Religion, Protest, and Social Upheaval

Religion, Protest, and Social Upheaval addresses multiple roles of religion in social and political movements. As the editors’ introduction observes, the book engages a rich array of historical and contemporary social movements, contending with “interrelated forms of social and political domination that, historically, have been the focus of the American left – capitalism, environmental degradation, racism, xenophobia, and gender and sexuality” (5).

Part 1 addresses “Upheaval Under Capitalism.” Mark Lewis Taylor’s chapter tracks gendered and racialized capitalism, which violently shaped, reinforced, and normalized “white supremacist metaracism,” evidenced by the Klan and other late 19^th century U.S. post-Reconstruction Era groups, by more recent alt-right and militia groups, and by “militant wars on racialized peoples” (36). Devin Singh’s chapter locates theological and praxical resources in the Christian doctrine of the ascension, i.e., a resurrected-but-absent Christ, to protest and disrupt present-day entrenched neoliberal politics and economics. Singh argues that capitalistic systems rest on and reproduce vulnerable communities through race, gender, class, colonialism, commercialization / commodification, extractivism, and policing.

Rather than a rapture politics of theo-political and economic stability, Christian claims about Christ’s ascension according to Singh are imbued with new theological, political, and economic implications to contest capitalism via the body of Christ and the sacramentality of the world. Mary Doak’s chapter articulates moral, social, and political challenges to democratic politics in our time of hyper-individualism, partisan polarization, and eco-crises. Doak elaborates on the ways in which Pope Francis’ eco-encyclical confronts those challenges via Catholic theological claims about communion with vs. anthropocentric instrumentalist use of creation, interrelationality of humanity, nature, and the divine (including intergenerational and cosmic solidarity), and prophetic spirituality.

Part 2 examines “Race, Aesthetics, and Religion.” Donovan O. Schaefer’s chapter combines affect theory with media, rhetoric, and communication studies to argue that white rage-based discourses of shame and dignity mobilize political support for President Donald Trump. These dynamics are exemplified in Schaefer’s apt analysis of Trump’s campaign mottoes and speeches, including the “visual rhetoric of Trump’s body” (105) and facial expressions. Nichole M. Flores’ chapter centralizes the aesthetics of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Latine justice movements. Embracing the ethics of everyday experience (from mujerista theology) to ground or root (from Nahuatl language) vulnerable persons and communities, Flores engages with Latine theological aesthetics as a way to empower and energize struggles for Latine dignity and justice, exemplified by popular religious devotions, processions, and liturgies in United Farm Workers’ activism, by contemporary church protests against impending closure, and by immigrant justice. Jermaine M. McDonald’s chapter chronicles the feminist, liberationist, and community-organizing origins, decentralized leadership, and intersectional justice of the Black Lives Matter movement. McDonald details Evangelical Christian rejection of BLM’s nonheteronormative notions of love and family, and Progressive Christian responses that follow the leadership of young Black queer women rather than Black Church clerical-patriarchal authority.

Part 3 analyzes “Migration, Labor Movements, and Islam,” and elaborates on global economic, political, military, environmental, and other factors motivating both Muslim migration and US anti-immigration policies during Trump’s presidency. Zayn Kassam’s chapter traces the complex history of and ever-increasing Islamophobia from the colonial to the current era, primarily characterized by a racialized rhetoric of othering Muslims. Countering white nationalist Islamophobic politics of fear and threat, Kassam highlights partnerships of religious and student groups with IRIS (Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service) to support multi-dimensioned empowerment activities with asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants, which collectively demonstrate a democratic politics of pluralism. C. Melissa Snarr’s chapter sketches the confluence of Christian and capitalist worldviews in the US political economy that negatively impact Muslim workers’ constitutional rights to religious free exercise and civil rights to workplace accommodations. Secularity in the public and economic sphere privileges Christian/Protestant definitions of religiosity and work, thereby discriminating against and ultimately erasing religious minorities. Contesting this erasure of Muslim worker’s dignity and rights, Snarr examines the holistic approach of “post-secular intersectional labor organizing” (167) that forefronts Muslim religious identities in high-profile union organizing and other types of advocacy—the SEIU (Services Employers International Union) “pray-in” at Amazon’s headquarters, the NYTWA (New York Taxi Workers Alliance) work stoppage, and the anti-Uber campaign during Trump’s anti-Muslim immigration orders.

Part 4 explores “Thresholds in Gender, Sexuality, and Christianity” with attention to US and global feminist and queer movements. Kwok Pui-lan’s chapter explores three major US feminist movements via their slogans that modeled the alternative just worlds that these movements advocated: “For God, Home, and Native Land” in the 19^th century; “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in the 1970s; and #MeToo in the 21^st century. First, extending women’s domestic roles into the public sphere enabled women’s political activism around multiple issues (temperance, women’s suffrage, prison and health reforms, etc.), but failed to criticize US imperialism within Christian missionary movements to “civilize” global women and Indigenous peoples via militarism, colonialism, and white racist heteropatriarchal family values. Second, empowering women’s body rights and sexual as well as reproductive decision-making asserted women’s moral and political subjectivity and agency, but neglected an intersectional approach to women’s multiple racialized, gendered, and sexual identities and oppressions. Third, collective advocacy against sexual assault, abuse, and harassment through digital activism amplified global feminist voices and views but mainly privileged West-centric discourses. Ju Hui Judy Han’s chapter interrogates religio-political charges of heresy against LGBTQ+ affirming and inclusive theologians and ministries in progressive South Korean Protestant communities. On the heels of a major work in queer biblical hermeneutics, these heresy charges intended to religio-politically stigmatize these theologians, ministries, and communities, but ultimately, according to Han, spotlighted a longstanding intra-Protestant power struggle between conservative and liberation theologies, a struggle in and through which these counter-theologies and spaces for more radically inclusive religious beliefs and practices flourish.

This book, when aligned with other key texts about religion and politics, religion and social justice movements, and community organizing and advocacy, will enhance undergraduate and graduate courses alike, especially in the interdisciplinary fields of theology and religious studies, gender studies, Africana/Black Studies, Latin@/x/e studies, as well as political science, history, sociology, and social work. This book, together with the religio-political movements analyzed within it, opens up new compelling spaces to consider and contend with the diverse and complex roles and goals of religion in/and public life.

Rosemary P. Carbine holds the Genevieve Shaul Connick Chair in Religion and is an associate professor of religious studies at Whittier College.

Rosemary P. Carbine

Date Of Review:

March 5, 2024