Course Syllabus: SUP 170 FAITH IN ACTION Spring 2011 Faculty: Dr. Timothy Nelson Faculty Asst: Daphne Flowers Office: Taubman 454 FA Office: Taubman 459B Phone: 617-495-1462 FA Phone: 617-496-4082 Email: tim_nelson@hks.harvard.edu FA Email: daphne_flowers@hks.harvard.edu Course Description: Despite the greatly exaggerated proclamations of its demise over the last century, religion persists as a powerful force in the world. The goal of the course is to identify and analyze the roles which individual faith and organized religion play in the public realm and to equip students with the necessary tools to effectively relate to religiously motivated actors. The most important of these is simply to understand the powerful motivations, perspectives, identities, commitments and resources which each faith tradition continues to provide to the majority of the world s population. In this course we are concerned with the public face of religion, or the relationship of faith communities to those outside of their boundaries. Three of the major public roles of religion as citizen, as neighbor and as prophet are the ones which concern us here. 1. Religion as Citizen Faith traditions generally transcend borders, yet religious organizations and individuals all exist within particular nation states and civil societies. Recognizing the diversity of relations between these religious groups and states is an important step to understanding public religious action more generally. 2. Religion as Neighbor Religious organizations are often engaged in providing families and communities with material resources and social services. We will observe how these activities occur at the level of the individual believer (charitable giving, volunteer work), the organizational level (congregational outreach, faith-based organizations), as well as the transnational work of religious NGOs and other actors. 3. Religion as Prophet Finally, we look at religion in its most controversial role as a social movement which seeks to remake the world in accordance with its particular visions of morality, peace, justice, equality and other transcendentally-derived values. Here we will seek to understand the circumstances under which religion becomes politicized, as well as how the faithful are mobilized to join particular movements. Because of the wide diversity of religious expressions, even within the larger faith traditions, the extraordinary complexities of religion s intersection with ethnic and national identities, legacies of power and exploitation (colonialism, slavery, etc.), and its varied relations with state authority, the focus of the course will be limited to three regions: the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
Course Requirements: 1. Students are expected to come to each class session having read the assigned material and prepared to engage in informed discussion. There is an average of two articles or book chapters assigned per class period, or about 120 pages of reading per week. 2. At the end of the first week of the semester, each student will write a 500-750 word essay on where he or she stands with respect to religion itself and its proper role in public life. There is no right or wrong answer to this and it will not be graded. The purpose is for students to reflect on their assumptions and experiences in the beginning of the course, and for the professor to get a sense of where students are coming from regarding these often personal and emotional issues. 3. Each student will be expected to post a 500 word comment to the course blog by Sunday evening at 7:00 PM., beginning on February 6. One part of the post should be a reflection on the prior reading/discussion from Thursday, and one part should address the readings for the coming Tuesday. These posts should not strive to summarize the readings, but to highlight what important issues or concepts these readings raise for you in light of your own experiences, your understanding of what s happening in the world, and, perhaps, the dilemmas and challenges for policy makers. Early posts are encouraged, and students may comment on an earlier post in their postings. All posts will be graded on the thoughtfulness and creativity of the response and are not meant to be reviews of the reading. Posts which do not address the reading, or show poor understanding of the reading, will be given a grade of check minus. Check pluses will be relatively rare. Late posts are not accepted except under special circumstances and with preapproval from the instructor. Even so, they cannot receive better than a check grade. Students may skip two responses without penalty. 4. Finally, each student will write a 12-15 page research and analysis paper on a topic of their choosing related to the course. Topics must be approved by the instructor. Grading: Participation 25% Memos 35% Paper 40% Final Grade 100% Course Materials: Munson, Ziad 2008. The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Available at Harvard Coop.] Course packet. [Available at HKS Course Materials Office] Other readings [Available on the course website]
1. The State(s) of Religion Class Meetings, Readings and Assignments 1/25 Introduction and Overview of the Course 1/27 Religion in Europe Katzenstein, Peter J. and Timothy A. Byrnes. 2006. Transnational Religion in an Expanding Europe. Perspectives on Politics, 4:679-94. Davie, Grace. 2006. Is Europe an Exceptional Case? The Hedgehog Review Spring & Summer 2/01 Religion in the Middle East Mapping the Global Muslim Community. Pew Forum, October 2009. Fox, Jonathan and Shmuel Sandler. 2005. Separation of Religion and State in the Twenty-First Century: Comparing the Middle East and Western Democracies. Comparative Politics 37:317-35. 2/03 Religion in the US US Religious Landscape Survey, Pew Research Report, June, 2008. 2. Religion as Citizen 2/08 Religion as Partner: The US and UK Hepworth, Christine and Sean Stitt. 2007. Social Capital and Faith-Based Organisations. Heythrop Journal. 48:895-910. Wuthnow, Robert. 2003. Can Religion Revitalize Civil Society? Chapter 12 in Religion as Social Capital: Producing the Common Good, edited by Corwin Smidt. Waco, Baylor University Press. [Course packet] 2/10 Religion as Social Threat: Muslims in Europe Soper, J. Christopher and Joel S. Fetzer. 2007. Religious Institutions, Church-State History and Muslim Mobilisation in Britain, France and Germany. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 33: 933-44. Bowen, John R. 2008. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space, chapters 2, 4. [course packet] 2/15 Religion as Competing Authority: Haredim and Jehovah s Witnesses Stadler, Nurit, Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari. 2008. Fundamentalism s Encounters with Citizenship: the Haredim in Israel. Citizenship Studies 12: 215-31. Lawson, Ronald. 1995. Sect-State Relations: Accounting for the Differing Trajectories of Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah s Witnesses. Sociology of Religion 56:351-77.
2/17 Religion as Power: Religious States Milton-Edwards, Beverly. 2004. Islam & Politics in the Contemporary World. London: Polity Press. Chapter 2 [Course packet] Fox, Jonathan and Jonathan Rynhold. 2008. A Jewish and Democratic State? Comparing Government Involvement in Religion in Israel with other Democracies. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9: 507 31. 3. Religion as Neighbor 2/22 Religion, Philanthropy and Volunteering in the US Monsma, Stephen. 2007. Religion and Philanthropic Giving and Volunteering: Building Blocks for Civic Responsibility. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 3: 2-28. Putnam, Robert and David E. Campbell. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Chapter 13 [Course packet] 2/24 Faith Based Organizations in the US: History Sager, Rebecca. 2010. Faith, Politics and Power. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1. [Course Packet] Not by Faith or Government Alone: Reassessing the Role of Faith-Based Organizations. 2008. Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University. 3/01 Faith Based Organizations in the US: Effects and Effectiveness Rogers, Melissa and E.J. Dionne, Jr. 2008. Serving People in Need; Safeguarding Religious Freedom: Recommendations for the New Administration on Partnerships with faith-based Organizations. The Brookings Institution. Wuthnow, Robert et al. 2004. The Effectiveness and Trustworthiness of Faith-Based and Other Service Organizations: A Study of Recipients Perceptions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43:1-17. 3/03 The Black Church and Faith-Based Organizations Owens, Michael Leo. 2007. God and Government in the Ghetto: The Politics of Church-State Collaboration in Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 2. [Course packet] 3/08 Muslim Charity Singer, Amy. 2008. Charity in Islamic Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5 [Course packet] Benthall, Jonathan and Jerome Bellion-Jourdan. The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World. Chapter 5. [Course packet]
3/10 Religious NGOs and International Development Berger, Julia. 2003. Religious Nongovernmental Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 14: 15-39. Grills, Nathan. 2009. The Paradox of Multilateral Organizations Engaging with Faithbased Organizations. Global Governance 15: 505-20. 4. Religion as Prophet 3/29 Faith and Social Movements Smith, Christian. 1996. Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism. New York: Routledge. Introduction. [Course packet] 3/31 Politicized Religion: Protestants in the US Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 7 and 8. [Course packet] 4/05 Politicized Religion: Islam Ayoob, Mohammed. 2004. Political Islam: Image and Reality. World Policy Journal 21: 1-14. Tibi, Bassam. 2009. Political Islam as a Forum of Religious Fundamentalism and the Religionisation of Politics: Islamism and the Quest for a Remaking of the World. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10: 97-120. Wittes, Tamara Coffman. 2008. Islamist Parties: Three Kinds of Movements. Journal of Democracy 19: 7-12. 4/07 Mobilizing the Faithful around Abortion I Munson, Ziad. 2008. The Making of Pro-Life Activists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1-4. 4/12 Mobilizing the Faithful around Abortion II Munson, Ziad. 2008. The Making of Pro-Life Activists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapters 5-8. 4/14 Mobilizing the Faithful: Muslims in Egypt and Catholics in Poland Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. 2004. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt. Chapter 7. [Course packet] Osa, Maryjane. 1997. Creating Solidarity: The Religious Foundations of the Polish Social Movement. East European Politics and Societies 11: 339-65.
4/19 The Black Church and Activism Harris, Frederick C. 2001. Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapters 5 and 6. [Course packet] 4/21 Women, Faith and Activism O Neill, Brenda, Religion, Political Participation and Civic Engagement: Women s Experiences. 2009. In Dinham, Adam, Robert Furbey and Vivien Lowndes (eds). Faith in the Public Realm: Controversies, Policies and Practices. Policy Press. [Course packet] Faver, Catherine A. 2000. To Run and Not Be Weary: Spirituality and Women s Activism. Review of Religious Research 42: 61-78. Conclusions: Faith in Action 4/26 Faith and Forms of Public Engagement TBA 4/28 Faith, Democracy and Civil Society Cladis, Mark S. 2008. Painting Religious Landscapes in America: Four Models of Religion in Democracy. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 76: 874-904.