Peter Manseau
Slate
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Past articles by Peter:
Two Years of Asking the Black Death to Explain Our Lives
And the op-eds keep coming. → Read More
How Photos Of Child Ghosts Comforted Grieving 19th-Century Parents
Among the creepiest of creepy nineteenth-century cultural artifacts, post-mortem photographs of children have all the awkwardness of staged moments of ... → Read More
Accidental Shootings in US Go Way Back
From America’s earliest days, we have been morbidly fascinated with accounts of accidental shootings—Melancholy Accidents they were often headlined, and they were never rare. → Read More
Amazing Grace: Obama Hits a Blue Note in Charleston
If Sunday morning at 11 o’clock is Christian America’s most segregated hour, then “Amazing Grace” might be its most segregated song. To be sure, it is one of very few pieces of music instantly recognized all over the United States, by people of all races and even of different faiths. Sing → Read More
What Happened to America's First Muslims?
Muslims were indeed here from the beginning, but the beliefs and practices they brought with them only rarely endured. Their experiences serve as a reminder that every faith woven into the fabric of our country has been made up of strands both light ... → Read More
Peter Manseau: The Muslims of early America
Peter Manseau: The Muslims of early AmericaIslam is part of our common history — a resilient faith of Arab immigrants in the late 19th century and in the 20th century of many African-Americans reclaiming it as their own. → Read More
A Forgotten History of Anti-Sikh Violence in the Early-20th-Century Pacific Northwest
When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal spoke last month of a Muslim “invasion” of the United States, he stood on sadly familiar ground in American history. The “Yellow Peril” fears of the late nineteenth century are well known, but few remember the “Dusky Peril” that soon followed—the anxiety caused by South... → Read More
Why This Lie? Brian Williams' Pulpit Fiction
The deafening whomp-whomp-whomp you may have heard when Brian Williams got caught in a lie last week was not the approach of a Black Hawk helicopter. It was the media’s schadenfreude machine roaring to life. Why would a man at the top of his field risk it all with unnecessary embellishments? Th → Read More
Islam is as American as...
In Monday's New York Times, I wrote a fairly innocuous sentence that was upsetting to some: "Islam is as American as the rodeo.” The comments I received would not surprise anyone who writes about religion (among the printable: "Why don’t you go see 'American Sniper → Read More
A Church With a Hole In Its Heart: An Excerpt from Peter Manseau’s “One Nation Under Gods”
In the dry red soil of Chimayo, New Mexico, there is a hole in the ground that some call holy. They intend no pun, no play on words. The hole is a serious matter; the locals who tend to it would no more joke about their humble opening in the earth than they would a hole in the head, or the heart. An arm’s length in diameter and just deep enough that the temperature seems to drop when you lean in… → Read More
How Did the Buddha Become a Medieval Saint?
When Saint Francis Xavier attempted to bring Christianity to Asia in the middle of the sixteenth century, he believed for a time that his mission was going quite well. With the help of a former samurai, whom he had converted at the start of his travels in Japan, he translated and memorized sections of the Gospels in order to explain himself to the locals. He told everyone he met that he was there… → Read More
The Quantified Soul
The developers of mindfulness apps believe technology can make us happier and healthier → Read More
How Anne Frank Turned Up At Occupy
Throughout his 32-minute set, Mangum returned more than once to the sad fate of the teenage diarist, and in doing so he created a moment that seemed at once a communal high point of the movement and a peculiarly ominous sing-along, Kumbaya mashed up with catastrophe. → Read More