The Diminished Public, and Black Christian Promotion of American Civic Ideals

Abstract

Black public activism has been guided largely by black affinities toward the U.S. Constitution, including its core democratic liberalist premises. This range of constitutionally defined political possibilities has both animated (and confined) a sense of public imagination and agency for many black Christians. Divergences and convergences between black religion-based public confidence and dissent are examined here, with reference to three paradigmatic approaches: (1) civil religious patriotism; (2) religious counter-publics; and (3) socio-religious liminality and semi-publics. Contrasts and continuities between these approaches are examined with attention to the impact of these approaches on a beleaguered and diminished American public realm and their relative affirmations or negations of broad understandings and undertakings of public purposes.

Repository attribution: R. Drew Smith. The Diminished Public, and Black Christian Promotion of American Civic Ideals. Religions, 12(7), issue year 2021; article page publication date 2021-07-07. Original: source article. DOI: 10.3390/rel12070505. Original PDF reproduced without changes under CC BY 4.0. No endorsement is implied. Copyright 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/