Turning to the other paper I have to write...

Another week, another paper due--this time, to a roundtable in religion and theatre. Here's the abstract for the roundtable (written by yours truly):

In 2005, a reporter asked Stanley Fish what might succeed critical theory and race/gender/class as the center of scholarly attention. He said, “I answered like a shot: religion.” Surveying the academic and cultural landscape in 2018, one might conclude that Fish was mistaken. Issues of race and gender seem more relevant and forceful than ever. Religion, at least as embodied by the once-powerful Christian Right, seems to have retreated in the wake of apparent cultural defeats like same-sex marriage and, in the US, the election of a largely irreligious conservative figurehead.  

At the same time, however, researchers across a range of disciplines and international contexts are highlighting the role that deep belief plays in politics and culture. Social psychologists mark how social group membership shapes what we believe in politically and ethically. Political scientists track how quasi-religious political messaging traffics in race-, class-, and gender-based appeals. Some old-school Christian conservatives now preach a doctrine of strategic withdrawal from political and cultural conflicts.  And, alongside these trends, various new belief practices have emerged—not all of which sit comfortably under the moniker “religious”—that play out novel configurations of identity and political engagement.

In this roundtable, scholars working at the intersections of belief and political/cultural intervention gather to reassess Fish’s prediction in light of these trends. How do political conviction and identity operate like faith-based commitments or ways of life? How are secular forces manipulating passions and rhetorics once considered the sole purview of religion? How have scenes of political belief changed?

If I had to write it and submit it over again, I'd probably talk about Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, in which he writes that we in the twenty-first century Anglosphere participate in "the immanent frame," where religion and supernatural realities have lost their hegemonic status as default, common sense beliefs. Other sociologists, Peter Berger among them, dispute this. Something like religious sense persists even in 2019. 

Politically, bits of the old Religious Right seem to hang on--weirdly--in the Trump Administration. Under Bush II, there was an resurgence of conservative Christianity. George W. Bush, at least, seemed authentically to be a person of faith. By contrast, even most of Trump's supporters stop short of saying Trump is himself faithful. They see him as chosen and used by God, an imperfect vessel. 

Trump's administration throws them enough scraps to embolden them on a few issues. Anti-gay and anti-trans attitudes are now the new First Amendment battlegrounds, religious beliefs so strong they cannot be hidden and yet so vulnerable they can be snuffed out by even a breath of anti-bullying measure or nondiscrimination employment policy. A new "Natural Law Commission" stocked with arch-religious conservatives has been formed; heaven only knows what they'll actually do. Other forces on the right seem to be fighting back against Benedict Option-type withdrawals from the world. Witness, for example, Sohrab Ahmari's recent call to arms (though he targets David French rather than Rod Dreher). 

Certainly, as demographic shifts herald an un-whitening of the US and other parts of the Anglosphere, predominant views of some cultural issues, such as LGBTQ acceptance, will likely shift as well. Though predominantly Democratic in terms of partisanship, Black and Latinx communities in the US  generally hold slightly more conservative views on LGBTQ issues than white Democrats do. (Ethnic and racial minorities, however, are just as if not more likely than white people generally to affirm that LGBTQ people face discrimination. Those groups are also mainly opposed to pro-discrimination stances regarding LGBTQ folk.) Certainly as the locus of Christianity moves to the Global South, sharply more conservative views are likely to take charge as LGBTQ rights struggles are at earlier stages compared to Europe and North America. Heck, even young people, long the stalwart hope for LGBTQ acceptance, now register increasing discomfort with the LGBTQ community (though there's no evidence I know of that this has to do with racial/ethnic demographic changes).

Just when you think religiously based discrimination is on the wane, in other words, it persists.

More tomorrow,

JF