POPULARITY
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss righteousness, liberation, and vulnerability in Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35. The text is appointed for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastJoel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity. Connect with Yale Bible Study: Facebook: @YDSCCE Twitter: @BibleYale YouTube: youtube.com/c/YaleBibleStudy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/yds-center-for-continuing-education Thank you for listening!
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022) examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country's history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion. Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017). Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom and co-editor of FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his websitethereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss life in the wilderness for the Israelites, being tested and testing God in Exodus 17:1-7. The text is appointed for the Third Sunday in Lent, in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastJoel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School.Connect with Yale Bible Study: Facebook: @YDSCCE Twitter: @BibleYale YouTube: youtube.com/c/YaleBibleStudy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/yds-center-for-continuing-education Thank you for listening!
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss leadership, inherited stories, and transfiguring moments in Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9. The texts are appointed for Transfiguration Sunday, in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastJoel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School.Connect with Yale Bible Study: Facebook: @YDSCCE Twitter: @BibleYale YouTube: youtube.com/c/YaleBibleStudy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/yds-center-for-continuing-education Thank you for listening!
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss colonial narratives, indigenous theology, and the downsides of going to a “Promised Land” in Deuteronomy 26:1-11. The text is appointed for Thanksgiving Day (USA), in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BibleYaleJoel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School.Connect with Yale Bible Study: Facebook: @YDSCCE Twitter: @BibleYale YouTube: youtube.com/c/YaleBibleStudy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/yds-center-for-continuing-education Thank you for listening!
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Tisa Wenger and Joel Baden discuss bargaining, God and Abraham's new relationship, and the righteous of Sodom and Gamorrah in Genesis 18:20-32. The text is appointed for Track 2 on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BibleYaleTisa Wenger is Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. Joel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School.
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss the construction of stories, Christian supersessionism, and the legacy of Christian storytelling in relation to Genesis 22:1-18. The text is appointed for the Easter Vigil, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BibleYaleTisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. Joel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School.
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Tisa Wenger and Joel Baden discuss divine violence, colonialism, and the notion of “wilderness” in Isaiah 43:16-21. The text is appointed for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcastFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BibleYaleTisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. Joel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School.
Chapter, Verse, and Season: A Lectionary Podcast from Yale Bible Study
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss messianic prophecy, timelessness, and historic context in Jeremiah 33:14-16. The text is appointed for the First Sunday of Advent (Advent 1), Sunday, November 28, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcast Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BibleYale Joel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education. Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History. Both teach at Yale Divinity School.
This is the third and final podcast in the Fireside Chat series that the Spiritual Formation Committee has sponsored this year. In this podcast, you will hear Professor Tisa Wenger and MDiv student Tasha Brownfield interview each other about their faith stories related to the Unitarian Universalist tradition.
“Religious freedom” is everywhere in the news: it is invoked, it is debated, it is implicated, it is litigated, it is ridiculed, it is derided, it is loved, it is honored, it is before the Supreme Court & school boards, and it is found in religious sermons. The National Museum of American Religion offers to shed light on its history, in the hope that Americans, knowing some of its history, will understand this governing principle better, how revolutionary it is, how fragile it is, how dynamic it is, and how indispensable it is to America in fulfilling her purposes in the world, and so commit to protect and preserve it. Today we have with us Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale Divinity School, to show us some of this history of religious freedom by discussing her book Religious Freedom: A Contested History of an American Ideal. Professor Wenger's research and teaching interests include religious encounters in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States; the cultural politics of religious freedom; and the intersections of race, religion and empire in American history. She is also the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom. Sign up for notifications of future podcasts: www.storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up/
Tisa Wenger tells David Robertson how local, national, and international regimes of religious freedom have produced and reproduced the category 'religion' and its others in the modern world.
In this episode, historian Tisa Wenger of Yale University joins us to talk about religious freedom—the legal right to worship according to the dictates of a person's own conscience. An important ideal to be sure, but—as historians like Wenger are fond of saying—it's complicated. We're talking about her new book Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal. About the Guest Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History in the Divinity School, American Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University, where she has been teaching for almost ten years. Wenger's work explores the cultural politics of religious freedom, the religious histories of the American West, and the intersections of race, empire, and religion in U.S. history. Her books are We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). She lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with her husband Rod Groff and their three children, along with a dog, two cats, a rabbit, five chickens, ten fish, and a sizable vegetable garden. The post The contested history of religious freedom, with Tisa Wenger [MIPodcast #91] appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.
The post The contested history of religious freedom, with Tisa Wenger [MIPodcast #91] appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.
Rachel Lindsey, assistant professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University, talks with Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School, about her research on religious freedom and the intersection of race and religion.
In this episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Donald Trump’s use of the presidential pardon, and the American tradition of separating families. Support Past Present on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pastpresentpodcast Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. Neil referred to Tisa Wenger’s book Religious Freedom: The Contested History of An American Ideal and Sarah Posner’s Nation article about the conservative Christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom. President Trump has legal scholars thinking about whether a president is legally permitted to pardon himself. Natalia cited this Washington Post article by Lawrence Tribe, Richard Painter, and Norman Eisen arguing a president cannot pardon himself. Niki cited Bob Bauer’s Lawfare article about the larger demagogic nature of Trump’s presidency. The Trump administration has intensified a policy separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Niki cited historian Martha Jones’ Medium slideshow about the history of separating enslaved families. Natalia cited historian Walter Johnson’s book Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market and Niki recommended historian Heather A. Williams’ Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia talked about Hilary Levey Friedman’s USA Today article, “Good Riddance to the Miss America Pageant, But Did We Have to Lose Fitness Too?” Neil discussed the German TV show Deutschland 83, now available on Hulu. Niki recommended Yoni Appelbaum’s Atlantic article, “Which America Is Trump Celebrating?”
David Sehat talks to Tisa Wenger, Associate Professor of Divinity at Yale University, about the meaning of religious freedom and the contemporary invocations of religious freedom by white, conservative Christians.
This panel looks at the increasingly diverse and multi-cultural society that the United States is moving toward: 2013 is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 50th anniversary of both the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.PanelistsHarlon Dalton (moderator) is currently the Priest-in-Charge at Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from Yale University. He has served as a public interest lawyer in New York and worked for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. He also taught at Yale Law School, where he is now a professor emeritus. Aracelis Vazquez Haye is the assistant pastor of the Primera Iglesia Bautitsa Hispana de New London, a fast growing American Baptist Latino/a congregation in New London, CT. She also serves as the Protestant Chaplain at Connecticut College in New London, CT, and at The Waterford Country School. Aracelis holds a Master of Divinity from Yale University, with special emphasis in youth and young adult ministry. Aracelis obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Connecticut State University in Latin American Studies, and a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration from Loyola University Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Khyati Yogeshkumar Joshi is an Associate Professor of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Dr. Joshi is the author of the book New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in Indian America (Rutgers University Press, 2006), which received the National Association for Multicultural Education’s 2007 Philip C. Chinn Book Award. She is co-editor of the collections Asian Americans Down South (University of Illinois Press, 2013) and Understanding Religious Oppression and Christian Privilege (Sense Publishers, 2008). She is the Religion, Schools And Society section editor for the Encyclopedia on Diversity in Education (Sage Publications) edited by James Banks, and has authored numerous book chapters and articles on race, immigration, and religion. Reverend Dr. Frederick J. Streets is the Senior Pastor of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven, the oldest African American American Congregational Church in the known world, founded in New Haven in 1820. He served as the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor in Pastoral Counseling at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, New York City, from 2007-2012. He also served as Chaplain of Yale University and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale 1992-2007 and is the first African American and Baptist to hold this position. Tisa Wenger is Assistant Professor of American Religious History at the Yale Divinity School. Her research and teaching interests include the history of Christianity in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States (especially the American West), the cultural history of the categories of religion and secularism, the politics of religious freedom, and the intersections of race and religion in American history. Her book We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom(2009) shows how dominant conceptions of religion and religious freedom affected the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico as they sought to protect their religious ceremonies from government suppression, and how that struggle helped reshape mainstream views of religion and the politics of Indian affairs. She is now writing a history of religious freedom as an American ideal, tracing its multiple and shifting deployments throughout U.S. history. These scholars, religious leaders and activists take a look back, and also enrich our thinking about the next 50 years of race in America. Presented in collaboration with Yale Divinity School.