RELI 376
Race and Religion in the US
TR 10:30-11:45
Martin Luther King, Jr. termed it “appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.” Religion and race have both brought diverse Americans together and divided them in bitter ways. This course explores the intersection of these two fundamental contributors to American culture and identity. The course will examine, among other things, the issues of race, conquest, and Indian missions; debates over the morality of slavery; the construction of Mormons as a racial “other” in the nineteenth-century; and the growing significance of Latino Christianity in the contemporary United States.
Prof. John Turner
Prof. Turner teaches and writes about the the place of religion in American history. He holds a PhD in American History from the University of Notre Dame and a Masters of Divinity from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Prof. Turner's first book, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, won Christianity Today’s 2009 prize for best History / Biography.
More recently, Prof. Turner has switched his research focus to the history and present nature of Mormonism in the United States. In 2012, he published Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, the result of several years of archival work in Salt Lake City and other Utah repositories.
He blogs for Religion in American History and The Anxious Bench, and has written for popular outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.
April 08, 2015
