I’ll start this post with another tidbit from my Sunday school class from a while back which I have been meaning to share. That particular Sunday witnessed us being “distracted by Satan.” Yes, I did use precisely that phrase. But it was the subject of Satan that grabbed my attention and that of the rest of the class away from the text that we had been talking about. We certainly weren’t blaming a supernatural force for the fact that we did... Read more
I had a draft post here for a while with something I hoped to return to, comparing how scripturalists/fundamentalists in religion interpret the sacred text, and how “originalists” interpret the Constitution. In the end, since most of those thoughts were from someone else who didn’t give me the OK to share what they wrote, and we never managed to get an article written, I scrapped the idea. But then more recently I had a conversation with someone on Instagram who... Read more
In an amazing blog post on the Yale University Press blog, Agustin Fuentes writes: We all believe. But we are not all religious. Belief is an evolved capacity that incorporates our neurobiology, our behavior, our cultures, our histories, our individual development and experiences. This enables humans to live in the here and now, in the moment, in the material world, and to simultaneously know that there is much more to existence than what we can see, feel, and hear. Belief is the... Read more
I’m exploring creating an open textbook on the Bible and music. One thing that I am excited about by the project is the prospect of having music embedded seamlessly into the textbook so that one can read and listen without having to leave the book. Digital platforms seem to have far more potential to offer innovative reading and learning experiences like this than educators and other authors have yet taken advantage of. There are, to be sure, some websites that... Read more
I’ve long thought there should be more musical settings of biblical texts in a jazz idiom, but my own expertise composing and writing in that idiom is so meager that I don’t feel able to contribute in as meaningful ways as I wish I could myself. So for now I’ll content myself with the output of others, such as Jeremy Walker, who has set seven of the Psalms in the Bible in a jazz idiom in an impressive way. Have... Read more
The Leisure Hive introduces a lot that is new into Doctor Who. The first is the new intro sequence with new music, similar to what would characterize Peter Davison era as well, marking the arrival of the 1980s. John Nathan Turner took the lead on the show as of this episode, and John Leeson returned as the voice of K-9. We saw a completely new scarf pattern for the first time in the Tom Baker era (even though the scarf... Read more
The current situation places the wellbeing not just of individuals but societies and the world at serious risk. It is a time when the widespread rejection of expertise and embrace of misinformation has reached, if you will, pandemic levels. And yet the economic impact of the literal pandemic can make this situation all the worse, as funding for public universities and the financial situation of private universities is jeopardized, and as students who wanted to study find themselves forced to... Read more
It always seems to be an interesting time to teach my course on China and the Islamic Middle East, one of several courses that students can take in the Global and Historical Studies part of the core curriculum at Butler University. Last semester there were protests in Hong Kong. This semester there was a virus that seems to have originated in Wuhan. Of course, we tend to focus on major players and regions in courses like these, and there will... Read more
A call for book proposals, including a range of possible types, on an interesting and timely topic: For the new De Gruyter Oldenbourg series Video Games and the Humanities we are inviting manuscript proposals (monographs, edited/co-authored volumes, reader). We encourage submissions from early career scholars and established researchers alike. They can be sent at any stage of a project, but ideally include one or two sample chapters and a detailed synopsis of the project. All titles in the series are peer reviewed and published... Read more
I am delighted that the Enoch Seminar, a forward-thinking organization by its very nature, was very quick to adjust to the uncertainty created by the pandemic and to organize an online meeting for the summer of 2020. As with all Enoch Seminar meetings, this is an event with invited papers and attendees. If you are an academic who works in a field related to the topic, however, you should feel free to reach out to one of the session organizers... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In