Anthea Butler | |
---|---|
Born | 1960 (age 62–63) Texas, US |
Awards | Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought |
Academic background | |
Thesis | A Peculiar Synergy: Matriarchy and the Church of God in Christ (2001) |
Doctoral advisor | Lewis V. Baldwin |
Anthea Deidre Butler (born 1960) is an African-American professor of religion and chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, where she is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought.
Born in Texas in 1960, Anthea Deidre Butler is the daughter of Jesse and Willa Mae (Anthony) Butler. [1] [2] She attended La Marque High School in La Marque, Texas, winning prizes in local music contests playing the marimba. [3] [4] [5]
She completed a B.A. degree at the University of Houston–Clear Lake; an M.A. in theology at the Fuller Theological Seminary in California; and an M.A. in religion at Vanderbilt University. [6] [7] She earned a Ph.D. in Religion at Vanderbilt University in 2001, with the dissertation, A Peculiar Synergy: Matriarchy and the Church of God in Christ, advised by Lewis V. Baldwin. [8]
Butler was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Race, Religion, and Gender at Princeton University from 2001 to 2002. She has also been on the faculties of Loyola Marymount University and the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. In 2008 and 2009, she was a research associate and Colorado Scholar in the Women’s Study in Religion Program of Harvard Divinity School. [7] Since 2009 she has been on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where she now serves as chair of the Department of Religious Studies. [7] [9]
She has taught classes on the religious beliefs of Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King and is known for her extensive use of social media and engagement in religious debates on Twitter. She has written for Religion Dispatches , TheGrio and CNN's Belief Blog. [6]
As an educator, Butler was among those who protested against Colin Powell being awarded an honorary degree from the University of Rochester. [10] She has also spoken on issues such as the sexuality of Pentecostal women, and has criticised the Evangelicalism of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. [11] She has been critical of the American Christian right and Evangelicalism in general, arguing that it is white supremacist; [12] [13] her 2021 book White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America discusses White American Evangelicals and that group's support for former President Donald Trump and conservative Republicans, arguing that "evangelicalism is not a simply religious group at all" but a racist, "nationalistic political movement". [14]
In 2015, in response to Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's views on the modern display of the Confederate battle flag at NASCAR races, she argued that he deserved a "Coon of the Year" award on Twitter, leading to criticism among conservatives for her use of an anti-Black racial slur. [12] [15] [16] Tommy Christopher of Mediaite defended her use of the word, arguing that the slur had different connotations when said by a Black person (such as Butler) than a White person. [17]
Butler is Catholic, and for a period identified as an Evangelical. [18]
In 2021, Butler was named the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought, a professorship "...interdisciplinary in nature and awarded to a scholar of national reputation whose central interests include human rights, civil liberties, and race relations." [9]
Butler was a Yale University Presidential Visiting Fellow for 2019-20, "to investigate the prosperity gospel and its political dimensions in the American and Nigerian contexts". [19] [20]
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Evangelicalism, also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasises the centrality of being "born again", in which an individual experiences personal conversion; the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity; and spreading the Christian message. The word evangelical comes from the Greek (euangelion) word for "good news".
Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, an event that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
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Nondenominational Christianity consists of churches which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by not formally aligning with a specific Christian denomination. Many non-denominational churches have a congregationalist polity, which is self-governing without a higher church authority. This is not absolute of all non-denominational churches though, as elder-ruled non-denominational churches have grown quite recently within networks like Acts 29.
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The First Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. The Great Awakening marked the emergence of Anglo-American evangelicalism as a trans-denominational movement within the Protestant churches. In the United States, the term Great Awakening is most often used, while in the United Kingdom, the movement is referred to as the Evangelical Revival.
Christian feminism is a school of Christian theology which uses the viewpoint of a Christian to promote and understand morally, socially, and spiritually the equality of men and women. Christian theologists argue that contributions by women and acknowledging women's value are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity. Christian feminists are driven by the belief that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically-determined characteristics such as sex and race, but created all humans to exist in harmony and equality regardless of those factors. On the other hand, Christian egalitarianism is used for those advocating gender equality and equity among Christians but do not wish to associate themselves with the feminist movement.
Rosemary Radford Ruether was an American feminist scholar and Roman Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the fields of feminist theology and ecofeminist theology. Her teaching and her writings helped establish these areas of theology as distinct fields of study; she is recognized as one of the first scholars to bring women's perspectives on Christian theology into mainstream academic discourse. She was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and her own work was influenced by liberation and black theologies. She taught at Howard University for ten years, and later at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Over the course of her career, she wrote on a wide range of topics, including antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the intersection of feminism and Christianity, and the climate crisis.
Christian egalitarianism, also known as biblical equality. Christian egalitarians believe that the Bible advocates for gender equality and often allows women to be apart of the clergy. In contrast to other views such as complementarianisim and Christian patriarchy Egalitarians believe in a form of mutual submission in which all people submit to each other in relationships and institutions as a code of conduct without a need for hierarchical authority.
Christian views on environmentalism vary among different Christians and Christian denominations.
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population about 63% is Christian. The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians, though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics and other Christian denominations such as Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christians and Oriental Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval. In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians. They were 75% in 2015, 70.6% in 2014, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.
Diana Butler Bass is an American historian of Christianity and an advocate for progressive Christianity. She is the author of eleven books.
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Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies.
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Nancy Joan Hirschmann is an American political scientist. She is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania where she specializes in the history of political thought, analytical philosophy, feminist theory, disability theory, and the intersection of political theory and public policy.
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