Superstitious Subjects: us Religion, Race, and Freedom
This article employs the trinary framework to interrogate American religious freedom and religious actors’ interaction with the us state. It focuses on issues of governance and the classification and management of state subjects and their activities, showing how these lived effects are entwined with...
| Published in: | Method & theory in the study of religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Method & theory in the study of religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
USA
/ Religious freedom
/ Spirituality
/ Superstition
/ Magic
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion AZ New religious movements KBQ North America |
| Further subjects: | B
Superstition
secularism
religious freedom
American religion
race
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This article employs the trinary framework to interrogate American religious freedom and religious actors’ interaction with the us state. It focuses on issues of governance and the classification and management of state subjects and their activities, showing how these lived effects are entwined with more “academic” or intellectual concerns about the categories religion and superstition. The article uses “superstition” in two ways. First, it is a term many Americans, from jurists to popular writers to academics, have used to describe human activities, often with racial assumptions and implications built into the framework. Second, scholars today might use the term, as part of the trinary, as an analytical device. The argument is that because the United States guarantees religious freedom, the state (or, more specifically, a particular state agent) must classify beliefs and practices as religious. This leaves a third category of activities that are clearly not secular but are also not religious, because they are not protected. Thus, we might call this third category “superstition” or “the superstitious.” The article tests this framework with two brief case studies drawn from the early and late twentieth century, respectively. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0682 |
| Contains: | In: Method & theory in the study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341408 |