Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Blog

Evangelical-Jewish Relations

By Alan Mittleman

A group of 34 evangelical leaders recently sent President Bush a letter indicating their support for a Palestinian state. Both sides, they claim, “have legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine,” according to an article in the International Herald Tribune (July 29, 2007). Such a declaration would, of course, be unremarkable had it come from a liberal, mainline Protestant body. Coming from the evangelical world, however, makes it noteworthy. The evangelical community has been stalwart in its support for Israel, as well as in its suspicion toward the Palestinians. The signers of this letter, however, claim that the public face of evangelicalism, as a staunchly pro-Israel community, does not do justice to the inner diversity of the community. According to one evangelical leader, Rev. Joel Hunter, most of the community should not be considered Christian Zionists but is “really open” and seeks “justice for both parties.”

The pastors and leaders behind this initiative—who are identified with the growing progressive wing of the evangelical world—intend their message to be heard by Muslims, as well. The letter is being translated into Arabic and sent to Muslims abroad to offset the image of American evangelicals as lock-step followers of maximalist Zionism. 

This display of internal diversity within evangelicalism suggests the healthy dissent of a community come of age. Just as some evangelicals have taken a “liberal” line on the environment, the war in Iraq, or the use of torture, so too here, complicating the public image of the community is not a bad thing. Anyone who supports pluralism and the free exchange of ideas might welcome this intramural dialogue. Although I very much reject their argument—do Palestinian Arabs really have claims reaching back millennia? Millennia? lands of Israel/Palestine?—I recognize their need to make it based on their understanding of the biblical imperative of justice.

Let us be clear, however, this group does not represent a majority. It represents, at best, a vocal minority. Drawing on several surveys of evangelical opinion from 1994-2005, the political scientist John Green finds that in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians 56% of evangelicals sympathized more with Israel as opposed to 6%, who sympathized more with the Palestinians. (38% had no opinion.) Forty one percent of the general public, by comparison, sympathized with Israel; 13% with the Palestinians; 46% had no opinion. Majority evangelical backing for Israel both internally and comparatively is striking. When asked why they sympathized with Israel, 84% said it was because “God gave Israel to the Jews.” It would be hard to read the Bible without coming to this conclusion, especially if one hews to a non-suspicious approach to the text.

These leaders do not speak for the majority. At best, they speak for the 38% who have no opinion and the 6% whose sympathies lie with the Palestinians. Perhaps more probing into the evangelical majority would reveal nuances, hesitations, or gradations of support for Israel. For my part, I am thankful that the majority stands behind Israel. I do not want evangelicals to support Israel naively or credulously; I want them to support Israel —warts and all—intelligently and with full recognition of the fundamental justice of its cause. 

Alan Mittleman is Director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies and Professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary.  His latest book Uneasy Allies? Evangelical and Jewish Relations , co-edited with Byron R. Johnson and Nancy Isserman, will be published by Lexington Books this month.

More Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: How did the newspaper cover slavery? 

A: Freedom’s Journal exposed the cruelties of slavery and the ways that enslaved people fought their oppression. Articles by the editors and contributors countered common proslavery arguments and the assumptions—scriptural, economic, and political—on which they were based. A significant number of articles explored judicial decisions that considered slavery’s reach onto “free” soil when slaves accompanying traveling masters to non-slave states sued for their freedom, from the 1772 British Somerset case to cases from various regions of the United States that explored the power of slavery throughout the nation and set the stage for more well later known decisions such as the Dred Scott case. 

Q: Did the newspaper help free slaves?

A: For obvious reasons, Freedom’s Journal did not publicize specifics about the underground channels for assisting fugitives. However, Russwurm offered help in the newspaper to runaways by notifying them about locations where they would be unsafe because of slave hunters, the devious methods used by those who would capture them, and the names of captors and their accomplices. Freedom’s Journal also publicized efforts by individuals and organizations who aided free African Americans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery or whose loved ones had suffered this fate, allowing African Americans and white allies to seek assistance in specific cases and free particular victims. Slaves could also be freed through the controversial (but sometimes effective) method of purchasing their freedom, and such initiatives were publicized in the newspaper, such as the campaign to free the children of Reverend George Erskine, a Presbyterian minister and former slave who had been manumitted in 1815, and the poet George Moses Horton. (Although at least some of Erskine’s children obtained freedom, the effort to buy the liberty of Horton failed.)

Q: How did Freedom’s Journal influence American abolition and the history of American journalism? 

A: Freedom’s Journal established connections among African-American leaders in different cities; created a force of writers and activists whose impact on American abolition was crucial, such as David Walker and Samuel Cornish, who went on to edit other newspapers and served on both the Board of Managers and the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and publicized the arguments against colonization and slavery and for black freedom and civil rights that convinced white reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison to support abolition. Because one of the goals of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> was to encourage debate on important subjects, we discover in the pages of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> discussions of issues that white abolitionists did not take up until subsequent decades, such the role of women role in reform and in the public sphere, the use of physical resistance and extralegal action, and the reliance on or rejection of political institutions. 

Q: What is the significance of Freedom’s Journal for African-American newspapers of today?

A: Freedom’s Journal established the power of the black press as a tool in building community and fighting oppression. Numerous newspapers can be considered the legacy of Freedom’s Journal, from Frederick Douglass’s North Star, which began publication in 1847, to the Chicago Defender, which from 1905 to today has played a key role as a source of information and a forum for discussions of issues relating to people of color. As various historians and journalists have noted, the issues raised in Freedom’s Journal have been discussed in the African-American press in various forms since its publication, and the principles upon which it was founded remain relevant. As did Freedom’s Journal, African-American newspapers continue to report stories that are ignored in the mainstream white-dominated media, to interpret news in ways that make it relevant to people of color, to educate and empower, and to critique the nation and challenge it to live up to its ideals.

Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: When, how, where, and why was Freedom’s Journal founded?

A: In 1827, at a gathering of African-American leaders in New York, the idea for Freedom’s Journal was created, and two men were chosen as its editors: Samuel E. Cornish, a Presbyterian pastor; and John B. Russwurm, born in Jamaica to a black woman and a white plantation owner, who was the third black college graduate in the United States. (After six months, Cornish resigned and Russwurm became the newspaper’s sole editor.) Although some historians have argued that the impetus for the newspaper was the white oppression of the 1820s, particularly vile attacks on African Americans in white newspapers, it is reductive and inaccurate to cast Freedom’s Journal as simply a response to white society. The newspaper was a self-directed effort of African Americans themselves and grew out of the organizational structures already in place in free black communities—churches, mutual aid and literary societies—and the awareness in the late 1820s among African Americans of the crucial power of writing as a tool of freedom. 

Q: Who financed the paper and who promoted it?

A: Both African Americans and whites provided financial support, and the paper had black and white subscribers and readers. Freedom’s Journal was promoted in various cities by agents, including many prominent figures, such as Bostonian David Walker, author of the 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (a forceful, uncompromising condemnation of slavery and colonization) and John Remond, a successful hairdresser and community leader in Salem, Massachusetts, whose children, Charles Lenox Remond and Sarah Parker Remond, became lecturers with the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

Q: Who were the readers of Freedom’s Journal?

A: The newspaper’s readers included African Americans throughout the north and south, including slaves as well as white reformers such as Gerrit Smith and, likely, William Lloyd Garrison. Those who could not read often had Freedom’s Journal read to them. It is estimated that the number of subscribers was at least 800, which would make its circulation close to that of other weekly papers of the time. However, because copies were often shared at this time, the audience was greater than this figure indicates.

Q: What subjects were covered in Freedom’s Journal, and what types of material appeared in its columns.

A: Cornish and Russwurm described the newspaper's content broadly: In short, whatever concerns us as a people, will ever find a ready admission into the Freedom's Journal. True to their word, they published articles about a variety of issues of concern to African Americans such as colonization, slavery, education, self-improvement, women's and men's ideal roles in the home and in society, law, religion, and history. The paper contained domestci and foreign news, frequently reprinted from other newspapers; correspondence and essays by both well-known leaders such as Philadelphian Richard Allen, on of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and unknown and even annamed African Americans who contributed letters and essays; transcriptions of speeches given on various occasions; literary and historical excerpts from published works; editorials and essays offering diverse opinions on differenct topics; poems and short stories; announcements; and advertisements.   

Planning the Past receives Honorable Mention

Planning the Past: Heritage Tourism and Post-Colonial Politics at Port Royal by Anita M. Waters, received an Honorable Mention from the Caribbean Studies Association’s 2007 Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis Award. This award honors two distinguished Caribbeanists, in commemoration of the sad physical loss but continuing memory and legacy of Sybil Lewis as well as Gordon K. Lewis.

Rowman & Littlefield Imprints Join Google Book Search as Partner Publishers

Earlier this year (prior to the birth of this blog) Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, AltaMira Press, and Lexington Books became partners in the Google Book Search program. This month we’re very excited to launch Google’s Book Search functionality directly on the rowmanlittlefield.com, altamirapress.com, and lexingtonbooks.com websites. Visitors to these websites will find that they now have the ability to search within the full text of any of the titles that are included in the Book Search program. Searches can be conducted across the entire list or within the contents of a specific title.

Google Book Search hugely expands the visibility of our books both to our current customers and to web browsers who may never have heard of Rowman & Littlefield or any of our imprints. Of course, only a limited portion of any one title is visible via Book Search. Visitors to our websites will be able to see a few full pages from a book as a preview. They can also conduct multiple searches within the book, or browse through the available pages. There’s a limit to the amount of any given book that can be viewed online.

Each book’s Google page includes an 'About this book' link with basic bibliographic data like title, author, publication date, length and subject. Users also have access to additional information like key terms and phrases, references to the book from scholarly publications or other books, chapter titles and a list of related books. Each book also has a link to the appropriate R & L website where the book can always be purchased at a 15% online discount.

We believe this added functionality will increase overall traffic to our website in addition to improving the browsing and shopping experience on our sites.

For more information about Google’s Book Search program, please visit http://books.google.com/googlebooks/about.html

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007: An Appreciation

by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Ingmar Bergman passed away on July 30, 2007 at the age of 89. As soon as the sad news got around, the world honored his oeuvre as that of one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. In Sweden flags were flown half-mast and the nation was aware that it had lost its most famous son. In this context, some Swedish journals could not ignore the fact that the Bergman phenomenon has something uncanny (or should we say Bergmanesque?) about it: in a way, this artist, who exposed themes that are familiar to every Swede, had been “too large” for this small country.

Foreign journals, on the other hand, seldom mentioned details about Bergman’s cultural context. As a matter of fact, explorations into this theme are rare; just as rare as philosophical examinations of Bergman’s films, though his films are (as everybody agrees) as profound and metaphysical as the work of, say, French existentialist writers.

The death of this giant produces an uncanny feeling: there is a gap between the explicit concreteness with which Bergman described the relationships between “real” (Swedish) humans, and his abstract way of sticking out of a culture to which he is so strongly linked and at the same time not linked at all. The most uncanny of all questions can thus be formulated like this: is Bergman too big not only for the Swedes but also for everybody else?

Bergman is indeed full of contradictions. Seemingly mainly preoccupied with his own pains and indifferent about “influences,” he is at the same time recognized as an integral component of European cinema. When he received the Erasmus Prize for his artistic contribution to European culture he declared, in the official speech that he held, that in his opinion European culture would simply not exist. This was perhaps, as wrote Vernon Young, the “most sovereign discourtesy publicly committed by any artist in our time” because the Erasmus Prize is explicitly awarded for the “intensification of European spiritual life.”

But there are more contradictions. Bergman was highly professional though at the same time widely “self-taught;” he was cultivated and profound though he preferred to describe himself modestly as an “entertainer;” his films are vernacularly savage though speaking at the same time the artistic language of an international bourgeoisie; throughout his career Bergman remained internationally influential though he clung at the same time to an outside position from which the world can be observed rather than changed.

If we really want to understand Bergman we should perhaps catch up some basic understanding about the evolutionary process of culture through a dialectical exchange between periphery and centre. First of all, instead of putting Bergman into the mausoleum of great directors we should try to perceive his work through the cultural context established by, for example, Mauritz Stiller (the Finnish-Swedish film director who “discovered” Greta Garbo), Victor Sjöstrom, or the Dane Carl Dreyer. Then, Bergman can be studied as the perhaps unique case of an artist who not only came from the periphery but who stayed in the periphery without turning the periphery into a center. Bergman influenced the center from the periphery and this is indeed uncanny or simply Bergmanesque.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is professor of philosophy at Zhejiang University, China. He is the author of the upcoming book Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-Wai.

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru Sir Fflint a'r Cyffiniau, Awst 4 - 11, 2007

By  Megan Lloyd

The Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru or Welsh National Eisteddfod is now underway in a maes or field near Flint, North Wales. While other eisteddfodau occur throughout Wales, the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru is Wales’ largest and most important arts competition. Here, this week every August, poets, musicians, dramatists, artists, actors and dancers come to compete all in yr iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh language. To recognize this long-standing arts festival, here are a few words about its history.

Eistedd, in Welsh means to sit. Thus the highest honor given to any artist in Wales is for him or her to sit or be chaired. The climax to the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru is the chairing of the bard ceremony where the poet who has won the competition for the best poem in strict meters is chaired. The second best award is the crown, given to the winner of the free verse competition.

Poets in Wales have always been highly regarded. Today’s contemporary chaired bard, and all those who compete in the competition for the chair, follow some of the strict poetic meters established in the earliest Welsh poetry we have record of, coming from the bards Taliesin and Aneirin writing in the sixth century. The chairing aspect of today’s eisteddfod may go back to the place of prominence the head poet or Pencerdd was given at the Welsh Court. Hywel Dda or ‘Hywel the Good’(d. 950) created Wales’ first uniform legal system which established twenty-four offices at court, for advisors, counselors, the clergy, with two given to poets. The highest honor was given to the Pencerdd or head singer who took his place beside the prince himself. The Pencerdd was in the immediate entourage of the king or Prince.* The head poet was not only given this prominent place at court, he was given land and the ability to license other poets.** An elite profession, belonging to the bardic order, poets learned their craft and became licensed once they mastered traditional meters and vocabulary. The court included a number of these other poets called the Bardd Teulu, or “family poets” – both a family of poets and poets for the family or lord or household. Also attached to the courts of Wales in the medieval period were the Cerddorion or apprentices. These men were the more popular singers who were learning their craft and waiting for a license from the Pencerdd. The Pencerdd and Bardd Teulu all had a job to pass along their craft. To become a member of the Bardd Teulu, a poet had to complete a rigorous poetical test. Once you were a member of the Bardd Teulu or became the Pencerdd, you had it made – a secure position and the necessities of life. The power of Welsh poetry can be seen by looking at this rule: If you were of lower class, you were not permitted to teach your son to be a scholar, a blacksmith or a poet. If you became any of these without detection, you would become a free man.***

Welsh bards held eisteddfodau to test and license apprentice poets, to review rules governing the craft of poet and musician, and to protect and promote the professional status of these artists. The earliest eisteddfod may be traced back to 1176 Cardigan where Lord Rhys invited poets and musicians from all over the country and awarded the best poet and musician a chair at his table. Medieval records show that eisteddfodau were held in 1450, 1523, and 1567 to license poets and musicians and to examine the rules of poetry and music. One specific aim of the 1567 Caerwys Eisteddfod was to control wandering minstrelsy. The gentry petitioned the crown for an eisteddfod in 1594, but nothing came of it.

The Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1567 was the last “official” eisteddfod until those of the “modern era” established during the nineteenth century and filled with druidic trappings, for example, the Gorsedd who, aided by maidens adorned in flowing garments, perform the chairing and crowning ceremonies. While today’s eisteddfod does not evaluate the rules governing behavior of Welsh artists nor does it test upcoming artists so they may one day become licensed, it still preserves the purity of form established in the oldest Welsh verse, and it sustains the rich heritage of the Welsh language through the arts themselves.

  * Of the fourteen offices at court and chairs next to the King, one was occupied by the Pencerdd. Dafydd Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law (Llandysul, Dyfed, Wales: Gomer Press, 1986) 7-8.

** Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law, 38-39.

*** Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law, 40.

Megan S. Lloyd, PhD, is Associate Professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA. She is the author of upcoming  "Speak It in Welsh": Wales and the Welsh Language in Shakespeare, published by Lexington Books.

 

Democrats Getting Religion, but Doing It the Wrong Way

by Mark Ellingsen

Good to see the Democrats are finally getting religion, according to Time Magazine (in its July 23 cover story). But if the account is accurate, Democratic leadership and the first-tier Presidential candidates are doing it the wrong way, making the same mistakes that the Right has in manipulating religion for its political purposes. The Time article also doesn't have the whole story. Typical of most media accounts, along with its 'experts' it concentrates only on Evangelical voters, when in fact a coalition of a mainline Protestants, African-American Christians, and Catholics far outnumbers Evangelical voters by 2.5 to 1.

Here's the deal: Republicans have succeeded in getting the religious vote by linking their policies to Puritan dispositions (those of the Mayflower Pilgrims) which have dominated religious life and the way in which most religious Americans of influence view religion. Among these Puritan dispositions, inherited from the movement's origins in 17th-century England include high standards of conservative individual morality, openness to the free-market and aversion towards the poor, as well as the belief that Christian values should directly impact society. By simply speaking of religious values shaping their politics and even implying that the values of faith should impact American society, the old Puritan-like way of the Right, the Democrats not only run the risk of losing their secular and Jewish base as well as of being dismissed by the secular media for violating First Amendment suppositions. More seriously, using such Puritan-like rhetoric just plays into the conservative strategies of developing legislation that favors a free-market, individual accountability approach. It will be heard that way by the public and implemented that way by most American political leaders, because, immersed as they are in Puritan dispositions, most Americans hear religious rhetoric as values to foster individual accountability and the free market. The new Democratic version of religion will just undergird the Neo-Conservatism which has influenced American politics since the Reagan era.

It will take a new/old way of doing religion in politics. The heritages of the African-American, Lutheran, and Catholic churches offer a way to go. Until the Reagan era these three branches of American religion voted Democratic, and at least the first of them still do. What is different? In part it relates to the historically ethnic character of these bodies, a sense that their faith was about all the members of these churches so that politics rooted in these traditions was aimed at upbuilding the community, not just individuals. Also, especially in the case of Lutherans and Catholics, as well as the heritage of the Civil Rights Movement, faith was brought to bear on politics, not so much by appealing to distinct Christian principles, but by appealing to the common morality shared by all human beings and embodied in America's founding documents. Such an approach will appeal to a broad constituency of Americans, will not alienate the Democrats secular base. It will also lead to a progressive politics, because study of the way traditional Christianity has interpreted humanity's common morality (expressed in the final Commands of the Ten Commandments) reveal that the most ancient versions of these faiths believe we kill and steal if we are not helping our neighbors with the basic necessities of life.

This is how the Democrats need to get religion. It will help them keep the good will of a broad constituency, and allow religious claims to be heard as supporting a progressive politics. And if the Democrats combined this with a strategy of building a mainline Protestant, Catholic, Black church coalition, the voice of religious conservatives who could not buy into progressive politics for whatever reason would not matter much (as the numbers of religious conservatives are small compared to this coalition).

Mark Ellingsen is an active speaker at seminaries, churches, and conferences where he is sought out as an expert and spirited champion of authentic Christian faith and politics. Ellingsen is associate professor at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. His new book When Did Jesus Become Republican?: Rescuing Our Country and Our Values from the Right is publishing this month.

 

Motherhood, the Media, and the Marine Corps

By Robin R. Cutler

On October 13, 1907, a 22-year-old marine from Portland, Oregon died during a fight with his fellow student officers in Annapolis, Maryland. The young men immediately claimed Lieutenant Sutton committed suicide; within 36 hours a swift and efficient naval investigation confirmed their story. But then something astonishing happened. Three thousand miles away in Portland, Oregon, the dead lieutenant's mother saw a "vision" of her son who denied the charge, and asked her to clear his name. Fueled by her Catholic faith, Rosa Brant Sutton would spend the next three years trying to redeem her son from the stigma of a mortal sin and learn the real truth about his death. Within a few months her spiritual battle became a political one — in the summer of 1909 a new naval investigation took place that was unprecedented.

The Sutton case became a national sensation as reporters, editors, members of Congress, high-ranking military officials, attorneys, doctors and ultimately the Cardinal of the Catholic Church were caught up in the question of what had really happened to Lieutenant Sutton. There was no question of friendly fire — this fratricide might have been homicide. In 1909, big-city papers in San Francisco and across the country put this case in their headlines for months as Americans from all walks of life acquired a stake in its outcome. Today, this mother's cause célèbre — a civilian seeking truth from military power — is a familiar story, a fact that is both instructive and sobering.

We might learn from the timeless language used by Major Harry Leonard, the savvy judge advocate in the Sutton court: "The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are great many military reputations at stake in this hearing." The accused marines' attorney, Arthur Birney, echoed this theme: "We know what an officer's honor is to him. It cannot be stained without the same kind of injury which is done to a woman's honor when it is stained . . ."

What really happened to "Jimmie" Sutton became less important than his mother's right to know. The case became a battle between protagonists who fought hard for their own versions of the truth. Today, America's journalists follow several families whose military sons died under questionable circumstances. Their efforts to learn the truth have been eerily similar to Rosa Sutton's both in their language and the hurdles they face. The soldiers' mothers, overwhelmed by a very private grief, have turned to the media unwillingly — and as did Rosa Sutton, Patrick Tillman's mother, Mary, has insisted on a congressional investigation of her son's mysterious death.

Misleading information — even blatant lies — may only be fully comprehensible over time. The whole truth (in so far as it can ever be known) about an alleged cover-up may come to light when the conflicting testimony surrounding cases such as these is analyzed years from now. Evidence will be weighed in the context of how military leaders function, what private battles individual officers and enlisted men faced, what allegiances they had and what personal debts witnesses owed. Only then will we understand why the exact same language used at the beginning of the twentieth century about misleading and inaccurate information from one of the armed services appears on the front pages of newspapers in 2007.

Robin R. Cutler has spent most of the past two decades as a public historian both at the National Endowment for the Humanities and as president of two nonprofit organizations. She is the author of A Soul on Trial: A Marine Corps Mystery at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Ten years ago she discovered the extraordinary primary sources that make it possible to explore the century-old case of Jimmie Sutton's death for the first time. You can visit her website at http://www.RobinRCutler.com/

 

July 19th to August 18th marks the 98th anniversary of the unprecedented naval investigation of Lieutenant James L. Sutton's death.