Capture Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, And American Minority Religions Portrayed By Megan Goodwin Disseminated As Paper Copy

I found this a super interesting analysis, bringing race and gender theories to nationalism and religion, Thoughtprovoking from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, as well as mainline Protestantism, Focuses in on her coined term contraceptive nationalism to explain the demonization of minority religions when sexual scandal occurs, I'm convinced people use sexual scandal to characterize religions they don't understand but I think this also applies just as much to Christianity anywhere where it isn't the dominate religion.
In the first few century bisophs were killed for canabalism and have love orgies, News flash they were simple partaking in the lords supper or the Eucharist, Being a minority religion that wasn't understood Christianity was demonized by Rome, So I don't find her point profound or helpful in bettering the world, Protestant Christian values happens to be the majority in the USA whatever that means because protestantism is just build your own Christianity, This book finds instances of the majority reacting poorly and painting minority religions with the stroke of their worst members but that always happens and will always happen.
I would suggest that books exaggerate the problem by not looking at the larger dynamics of history, Alot of her analysis is very good, just not helpful or novel, I enjoyed this book but I would have liked to see it linked revelantly to a larger conclusion or solution, Absolutely fascinating book about how American society makes a spectacular display of fighting sex abuse involving "outsiders" or minority religious communities, while totally ignoring and thereby giving cover to the abuse in mainstream institutions.
I grew up Catholic when the clergy scandal broke, Of course, this scandal was swiftly blamed on gays who'd "infiltrated" the church, It couldn't possibly be that the Church's theology, tradition, and hierarchical structure gave rise to such abuse, But when it came to stories of abuse in Arab/Muslim communities, well, these stories were representative of the religion at large because that's “who they are.
” Goodwin considers the commercial success of Not Without My

Daughter, suggesting that the book and film resonated with Americans precisely because they gelled with Americans' preexisting views of Islam as inherently violent, barbaric, etc.


In the beginning of the book, Goodwin discusses the "catholicization" of America, by which she means the mainstreaming of Catholic thought in postRoe public life.
Catholics, she says, influenced evangelicals and rightwing politicians by giving them the concepts of "the family" and "contraceptive nationalism," whereby sexual purity and socalled traditional family values become the means to protect America from literal and figurative insemination by darkskinned others.
Going back to Not Without My Daughter, the white woman played by Sally Field is innocent, vulnerablea standin for the nation, She must be saved from the beastlike Muslim, who, more metaphorically, is trying to rape America, This plot is also a reformulation of antiBlack propaganda like Birth of a Nation,

I wish there'd been more on Catholicism's influence on the modern right, as there isn't a lot of scholarship on this topic compared to white evangelicalisms influence.
I do wonder, though, if it's really Catholics who gave the modern right the concept of the family or if it's secular eugenicists, Eugenicists like Paul Popenoe had a major influence on folks like James Dobson, and blatanlty eugenicist books like The Birth Dearth shaped the rhetoric of highprofile Catholics like Pat Buchanan in the 's.
I recently wrote about this here: sitelink org

Highly recommend this book or at least listening to Goodwin on SWAJ podcast: sitelink apple. com/us/podcast

Goodwin is brilliant, sarcastic, and witty, and I'll definitely look forward to more of her work, Sex abuse happens in all communities, but American minority religions often face disproportionate allegations of sexual abuse, Why, in a country that consistently fails to acknowledgemuch less addressthe sexual abuse of women and children, do American religious outsiders so often face allegations of sexual misconduct  Why does the American public presume to know “whats really going on” in minority religious communities  Why are sex abuse allegations such an effective way to discredit people on Americas religious margins What makes Americans so willing, so eager to identify religion as the cause of sex abuse Abusing Religion argues that sex abuse in minority religious communities is an American problem, not merely a religious one.

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