Whose Civil Rights Movement? Black Churches and Bridging Cultural Work on Israel and Palestine

• In Event: 1447 - Constructions of Identity: Religious and Secular

Abstract

Existing studies of cultural work in social movements have focused on how groups create meaning around political ideas in order to recruit members or to develop in-group ties. However, this approach overlooks how groups overcome perceived social boundaries, which are common and powerful obstacles to social movements. In contrast, this essay analyzes processes of solidarity building that happen through the re-working of particular cultural contents to enable political solidarities across social divides. Through a comparative case study of African American Christian engagement with the issue of Israel and Palestine, I analyze how the memory of the U.S. civil rights movement is invoked, framed, and deployed in the service of opposite purposes by African American Christians. I show how African American Christian Zionists and Palestinian solidarity activists both work to build solidarities across racial, national, and religious lines as a form of bridging cultural work, alternatively emphasizing Black-Jewish or Black-Palestinian solidarities. I suggest the concept of bridging cultural work as a process of solidarity building via the re-working of particular cultural contents aimed at enabling political solidarities across social divides.

Author

• Roger Baumann, Yale University