I am a historian who studies religion, religious practice, and religious identity in U.S. history, world history, and post-colonial Africa. My work tends to bear the marks of social history, although increasingly I find my research trajectories engaging the sociology of religion and ethnography of religion. I am also interested in the intersections of religion and popular culture. My research involves study in the archives, pursuit of fieldwork through observation-participation, as well as conducting interviews. On my best days I think of myself as a sociologist masquerading as a historian, or perhaps a historical sociologist.
Book Projects
I currently have 3 book projects underway.
The first is my dissertation, " 'The Sad Tendency of Divisions and Contentions in Churches': Popular Religion and Pastoral Dismissal in British North America," a study of church conflict and pastoral dismissal. (The dissertation's title comes from a 1750 Solomon Williams sermon.)
The result of work in 10 different archives scattered throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylania, in addition to countless published primary texts, this study further establishes clergy expulsion as a sub-field of study in American religious history. It examines the reasons behind and the social and cultural significance of hundreds of ministerial dismissals throughout the sevententh and eighteenth centuries. Complimenting existing work in the field, this study also uses church conflict as a way to better understand popular religion. The famous expulsion of Jonathan Edwards forms a centerpiece to the dissertation, while other lesser-known dismissals round out the project. Organized chronologically yet presented thematically, this study analyzes dismissals nearly a half century before the Great Awakening, during the revivals, and those expulsions that came in the revivals' wake up to the 1780s.
I am convinced that pastoral dismissal/clergy expulsion is a worthy (and mammoth) theme in American religious history that deserves more attention. Put another way, the infamous televangelist scandals of the 1980s and the recent Ted Haggard debacle have a long history.
The second book project is a collaborative endeavor with Tulane sociologist Shayne Lee. To be published by New York University Press, this manuscript uses the theory of religious economy to study contemporary religious trends in the United States. It imagines this country as a spiritual marketplace where religious firms offer spiritual goods and services to religious consumers.
The result of nearly three years of research, including extensive participant-observation in Connecticut, Florida, California, Georgia, and Texas, our project explores the extraordinary appeal of five evangelicals who make strong cases to replace Billy Graham as America’s leading preacher and evangelist: Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Brian McLaren. They pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism. They write best-selling books and draw thousands of people to their conferences. They are fixtures on the airwaves, appearing as special guests on television programs. Newspapers report on their vast influence. Thousands of websites, blogs, and chat rooms dispatch their names throughout cyberspace, both praising and chastising their ministries.
Through the power of their appeal, rather than the authority of ecclesiastical positioning, they assemble multi-million dollar ministries and worldwide renown. With weak or no denominational ties, they are free agents who make their mark on contemporary American society. Deploying the theory of religious economy, while also crafting interpretations from other disciplinary angles, this project seeks to explain the wide appeal of White, Jakes, Warren, Osteen, and McLaren.
The third project already underway is a study of Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church in Houston. Also the result of 3 years of research and participant-observation, this study uses the life and ministry of Osteen and his church to capture the dynamics of supply and demand in America’s (and Houston's) religious marketplace. Though Osteen stands in a long line of ministers to speak the cultural language of their times, to create metaphors, deploy symbols, and make religious utterances at once spiritual, memorable, and marketable, he is the most versatile and most savvy of recent evangelical innovators. Osteen’s spiritual toolkit provides him with the equipment to build a ministry, a message, and an image, elements necessary to maintain stock in America’s religious economy.
This project argues that Joel Osteen is America’s leading religious capitalist with a ministry toolkit expertly equipped with a keen understanding of America’s consumer habits and spiritual vocabulary. Osteen’s ability to draw from select elements of evangelical theology, prosperity teaching, self-help psychology, life-coaching techniques, leadership theory, and modern media position him to lead a cutting-edge megachurch and captain a niche ministry that influences millions around the world. This critical scholarly work aims to understand the social significance and cultural meaning of this twenty-first century megaminister.
Articles
" 'The Sad Tendency of Divisions and Contentions in Churches': Popular Religion and Pastoral Dismissal in Early American Religious History." A showcase of my dissertation research, this essay addresses the subject of clerical expulsion in American religious history, analyzes key cases in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and proposes further avenues of study. (Separate articles on pastoral dismissal in the context of the Great Awakening and American Revolution are also in the works.)
"W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, Religion, and World History." (tentative title) Co-written with Edward J. Blum, this project imagines Du Bois as a world-historical religious figure, and from a global perspective focuses on the ways race and religion factored into his life, his writing, and his influence. With secondary teachers and students in mind (and undergraduates) this essay has a pedagogical component to it.
"Global Religious Literacy: What Every World History Student Should Know." (tentative title) In collaboration with Luke Clossey and inspired by Stephen Prothero's award-winning Religious Literacy (2007), this essay addresses religious (il)literacy within the field of world history by assessing the state of the field, and offers practical, pedagogical ways to increase religious understanding in the secondary and college world history classrooms.
"The Gospel According to Lenny Kravitz: Religion, Race and Redemption." (tentative title) Reflecting my interest in the intersection of religion and popular culture, this project studies the complex ways Kravitz's music engages religion (mostly Christianity), race(ism), and redemption between his first album Let Love Rule (1989) to his latest offering Baptism (2004). It appears Kravitz will release another CD at some point in 2008, so I anticipate figuring this into my analysis as well.
"Africa in World History and World History in Africa: Teaching Sudan." Already written and currently under revision, this essay summarizes curriculum on Sudan I created and use, and suggests ways that angles of analysis in Sudan's history (e.g., trade, comparative slavery, civil war, religion) might be innovatively framed in a world history context.
Future Projects (research underway)
Rodeo for Jesus: Cowboy Churches and Contemporary American Religion
Race, Religion, and the Theological Imagination of James Baldwin
American Imams and Muslim America
Salvation in Sudan: Immigration, Religion, and Identity in Houston's Sudanese Community