Decentering Discussions on Religion and State

Emerging Narratives, Challenging Perspectives

Sargon George Donabed, Autumn Quezada-Grant

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739193266
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume explores dynamic conversations through history between individuals and communities over questions about religion and state. Divided into two sections, our authors begin with considerations on the separation of religion and state, as well as Roger Williams' concept of religious freedom. Authors in the first half consider nuanced debates centered on emerging narratives, with particular emphasis on Native America, Early Americans, and experiences in American immigration after Independence. The first half of the volume examines voices in American History as they publicly engage with notions of secular ideology. Discussions then shift as the volume broadens to world perspectives on religion-state relations. Authors consider critical questions of nation, religious identity and transnational narratives. The intent of this volume is to privilege new narratives about religion-state relations. Decentering discussions away from national narratives allows for emerging voices at the individual and community levels. This volume offers readers new openings through which to understand critical but overlooked interactions between individuals and groups of people with the state over questions about religion.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Philosophy, Sectarianism, and Development and Questioning the Status Quo in the United States
• The Sectarian Friend
• “Their Supervision Was Temporal Not Ecclesiastical”
• “It Forbids You the Right to Do Right”
• “Soul Libertie” versus the Sons and Daughters of Eire
• Altering Landscapes
• Stories the State Tells Itself
• Tempest in a Teacup
• Fighting the Winds of Change
• Twentieth-Century Reflections: Theory, Global Narratives, and New Agency
• Silence and the City
• Visions of Al-Quds
• Confronting the “Normative Abyss”
• Political Functions of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States (1945–1991)
• Sacred Confronts Profane
• Church-State Relations in the “New Egypt”
• State-Sponsored Religion as Impediment to Assimilation and Immigration
• Preventing Religious Genocide
• Index
• About the Editors