Studying for the Final

I wanted to provide a few additional notes so you can prepare well for the final. As you know from the syllabus the format is multiple choice, short answer, and essay. There will be approximately 50 questions and three essays to answer. Please review the books as well as you can. I would encourage re-reading the first and last paragraphs of each chapter to help reacquaint you with the content. Also scan your additional readings. That said, the bulk of the test will come from our discussions in class so I wanted to run through each class and the overarching points that we hit on. As to the essays, I will frame four questions that touch on several areas that we've studied. If you study for the exam, you'll be well prepared for the essays. They will each will require about a page of writing so bring some paper with you. I will give you four questions and you can choose three. (Click "read more to see a brief outline to help your review.)

Class 1
- The Reformation (Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, John of Leyden)
- The idea of the Old and New Worlds (Indians, manifest destiny, religious freedom)

Class 2
- Exploration (Spain, Portugal, France, England)
- Colonization and New World Utopias (Puritans, Pilgrims, Anglicanism, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, William Penn)
- The lesson of Oliver Cromwell (Puritans in England as a precursor to the Revolution)

Class 3
- The Age of Enlightenment and its heightened view of reason
- The Great Awakening - causes, results, reactions (John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards (especially))
- A Working Up to Revolution (problems with Anglicanism, reasoned religion means everyone can be saved and reason suggests freedom)

Class 4
- The Revolution (Acts, civil religion in the Declaration)
- Volunteerism (American Bible Society, American Sunday School Union, American Tract Society)
- Second Great Awakening - difference from first, causes, results (Charles Finney)
- Utopias (Shakers, Oneidas, William Miller, Seventh-day Adventists, Alexander Campbell and Cane Ridge)

Class 5
- Unitarianism and Transcendentalism
- Slavery (cotton demand, "backwardness," codes, Upper and Lower South,
- Revolt and Abolition (Wilberforce, Prosser, Vesey, Turner, Garrison, Douglass, Stowe, Tubman and Underground Railroad, Brown)
- The Civil War

Class 6
- Immigration and problems with American identity - religion and ethnicity (Jews, Lutherans, Chinese, Japanese, Catholic)
- Black America (E.K. Love,
- Women and Religion (Antionette Brown Black, Elizabeth Cady Stanton)
- Americanization efforts (temperance, Sunday, Public schools, Josiah Strong)
- D.L. Moody (personal Jesus, soul-winning, better world through prayer...)
- Christian Science and Jehovah Witnesses
- The World's Parliament of Religions

Class 7
- Industrial Revolution
- Social Gospel (Washington Gladden, Charles Sheldon, Jane Addams, Cardinal Gibbons, Walter Rauschenbusch, 1908, 1918)
- Consumer Culture (Bruce Barton, prosperity)
- Pop Culture- building your own "anytime" Jesus (reflect on question from clips in blog entry and the readings for this week)

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Randy Balmer on the Religious Right

This is a good review of your reading of Randy Balmer's God in the Whitehouse. It's a lecture he gave at Mercer as well as Emory. It helps capsulize the issues related to politics and religion, especially post-1979 and especially with Christians. Do you agree with his arguments? Do you find holes in what he's saying in terms of working inside politics with strong religious convictions that may produce a social and moral agenda that segments people? Doesn't morality segment out people from people naturally anyway?

Here's the link.

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Hip Hop Jesus

Here are a list of links we looked at in class. What are your thoughts? Do you see any connections from the study we've done and the outgrowth in today's culture?

- "Infant Jesus Prayer" from Talladega Nights

- "Sex Challenge" from Ed Young

- "Inaugural Prayer" by Rick Warren

- "Yahweh or No Way" from The Colbert Report

- "Praying for Wings" from a Tyler Perry play

- "Fight the Devil" by T.D. Jakes

- "After 9-11" from Jerry Falwell

- "God in the Whitehouse" from Randy Balmer on The Daily Show

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USA: Marked with "Insufficient Funds"

Martin Luther King began his "I Have a Dream" speech with the words below. What does it mean that 100 years after the emancipation, King would have to address the nation in this way? What does it say about the War's result and the South's resolve?

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity...

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children...

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Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Julia Howe (yes that's her in the photo) wrote this hymn in 1861 while viewing the movement of soldiers. It's an abolitionist hymn and Julia was a Northerner. Are there problems with relating the victory of Jesus to the victory of the Union? What does this suggest in terms of manifest destiny of the United States and the mythologies and realities of Christianity in marriage with the country?

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
 His truth is marching on...

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
 Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
. They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; 
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
 His day is marching on.


Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
 Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
 “As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
 Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
 Since God is marching on.


Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
 Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
 He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
 Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
 Our God is marching on.


Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
 With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
 As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free; 
[originally …let us die to make men free]
 While God is marching on.


Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
 Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
 So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.


Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! 
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

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The Civil War Draws Us

Robert Penn Warren in The Legacy of the Civil War says,

The Civil War draws us as an oracle, darkly unriddled and portentous, of personal, as well as national, fate. In any case, the Civil War occurred. "Whether or not the war was inevitable," as Benard de Voto says, the crisis was." The conflicts had to be solved, but the fact that "they were not solved short of war is our greatest national tragedy."

What does it mean to say that there is a drawing to the Civil War? What are the religious overtones, especially ones of civil religion, as we've discussed in class?

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The Tales of Brer Rabbit

The Tales of Brer Rabbit were written by Joel Chandler Harris of Eatonton, Ga. They were told from the perspective of Uncle Remus and were adapted from the oral tradition that Harris had heard on a plantation where he worked. There has been some talk about the stories and their meaning. In fact, that's a primary reason that Disney hasn't released Song of the South (a film based on the Tales).

What say you? Is it racist? Does it speak into something about white people or black people? Here is a clip of the Disney rendition.

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