Sometimes moments in the church year or the liturgy spark insights in scholars in attendance. Last year during Holy Week something clicked and I realized there is a major discrepancy between something in the Gospels on the one hand, and widely held views of the significance of Jesus’ death on the other. It seems appropriate to share it now as Holy Week 2023 draws near. At this time in the church’s calendar, many of us turn our thoughts to the... Read more
There is some poignant humor in a bit of satire from McSweeney’s depicting the prayer of an assistant professor to the “tenure gods” when going up for tenure. But I also feel the need to comment that I am part of a department that has very clear tenure and promotion guidelines, something that I only fully appreciated when I did a Wabash Center workshop for early career scholars many years ago and discovered that this was anything but commonplace. I... Read more
I almost ended up doing a blog interview with the filmmaker behind Once The Ice Melts but with the sabbatical I wasn’t able to dedicate the time to it that would have been necessary. For anyone who is interested in culture, climate change, ethnography, and/or seeing part of the planet that you never have before, the movie is worth watching. The ice melting in Greenland made the news not that long ago. Also relevant: On other topics I’ve blogged about recently... Read more
This opportunity came to my attention and it seemed appropriate to spread the word: Nova Forum Postdoctoral Fellowship in Science and Religion, 2023-2024 The Nova Forum for Catholic Thought is an initiative of the Roman Catholic community at the University of Southern California in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Our mission is to introduce students to the Catholic intellectual tradition and to share that tradition’s resources with secular universities. Nova Forum is currently a project sponsored by the USC Caruso... Read more
As I listened to Brian McLaren’s wonderful book Do I Stay Christian? a while back I had lots of thoughts. The book has prompted me to think and reflect not only about the book’s content itself but also related (and at times tangential) matters. One major theme in the book, even if not flagged as such, is shifting from being part of a conservative Christian minority in the context of a liberal secular society, to being a liberal inclusive minority in... Read more
Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity Unit Call for Proposals Environments and Landscapes For this session, we invite paper proposals that address how late ancient eastern traditions address the environment and landscapes, broadly conceived. Proposals might explore how texts or artifacts depict natural environments, human interactions with nature, and representations of landscapes, animals, and/or archeological sites. We encourage papers that employ diverse methodological frameworks such as insights from eco-criticism and/or environmental humanities. Contending with Scholarly Legacies: Orientalism in the study... Read more
A student in my class this semester, Sophie Schieve, had the following interaction with ChatGPT: why do people think mary magdalene was a prostitute The idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute is a long-standing, but incorrect, tradition in the Western Christian Church. This belief appears to have originated in the 6th or 7th century and is not based on any historical evidence. Instead, it seems to have arisen from a conflation of Mary Magdalene with several other women mentioned... Read more
The Eerdmans website now has my next book listed, which should be out sometime this year although I’m not sure on their precise schedule. Think of it as what it would be like if Pete Enns wrote an overview of the essential things to know about the New Testament, except instead of baseball references there are references to the TV show Friends. Here’s the information from the publisher’s website: The A to Z of the New Testament: Things Experts Know... Read more
One explanation someone offered for why ChatGPT imitated me so poorly (as shared in my recent post) was that it did not in fact have my words as part of its data set. I read an article on Gizmodo that suggested that this was unlikely to be the case. I decided to check, but was distracted by a pop-up window saying that the AI had been upgraded with better skills for verifying information. So I decided to ask it about... Read more
Imagine a world in which there are no church buildings. There are no formally organized online communities to sustain religious faith but only grassroots connections made by likeminded people. As a member of a religious minority, this might not be a speculative future scenario but real life. I have seen among the Mandaeans how young people in different parts of the world have connected online, even as their local Mandaean community might have fractured along lines of disagreement, dividing a... Read more
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