Showing posts with label Pacific Northwest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pacific Northwest. Show all posts
June 28, 2013
James W. Scott Regional Research Fellowship Awards for 2013-2014
Western Washington University’s Center for Pacific Northwest Studies welcomes applications for the James W. Scott Regional Research Fellowships, established to promote awareness and use of archival collections at WWU and to forward scholarly understandings of the Pacific Northwest. The fellowships are awarded in honor of the late Dr. James W. (Jim) Scott, a founder and first Director of the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, and a noted scholar of the Pacific Northwest region. The Center for Pacific Northwest Studies is a program of Western Libraries' Heritage Resources, located in the Goltz-Murray Archives Building.
For more information, see this announcement at H-net: http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=204537
or here: http://library.wwu.edu/internships_cpnws#fellowships
December 21, 2012
Casual Friday
CALL FOR PAPERS
(from the Thomas Wolfe Society FB page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Thomas-Wolfe-Society/139828276033808)
THOMAS WOLFE CONFERENCE
"Wolfe and the West"
Boise, Idaho--MAY 24-25, 2013
On June 20, 1938, Thomas Wolfe embarked from Oregon on a two-week car trip that took him through eleven national parks and 4,500 miles of highway
. From this whirlwind tour of the western U.S., he would produce his last piece of writing, A Western Journal. For its 35th annual conference, in Boise, Idaho, the Thomas Wolfe Society invites papers that explore Wolfe’s connection to the West, although proposals are welcome on any theme related to Thomas Wolfe and his work. We are especially interested in ecocritical approaches to Wolfe, as well as considerations of his experience of nature tourism, auto tourism, and our national parks (now threatened by moneyed interests). Other topics might include treatments of Wolfe and Western writers or other writers who had ties to the American West, considerations of Wolfe and literary regionalism, and, more generally, how Wolfe’s experience of the West compares with his lives in the South and the Northeast.
Please send 250-word paper proposals by January 10, 2013 to:
george.hovis@oneonta.edu (For email submissions, please include in the subject heading WOLFE PROPOSAL) or snail mail: Dr. George Hovis, Department of English, 322 Netzer Admin. Bldg., SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13820
November 5, 2012
Book of the Month
James K. Wellman, Jr., Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Reviewed by Susanna Morrill
[T]his study is a moral project, mirroring and comparing moral worlds for readers to see themselves more clearly and judge their own moral worldviews in the relative light of these worlds (284).
In the spring, I’ll be teaching for a second time my class on religions of the Northwest. I’m looking forward to again using James Wellman’s book, Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest. The title of the book captures the project quite effectively. Wellman compares and contrasts twenty-four thriving evangelical congregations in western Washington and Oregon with ten thriving mainline liberal Protestant congregations from the same area. The uneven balance of the comparison tells the story that Wellman is trying to explain: Evangelical congregations are the far outstripping liberal congregations in financial and membership growth despite, as Wellman points out, the well known reputation of the Pacific Northwest as a bastion of liberal social and political life (xiii).
Published in 2008, the book is an explanatory aftermath of the media buzz about evangelical influence in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Wellman proposes that the Northwest is an ideal laboratory for exploring these national trends because the region has no dominant religious tradition. Mainline liberals and evangelicals have a level playing field and he can witness how these groups interact with each other and wider culture without one having an undue advantage over the other. I might moderate this contention a bit. As noted above, Wellman himself argues that the liberal Protestant groups seem to fit with the wider culture of the Northwest and I think, in agreement with Killen and Silk, this is partially because mainline liberal Protestants played a large role in creating the elite, dominant culture of the Northwest.
This, however, is a minor point in terms of the effectiveness of Wellman’s argument. Using qualitative sociological data and theorists (such as Peter Berger), Wellman sets out to answer three main questions: What are the religious worldviews of each group? How are these worldviews created and sustained? How can we understand the clash of these two worldviews (xii)? Wellman and his associates observed the services of each of the congregations, interviewed the senior pastor and an international missionary (if available) of each group, and also interviewed a representative focus group of members of the congregations.
I found Wellman’s book quite useful for my class and invigorating for my own thinking on the religious landscape of the region. Wellman writes in a clear and accessible style with a minimum of sociological jargon, though also communicating that his work is theoretically grounded. At the beginning of the book, he provides compact and useful background information about the history of the mainline liberal and evangelical Protestant traditions, as well as the religious and cultural landscape of the Pacific Northwest. In his discussion of the Pacific Northwest, he offers a useful challenge to the contention (made in Killen & Silk’s The None Zone, among other places) that nature religion is the civil religion of the Northwest.
My students and I found most useful the way he breaks down the worldviews of each group and then, very systematically demonstrates how these different worldviews shape respective beliefs and practices of members. He begins with what he calls the moral core of mainline liberal Protestants versus evangelical Protestants—the foundational beliefs that shape how believers see the world. For evangelicals it is a personal and intense relationship with Jesus Christ; they believe he died to save them from their sins (60). For mainline liberals, the moral core is a more abstract belief that Jesus is an example of openness and inclusiveness that all are called to follow (63). From these core beliefs, Wellman traces the moral values of each group. For liberal Protestants these values are principally “modernism and personal autonomy,” while for evangelicals it is “stringent personal and scriptural traditionalism (67).” Using the qualitative data he has collected, Wellman argues that this core and these values shape how members create moral projects and they structure how members engage with Jesus, the Bible, ritual, organizational structures, leadership style, mission, social service, and political views on issues such as abortion, the environment, gay marriage, and the Iraq War. As an active mainline liberal Protestant, Wellman is particularly strong in expressing in a rather passionate way the complicated and little studied theological views of this group of traditions.
One might argue with Wellman’s breakdown of moral cores versus moral values or with the issues that he chooses to focus on. However, I found this breakdown very useful because he gives students a structure with which to talk about the slippery concept of worldview and proposes a way to look at how the internal beliefs of groups and individuals are translated into real world action. He gives us good tools to work with and argue about. He brings students into the religious worlds of folks they might not understand. Because of his clear expository style, I found students able and willing to engage critically with his categories and argument.
Occasionally the book reads as a very much a product of its time. For example, the section on the Iraq War seems to focus on an issue that is more specific than, say, abortion or gay marriage. But even here it speaks to the wider shift in the American religious landscape—the possibility that, as Wellman notes, evangelical Protestantism may become the establishment religion of the country (10). For a class, some of the later discussion about how values play out in belief and action can become repetitive because Wellman argues convincingly that we see clear patterns of connections between moral cores and values and ways of being in the world—we begin to be able to predict what he, in fact, finds.
This is an excellent book and an excellent resource for class. Wellman speaks with great clarity to one of the major issues in the contemporary U.S. religious landscape. His work can be read with a regional focus, or it can be read more widely as, he suggests, a laboratory experiment for the country as a whole. It engages the reader because, as the opening quote suggests, Wellman is intent on presenting to the reader a practical roadmap into two important Protestant traditions in this country, a roadmap that will allow the reader to better understand, interact with, and talk about these traditions in their day-to-day lives.
September 14, 2012
Casual Friday
July 16, 2012
Approaches to Studying Irreligion and Secular Spirituality in the Pacific Northwest
by Dusty Hoesly
When scholars write about religion in the Pacific Northwest, they often claim that its defining feature is a lack of religion. In fact, one of the few book-length treatments of PNW religion is subtitled "The None Zone," a reference to the fact that nearly 25% of Oregonians and Washingtonians are unchurched and unaffiliated, or self-identify as not religious. (See Susanna Morrill’s Book of the Month post on that book here.) What's more, this has been the case historically, whereas states like New Hampshire and Vermont are only recently similarly irreligious. Those labeled by scholars as Nones are the largest bloc of respondents on social scientific surveys in the PNW.
Since no single religion dominated the region historically, there is no legacy of institutional affiliation or tradition that guides religious thinking or behavior. So what holds the region together? For most scholars, the rejection of institutional religion and a sense of place bind PNW cultural and spiritual identity. But what is the import of this rejection of religious identification? And what kind of spiritualities, values, and attitudes prevail amongst this heterogenous group?
In this post, I will summarize the work of several scholars who study (ir)religion in the PNW, and then offer some suggestions for future research.
Tina Block, Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University in Canada, offers a historical perspective in her essay "Religion, Irreligion, and the Difference Place Makes: The Case of the Postwar Pacific Northwest." For Block, during the post-World War II period, secularism came to be seen as an authentic part of PNW regional identity. PNW secularism is not a demographic but a cultural trend, one that was actively constructed by residents, she contends. Using newspapers, national surveys, church records, and oral interviews, Block traces the story of how sacred and secular are blurred in the PNW, and how irreligion came to be seen as a regional cultural marker. People across all gender, class, racial, and ethnic boundaries in the PNW are less religious than their counterparts in other regions. What unites these people is a sense of place that privileges cross-border interpenetration, high mobility rates, a myth of rugged individualism and independence, and the social acceptability of irreligiousness. In households and public constructions of the region's past and present, secularism became a hallmark of PNW culture in the social imaginary. In popular and academic representations of the PNW, writers ignore religion entirely or highlight the irreligiousness of the region.
Mark A. Shibley, Professor of Sociology at Southern Oregon University, has explored the spirituality of secular people in the PNW in several essays, combining sociological survey data and textual analysis of books written by regional authors. In "Secular but Spiritual in the Pacific Northwest," an essay in the volume Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone, Shibley contends that very few of the so-called Nones are actually atheists or agnostics. Rather, they largely fit into the squishy label "spiritual but not religious." Most Nones believe in God and miracles, according to survey data. These people experience the sacred in non-institutional forms through direct, personal experience. Shibley claims that "what is distinctive about religion in the Pacific Northwest is not the psychological orientation of individuals so much as social structural facts noted above--religious heterogeneity and low-affiliation rates" (141-142). He identifies three types of this secular spirituality: New Age and New Spirituality, nature and environmental religion, and anti-government apocalyptic survivalism. Connecting these strands are utopianism, millennialism, and dualism. Shibley reiterates similar themes in his essay "The Promise and Limits of Secular Spirituality in Cascadia," a chapter in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Here he explores New Spirituality and Earth-based religions, asserting that "[in] Cascadia alternative spirituality is popular religion" (37). For Shibley and other scholars, environmentalism is a sort of civil religion in the PNW, and sustainability is the credo. Elsewhere in Cascadia, in a chapter called "Mapping Spirituality and Values in the Elusive Utopia," sociologist Andrew Grenville similarly shows that Cascadians are more liberal, libertarian, laissez-faire, DIY, and utopian than other regions in Canada and the U.S. They combine privatized belief, institutional skepticism, and personal responsibility (DIY) into a general "live and let live" regional attitude.
Frank Pasquale, a research associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), has been researching the values and practices of self-identified hard secularists in Portland and Seattle for several years. Using ethnographic research and membership surveys of secularist organizations, Pasquale investigates those who self-identify as atheist or agnostic, who he calls Nots (rather than Nones). In "The 'Nonreligious' in the American Northwest," an essay in Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives, Pasquale reports that 3-4% of Pacific Northwesterners are Nots, nearly double the national average. Most are white, male, middle-class, well-educated, liberal, and unmarried or without young children. Many interviewees and respondents express societal skepticism, metaphysical skepticism, a strong sense of individualism, wariness of dogmatism, and ambivalence about proselytizing of any particular view. Pasquale also observes that difficulties in data gathering occur, in part, because of a cultural stigma against atheists and the inconsistency of scholarly labeling (atheist, secular, skeptic, humanist, nonbeliever, etc.), problems that Pasquale tries to circumvent through participant observation and using subject-derived labels rather than scholar-imposed terms.
Monica R. Miller, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College, has begun a research project in 2010 called "Youth Culture & the Remaking of Religion in Portland, Oregon." Recognizing that institutional forms of religion are declining amongst American youth, even as subjective spirituality remains strong, this effort attempts to gather data from Portland youths about the kinds of religiosity that they practice, with a specific emphasis on material culture. Through ethnographic on-the-street interviews and a survey, Miller and her research associates are examining the everyday religiosities of PNW youths in coffee shops, tattoo parlors, nightclubs and bookstores. Using sophisticated understandings of constructions of what counts as "religion," Miller interrogates along with her subjects the meaning of religion, what it looks like in everyday life, and how humanism and religion often commingle. This work will culminate in a series of articles and a manuscript called Faith in the Flesh: Manufactured Zones of Insignificance.
These approaches, ranging from historical to sociological to anthropological, converge around a few themes. Each of these scholars agree that religion looks different in the PNW, that irreligion is hallmark of the region, that secularity commingles with spirituality in personally meaningful ways, that secularism is a normative presence rather than the mere absence of religion, and that nature is a powerful element in PNW religious identity. There are some directions that future research should investigate.
Future scholarship should examine more fully the commingling of sacred and secular, carefully noting how conceptions of religiosity and spirituality are defined differently by scholars and by subjects themselves, and how various labels can overlap. For example, some evangelical emerging church folks may self-identify as Christian but also as "spiritual, but not religious." Others may claim to be both atheist and Buddhist, or agnostic and Catholic. And curiously absent is the contingent of folks who claim to be apathetic about religion; do they fit into scholarly boxes such as atheist, agnostic, spiritual, etc.? Scholars should begin with subjects' own views and language about what experiences they deem special, sacred, or extraordinary, and then proceed to develop scholarly categories based on these first-order terms, rather than imposing labels upon subjects who must check boxes which are more convenient for researchers than messy but accurate descriptors of individuals' beliefs and practices.
Definitions of secular and sacred are messy and interpenetrating, and scholars must dig into the nitty-gritty to get at where the people are to see their everyday spiritualities. In what ways is a search for authenticity similar to a spiritual seeking, while also a critique of institutional forms of religion? How does the region's DIY culture relate to creativity and homegrown spiritual renewal? Does the region's artisanal and craft traditions influence religious and spiritual attitudes? How are popular cultural norms integrated with or divergent from religious identities? And if consumption is also production in the postmodern age and in the PNW, how is this dynamic reflected in the region?
Few scholars have examined race and religion in the Pacific Northwest. In what ways are indigenous and Asian religions, for example, appropriated in the PNW, and are these appropriations different than in other regions? Do Asian American religiosities look the same in the PNW as in California or New York or Atlanta? What is the history of interactions between white supremacist religions in the region and other religious groups? What are the specific issues Native American religionists face? Why are racial minority groups similarly less religious than their counterparts in other regions?
Scholars also under-emphasize the cultural and religious divide between the more urban and liberal parts of Oregon and Washington, which lie west of the Cascade mountain range, and the more rural and conservative parts east of the mountains. When scholars explore the irreligiousness of the PNW, they are largely talking about Portland, Seattle, and other major urban centers rather than the smaller communities that comprise most of each state's geography. A fuller exploration of PNW religion must head east from the cities. Other comparisons could be made between the historically low-affiliation rates in the PNW with the recent surge of secularism in New England states like Vermont and New Hampshire. In what ways does secularism in the two regions look similar or different?
Lastly, despite what many commentators claim, the natural beauty of the PNW is not a singular explanation for its lack of institutional religious affiliation. Few, if any, empirical studies include data about the proclivity of Pacific Northwesterners towards nature and environmental religion. This argument, instead, rests mostly on anecdotal evidence. Similarly, when scholars argue that PNW regional religious identity rests on a sense of place, they often suggest that this sense of place is stronger and more defining than in other regions of the U.S. But this claim seems dubious to me. Anyone reading Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, or Terry Tempest Williams will clearly see a sense of place pervading their conceptions of their regions, and no less strongly than in the PNW. Natural beauty and a sense of place are not enough to distinguish PNW religiosity from the rest of the country. To hear many scholars tell it, PNW mountain ranges are responsible for the region's secularism and its sacredness. Instead, scholars need to examine how constructions of nature and wilderness contribute to the creation of a secular regional identity.
When scholars write about religion in the Pacific Northwest, they often claim that its defining feature is a lack of religion. In fact, one of the few book-length treatments of PNW religion is subtitled "The None Zone," a reference to the fact that nearly 25% of Oregonians and Washingtonians are unchurched and unaffiliated, or self-identify as not religious. (See Susanna Morrill’s Book of the Month post on that book here.) What's more, this has been the case historically, whereas states like New Hampshire and Vermont are only recently similarly irreligious. Those labeled by scholars as Nones are the largest bloc of respondents on social scientific surveys in the PNW.
Since no single religion dominated the region historically, there is no legacy of institutional affiliation or tradition that guides religious thinking or behavior. So what holds the region together? For most scholars, the rejection of institutional religion and a sense of place bind PNW cultural and spiritual identity. But what is the import of this rejection of religious identification? And what kind of spiritualities, values, and attitudes prevail amongst this heterogenous group?
In this post, I will summarize the work of several scholars who study (ir)religion in the PNW, and then offer some suggestions for future research.
Tina Block, Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University in Canada, offers a historical perspective in her essay "Religion, Irreligion, and the Difference Place Makes: The Case of the Postwar Pacific Northwest." For Block, during the post-World War II period, secularism came to be seen as an authentic part of PNW regional identity. PNW secularism is not a demographic but a cultural trend, one that was actively constructed by residents, she contends. Using newspapers, national surveys, church records, and oral interviews, Block traces the story of how sacred and secular are blurred in the PNW, and how irreligion came to be seen as a regional cultural marker. People across all gender, class, racial, and ethnic boundaries in the PNW are less religious than their counterparts in other regions. What unites these people is a sense of place that privileges cross-border interpenetration, high mobility rates, a myth of rugged individualism and independence, and the social acceptability of irreligiousness. In households and public constructions of the region's past and present, secularism became a hallmark of PNW culture in the social imaginary. In popular and academic representations of the PNW, writers ignore religion entirely or highlight the irreligiousness of the region.
Mark A. Shibley, Professor of Sociology at Southern Oregon University, has explored the spirituality of secular people in the PNW in several essays, combining sociological survey data and textual analysis of books written by regional authors. In "Secular but Spiritual in the Pacific Northwest," an essay in the volume Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone, Shibley contends that very few of the so-called Nones are actually atheists or agnostics. Rather, they largely fit into the squishy label "spiritual but not religious." Most Nones believe in God and miracles, according to survey data. These people experience the sacred in non-institutional forms through direct, personal experience. Shibley claims that "what is distinctive about religion in the Pacific Northwest is not the psychological orientation of individuals so much as social structural facts noted above--religious heterogeneity and low-affiliation rates" (141-142). He identifies three types of this secular spirituality: New Age and New Spirituality, nature and environmental religion, and anti-government apocalyptic survivalism. Connecting these strands are utopianism, millennialism, and dualism. Shibley reiterates similar themes in his essay "The Promise and Limits of Secular Spirituality in Cascadia," a chapter in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Here he explores New Spirituality and Earth-based religions, asserting that "[in] Cascadia alternative spirituality is popular religion" (37). For Shibley and other scholars, environmentalism is a sort of civil religion in the PNW, and sustainability is the credo. Elsewhere in Cascadia, in a chapter called "Mapping Spirituality and Values in the Elusive Utopia," sociologist Andrew Grenville similarly shows that Cascadians are more liberal, libertarian, laissez-faire, DIY, and utopian than other regions in Canada and the U.S. They combine privatized belief, institutional skepticism, and personal responsibility (DIY) into a general "live and let live" regional attitude.
Frank Pasquale, a research associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), has been researching the values and practices of self-identified hard secularists in Portland and Seattle for several years. Using ethnographic research and membership surveys of secularist organizations, Pasquale investigates those who self-identify as atheist or agnostic, who he calls Nots (rather than Nones). In "The 'Nonreligious' in the American Northwest," an essay in Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives, Pasquale reports that 3-4% of Pacific Northwesterners are Nots, nearly double the national average. Most are white, male, middle-class, well-educated, liberal, and unmarried or without young children. Many interviewees and respondents express societal skepticism, metaphysical skepticism, a strong sense of individualism, wariness of dogmatism, and ambivalence about proselytizing of any particular view. Pasquale also observes that difficulties in data gathering occur, in part, because of a cultural stigma against atheists and the inconsistency of scholarly labeling (atheist, secular, skeptic, humanist, nonbeliever, etc.), problems that Pasquale tries to circumvent through participant observation and using subject-derived labels rather than scholar-imposed terms.
Monica R. Miller, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College, has begun a research project in 2010 called "Youth Culture & the Remaking of Religion in Portland, Oregon." Recognizing that institutional forms of religion are declining amongst American youth, even as subjective spirituality remains strong, this effort attempts to gather data from Portland youths about the kinds of religiosity that they practice, with a specific emphasis on material culture. Through ethnographic on-the-street interviews and a survey, Miller and her research associates are examining the everyday religiosities of PNW youths in coffee shops, tattoo parlors, nightclubs and bookstores. Using sophisticated understandings of constructions of what counts as "religion," Miller interrogates along with her subjects the meaning of religion, what it looks like in everyday life, and how humanism and religion often commingle. This work will culminate in a series of articles and a manuscript called Faith in the Flesh: Manufactured Zones of Insignificance.
These approaches, ranging from historical to sociological to anthropological, converge around a few themes. Each of these scholars agree that religion looks different in the PNW, that irreligion is hallmark of the region, that secularity commingles with spirituality in personally meaningful ways, that secularism is a normative presence rather than the mere absence of religion, and that nature is a powerful element in PNW religious identity. There are some directions that future research should investigate.
Future scholarship should examine more fully the commingling of sacred and secular, carefully noting how conceptions of religiosity and spirituality are defined differently by scholars and by subjects themselves, and how various labels can overlap. For example, some evangelical emerging church folks may self-identify as Christian but also as "spiritual, but not religious." Others may claim to be both atheist and Buddhist, or agnostic and Catholic. And curiously absent is the contingent of folks who claim to be apathetic about religion; do they fit into scholarly boxes such as atheist, agnostic, spiritual, etc.? Scholars should begin with subjects' own views and language about what experiences they deem special, sacred, or extraordinary, and then proceed to develop scholarly categories based on these first-order terms, rather than imposing labels upon subjects who must check boxes which are more convenient for researchers than messy but accurate descriptors of individuals' beliefs and practices.
Definitions of secular and sacred are messy and interpenetrating, and scholars must dig into the nitty-gritty to get at where the people are to see their everyday spiritualities. In what ways is a search for authenticity similar to a spiritual seeking, while also a critique of institutional forms of religion? How does the region's DIY culture relate to creativity and homegrown spiritual renewal? Does the region's artisanal and craft traditions influence religious and spiritual attitudes? How are popular cultural norms integrated with or divergent from religious identities? And if consumption is also production in the postmodern age and in the PNW, how is this dynamic reflected in the region?
Few scholars have examined race and religion in the Pacific Northwest. In what ways are indigenous and Asian religions, for example, appropriated in the PNW, and are these appropriations different than in other regions? Do Asian American religiosities look the same in the PNW as in California or New York or Atlanta? What is the history of interactions between white supremacist religions in the region and other religious groups? What are the specific issues Native American religionists face? Why are racial minority groups similarly less religious than their counterparts in other regions?
Scholars also under-emphasize the cultural and religious divide between the more urban and liberal parts of Oregon and Washington, which lie west of the Cascade mountain range, and the more rural and conservative parts east of the mountains. When scholars explore the irreligiousness of the PNW, they are largely talking about Portland, Seattle, and other major urban centers rather than the smaller communities that comprise most of each state's geography. A fuller exploration of PNW religion must head east from the cities. Other comparisons could be made between the historically low-affiliation rates in the PNW with the recent surge of secularism in New England states like Vermont and New Hampshire. In what ways does secularism in the two regions look similar or different?
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| Mount Hood, Oregon. Photograph by Julie Kelly, via National Geographic |
July 2, 2012
Book of the Month:
Patricia O'Connell Killen and Mark Silk, eds., Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone
Review by Susanna Morrill
Killen, Silk, and their host of authors offer to students and researchers scholarly tools—good tools—to use, to change, to challenge. By creating some guiding categories and concepts, they establish a concrete starting point for understanding religious life in the Pacific Northwest. Of particular help is how they breakdown the religious landscape of the Northwest into four broad streams: fading semi-establishment religions, “sectarian entrepreneurs,” religions of the Pacific Rim, and those who identify as secular, but spiritual. With these categories they begin to capture the viscous, hidden, and flexible religious reality of the region.
The book has an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion written by various scholars who live and work in Oregon and Washington. As with all the books in this “Religion by Region” series (edited by Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh), much of the data used in the book is derived from the North American Religions Atlas (generated in 2000 from responses by religious groups) and the American Religious Identification Survey (generated in 2001 from responses by individuals).
However, the authors take both historical and sociological approaches to the material. Initially a bit disconcerting, I found these variegated methodologies worked extremely well in the classroom. They provoked students to think critically about the advantages and disadvantages of historical and sociological approaches to understanding religious life in this region and, more generally, to studying religion. Killen and Mark Shibley, for instance, give us the sociological, religious, and cultural lay of the land in the first chapter, emphasizing the region’s peculiarity: that “nones,” (those who claim no religious affiliation or identification) make up almost a quarter of the population in Oregon and Washington, a rate much higher than the national 14% (41). In the second chapter, Dale E. Soden offers a history of the semi-establishment religions of the Pacific Northwest: Catholicism, mainline Protestants, and Reform and Conservative Jews. The fact that the establishment religion is actually a grouping of three disparate, often conflicting religions demonstrates the historical religious heterogeneity of the region. James Wellman, using interviews with clergy, creates a profile of the regionally surging “sectarian entrepreneurs,” mostly non-denominational and Holiness/Pentecostal evangelicals who effectively employ business models and media communications (80). Lance D. Laird writes about religions of the Pacific Rim, skillfully combining in his discussion Native American traditions; traditions from East, Southeast, and South Asia; and religion of the Pacific Islands. Shibley takes up the formidable task of capturing and talking about those who claim to be secular but spiritual, those people taking full advantage the opportunities offered to them in the “open religious market” of the Pacific Northwest: New Age adherents, anti-government groups, and those engaging in “earth-centered spirituality” (140, 142). Killen finishes the book summarizing what has gone before, suggesting future avenues of research, and offering concluding insights on the material.
Occasionally, the brevity of the book detracts from the overall success of it. The main focus of the book is Oregon and Washington. Alaska is rarely mentioned beyond the introductory, contextualizing chapter and, when it is, the mentions are brief and not very elucidating. Within the larger series, this grouping seems like the best home for Alaska, but, at the same time, the little information we have suggests that Alaska is different enough from Oregon and Washington that it may deserve its own chapters or parts within the book. Native traditions in Alaska have a wider and weightier public presence than they do in Oregon and Washington (15.6% of the population in Alaska is of Native American or Alaskan Native heritage compared to less than 2% of the population in Oregon and Washington), while the long history of Orthodox Christianity in the state deserves a more in-depth and extended treatment (106). My sense is that there is simply not a lot of scholarship on religion in Alaska. In general, Native American traditions get short shrift in the book. Lance D. Laird successfully finds similarities in the influential yet peripheral status of Native American and Asian religions, but otherwise these religious traditions are different enough that they do not fit together completely comfortably in one chapter.
The category of “nones” is perhaps most exciting for scholars of Northwest religious life. Killen wonders if they are manifestations of the process of secularization and/or if they represent a new kind of modern American religiosity. This is a pertinent question in the present day when, nationally, more and more people identify with this moniker. Can the religious history of the Northwest help to illuminate these national trends? Is the region a kind of religious frontier that will send eastward missionaries of a new religious expression, Whitmans of the “none”-based spirituality? Can scholars of this region’s religious life discover valuable questions and concepts that will help illuminate this growing trend in the religious landscape of the U.S.? This book asks and provokes important questions. It is a valuable tool in the classroom and serves as the base of what I hope will be a burgeoning scholarship on the religious life of the Northwest, a scholarship that, in turn, may help us better understand larger trends within the religious landscape of the country.
Editor’s note: Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Join the conversation and leave your thoughts in the comments! If you have a suggestion for a future book of the month, or if you would like to review a book for the book of the month series, please contact us. Next month, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp reviews Hokulani K. Aikau’s A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai'i (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
Review by Susanna Morrill
Like magma from below the religion’s volcanoes, religion in the Pacific Northwest is an energetic, viscous fluid that is capable of altering the public landscape, galvanizing citizens for action, but not in ways easily predicted or directed by leaders of religious organizations (18).With these words, Patricia O’Connell Killen sums up the religious landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Having lived in the Northwest for the past eight years, for me, this simile effectively captures religion’s complicated presence here. As the editors and authors of this 2004 volume note, about 63% of the region’s population (Oregon, Washington, and Alaska) remain unaffiliated with any religious institution and no one institutional religious tradition dominates (or has ever dominated) the region, as is the norm in other areas of the country (22). Yet Northwesterners live, act, and talk in ways that are profoundly religious. A fascinating problem: How do we as teachers and scholars understand and study regional religious expressions that are so fluid and non-institutional? This is the task that the authors of The None Zone tackle with great success and in short order (the book is only 202 pages, including appendix and index). I used the book as an effective backbone for an upper level course on religions of the Pacific Northwest and, at the same time, it has provided a starting point for my own research on religion in the Northwest.
Killen, Silk, and their host of authors offer to students and researchers scholarly tools—good tools—to use, to change, to challenge. By creating some guiding categories and concepts, they establish a concrete starting point for understanding religious life in the Pacific Northwest. Of particular help is how they breakdown the religious landscape of the Northwest into four broad streams: fading semi-establishment religions, “sectarian entrepreneurs,” religions of the Pacific Rim, and those who identify as secular, but spiritual. With these categories they begin to capture the viscous, hidden, and flexible religious reality of the region.
The book has an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion written by various scholars who live and work in Oregon and Washington. As with all the books in this “Religion by Region” series (edited by Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh), much of the data used in the book is derived from the North American Religions Atlas (generated in 2000 from responses by religious groups) and the American Religious Identification Survey (generated in 2001 from responses by individuals).
However, the authors take both historical and sociological approaches to the material. Initially a bit disconcerting, I found these variegated methodologies worked extremely well in the classroom. They provoked students to think critically about the advantages and disadvantages of historical and sociological approaches to understanding religious life in this region and, more generally, to studying religion. Killen and Mark Shibley, for instance, give us the sociological, religious, and cultural lay of the land in the first chapter, emphasizing the region’s peculiarity: that “nones,” (those who claim no religious affiliation or identification) make up almost a quarter of the population in Oregon and Washington, a rate much higher than the national 14% (41). In the second chapter, Dale E. Soden offers a history of the semi-establishment religions of the Pacific Northwest: Catholicism, mainline Protestants, and Reform and Conservative Jews. The fact that the establishment religion is actually a grouping of three disparate, often conflicting religions demonstrates the historical religious heterogeneity of the region. James Wellman, using interviews with clergy, creates a profile of the regionally surging “sectarian entrepreneurs,” mostly non-denominational and Holiness/Pentecostal evangelicals who effectively employ business models and media communications (80). Lance D. Laird writes about religions of the Pacific Rim, skillfully combining in his discussion Native American traditions; traditions from East, Southeast, and South Asia; and religion of the Pacific Islands. Shibley takes up the formidable task of capturing and talking about those who claim to be secular but spiritual, those people taking full advantage the opportunities offered to them in the “open religious market” of the Pacific Northwest: New Age adherents, anti-government groups, and those engaging in “earth-centered spirituality” (140, 142). Killen finishes the book summarizing what has gone before, suggesting future avenues of research, and offering concluding insights on the material.
Occasionally, the brevity of the book detracts from the overall success of it. The main focus of the book is Oregon and Washington. Alaska is rarely mentioned beyond the introductory, contextualizing chapter and, when it is, the mentions are brief and not very elucidating. Within the larger series, this grouping seems like the best home for Alaska, but, at the same time, the little information we have suggests that Alaska is different enough from Oregon and Washington that it may deserve its own chapters or parts within the book. Native traditions in Alaska have a wider and weightier public presence than they do in Oregon and Washington (15.6% of the population in Alaska is of Native American or Alaskan Native heritage compared to less than 2% of the population in Oregon and Washington), while the long history of Orthodox Christianity in the state deserves a more in-depth and extended treatment (106). My sense is that there is simply not a lot of scholarship on religion in Alaska. In general, Native American traditions get short shrift in the book. Lance D. Laird successfully finds similarities in the influential yet peripheral status of Native American and Asian religions, but otherwise these religious traditions are different enough that they do not fit together completely comfortably in one chapter.
The category of “nones” is perhaps most exciting for scholars of Northwest religious life. Killen wonders if they are manifestations of the process of secularization and/or if they represent a new kind of modern American religiosity. This is a pertinent question in the present day when, nationally, more and more people identify with this moniker. Can the religious history of the Northwest help to illuminate these national trends? Is the region a kind of religious frontier that will send eastward missionaries of a new religious expression, Whitmans of the “none”-based spirituality? Can scholars of this region’s religious life discover valuable questions and concepts that will help illuminate this growing trend in the religious landscape of the U.S.? This book asks and provokes important questions. It is a valuable tool in the classroom and serves as the base of what I hope will be a burgeoning scholarship on the religious life of the Northwest, a scholarship that, in turn, may help us better understand larger trends within the religious landscape of the country.
Editor’s note: Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Join the conversation and leave your thoughts in the comments! If you have a suggestion for a future book of the month, or if you would like to review a book for the book of the month series, please contact us. Next month, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp reviews Hokulani K. Aikau’s A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai'i (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
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