberty and defeating President Obama, was adopted by a variety of high-profile conservatives, including evangelicals as well as other non-Catholics. In July, in what was heralded as an unprecedented move, evangelical flagship Wheaton College joined Catholic University of America in a lawsuit against the federal mandate.

Such politics of affinity may seem counterintuitive, but they make sense in the context of an election year when two GOP contenders (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum) and the party’s vice presidential nominee (Paul Ryan) were Roman Catholics with strong support among conservative evangelicals. Indeed, evangelicals and Roman Catholics have found ways to get along for decades, demonstrating repeated, albeit cautious, willingness to forge mean- ingful partnerships despite stark doctrinal differences and mutual recrimi- nations. From the ecumenism of the Billy Graham crusades to the abortion activism of the religious right, to interfaith dialogue groups like Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good (spearheaded by veteran bridge-builders like Ron Sider), evangelicals and Catholics routinely find common cause around moral, political, and social issues. In recent years, leaders and intel- lectuals of both traditions have come together to form coalitions and working groups, issuing influential (and controversial) manifestos such as the landmark “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document of 1994 and the Manhattan Declaration of 2009. The charismatic renewal movement opened up multiple lines of communication and joint worship that continue to influence adherents in both camps. And as is evident in this book, especially in chapters 2, 9, and 10, politically and socially engaged evangelicals have been borrowing conceptual tools and mobilization strategies from Catholic activists for many years.

Aside from formal partnerships and dialogues, there are subtle and implicit resonances between contemporary evangelical and Catholic sensi- bilities that are less conspicuous but worth investigating as well. This chapter is an attempt to think about notable features and cultural characteristics of evangelicalism’s new social engagement that recall or resonate with Roman Catholic theology and practice, with an emphasis on shared motivational themes especially as applied to ministries of social welfare. While the fact that evangelicals and Catholics are able to come together around certain social and political issues is significant, issue agreement is only one marker of elective affinity. By framing my discussion in terms of resonance (intentional or otherwise) rather than collaboration, I point to underlying affinities between these two traditions, and, more important, I highlight the ways that divergent traditions separated by centuries of theology and ritual practice may find themselves drawn into closer alignments in their modalities of religious and social action, resulting from gradual shifts in public consciousness. The possible ways in which uniquely evangelical influences make their way into Catholic ministries and services merit exploration as well, but this is not within the purview of my discussion here.”

Steensland and Goff (eds), “The New Evangelical Social Engagement”

Posted on October 29, 2013 by anthrocybib

Steensland, Brian and Philip Goff, eds. 2014. The New Evangelical Social Engagement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Publisher’s Description: In recent years evangelical Christians have been increasingly turning their attention toward issues such as the environment, international human rights, economic development, racial reconciliation, and urban renewal. Such engagement marks both a return to historic evangelical social action and a pronounced expansion of the social agenda advanced by the Religious Right in the past few decades. For outsiders to evangelical culture, this trend complicates simplistic stereotypes. For insiders, it brings contention over what “true” evangelicalism means today.

Beginning with an introduction that broadly outlines this ‘new evangelicalism’, the editors identify its key elements, trace its historical lineage, account for the recent changes taking place within evangelicalism, and highlight the implications of these changes for politics, civic engagement, and American religion. The essays that follow bring together an impressive interdisciplinary team of scholars to map this new religious terrain and spell out its significance in what is sure to become an essential text for understanding trends in contemporary evangelicalism.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The New Evangelical Social Engagement, Brian Steensland and Philip Goff

Part One: Recent Evangelical Movements and Trends

Chapter One – “FORMED”: Emerging Evangelicals Navigate Two Transformations
James S. Bielo
Chapter Two – Whose Social Justice? Which Evangelicalism? Social Engagement in a Campus Ministry
John Schmalzbauer
Chapter Three – All Catholics Now? Spectres of Catholicism in Evangelical Social Engagement
Omri Elisha
Chapter Four – The New Monasticism
Will Samson
Chapter Five – “We Need a Revival”: Young Evangelical Women Redefine Activism in New York City
Adriane Bilous
Chapter Six – New and Old Evangelical Public Engagement: A View from the Polls
John C. Green

Part Two: Areas of Evangelical Social Engagement

Chapter Seven – Green Evangelicals
Laurel Kearns
Chapter Eight – The Rise of the Diversity Expert: How American Evangelicals Simultaneously Accentuate and Ignore Race
Gerardo Marti and Michael O. Emerson
Chapter Nine – Pro-Lifers of the Left: Progressive Evangelicals’ Campaign Against Abortion
Daniel K. Williams
Chapter Ten – Global Reflex: International Evangelicals, Human Rights, and the New Shape of American Social Engagement
David R. Swartz
Chapter Eleven – Global Poverty and Evangelical Action
Amy Reynolds and Stephen Offutt

Part Three: Reflections on Evangelical Social Engagement

Chapter Twelve – What’s New about the New Evangelical Social Engagement?
Joel Carpenter
Chapter Thirteen – Evangelicals of the 1970s and 2010s: What’s the Same, What’s Different, and What’s Urgent
R. Stephen Warner
Chapter Fourteen – We Need a New Reformation
Glen Harold Stassen

Elisha, “What has been will be again”

Posted on January 25, 2013 by anthrocybib

Elisha, Omri. 2013. What has been will be again. The Immanent Frame. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2013/01/25/what-has-been-will-be-again/ (accessed January 25, 2013).

Excerpt: “Marcia Pally’s incisive essay on “the new evangelicals” highlights a relatively small but growing population of white evangelicals who appear to be embracing broader, less conservative visions of the common good, and public policy views (at least partially) more in line with Democratic politics than their recent forebears. While her descriptions presumably are not limited to those who necessarily call themselves “new evangelicals,” she does invoke the work and ideas of public evangelicals who clearly self-identify as such. This points to an interesting observation worth considering here: to assume the mantle of newness is to make an ideological statement as well as a historical claim.

Newness is a fascinating, and very loaded concept. It expresses ideas of innovation and progress, as well as rupture and substitution. Whether presented in the form of prophetic revelations, revolutionary ideologies, or consumer branding, “the New” is always wrapped in a combination of promise and threat – it promises to improve upon the old, while threatening to eclipse and even replace it. Newness inspires hope as well as fear, with a provocative power that sometimes borders on the messianic.”

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