American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice by Albert J. Raboteau

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice by Albert J. Raboteau Casey Bohlen Albert J. Raboteau, American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016) In American Prophets, historian Albert J. Raboteau provides concise, lucid biographical sketches of seven religious radicals, each of whom contributed to movements for social justice in the 20th-century United States. His subjects include intellectuals and activists from a diverse set of faith traditions, including the familiar faces of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as the less well-known Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, heterodox iconoclast A.J. Muste, Black Protestant intellectual Howard Thurman, and Catholic monk Thomas Merton. Although these individuals hailed from disparate theological backgrounds, Raboteau argues that they were united by a shared religious commitment to social justice, defined by moral solidarity with the socially marginalized and faith in the redemptive power of nonviolent direct action. For readers who are unfamiliar with the history of the mid-century [End Page 339] religious left, this book offers a readable and illustrative introduction to the field, told through the lives of some of its most influential participants. Raboteau's central argument is that members of the religious left have served as a prophetic voice in 20th-century United States politics, blending civic and theological language to develop effective moral arguments against injustice and inspire grassroots movements for social change. Their political vision was defined by what Raboteau dubs "divine pathos" – meaning a heightened sense of compassion for the least among us, derived from a religious belief in the divine dignity of each individual, the spiritual unity of humanity, and categorical opposition to systems rooted in violence and coercion. Inspired by this divine pathos, religious radicals played pivotal roles in a wide variety of social justice movements across the course of the century, ranging from the long civil rights movement to radical labour organizing to anti-war resistance. They mounted campaigns rooted in nonviolent direct action, drew on religious networks to organize activists at the grassroots, and delivered soaring political speeches redolent with religious imagery, appealing to the consciences of their fellow citizens through both word and deed. These appeals were often successful, most notably in the case of the Southern freedom struggle, which unsurprisingly takes centre stage here. But of equal importance, Raboteau argues, they passed their sense of divine pathos on to their audiences, engendering new moral awakenings and sustaining the religious left across generations in a manner that other branches of the United States left have notably failed to do. This combination of interpersonal encounters, flexible moral language, and effective protest tactics have made religious radicals capable of adapting their relatively consistent set of principles and strategies to a diverse set of causes. In doing so, they have had an outsized impact on United States politics over the course of the century. Raboteau delivers this argument episodically, organizing American Prophets into seven independent chapters, each devoted to one of his subjects' intellectual biography and history of social engagement. The book is already succinct, clocking in at just under two-hundred pages, but because each chapter can stand alone, educators might consider exploring Raboteau's overarching argument by assigning excerpts on just one or two of his subjects. His chapter on Thomas Merton is a prime candidate for such treatment. Merton was a Trappist monk whose early writings called on readers to seek God by withdrawing from the world, but who reemerged as a preeminent social critic and political advocate in the 1960s. Raboteau's discussion of him is rife with meaty block quotes, which articulate Merton's seemingly-paradoxical fusion of contemplative life and worldly engagement, his analysis of the relationship between systems of social violence and personal alienation, and his deep skepticism of the ability of white liberals and civil rights legislation to unravel the tangled knots of racial inequality in America. His writing is rich and provocative, and his thinking on race relations feels especially prescient today, marking Merton as one of the most intellectually challenging voices in this collection. Also noteworthy are...