At the same time that President Obama was preparing to convene a meeting of black religious leaders at the White House, a debate had been brewing over the blogosphere, mostly among scholars of religion, regarding the significance of black churches in this historical moment. To attribute the cause of the former to the latter would be to overestimate the impact of scholarship on society, but the confluence of these conversations certainly appear serendipitous... continue reading at On Faith
Further Black Church Dialoging (Bloggingheads.tv)
I recently had the opportunity to continue the "post-black church" dialogue with Eddie Glaude on bloggingheads.tv, as part of their new series on religion: "Values Added." My conversation with Dr. Glaude is embedded below, or you can go directly to bloggingheads.tv
The RZA's Religious Ruminations (ReligionDispatches)
RZA's The Tao of Wu: Hip Hop Religion, Spiritual Sampling, and Race in a "Post-racial" Age You'd think that seven years after the release of Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” that there would be little need to explain the link between Hip Hop music and religion. Yet in a recent NPR interview, I was asked once again what the often profane posture of Hip Hop has to do with the sacred aspirations of spirituality. So perhaps it is still necessary to pause at the outset and offer a few examples as a reminder to readers of rap music’s long tradition of religious ruminations.
In fact, one can trace a trajectory that goes back as far MC Hammer’s 1987 debut album, Let’s Get it Started, which featured the gospel track, “Son of the King.” Such spiritual lyricism continued through the prophetic musings of Tupac Shakur, the biblical (re)imagination of Ja Rule (i.e. Rule 3:16), the Muslim message of Lupe Fiasco, and the messianic aspirations of Remy Ma, whose 2008 album was simply titled, Shesus Khryst.
to continue reading, go to Religion Dispatches
The Black Church is Dead--Long Live the Black Church (ReligionDispatches)
A few weeks ago, Princeton’s Eddie Glaude Jr. published an obituary for the black church in the Huffington Post—the Digital-Age equivalent of nailing a set of theses to a church door. And while it is a brief article, short on the conventions of mourning, in it Glaude details the long, lingering illness of the venerable institution, and cites multiple causes of death. What has finally died, Glaude explains, is the idea of the black church as a singular idea; what remains are black churches, in the plural.Glaude concludes his provocative pronouncement with what Jonathan Walton refers to below as “a prophetic challenge.”
The death of the black church as we have known it occasions an opportunity to breathe new life into what it means to be black and Christian. Black churches and preachers must find their prophetic voices in this momentous present. And in doing so, black churches will rise again and insist that we all assert ourselves on the national stage not as sycophants to a glorious past, but as witnesses to the ongoing revelation of God’s love in the here and now as we work on behalf of those who suffer most.
RD asked a selection of historians, religious scholars, and other interpreters of the black church to respond to Glaude’s thesis, and to his challenge. Following is a set of comments and reflection:
to continue reading go to: The Black Church is Dead--Long Live the Black Church
A Celebration of Life: A Historian for the History Books
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- John Hope Franklin, a revered Duke University historian and scholar of life in the South and the African-American experience in the United States, died Wednesday. He was 94.
Duke spokesman David Jarmul said Franklin died of congestive heart failure at the university's hospital in Durham.
Born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma where he was often subjected to humiliating incidents of racism, he was later instrumental in bringing down the legal and historical validations of such a world.
As an author, his book ''From Slavery to Freedom'' was a landmark integration of black history into American history. As a scholar, his research helped Thurgood Marshall win Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that outlawed the doctrine of ''separate but equal'' in the nation's public schools.
''It was evident how much the lawyers appreciated what the historians could offer,'' Franklin later wrote. ''For me, and I suspect the same was true for the others, it was exhilarating.''
Franklin broke numerous color barriers. He was the first black department chair at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College; the first black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke University; and the first black president of the American Historical Association.
to continue reading go to: New York Times.com
Look out for "Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism"
As we near the end of the first Black History Month in age of the first black president, I want to quickly share with everyone the arrival of an important and timely book: Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism, by Jonathan L. Walton.
In case you didn't already know, President Obama's road to the White House revealed most clearly that African American religion continues to occupy a most pivotal place in the American cultural imagination. Moreover, his dramatic falling out with Jeremiah Wright (I know, this conversation is already exhausted) confirmed that the common assertion of the United States as a Christian nation is a claim in need of further clarification. While African Americans have long inserted themselves into the Christian story, the Obama-Wright show served to illustrate that not all forms of American Christianity (really, protestantisms) achieve equally footing in the public culture of the U.S.
Jonathan Walton's "Watch This" provides a compelling a critical account of the varieties of black Christianity that now dominate airwaves both in the U.S. and around the globe. I've had the privilege of dialoging with the author as the project moved from dissertation to book, and I know him to wield one the sharpest and most insightful interpretations of African American religion, in particular, and religion and culture in America, more broadly. While I've just started to get into the book myself, I am confident that anyone who picks it up will learn something new about religion and race in America.
Kudos, Congratulations, and Thank you, Jonathan!
What follows is the beginning of his discussion of the book on the website ReligionDispatches:
Ten Questions for Jonathan Walton on Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism
What inspired you to write Watch This?
My interest in African American religious broadcasting came from what I perceived to be the gaps in the fields of African American religion and Religion, Media and Culture. For the most part, scholars of African American religion in general and black theology in particular theorize about Afro-Protestantism in America according to a particular historiography that privileges liberal Protestantism in general, and civil rights motifs in particular. But the prevailing narrative of the freedom fighting “black church” is in many ways inconsistent with a number of African American Christians whose view of the faith is informed by Trinity Broadcasting, the Word Network, and Streaming Faith.com. Just the same, for sociologists and communication theorists who have examined the world of evangelical religious broadcasting, it is predominantly framed as the domain of the white, Religious Right.
This book, then, is my attempt to illumine, unpack and interrogate the theological and social orientations of prominent black religious broadcasters in order to understand them as a source of attraction and ethically evaluate their dominant messages...
To continue reading go to ReligionDispatches.org.
To purchase book, go to www.nyupress.com
A Backslidden Blogger, Inaugurating Obama and "The End of White America"
It has been exactly one year since I made my last blog entry – can I still really call myself a blogger? Anyway, 2009 was quite an eventful year for me both professionally and personally. With regards to the latter, I entered the land of parenthood as my wife and I welcomed our son into the world in January. As for the former, less than six months later I walked across the commencement stage at Harvard with the university's first class of Ph.D.s in African American Studies (and thousands of other graduates as well). As both a black father and a recently-minted Ph.D. in African American Studies there was perhaps no more intriguing event in 2009 than the historic election of Barack Obama. Personal background aside, Obama’s rise to the presidency was arguably the biggest headline around the world, rivaled only by the economic collapse that serves as the background to this week's festivities, around the world. So much has been written about Obama that I’ve been reluctant to weigh in - Seriously, what more can be said! As a good friend, and colleague in the study of religion, recently bemoaned, “Since when did Obama become the arbiter of the black religious experience?” Moreover, given the culture of celebrity and the fascination with the entire Obama family (we love you Michelle, Sasha and Malia!), they have also become the poster image for the African American family. Want to know about black love, black parenting, etc – there’s sure to be scores of articles available on each topic that begin with an Obama invocation.
Despite being overwhelmed by Obama-mania (how quick does it take to become an empty signifier?), I’d be lying if I did not admit that I too will be celebrating this Tuesday, or acknowledge how often I’ve considered the question, as a new parent, of what it will mean for my son’s first memories of the White House will be occupied by images of a black family. As a scholar of African American religion, there is still much that can be said of the subtle ways that Obama appealed to, but also superceded, black church traditions in his campaign. And, as a historian I still wonder, given the current academic interest in re-thinking Black Power, what it will mean that the man who heads the United States—the last super power—is African American. Can American imperialism also be a form of black power?
Anyway, at this point I will leave these preliminary thoughts as they are, as simply questions. But I do want to direct attention to one article that I recently read that stood out for me in the sea of stories on Obama, blackness, and the so-called “post-racial” era. Hua Hsu, a colleague and friend of mine from Harvard, who teaches at Vassar College and also happens to be formidable behind the turntables, recently examined what the Obama phenomenon says about the current state of whiteness in America. The header to his article reads as follows:
"The Election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it? What will it mean to be white when whiteness is no longer the norm? And will a post-white America be less racially divided—or more so?"
To read the entire essay, click on the following link to The Atlantic on-line.
This excellent piece is certainly worth reading in its entirety. Perhaps you'll turn to it after coming down from the inauguration high, as we celebrate this historic moment and consider the continued promises of American democracy. Then all of us who live our lives in the many worlds between black and white will begin the difficult work of figuring out what the Obama era will truly offer. In the meantime, for now I will return to singing "We Shall be Free" with my wife and son, along with Garth Brooks, Shakira, Stevie Wonder and the rest of the pre-inauguration party cast. GOBAMA!
A Word From My Favorite Black Republican
Hope this finds y'all well in the New Year... In light of what I will call the Obama Iowa Caucus scare, and the heating up of the Democratic primary race in its wake, I wanted to share with you a couple of emails from a good friend who I've known since my undergrad days at Oral Roberts University in the early/mid-1990s. On campus he was the most vocal black democrat, with a biting racial critique of the college's politics; and I vividly remember him celebrating Clinton's 1992 victory - at least in part to provoke tears (and they were being shed) on the part of ORU's even more vocal Republican majority.
Sean McCray is now pursuing a career in law and, while switching party affiliations, has maintained his critical commentary on race politics in America. Check out his email comments (included here with his permission) below and let me know what you think...
MONDAY, January 14, 2008
"Others are finally seeing the real Bill and Hillary Clinton. The so called "black" President. They also passed out mailers in NH implying that Obama was not pro-choice. Although Obama and Hillary have the exact same rating from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. The Clinton's are just getting started. Wait and see. Let’s see how long blacks will hold on while the Clinton's play racial politics."
"I keep saying I am going to write a book exposing that man's record. My mother has never voted Republican, and she said she would not vote for Hillary, just tired of the dirty politics they play. Bill Clinton is … as usual, showing no class. He is a former President, he should act like it. Running around telling blatant lies on Obama, I mean blatant lies. (Bush 41 never acted like this.) When the Republicans win the Presidency in the Fall, remember this is when the Dems lost it. The Obama supporters will not follow Hillary unless she makes Obama the VP. We all know ain’t no way america is going to elect a woman/black on the same ticket."
"Say hello to President McCain, and not seeing the Dems in the white house for at least 8 more years. As blacks continue to hitch our political lives on one party."
TWO DAYS LATER... (Wednesday, January 17, 2008)
"It is Dick Morris (SEE: Hannity and Colmes) talking about the Clinton's purposely using the race card to gain white voters. Guess what, its working. Obama's lead in SC has gotten smaller, even though the black vote has moved toward him. The Clinton's wanted this, they wanted to make Obama "black". They know what that says to many white liberals. If they make him "black", it is easier to call him names, and call him a liar. They are thinking about the Super Tuesday elections. They also hope that if Obama wins SC they will be able to dismiss the win as a "black" victory. "
Has Sean got it right? Let me know what y'all think...
Keeping it Critical in 2008!
Respect,
Josef
... to The Wire!!!!!!!!!!!
The final season of HBO's The Wire is set to begin in about 10 minutes. Enough Said! As they say, if you don't know, you better ask somebody!
A Christmas Introduction to a New Fanon Scholar
Good Afternoon and a Merry Christmas to you all:
Yes, I am aware of the obvious contradictions (I prefer the term "complexities") of sending out a blog that introduces a new work on one of the foremost radicals in the black intellectual tradition - Frantz Fanon - on this day, which has become perhaps the central religious symbol of the high holidays of American capitalist consumption. But, alas, this is the conundrum of being a New World Negro Scholar...
For a number of reasons, I am sending this out in this moment:
First (the selfish reason), I am in the process of sorting through a dissertation chapter on the Black Arts Movement and it is impossible to examine the various iterations of Black Power, in politics and culture, without taking seriously the import of Fanon's thinking on this generation. I'm thinking about Fanon, so here you go...
Second (perhaps less selfish), in the spirit of giving I wanted to support the work of a good friend of mine, Vivaldi Jean-Marie, who I was privileged to meet at the beginning of 2007, while we were both teaching at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
Val is a sharp brother trained in the continental tradition - in fact, he was the first person of African descent to finish the New School's PhD program in Philosophy in over twenty years - who I have had the opportunity to break bread with on topics ranging from the unique opportunities of teaching at an HBCU, the challenges of balancing personal commitments and professional aspirations, the joys and anxieties of entering fatherhood (both of our wives are due to give birth in January), and how to find a great sale on high end jeans (the only way most of us in the Academy can afford them)... I digress.
Anyway, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Val to you all and to celebrate the publication of his first book. By the way, he has already finished the manuscript for his second book- a revision of his dissertation on Hegel and Kierkegaard.
What follows is more formal intro provided by Val himself and a link to where you can find his book.
A Peaceful Holiday season to you all!
Respect, Josef
Vivaldi Jean-Marie received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, NY. Fanon: Collective Ethics and Humanism is his first book and focuses on Frantz Fanon's final book Wretched of the Earth. Dr. Jean-Marie's research project is to reflect on the ethical experiences of the people of Africa and the African Diaspora. The key question is: What is the good life for the people of Africa and the African Diaspora in the Post-Colonial period? This fundamental question was raised by Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, which attempts to formulate the Ethos of the happy life for Westerners, but it has not been raised for the people of Africa and the African Diaspora. Fanon:Collective Ethics and Humanism is his first attempt to address this question from a social, cultural, and political perspective.
You can purchase the book on Amazon or at Peter Lang.
Reflections on Hip Hop Culture, Christianity and Social Capital
In recent years, references to Creflo Dollar, arguably the most popular black prosperity preacher of the day, have become a visual and verbal fixture in Hip Hop music. Such instances include a cameo appearance in Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri’s “Welcome to Atlanta” video, an invocation in a song by Fifty Cent, a professed pastoral affiliation by Mase, and a shout-out from Lupe Fiasco in his underground re-mix of Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks.” This would seem to suggest, at least within the culture of the bling, that Christianity has become as much a signifier of wealth and power as it is evidence of any specific type of theological vision. Evidently Dollar – for whom wealth is a core spiritual value – seems to embody, for many Hip Hop artists, the essence of Hip Hop’s hustle doused in holy water. Interestingly, Pastor Dollar also has a rap video in the works, performed a by a group of rappers, the Ziklag Boyz, who belong to his church and record on his Arrow Records label. A surprise to no one, the song’s refrain is simply, “Money, money, coming down!” (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFyMEnXDG4g 
). While the video draws much resemblance to Lil’ Wayne and Fat Joe’s tale of the strip club, “Make It Rain,” – with dollar bills floating across the screen – noticeably absent from the Ziklag Boyz’ video are the bodies of scantily clad black and brown women. For male rappers, it is the bodies of black females that often make their rap videos so profitably seductive, but Dollar insists that the power to get “bling” can just as easily be achieved dropping bible verses like they're hot. The mutual resonance between much of rap music and Dollar’s prosperity ministry is but one instance where Christianity seems to function as an explicit form of social capital in popular culture . . .
For the entire article go to: http://faithinmotion.net/
Beyond Culture vs. Structure
It has been impossible to ignore the shouting match that has taken place over the past couple years between Michael Eric Dyson and Bill Cosby, but their debate - which many others have weighed in on - is part of a much longer dialogue regarding class divisions among black people living in the United States. On the one hand, the black "elite" and middle class have complained that poor black folks need to hold up their end of the bargain (read: y'all are making us good negros look bad); while, on the other, poor and working class blacks have insisted that Du Bois' so-called "talented tenth" have willingly left the rest of the race behind in exchange for their share of the American dream (read: y'all do the same stuff we do, but money covers a multitude of sins). This debate is also closely tied to a similar academic conversation regarding whether the issue of poverty (often linked to a history of racism) is best addressed through structural (read: social policy change) or cultural (read: behavioral change) interventions. This debate has gone on just as long and has been equally rife with shouting matches where one side labels the other as victim blamers (cultural) and hand-out givers (structural).
Cornel West's classic 1993 text Race Matters straddled this debate - holding culture and structure in tension - and much scholarship and social criticism has since moved in this direction. The following article by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - whose recent work on race and genetics has been the subject of much heated debate on issues of both race and class - seems to capture some of the complexities and contradictions of each of these conversations while highlighting the reality of an increasing class divide that exists not only with Black America (Gates' focus), but in the United States, generally, and between the so-called "first" and developing worlds more broadly. Discussions of DNA aside, the issue of CLASS certainly deserves a deeper dialogue that moves beyond the perceived mutually exclusive categories of culture and structure....
Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth
LAST week, the Pew Research Center published the astonishing finding that 37 percent of African-Americans polled felt that “blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race” because of a widening class divide. From Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps the most fundamental assumption in the history of the black community has been that Americans of African descent, the descendants of the slaves, either because of shared culture or shared oppression, constitute “a mighty race,” as Marcus Garvey often put it.
“By a ratio of 2 to 1,” the report says, “blacks say that the values of poor and middle-class blacks have grown more dissimilar over the past decade. In contrast, most blacks say that the values of blacks and whites have grown more alike.”
The message here is that it is time to examine the differences between black families on either side of the divide for clues about how to address an increasingly entrenched inequality. We can’t afford to wait any longer to address the causes of persistent poverty among most black families.
This class divide was predicted long ago, and nobody wanted to listen. At a conference marking the 40th anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous report on the problems of the black family, I asked the conservative scholar James Q. Wilson and the liberal scholar William Julius Wilson if ours was the generation presiding over an irreversible, self-perpetuating class divide within the African-American community.
“I have to believe that this is not the case,” the liberal Wilson responded with willed optimism. “Why go on with this work otherwise?” The conservative Wilson nodded. Yet, no one could imagine how to close the gap.
For the entire article click on the following link to the New York Times
Living Religion - with a Laugh
It has been well over one month since I last made a post to my blog... Much has transpired during this time that would typically be the type of material that I hope to engage and interrogate on this page, but for too many reasons I have chosen to abstain - to simply read rather than write. Nonetheless, I am thankful for the prodigious efforts of bloggers, much more faithful than I, who have continued to offer tremendous insights into a number of occurrences that have piqued my interest, including several obvious incidents:
- The Violent Break-up of Thomas Weeks and Juanita Bynum
- The building of a critical mass in support of the Jena Six
- The appearance of additional "nooses" not only in the South, but up north in such places as Hempstead's Police Headquarters (Long Island) and Columbia University's Teachers College
- The latest black morality tale in the release of Tyler Perry's most recent movie, "Why did I get married?"
- ANOTHER scandal connected to my undergraduate alma mater - Oral Roberts University. Oh, ORU...
- The debut of BET's new show "Exalted" - a behind the scenes look at some of America's most popular black clergy
The list could go on ad infinitum...
However, as I write today I am fresh off the heals of a wonderful retreat with a small group of friends - most of whom are pastors serving churches across the United States - that took place in a small coastal town on Massachusetts' North Shore. We have been meeting as a group for seven years now, and more than anything else the time serves for me as a chance to check in with a group of great colleagues and friends who are as ambitious about being good parents to their children, loving partners to their spouses, and supportive friends to, well, their friends, as they are in their professional lives. Over the weekend we read, prayed, cried, talked, ate and drank with each other. What almost always emerges most powerfully out of these incredibly honest exchanges - which is most important to me - are deep, tear-jerking belly laughs that are not always as easy to find every day. They serve to remind us that our lives need not always be as serious as we are prone to treating them and that, to paraphrase a bible verse "... laughter does the heart good, like medicine..."
In this spirit, I invite you to check out an essay by Hannah Rosin from the Book Review section of the October 14 New York Times. The book under discussion sounds something like "Borat in Bible-Drag" and I hope it will provide plenty of laughs as a balance to all the serious debates about what is up for grabs in the contemporary religious landscape. As I am reminded of a course I took during graduate school in which Cornel West pointed to the fact that not once does Christian scripture record Jesus laughing, just this once I encourage you to - forgive me - Do What Jesus Didn't Do:
-----------------------
By the Book
THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY
One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
By A. J. Jacobs.
Illustrated. 388 pp. Simon & Schuster. $25.
If I were to write this review while trying to live biblically, here are some of the rules I would have to follow:
Love thy neighbor. Jacobs is a fellow journalist and thus a neighbor of sorts. I would have to strive to be as generous as possible, and point out right at the outset that this book is an inspired idea and that Jacobs is alarmingly adept at keeping the joke alive for 365 days.
Thou shalt not covet. I would have to confess my jealousy that Jacobs already had a movie contract in place before the book had even been published, and that even though I have spent much more time around young-earth creationists than he has, he thought of a much funnier way to describe them (people who believe in an earth that's ''barely older than Gene Hackman'').
Thou shalt not bear false witness. I would have to admit that every once in a while, as he wrote about walking down some New York street in a shepherd's robe strumming his 10-string harp, or throwing small stones at a random suspected sinner, or eating crickets or burning myrrh each morning, I thought to myself, What's the point, really?
But having a point is slightly beside the point. Jacobs is a stunt journalist, although that term seems belittling to the monumental self-improvement projects he subjects himself to. In his last book, ''The Know-It-All,'' Jacobs read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in an attempt to make himself smarter than his showoff brother-in-law.
In ''The Year of Living Biblically,'' he attends to the soul, turning himself from a guy who is ''Jewish in the way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant'' into a follower of ''the ultimate biblical life.'' This means spending a year strictly following a typed list of more than 700 biblical rules, including the obscure (don't wear garments of mixed fibers, bind money to your hand, pay the wages of your workers every day) and the potentially awkward (don't touch your wife seven days after her ''discharge of blood,'' bathe after sex and don't tell lies, in their many variations).
Unlike Norah Vincent (who wrote a book about passing as a man) and Eddie Murphy (who made himself over as a white man in a classic ''Saturday Night Live'' skit), Jacobs does not take the undercover spy route. Instead he lives out the biblical high life in his usual New York surroundings, among all his wanton, gossiping, blaspheming journalist friends. The result is that he ends up sort of like Kramer on ''Seinfeld,'' a big weirdo who interrupts the normal patter of urban life. Lots of comic relief ensues. He accepts a hug from a homeless woman on the subway, who then accuses him of harassing her. He contemplates taking his cute nanny as his second wife. He grows a beard of ZZ Top-like proportions.
His efforts to obey the injunction against lying are an endless source of sit-com moments. He refuses to tell his son that an English muffin is a form of bagel, prompting a massive temper tantrum. He and his wife run into an old college acquaintance of hers at a restaurant. When the friend suggests they get their kids together sometime for a play date, he tells the friend he'll ''take a pass'' because he doesn't ''really want new friends right now.'' His wife, of course, wants to kill him.
The larger context for this book is that we live in age of flourishing biblical literalism, where a lot of Americans who don't live in New York still believe the Bible to be literally true. Jacobs does make dutiful visits to an Amish community, Jerry Falwell's church in Virginia and a new creationist museum in Kentucky. But his visits yield no tremendous insights about why the United States continues to be such a literal-minded nation, or what comforts people derive from refusing to read between the lines. They merely leave him feeling confused and depressed.
This is a New Testament nation, but most of the rules that make for good comedy are in the other book. So Jacobs's most lively interactions by far are not with red-state America but with his own people: Mr. Berkowitz, the guy who comes over to check for shatnez, or mixed fibers; or his Uncle Gil, the inspiration for Jacobs's project.
Gil is the person Jacobs fears he could become if he really took the project to heart. Gil, too, started out as a secular Jew on a spiritual mission. But then he got in too deep. He careered, Jacobs tells us, from acid head to Hindu to cult leader to born-again Christian to ultra-Orthodox Jew who gathers in the lost souls of Jerusalem. Jacobs has dinner with him, and leaves with the impression that Gil is ''subtly dangerous.''
Jacobs comes closest to transcendence in a crowd of Hasidic men dancing ecstatically all night. But otherwise he skirts around the edges. The truly Orthodox would say you can't do this alone, in your apartment, with your wife rolling her eyes. You need a community, not some stranger rabbis who drop by once in a while. Alone, Jacobs can ponder the big questions, but he usually turns them into a joke. (''If there is a God, why would he allow war, disease and my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Barker, who forced us to have a sugar-free bake sale?'')
Jacobs begins the book by saying that if his new self met his old at a coffee shop they would think each other ''delusional.'' I'm not sure he makes the case for that much of a transformation. But here and there, through some surprisingly poignant moments, he sees through to the other side, and he stumbles his way to a working definition of what it might mean to become a better person.
At the start of the year, his mind cleansing is yet more sit-com fodder: remove the magazine with Jessica Alba in a skintight bathing suit, the wedding album picture of the friend with cleavage, the Celestial Tea box showing the hot geisha. Stop self-Googling. Don't be jealous of Jonathan Safran Foer's speaking fees. Don't check your e-mail on the Sabbath.
But toward the end, he deepens. A friend e-mails him a YouTube clip of a newscaster who gets smacked in the head by a stage light and falls over. Jacobs can't bring himself to ''lol'' as his friends do. He finds it upsetting. He spends 20 minutes trying to track down the newscaster's e-mail address so he can ask if she's all right, while at the same time worrying that he's become some kind of ''overly virtuous sap.''
After a year of praying every day he becomes by no stretch a believer, but someone who at least accepts ''such a thing as sacredness.'' Sometimes he can even envision a God who might watch over him and care what happens. As a teenager he convinced himself that even when he was alone in his house, the girls he had a crush on could see him, so he listened to David Bowie and brushed his teeth in a ''rakishly nonchalant manner'' to prove he was worthy of their attention. This is how he experiences God now.
God as Mean Girl. It's not exactly biblical, but it's not nothing.
For all I know, Jacobs is already back to his old ways He never gives the impression that, God forbid, his soul is at stake, or anything else of much importance. Certainly his isn't the kind of transformation any real fundamentalist would accept. But for many of us who would never even try, walking with Jacobs is the closest we'll come to knowing what it feelslike to be born again.