Editorial

by Charles P. Henderson

As I write, commentators continue to react to a very few, highly selected quotations, or rather, video clips, edited out of a few sermons delivered in some cases several years ago by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Some have suggested that the relationship between Senator Obama and Dr. Wright will be the critical turning point that ultimately changes the course of this year's presidential campaign, perhaps even factoring in the outcome of the general election. It is astonishing that the connection between religion and politics should be seen by so many as being characterized by such digital flotsam and jetsam, cast upon the seas of popular culture. Regular readers of CrossCur-rents will remember that we published, not a few sound bites, but an entire sermon of Dr. Wright in last summer's issue on race and religion. We published long before the current controversy erupted, and we did so because Dr. Wright is widely recognized as a religious leader of stature whose influence spans several decades. Anyone who seeks a better understanding of the complicated relationship between religion and race in the United States today, or even the broader connection between religion and public life, will want to understand his significance. That will require pushing far deeper than a few video clips on YouTube can take you.

We too believe that religion is a decisive factor in politics, but its influences are far broader and deeper than the pundits seem to understand. Just as Dr. Wright's life and ministry cannot be evaluated on the basis of a few comments chosen precisely because of their shock value, so the rich, nuanced, dynamic, and highly complex phenomenon we refer to for lack of a better word as "religion," cannot be understood by focusing either upon the glaring faults of a few people who happen to identify with a particular religion, or the generalities that purport to describe something that has such a strong purchase upon the human mind and heart.

In this, our first issue in our fifty-eighth year of publication, we continue the tradition of bringing to your attention those thinkers and writers who are capable of navigating these trouble waters, mindful of those "crosscurrents" that are sometimes so difficult to discern, let alone understand. Whether it is Gary Dorrien dissecting the life and work of Cornel West, Robert Wuthnow addressing to the challenges of religious pluralism, Oliva Espin reexamining Edith's Stein's paradoxical sainthood, or Judith Plaskow exploring the role of toilets in the struggle for social justice (yes, you read that correctly), in our sixth decade CrossCurrents, continues to explode aging paradigms and offer new lenses through which the major intersections of religion and culture can be more clearly seen.

With this issue the tradition continues under the auspices of Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. Wiley-Blackwell is the world's leading journal publisher, partnering with 665 academic and professional societies in doing so. The company puts out 850 journals and has over 6,000 books in print; it has more than 1,000 staff members located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Singapore, and Japan. We chose to partner with Wiley-Blackwell because we felt that they could provide us with a level of support and expertise consistent with our reputation as one of the most respected journals in the field of religion. With this partnership, we hope to expand the reach of CrossCurrents both nationally and globally, while insuring that it remains one of the premier sources of high-quality research and writing that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, and international.