Category: Community
Ethnographic Filmmaking and the Scientific Study of Religion
What happens when a social scientist uses a camera as a tool in ethnographic fieldwork? For a decade prior to pursuing graduate school, I worked as a composer, film editor and documentary filmmaker. W... Read More
Should Civil and Church Marriage be Separated?
Some Christians have responded to the court's recent ruling in favor of same-sex marriage by calling for Christians to totally separate 'civil' marriage from 'church' marriage. But this position is to... Read More
On Taking a Selfie with Pope Francis
Recently I attended an audience with Pope Francis with the International Council of Christians and Jews. It was my second audience, as I had also gained access to the Vatican’s elaborate reception r... Read More
Methodological Challenges to Measuring Transformation
When I set out on my dissertation research, my main question was whether and how interfaith dialogue functions to transform people. I had a hypothesis that people do interfaith dialogue because when d... Read More
Can We Get Real? Authentic Interfaith Truth-Telling & the Burning of Black Churches
“Why does it take a tragedy to bring us all together?” Rev. Terry McCray Hill of Bethel AME Church in Portland, Oregon asked this question the day after the Charleston massacre. We gathere... Read More
Same-Sex Marriage and Slippery Slopes
In his dissent to the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts offers a familiar 'slippery slope' argument. Slippery slope arguments offer a very narrow picture... Read More
Choice and Safety: Required Ingredients for Interfaith Progress
Classic “contact theory” predicts that diverse societies automatically bring about tolerance. I argued against this idea here when I discussed how proximity generally exacerbates the anxiety of di... Read More
Generalizations Are Never Defensible. Or Is This an Indefensible Generalization?
Figuring out how to talk about religion, especially in boundary crossing contexts, can be a struggle. Isn’t that part of what we are trying to do at State of Formation–figure out the how of in... Read More