Nathan Schneider at Religion Dispatches:
Pass by Brown Memorial Baptist Church on a Sunday morning and you’ll hear a powerful sound. In between the spirituals—sorrow songs sung over a joyful rhythm section—you’ll hear Rev. Clinton M. Miller’s voice, rising over his microphone’s threshold, calling out through the static to responses from the packed pews.
Mixed in all that, these days, you’ll probably hear something about Barack Obama, or at least his echoes—”hope,” “politics as usual,” “change.” Keep walking, past the humbler Progressive Glorious Church of God in Christ, and there is a man on his stoop selling t-shirts with the big, colorful face of you-know-who on the front.
“This is Obama territory,” says Miller.
Read the rest of Nathan’s essay here.
Jonathan VanAntwerpen is program director for theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. Originally trained as a philosopher, he received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of a series of books on secularism, religion, and public life, including Habermas and Religion (Polity, 2013), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Post-Secular in Question (NYU Press, 2012), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011), and Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). VanAntwerpen was the founding director of the SSRC's program on religion and the public sphere, and in 2007 he worked with others to launch The Immanent Frame, serving for several years as editor-in-chief.
