Charles Mccrary
Biographic Data
| ID | 3890840 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles Mccrary |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccrary |
| SIGNATURE | MCCRARY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Eckerd College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8913-4512 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Editor’s Introduction to Paradoxes of Education: A Symposium on Without A Prayer
Response by Author
Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Does Anyone Sincerely Believe in Science? and Several Other Questions
This piece, a sort of epilogue to the special issue, reflects on different ways to study “religious belief.” It identifies two broad types of scholarly questions. The first concerns religious beliefs themselves, how they are held, what work they do in societies, etc. The second interrogates “religious belief” itself as a category. And yet, these two types, while having seemingly quite distinct aims and assumptions, often overlap. The piece conclu…
Cringing at Benevolence
Engaging with Logan’s third chapter, on the American Seamen’s Friends Society, this piece reflects on what it means to cringe in the context of a benevolent or charitable relationship. People cringe when they are made painfully aware of the gap between their self-conception (and/or their ideal self) and the way others perceive them. Logan shows us, in her study of the ASFS , the cringeworthy nature of antebellum benevolent societies: they learned…
“Ash Like People Now”: Philadelphia Fire and Humanization
A splendid norm”: Human Plants and the Eugenic Secular, 1906–1926
This article analyzes eugenics and the secular in early twentieth-century California through the career of Luther Burbank. Burbank was a famous plant breeder who cultivated a theory of human progress based on his breeding work. For him, humans were part of an always-evolving and immanently spiritual natural world. And it was the task of civilized people to perfect that world, making it more beautiful and more productive. This project rested on an…
Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt
Reviewed by: Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt Charles McCrary Hannah K. Scheidt, Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) Like scholars of religion, but also unlike them, American atheists spend a lot of time and energy thinking about religion. To study their ideas and rhetoric, then, can offer…
Fortune Telling and American Religious Freedom
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of people who were arrested for pretending telling fortunes appealed their convictions on religious freedom grounds. These accused fortune tellers, mostly white spiritualist women, were arrested for violating state statutes across the United States, from New York to Georgia to Oklahoma to Washington. Though each defendant lost her case, their arguments showcase previously understudied…
Superstitious Subjects: Us Religion, Race, and Freedom
This article employs the trinary framework to interrogate American religious freedom and religious actors’ interaction with the us state. It focuses on issues of governance and the classification and management of state subjects and their activities, showing how these lived effects are entwined with more “academic” or intellectual concerns about the categories religion and superstition. The article uses “superstition” in two ways. First, it is a …
The Myth of the Circuit Rider: American Methodist Autobiography and the Croaks of Nostalgia
Many Methodist circuit riders published their autobiographies in the mid-nineteenth century as an attempt to recreate the “zeal” of the earlier decades of American Methodism—and to lament the comfortable mood they perceived within their newly respectable middle-class denomination. This article demonstrates how and why “the circuit rider”—as a mythic figure or literary trope—was created and maintained, especially through autobiographies. It argues…
The protestant secular in the study of American religion: Reappraisal and Suggestions
This article provides a theoretical and historiographical overview of secularism in the study of American religion. It focuses on how scholars have used the concept of the ‘Protestant secular’ in works on law, politics, and culture. Although it has been useful, we argue that this concept has lost some of its analytical utility in the effort to explain secularism predominantly in terms of its Protestant nature. In turn, this article looks to liter…
Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith
Cusack, Carole M. Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. 179 + viii pp. 55.00 [pounds sterling], $89.95. Cloth. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6780-3 Carole Cusack's Religions examines six recently religions: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, Jediism, Matrixism, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Because these religions have received little to no attention from scholars, Cusac…
The protestant secular in the study of American religion: Reappraisal and Suggestions
This article provides a theoretical and historiographical overview of secularism in the study of American religion. It focuses on how scholars have used the concept of the ‘Protestant secular’ in works on law, politics, and culture. Although it has been useful, we argue that this concept has lost some of its analytical utility in the effort to explain secularism predominantly in terms of its Protestant nature. In turn, this article looks to liter…
A splendid norm”: Human Plants and the Eugenic Secular, 1906–1926
This article analyzes eugenics and the secular in early twentieth-century California through the career of Luther Burbank. Burbank was a famous plant breeder who cultivated a theory of human progress based on his breeding work. For him, humans were part of an always-evolving and immanently spiritual natural world. And it was the task of civilized people to perfect that world, making it more beautiful and more productive. This project rested on an…
Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith
Cusack, Carole M. Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. 179 + viii pp. 55.00 [pounds sterling], $89.95. Cloth. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6780-3 Carole Cusack's Religions examines six recently religions: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, Jediism, Matrixism, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Because these religions have received little to no attention from scholars, Cusac…
Superstitious Subjects: Us Religion, Race, and Freedom
This article employs the trinary framework to interrogate American religious freedom and religious actors’ interaction with the us state. It focuses on issues of governance and the classification and management of state subjects and their activities, showing how these lived effects are entwined with more “academic” or intellectual concerns about the categories religion and superstition. The article uses “superstition” in two ways. First, it is a …
The Myth of the Circuit Rider: American Methodist Autobiography and the Croaks of Nostalgia
Many Methodist circuit riders published their autobiographies in the mid-nineteenth century as an attempt to recreate the “zeal” of the earlier decades of American Methodism—and to lament the comfortable mood they perceived within their newly respectable middle-class denomination. This article demonstrates how and why “the circuit rider”—as a mythic figure or literary trope—was created and maintained, especially through autobiographies. It argues…
The protestant secular in the study of American religion: Reappraisal and Suggestions
This article provides a theoretical and historiographical overview of secularism in the study of American religion. It focuses on how scholars have used the concept of the ‘Protestant secular’ in works on law, politics, and culture. Although it has been useful, we argue that this concept has lost some of its analytical utility in the effort to explain secularism predominantly in terms of its Protestant nature. In turn, this article looks to liter…
Fortune Telling and American Religious Freedom
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of people who were arrested for pretending telling fortunes appealed their convictions on religious freedom grounds. These accused fortune tellers, mostly white spiritualist women, were arrested for violating state statutes across the United States, from New York to Georgia to Oklahoma to Washington. Though each defendant lost her case, their arguments showcase previously understudied…
“Ash Like People Now”: Philadelphia Fire and Humanization
A splendid norm”: Human Plants and the Eugenic Secular, 1906–1926
This article analyzes eugenics and the secular in early twentieth-century California through the career of Luther Burbank. Burbank was a famous plant breeder who cultivated a theory of human progress based on his breeding work. For him, humans were part of an always-evolving and immanently spiritual natural world. And it was the task of civilized people to perfect that world, making it more beautiful and more productive. This project rested on an…
Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt
Reviewed by: Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt Charles McCrary Hannah K. Scheidt, Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) Like scholars of religion, but also unlike them, American atheists spend a lot of time and energy thinking about religion. To study their ideas and rhetoric, then, can offer…
Does Anyone Sincerely Believe in Science? and Several Other Questions
This piece, a sort of epilogue to the special issue, reflects on different ways to study “religious belief.” It identifies two broad types of scholarly questions. The first concerns religious beliefs themselves, how they are held, what work they do in societies, etc. The second interrogates “religious belief” itself as a category. And yet, these two types, while having seemingly quite distinct aims and assumptions, often overlap. The piece conclu…
Cringing at Benevolence
Engaging with Logan’s third chapter, on the American Seamen’s Friends Society, this piece reflects on what it means to cringe in the context of a benevolent or charitable relationship. People cringe when they are made painfully aware of the gap between their self-conception (and/or their ideal self) and the way others perceive them. Logan shows us, in her study of the ASFS , the cringeworthy nature of antebellum benevolent societies: they learned…
Response by Author
Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Editor’s Introduction to Paradoxes of Education: A Symposium on Without A Prayer
Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (8 works) · History (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Religious studies (5 works)