RELI 140 - American Heretics

Just what is “the Bible” and what role has it played in shaping American life? How might it center a pattern of repeated political and cultural negotiation of power? Many, if not most, of the earliest Europeans who colonized what is now the U.S. were considered religious heretics by the Christian churches of their original homelands at the time of their immigration. Over the course of U.S. history, “new” traditions have also emerged, often considered heretical or “not really Christian” by the subsequently established Christian traditions. Much of the debate over who is and isn’t heretical or “really Christian” has focused on what counts as authoritative Christian sacred text and how to interpret it. Controversy over what does and does not count as sacred scripture, how it is to be interpreted, and who gets to determine right teaching of these texts for human life has gone on to shape American culture and politics in distinctive ways. The debates and the texts on which conflicts focus have provided the primary scripts, the central narratives, and the cultural discourse, from worship to moral practice, politics to the courts, and secular ceremony to economic life in this country. Moreover, self-identified Christians have turned to Civil Rights, Women’s suffrage to the second wave of Feminism, capitalism to socialism, and heterosexually exclusive civil marriage laws to Gay Rights. This course will examine this pattern, characterized by dispute, adaptation, and power, even violence, by looking at the number of these groups, their sacred texts, and their impact through use of film, guest lecture, visual arts, field work in various different religious communities, on-line virtual churches, and, most importantly, the sacred texts themselves. Alternate years. (4 Credits)