Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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In some cases, these media have extended revivalist careers like that of Billy

Graham,

who relied on television specials rather than shows. The next step, however, was taken by

televangelists like Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jack Van Impe, Jim

Swaggart, Robert Schuyler, Jerry Falwell and others, who found their melodious

preaching and fundamentalist answers attracted widespread audiences’ support. The

Bakers built their PTL (Praise the Lord) network into an empire, including a Christian

Heritage

theme park

before it crashed on charges of embezzlement and improprieties.

Robertson, with his 777 Club, used televangelism as a springboard for presidential

olitics, while Falwell has used Liberty College and his network to assert influence over

issues from

abortion

to homosexuality. The media presence of such figures, however,

does not equate to readership or support, as mass movements based in Christian media

have discovered.

By contrast,

African Americans

have tended to become better known in local

broadcasting, although Reverend “Ike” made a long career out of miracles, prayer-cloths

and fundraising over national radio. Catholics, too, have generally had a quieter role in

Christian media. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen showed a shrewd knowledge of television in the

1950s, but Catholic broadcasting has tended to be pious, local and focused on issues from

the Eucharist to shut-ins. The Evangelical World Network, however, made a star out o

the maternal nun Mother Angelica and raised the presence of conservative and

evangelical Catholicism on

cable

nationwide.

In 1998 Lowell Paxson’s PAX network launched a national network of Christian

content—generally tame asexual series like reruns of

Touched by an Angel

or family

game and variety shows rather than evangelists. In 1999 NBC acquired a substantial

interest in PAX. Beyond radio and television, Christian media tend to synthesize old and

new forms, which is apparent from venerable publishers like Zondervan or the Paulist

Press. Christian bookstores, Christian music stations, concerts and church events all insist

on Christian media and their message as alternatives to American corporate control even

as these corporations themselves have invested in Christian media.

Further reading

Bruce, S. (1990)

Pray Television,

London: Routledge.

Kintz, L. and Lesage, J. (eds) (1998)

Media, Culture and the Religious Right,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Peck, J. (1994)

Gods of Televangelism,

Cresskill: Hampton.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Christian music

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 226

Accounting for a small fraction of American music sales, Christian music exists at the

margins of the music business. For example, most religious albums are sold not at record

stores but through religious bookstores. Many artists find tension between the view o

their work as a religious ministry and the economic need to make profitable, popular

music. Like the secular country music industry the Christian music industry is based in

Nashville,

Tennessee, and is most popular in the Southern

Bible belt

states. Well-known

Christian music artists include Amy Grant, the group DC Talk and Michael W.Smith.

A.JOSEPH BORRELL

Christian Right

Debates among

Republican

presidential hopefuls in the 2000 campaign again

highlighted the presence of organized conservative Christians as both

lobbyists

and

voters in American governance. The generally

white

male leadership of militant

organizations like Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell (founder of the Moral Majority), Pat

Robertson (founder of the Christian Coalition) and Gary Bauer (founder of the Campaign

for Working Families) have an impact not only through churches and followers, but also

through

Christian media,

education and money; Robertson and Bauer have sought the

residential nomination in their own right. The popular base of these leaders and

latforms, which have become contested votes in elections for decades, are more

aradoxical. In a nation whose citizens generally define themselves as believers and

whose everyday culture is permeated by Christian traditions, some also identify

themselves as members of a beleaguered cultural minority while others vary with regard

to the public agenda of the Christian right.

As a political force, the Christian right has defined Christianity around sometimes

exclusive beliefs and practices. While these groups may coincide with

Roman Catholics

on specific issues like

abortion,

for example, there are serious differences on other

issues, including

capital punishment

and social welfare, as well as rhetoric that

identifies the Christian right with Protestant fundamentalism. While women constitute

primary agents in

family values

and the Christian household, spokespeople tend to be

male and public positions often insist on a subservient helpmate and domestic femininity

And, while the traditions of

African American

churches are deeply rooted, social

experiences and social agendas have also created a critical stance

vis-à-vis

the Christian

right as a cultural and political movement among this and other minority populations.

Moreover, the political agenda of the Christian right focuses on key issues that define

an interesting theological and political network within the broader possibilities o

Christian belief and practice. In addition to protection of the

family

and the unborn, other

recurrent themes include defending

marriage

against gay and

lesbian

claims,

school

prayer, tax

reform, national defense, a moral and patriotic foreign policy and educational

Entries A-Z 227

reform. The sexual scandals of the

Clinton

White House have provided vocal contrasts

with regard to public morals and personal behavior, although critics in all these areas

have harped upon the Christian need for tolerance and forgiveness and underscored the

foibles of highly personalized leaders. While the focus of debate, moreover, often centers

on national politics, grass-roots organizations have had a strong impact at the local level

(school boards)

and in states of the

Bible belt

Conservative Christians themselves prove more varied. Some will embrace cultural

issues but remain independent in areas of foreign policy or social welfare. Others adopt

more culturally separatist positions, rejecting the messages of sexuality consumption and

the glamour of

mass media

—in extreme cases, they have created white

supremacist/separatist factions. Still others separate religious beliefs and political action.

Yet others seek to impose their beliefs, especially at a local level, through insertion o

Christian teachings into school curricula, whether by posting the Ten Commandments in

classrooms or by fighting against the teaching of evolution (see

scientific creationism

Attacks on the Christian right, from various political perspectives, respond to all these

points—the actions and intolerance of individual leaders, the connections and

contradictions among agenda issues (why protect the unborn and yet kill criminals?) and,

especially the place of sectarian values in a pluralistic society based on the separation o

church and state. In an era where both Republican and

Democratic

presidential

candidates are born-again Christians, this crosscutting debate over religious culture,

political strategy and “American values” proves both heated and divisive.

Further reading

Barkun, M. (1994)

Religion and the Racist Right,

Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina.

Kintz, L. and Lesage, J. (eds) (1998)

Media, Culture and the Religious Right,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Lienesch, M. (1993)

Redeeming America,

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Rozell, M. and Wilcox, C. (eds) (1995)

God at the Grass Roots,

Lanham: Rowman and

Littlefield.

Wilcox, C. (1996)

Onward Christian Soldiers?,

Boulder: Westview.

GARY McDONOGH

Christian Scientists

American Christian denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). The

Church of Christ, Scientist combines biblical devotion with faith in the healing powers o

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 228

God through prayer. Expanding as the nation negotiated modernity at the turn of the

twentieth century its numbers peaked after the Second World War, with between 100,000

and 150,000 adherents worldwide. Known for imposing churches as well as many urban

reading rooms, the church has also published the influential national

newspaper

Christian Science Monitor

and made other forays into mass media.

Further reading

Entries A-Z 229

Bach, S. (1985)

Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the

Making of Heaven’s Gate,

New

York: William Morrow.

MELINDA SCHWENK

Cincinnati, Ohio

Industrial and commercial center on the Ohio River, Cincinnati has long been

characterized as a bastion of conservative

Republican

culture, with strong German, Irish

and Catholic institutions, as well as a Protestant elite epitomized in the Republican Taft

family. This conservatism, however, has been challenged by the city’s universities and

artists, including a famous debate over the obscenity of a 1989 Robert

Mapplethorpe

exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center. Cincinnati also hosts strong professional sports

traditions, including

football’s

Bengals and

baseball’s

Reds, whose owner, Marge

Schott, was censored for racist remarks. Hence the city of 345,818 people (metro

1,948,264), despite its placid, home-town image, entails continual complexities and

contradictions—indeed, shock

talk-show

host Jerry Springer was once its

mayor

GARY McDONOGH

circus

From its inception as entertainment during the Roman Empire, the circus has come to

represent broadly any form of extravaganza that includes trained animal acts and human

feats of strength and skill. Growing out of the decline of the sprawling, disreputable fairs

of the eighteenth century the modern circus’ most common venue is the three-ring “Big

Top,” an enormous tent with temporary stadium seating that travels from town to town by

rail or truck. Several different types of acts, such as trick horse riding, clowns and trapeze

artists, may run simultaneously. Ringling Brothers, combined with Barnum & Bailey, has

come to be the best-known traveling circus in the US. Circuses now face dilemmas from

restrictions on animals to corporate control.

JIM WATKINS

Cisneros, Sandra

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 230

b. 1954

The daughter of a Mexican American mother and Mexican father, Sandra Cisneros

grew up in poverty and spent much of her childhood moving back and forth between

Mexco City and

Chicago, IL

. Her writing reflects this state of migrancy with its apparent

longing for rootedness. Cisneros’ award-winning works, the novel

House on Mango

Street

(1983) and her book of poems,

My Wicked Wicked Ways

(1987), have made her a

leading figure in

Chicana

literature.

ROBERT GREGG

cities

The United States is extremely urban: 80 percent of all people live in metropolitan areas,

and over half of all citizens live in the forty metropolitan areas with a population of over

1 million. Cities have provided a “melting-pot” for the people, races, classes, genders and

identities which constitute contemporary America. Nonetheless, American practices and

values of urban living exist alongside centuries of anti-urban prejudice that identifies

cities as hostile zones. These attitudes have been built into imagery as well as the political

and economic structures of individual states and counties (which may control cities) and

the nation as a whole—an ongoing encounter between utopian “cities on a hill” and

laderunner

American city-regions have been torn apart by political, social and economic changes

met by contradictory efforts to reform and to escape. Post-Second World War decades

have left a crippling legacy of urban decay alongside old and new monuments of urban

power. Established industrial centers like

Philadelphia, PA

and

Detroit, MI

have

hemorrhaged jobs, production and population, although

New York,

the largest American

city is expanding as a global metropolis, as is

Los Angeles, CA

as a

Pacific Rim

capital.

Meanwhile, both

suburbs

and

Sunbelt

cities have exploded: in 1990

Houston

overtook

Philadelphia to become the nation’s fourth-largest city Yet new cities and metropolitan

areas, like older ones, face racial and class polarizations, new transnational populations

and shifting positions in world markets. Moreover,

white flight, crime,

drugs and

poverty must balance creative urban expression in

rap

, centers for gay politics, strong

ethnic voices and social movements from beatniks to

yuppies

History and process

Modern American urban strengths

and

dilemmas have taken shape through history.

Despite the economic and cultural centrality of early cities, many saw them as dangerous

reminders of European decadence in a nation of yeomen farmers and plantation

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households. By the industrial era, visions of cities as dank warrens for immigrant masses

(for whom they nonetheless offered other dreams) or glittering domains of vice

contrasted with traditional towns, fertile plains and open

frontiers

. Even reformers who

sought to save the city often saw it primarily as a problem. The city was a place o

paradox and conflict: while skyscrapers soared upwards in

Chicago, IL

and New York,

other residents huddled in crowded tenements, fought in crowded streets or escaped via

street cars, railroads and

automobiles

By the 1920s, cities held the majority of US citizens and formed nationwide webs o

production, transportation and

information,

while providing

healthcare, education,

entertainment and

mass media

. As external

immigration

was curtailed,

African

Americans

intensified their escape from southern farmlands, seeking work and equality

in northern cities. Cities were associated with dreams and opportunities, whether in

Hollywood, Harlem,

Greenwich Village

. New urbanites used their opportunities both

to join the mainstream and to explore difference—of race, gender, sexuality politics,

belief or lifestyle—an option that remains a subversive element of the city. The city thus

seemed both tempting and dangerous to democratic society (and

white

hegemony).

The Second World War deepened rather than resolved the questions of previous

decades. During the war, cities were magnets as production geared up after the

Depression and incorporated women and blacks in newly autonomous roles. Returning

veterans,

however, re-envisioned an America based on domestic piety and opportunity

symbolized in the car and the suburb. Tract developments like

Levittown

became homes

for new ex-urban generations, although linked by

family

work and culture to nearby

cities. Here many

baby boomers

grew up, placing demands on lands of

lawns

and

malls

while downtown became a place for Christmas displays,

zoos, museums

and ball games.

Crises and responses

Alongside new suburbanization, the historic congestion of cities provoked uneasiness.

The “urban crises” of the 1960s, arising from shifts of production, population and

resources, were often aggravated by the very plans to solve them like

urban renewal

and

the

War on Poverty

. Attempts to open cities to all citizens in schools, jobs and politics,

for example, led to confrontations among African Americans and Euro-Americans. This

spurred some to flee the city while others became frustrated at the slow pace of reforms:

riots scarred cities from Los Angeles to Detroit in the 1960s. Meanwhile, efforts to make

the city attractive to suburbanites through pedestrian malls, highway accessibility and

new public events and spaces cut through traditional

neighborhoods

and patterns o

ethnic and

inner-city

life.

Some cities tried to escape politics, replacing

mayors

with city managers or

rofessional planners, or consolidating city and county functions. Yet cities, suburbs and

rural areas competed for state and federal funds. Programs like the

Model Cities

campaign raised high expectations but were only incompletely funded and caught in

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 232

multiple bureaucracies. Nor could cheap and cosmetic reforms tackle the underlying

problems of

deindustrialization,

shifting global production and disappearing jobs.

With riots, flight and decay in inner-city neighborhoods, American cities seemed to

face dismal prospects in the 1980s, despite the nation’s ever-increasing urbanization. This

apparent paradox is explained by how Americans choose to live—

near

cities rather than

in them. Cities remain centers for commerce, culture, sports, media and education. Yet,

their populations risk polarization between the very poor and the rich, with

middle

classes

in enclaves or suburbs. Hence, urban institutions realized the utility of branches

outside their traditional venues—stores, multiplex cinemas, work

campuses

and new

stadiums have become as much a part of the suburban landscape as of American

downtowns. Second and third generation suburbanites might experience everyday life in

edge cities

or amidst clusters of malls, schools and work without ever going “to the city.”

Yet other trends also balance this centripetal consolidation. First, urban growth

continues to take new and creative forms as cities bring together new lifestyles and

developments in transportation, tourism and services. Houston and

Dallas

have oil and

computers,

Miami, FL

is a capital for Latin America,

Atlanta, GA

hosts strong media

and commercial centers and

Seattle

offers aircraft and computers. The search for new

opportunities also has renewed the potential of older cities, like New York’s Silicon

Alley or Philadelphia’s attempt to concentrate sophisticated medical services.

Second, the changing needs of older cities have demanded new directions in urban use

and value. Planners have created new urban public places and have re-thought urban life

in more suburban terms with individualized homes and more green space. Downtowns,

for example, may become specialized centers for culture, entertainment and meetings

among metropolitan residents, the hub of many smaller urban complexes. Recycling

historic buildings through preservation or even entire neighborhoods as urban service

centers also has created new urban foci, like Inner Harbor of

Baltimore, MD

. Other

cities have turned factories (Ghirardelli Square in

San Francisco, CA

), train stations

(Cincinnati),

post offices

(Washington, DC),

markets

and other monuments of past

urban life into new multipurpose attractions, although all stress consumption.

Residentially

gentrification

brings new people and investment into fixing up older urban

neighborhoods, from Philadelphia’s Society Hill to Nob Hill in San Francisco. These

rocesses, again, have created conflicts with those dispossessed by rising property values

or objecting to the destruction of living history in favor of a mythic/consumerist

appropriation of the past. Still, conflict is neither new or avoidable in cities, even as

people search for more just and incorporative development.

Finally since the 1970s, old and new cities have grown from both young, transient

American populations and new immigration from East and Southeast Asia, Latin

America and other nations. Koreatowns, African markets and

Latino

barrios have grown

or emerged anew in cities across the US. Twenty-somethings have created new spaces in

Boston

. Atlanta, GA and Los Angeles. Legal and illegal immigrants find safety and

familiarity in numbers, shared customs and

language,

although exploitation has been

evident within groups as well as in conflicts between them. Tensions between Koreans,

Entries A-Z 233

blacks and

Hispanics,

for example, flared in the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Ethnic

communities also have their own suburban flights, resulting in suburban Chinese cities

around Los Angeles, California or New York City’s new Chinatown in Flushing

(Queens).

Other grassroots trajectories towards urban revitalization include new integration

through public art and culture, including “alternative” facilities and sponsorship of artists

like New York’s

SoHo

. By contrast, the Castro Street area in San Francisco and New

York’s Greenwich Village have become centers of strongly self-conscious gay

communities. In still other cases, squatters’ movements have reclaimed abandoned

housing and neighborhoods have turned the empty lands of urban renewal into

community gardens.

In the new millennium, American cities evidently face problems as well as

opportunities. As their infrastructures age, cities become more expensive to maintain than

new suburban growth—despite the pollution, energy expenditures, social issues and time

intrinsic to such diffuse housing. Dualization concerns critics because of its vivid

inequalities as well as the expense this entails in education and

welfare

for a shrinking

tax base. New cities and suburbs also risk the planning problems of suburban sprawl,

economic concentration and overly rapid expansion that plagued their forebears. Neither

these divisions, nor the ravages of drugs, urban epidemics of tuberculosis and

AIDS,

nor

the growth of dependent welfare populations that challenge modern American cities, are

roducts of cities in isolation, nor can they be resolved there. Those who have sorted

themselves out into exclusive suburbs, paying less in the short run, are nevertheless still

responsible as national citizens in an urban state.

In fact, are there any real competitors to take the place of the city? Suburbs often lack

the sense of name, place and distinction that made New Yorkers proud enemies o

Philadelphians, Chicagoans or Angelenos (the anti-Christ). Critics also argue that the

class (and racial) division of suburbs also relinquishes the history of confrontation and

learning from difference through which the city has created and renewed the US itself.

The

Internet

also has been characterized as a new global city, complete with urban

functions of market, forum and arcade, but again this may be premature. New

technologies in the past raised similar concerns—telephones, movies and

television

were

all seen as potential destroyers of American urban sociability and the destructive impact

of automotive mobility posed a particular warning. Yet people often have shown

flexibility in combining innovation and community: the Internet manages multiple tasks,

opening up the city for sharing with friends and colleagues while having

coffee

and e-

mail at an urban café. This information highway, however, does not incorporate everyone

equally nor does it resolve dilemmas of class, race and gender.

The diversity of American cities then, represents both the history and potential of an

America of different cultures, people and opportunities, both conflicts and urban

creations. To juxtapose the dark visions of

Batman

(1989) or

Who Killed Vincent Chin?

(1988) with the sunny suburban homes of

(1982) or the peaceful rural retreats of

Golden Pond

(1991) and some

children’s literature

overstates both the values and

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 234

divisions of contemporary American culture. Suburbs and even rural areas are no longer

seen to be innocent of social and cultural problems, from domestic abuse to gangs to

Walmart. Meanwhile, New Year’s Eve in

Times Square,

presidential inaugurations and

protest marches, using Washington, DC as their stage, and the

Olympic Games

Atlanta and Los Angeles show how the urbanity of America is celebrated and built upon

for the future. Its contradictions and complexities, in fact, are part of the character to be

experienced individually in the cities that constitute the order of the pastoral nation.

Further reading

The American city has provoked elegies and polemics throughout its history Among

myriad texts in which these arguments might be pursued, consider:

Cisneros, H. (ed.) (1993)

Interwoven Destinies,

New York: W.W.Norton (the literature is

vast but provides an interesting overview, balancing M. Sorkin’s more critical 1992

collection).

Sorkin, M. (1992)

Variations on a Theme Park,

New York: Hill & Wang.

Jacobs, J. (1961)

The Death and Life of American Cities,

New York: Vintage (among

classic studies of the modern city, it has had an enduring power).

Malcolm X (1965)

The Autobiography of Malcolm X,

New York: Grove (many urban

works underscore problems, but as a personal choice this remains a compelling starting

point).

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

city hall

“You can’t fight city hall” is an American adage that expresses frustration with political

ower. Yet local government buildings also embody emblems and stories of the city. The

movie

Philadelphia

(1993) opens with an aerial view of City Hall—a proud Second

Empire-style building (1871–1901), replacing the older federalist one at Independence

Hall.

Philadelphia,

PA’s costly project sought to be the tallest building in America, but

fell into later disrepair with 1970s deindustrialization. Other edifices epitomize

nineteenth-century industrial America or later Beaux-Arts urban reform (St

Louis, MO,

San Francisco, CA

);

New York’s

1803–11 miniature palace proves distinctly

understated in a towering city. Fanciful revivals of Indian and Spanish motifs in the

1920s, the skyscraper

Los Angeles, CA

built to demarcate a new downtown (1926–8)

and

Buffalo’s

art deco tower (1929–32) illustrate subsequent visions of modernity A

third wave of city halls emerged with 1960s

urban renewal

and increased federal

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