Month: December 2013

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Jesus Isn’t “White” but “Light”

Jesus is Light PicBy now we’ve all heard about and perhaps even participated in the debate sparked by FOX news correspondent Megyn Kelly that Santa Claus is white and Jesus is too. Edge member Leslie Smith’s post about this recent tug-of-war of identity claims demonstrated how such conversations are made possible by some highly inventive—even outrageous—ideas. This past week, another assertion that foregrounds the difficulty of taking such outrageous claims seriously posited something curious about what the public outrage reveals or uncovers and what steps we should take next.

Both sides of the debate ultimately rely upon the same tactics and mechanisms that assist Kelly in making such preposterous assertions possible in the first place, suggesting that as much as things have “changed in America,” they also stay the same. Continue reading “Jesus Isn’t “White” but “Light””

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It’s Not Fair!

By Tim GeerA brief news story on Alabama Public Radio recently discussed the delay of an Alabama State School Board vote on social studies textbook adoption because of some complaints that several of the texts demonstrated bias. The groups petitioning for the exclusions, including the Eagle Forum of Alabama and Act for America asserted that several texts contained anti-Christian and pro-Muslim statements. Continue reading “It’s Not Fair!”

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Discussing the “Nones”

Steven Panel

This year in Baltimore, at the Annual Meeting for the American Academy of Religion, Culture on the Edge members Monica Miller and Steven Ramey — along with Chip Callahan (University of Missouri), Sean McCloud (UNC Charlotte), and Patricia O’Connell Killen (Gonzaga University) — were panelists in a roundtable discussion, “Discussing the ‘Nones’: What They Say about the Category of Religion and American Society” where part of their thoughts on the Nones stemmed from the ideas and conversations around their co-authored Huffington Post article. Continue reading “Discussing the “Nones””

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Thanks for Thinking With Us

surpriseYes, this weekend we’ll hit 50,000 page views here at the Edge.

Whod’a thunk it?

We’ve been here just since the summer of 2013 — some days we get a few hundred hits, other days 500, and once over 1,300 on single day. So you never can tell what will catch someone’s interest.

For a daily blog devoted to academics writing for people both in and outside of the academy, offering pithy scholarly content, but written with an edge in terms of both approach and tone — well, we’re pretty pleased that you’re finding us useful and, we assume, provocative of thought.

So we just wanted to say thanks.

(That etymologists believe “thank” and “think” can be traced to the same Proto-Indo-European root is kind of a nice touch, no?)

 

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Santa, Jesus, and All Those Other White Guys: Why “Reality” is No Barrier to Identity

Santa and Jesus cartoon

If you haven’t already heard, the latest news from FOX news correspondent Megyn Kelly is that Santa Claus must be a white man.  Kelly’s remark was prompted by an article written by Slate journalist Aisha Harris, wherein Harris pointed out how Santa’s constant depiction as a white man is a particularly powerful and, to many children in particular, damaging example of white normativity.  After speaking to a group of panelists about various facets of the issue, Kelly reassured the children of America that Santa (and Jesus, too) are white.  How do we know these things?  One of Kelly’s panelists remarked that Santa is based on none other than St. Nicholas, a white,Greek bishop.  In a equally problematic characterization, Jesus’ whiteness was claimed as a self-evident fact of history. Continue reading “Santa, Jesus, and All Those Other White Guys: Why “Reality” is No Barrier to Identity”

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“This is a New Song…”

edgeyoungHistory is a funny thing — we think it’s removed from us and somewhere in the past, yeah, but inasmuch as we know about it, it’s in the present, right in front of our eyes. In fact, if it isn’t in the present — some tattered artifact settled into our context and far removed from whatever setting it might have once been in — then it might as well be that proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one aware of the crash. Continue reading ““This is a New Song…””