Category: Academic
A Call for Irony
“My entire existence is really the deepest irony.” Søren Kierkegaard “The value of irony, when it is deployed well, is that it opens up the possibility of hearing an internal call to goo... Read More
The Role of Religious Literacy in the Context of State Neutrality
This post is a summary of a presentation I gave at the Congress Conference 2014. A link to the presentation can be found here. Our argument is based on the following premises: Canada is becoming more ... Read More
Danger of a Single Story?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of narrative. After returning home from a trip to Kenya, the place of my birth, it struck me how many competing stories exist about “Africa.” Conr... Read More
The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition
In the United States, it’s common to hear frequent and impassioned references to the concept of ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture, ethics, or values. Any cursory review of American media wil... Read More
What is darkness? What is light?
Last Sunday, March 30, Dean of Duke Chapel Luke Powery preached a sermon titled “Seeing in the Dark.” In it he described the way Christian scriptures tend to associate darkness with struggle, blin... Read More
Streams Run Uphill
In an excellent new book, Streams Run Uphill: Conversations with Young Clergywomen of Color, Ruth-Aimée Belonni-Rosario writes about the promises and pitfalls of colonialism in her own spiritual jour... Read More
Sacred Metaphors and Creating Comfortable Conditions
I recently co-published an article at the Journal of Religion and Society titled “Revisiting Sacred Metaphors: A Religious Studies Pedagogical Response to the Rise of the Nones.” (The jour... Read More
Beyond a Corporate Model of Healthcare (Part I)
As a resident physician, I find it interesting that the most prominent public role models for medical humanism are all dead: Maimodedes, William Carlos Williams and Oliver Wendell Holmes come to mind ... Read More