Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator
Ah, the fantasy of “secure borders.” For millennia, economic pressures have forced people to move toward more prosperous lands. Nothing has ever stopped that flow, and nothing ever will.
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How Will We Teach About Sikhism After the Tragedy?
Something is deeply wrong when the burden remains exclusively on the community itself to conduct all of the outreach, to articulate its values and defend its contributions to the rest of society. Should the educational burden be entirely on the community? There is a deep isolation, not to mention exhaustion, in that “cultural tax”—especially after a tragedy. Do we as Americans simply leave the community to articulate itself to its neighbors? Do we ask them to teach us at the same time as they are burying their dead? Or are there ways that fellow travelers can participate in the educational process?
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Coming Out Twice: Sexuality and Gender in Islam
As scholar Scott Kugle knows well, to be both Muslim and gay means the possibility of having to “come out twice”—with the likely chance of encountering either homophobia or Islamophobia (or both), depending on the context.
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Why the World Needs Religious Studies
The first time I went to the American Academy of Religion conference it really got my hopes up. This was the fall of 2006 and, with only a summer in between, I’d just finished college and begun my first year of a PhD program in religious studies…
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Talking Religion at 30,000 Feet
I lie a lot on airplanes. Not in any way that should upset the TSA…
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Jeff Sharlet’s Weird Religion, in 13 Chapters
For Jeff Sharlet, the weird is out there: lost in the Wild West; hidden behind suburban fences and Hell Houses; on scratchy 1920s blues recordings and Mennonite funerals. His rare gift has been to make friends with the weird and almost make peace with it—which doesn’t mean he’s not skeptical.
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Spiritual But Not Religious? Come Talk to Me
Most Sundays I don’t go to church because, frankly put, it bores me; I am tired and church fails to provide any compelling reason to get out of my pajamas. (Were I living in a large, cosmopolitan city where churches with high liturgy, weekly Eucharist, beautiful architecture, and trained musicians abounded, my story might be quite different.) Although I like the people at church very much and I wish to support them in their hours of need, I am still unwilling to prioritize membership. I have an emotionally demanding job that takes up all of my time and psychic energy during the academic year, and I would honestly rather get work done in my off hours than act as an usher or sit on a church governing body.
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Studying Religion is Suddenly Popular
The premise that Religious Studies was a weak blend of esotericism and elitism prior to recent years—but is reviving through putting all that in the past—is wrong on factual grounds. More perniciously, if this analysis informs institutional strategies in an era of downsizing, it could be downright dangerous for the future of the discipline.
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Religion at Decade’s End
In which we take the long view, considering the place of religion in the twenty-first century so far. What stands out is our confusion—about religion, about the secular sphere, and about the future of both as embodying forms of political commitment capable of peaceable coexistence.
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Claude Lévi-Strauss: Meeting the Myth
The latest generation of religion scholars has studied Lévi-Strauss only to distance itself from his theories, and to challenge the myth of structuralism. Perhaps in doing so we have created a fable of our own.
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