Over the last three months I’ve made tremendous progress toward earning my PhD at the University of Virginia. My dissertation project has been approved, and I am now officially writing. My goal is to finish in May of 2027. Apparently, the number “7” is my thing…Princeton ’87, Pacific School of Religion ’17, UVA ‘27…kind of cool.
As I approach this threshold, I recognize that my work is needed in the world. While parish ministry gave me a great deal of practical on-the-ground experience and the opportunity to make one kind of contribution, the experience of immersing myself in the deep study of why people do what they do has been an even more natural fit. I’m now positioning myself to be able to publicly write, speak and teach in a way that contributes to the capacity for people everywhere to live better with one another. Specifically, my work responds to the weaponization of belief…belief based on religion or belief that is simply held as if it were religion…a.k.a. dogmatism. Belief conflated with government defeats the basis of a pluralistic society and we are already mired in that morass. Stark ideological entrenchment reinforced by technological echo chambers has proven to be the most toxic and potentially lethal invention of the 20th century.
In order to stay focused, I’ve had to remain largely offline over the last few years and particularly since January. Today, my 61st birthday, however, I’m recommitting to being part of the conversation. The balance between the day-to-day of academic life (researching and teaching) and the whiplash of modern politics is a lot to manage, but I’m feeling greater urgency as I get more fluent with this work and as more extreme positions of dogmatism emerge. I believe that it is essential for scholars like me to focus on practical applications for what we study and not just obsess over our personal grain of sand at our computers.
I want to point you toward three moments from this past week that have kept me thinking about what it means to commit to being a public scholar in this time:
Senator Tammy Duckworth on Iran War Powers Resolution
Representative Terri Sewell confronting RFK, Jr. on his racial (racist) comments
“Charlie Kirk Laws” promoting religion and free speech
Each one of these moments is a lot to take in. But a significant line of human logic connects them through what I named before: weaponization of belief. The literal weaponization of belief pulled us into the war with Iran; the willingness to weaponize an unfounded racialized belief about black children and families, makes RFK, Jr. a genuine threat in public service; and the weaponization of religious belief is attempting to turn the US Constitution into a legislative sword for Christianity.
My dissertation is about Rev. Ethelred Brown (1875 – 1956), Black Unitarian minister from Jamaica, and the sermons he delivered during the height of the Harlem Renaissance as part of the New Negro movement. But inside that grain of sand, I’m asking questions about how Brown understood himself at the intersection of Caribbean, Harlem, Black and Unitarian identity and how that understanding translated into his public words as a minister. I am asking about what Brown believed, why he believed it and how he expressed that belief in his sermons. While I am humbled by his ministry a century ago, my dissertation goes beyond revealing an important history.* For me, Ethelred Brown is primarily a foundational case study on whom I hope to base theories and practical tools that might be applied toward the challenges we face in the way belief is activated in the public discourse today.
This blog is a “note to self” to stay in this work. I will invite you to also consider how you might stay committed to being an engaged participant. It doesn’t need to have a big splash, but it does require conscious intention. That is how we disrupt the bots and memes and careless disposable rhetoric. All of our active and deliberate participation is required. Not just for the American experiment, but for the wider grand human experiment to realize its full promise and potential.
–ALD
*See the excellent historical work about Brown from Mark Morrison-Reed, and Juan Floyd-Thomas