Interrogating the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Will Herberg’s Construction of American Religion, Religious Pluralism, and the Problem of Inclusion

Levitt, Laura; Stein, Stephen J.

doi:10.1017/chol9780521871082.015

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Laura Levitt has shown how the articulation of Judaism as a religion is intimately bound up with a mid-twentieth-century attempt to ally Jews with the white American mainstream. 113 This essay argues for an earlier timeline for that effort. Kohler is a pivotal figure in that history, both because he anticipates these later apologetics and because reading him critically reveals how his apologetics are conditioned by the marginality of Jews within the Christian West.…”

Section: Conclusion: Orientalism and Modern Jewish Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

Goldstein¹

2019

Religion and Am. Culture

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This article uses the case of Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), an intellectual and institutional leader of American Reform Judaism, to explore the relationship between Orientalism and the category of religion in nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has shown that the lived religion of nineteenth-century American Jews departs significantly from the ideological hopes of Jewish elites. Connecting the emerging portrait of nineteenth-century Jewish laity with elite arguments for American Judaism, I reconsider Kohler's thought as a theological project out of step with his socioreligious milieu. Kohler is renowned for his theorizing of Judaism as a universal, ethical religion. As scholars have demonstrated repeatedly, defining Judaism as a “religion” was an important feature of Reform thought. What these accounts have insufficiently theorized, however, is the political context that ties the categorization of religion to the history of Orientalism that organized so many late nineteenth-century discussions of religion, Jewish and not. Drawing on work by Tracy Fessenden, John Modern, and Tisa Wenger, I show that Kohler's universal, cosmopolitan religion is a Jewish version of the Protestant secular. Like these Protestant modernists, Kohler defines Reform Judaism as a religion that supersedes an atavistic tribalism bound to materiality and ritual law. Being Jewish, for Kohler, means being civilized; reforming the soul of Judaism goes together with civilizing Jewish bodies and creating a Judaism that could civilize the world in an era in which religion and imperialism were overlapping interpretive projects with racial and gendered entanglements.

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Section: Conclusion: Orientalism and Modern Jewish Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

Goldstein¹

2019

Religion and Am. Culture

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“…3 For example, I have heard students say that Catholics are not Christian. 4 This terminology (Judeo-Christian) is problematic in and of itself because, as Laura Levitt (2009) and many others argue, the phrase overgeneralizes and at the same time discounts intra-and inter-group diversity. 5 Examples of this phenomenon include: the regular usage of Anno Domini (A.D.), meaning "in the year of our Lord" to describe the Common Era (C.E.…”

Section: Religious Pluralism and Public Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faith and Freedom of Religion in U.S. Public Schools: Issues and Challenges Facing Teachers

Allgood

2016

Religious Education

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Educators today are accustomed to discussing concepts of multiculturalism, race, class, and gender, but when it comes to religion, most new teachers and many seasoned teachers are confounded. This article provides a critical look at the treatment of religion in public education in the United States, and the potential marginalization of religion-minority and secular students in the public school. The intent is to help, especially beginning teachers, deliver equitable educational experiences for students of diverse faiths and worldviews. Content, curricular, and methodological recommendations for infusing a religious diversity unit within a teacher preparation course are offered.

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Interrogating the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Will Herberg’s Construction of American Religion, Religious Pluralism, and the Problem of Inclusion

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

Faith and Freedom of Religion in U.S. Public Schools: Issues and Challenges Facing Teachers

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