The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements)

This edited collection of exciting new scholarship provides comprehensive coverage of the broad sweep of twentieth century religious activism on the American left. The volume covers a diversity of perspectives, including Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish history, and important essays on African-American, Latino, and women's spirituality. Taken together, these essays offer a comparative and long-term perspective on religious groups and social movements often studied in isolation, and fully integrate faith-based action into the history of progressive social movements and politics in the modern United States. It becomes clear that throughout the twentieth century, religious faith has served as a powerful motivator and generator for activism, not just as on the right, where observers regularly link religion and politics, but on the left. This volume will appeal to historians of modern American politics, religion, and social movements, religious studies scholars, and contemporary activists.-- Provided by publisher Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Introduction (Leilah Danielson, Marian Mollin, Doug Rossinow)....Pages 1-17 The Other Social Gospelers: The Working-Class Religious Left, 1877–1920 (Janine Giordano Drake)....Pages 19-39 The Social Gospel, the YMCA, and the Emergence of the Religious Left After World War I (Christopher Evans)....Pages 41-60 Judaism, Yiddish Peoplehood, and American Radicalism (David Verbeeten)....Pages 61-79 Dorothy Day, Religion, and the Left (Nicholas Rademacher)....Pages 81-99 “Saints for this Age”: Religion and Radicalism in the American Century (Leilah Danielson)....Pages 101-123 Resisting Jim Crow Colonialism: Black Christianity and the International Roots of the Civil Rights Movement (Sarah Azaransky)....Pages 125-144 To Save the Soul of the Nation: Martin Luther King, Jr., Christian America, and the Religious Left (Douglas E. Thompson)....Pages 145-161 The Catholic Interracial Council and Mexican American Civil Rights in Davenport, Iowa, 1952–1974 (Felipe Hinojosa)....Pages 163-184 Black Power/Black Faith: Rethinking the “De-Christianization” of the Black Freedom Struggle (Angela D. Dillard)....Pages 185-210 “Pray to God; She Will Hear Us”: Women Reimagining Religion and Politics in the 1970s (Lilian Calles Barger)....Pages 211-231 “The 1900-Year Crisis”: Arthur Waskow, the Question of Israel/Palestine, and the Effort to Form a Jewish Religious Left in America, 1967–1974 (Doug Rossinow)....Pages 233-254 Ita Ford and the Spirit of Social Change (Marian Mollin)....Pages 255-276 Global Encounters and the Evangelical Left (David R. Swartz)....Pages 277-294 Back Matter ....Pages 295-303 Annotation This edited collection of exciting new scholarship provides comprehensive coverage of the broad sweep of 20th century religious activism on the American left. The volume covers a diversity of perspectives, including Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish history, and important essays on African-American, Latino, and women's spirituality. Taken together, these essays offer a comparative and long-term perspective on religious groups and social movements often studied in isolation, and fully integrate faith-based action into the history of progressive social movements and politics in the modern United States