Tag: Hope
Why I Keep Coming Back, or: Hooked
This past semester, I completed an ethnographic project on a Sacred Harp singing group in the Boston area, motivated by one central question: what is it about this old-timey style of music with its ar... Read More
Unrateable Terrors
I help teach a university course on The Holocaust in Historical Context. It is, it should be, impossible to remain unaffected by immersive study of Western Antisemitism and how religious, economic, po... Read More
Jesus and the Moneychangers in the Scrovegni Chapel
In the summertime I visited Padua and went to the Scrovegni Chapel, dated 1305. In the past 40 years the frescos have begun to crumble, and curators have researched atmospheric problems in order to co... Read More
Rosh HaShanah – The Day of Infinite Possibilities
Each year we have the opportunity read the text of our lives differently according to the vowels we supply. Rosh Hashanah invites us to gently and lovingly bring ourselves back to God, the eternal mot... Read More
Moving away from Jerry Springer: On Curiosity rather than Condemnation
“Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” the stranger asked me in the Reynolds Club café. Students from across the Chicago theological consortium gather at the Reynolds Club t... Read More
Living Soil
I was learning about compost. I’d never composted before, but a member of the church I serve informed me it was simple and that we should start a composting program at the church. I took him to ... Read More
Why Monty Python Makes for Good Religion: Reflections on Religion and Film, Part 3
(This is Part 3 of a 3-part series. See Part 1 and Part 2) OFFENSE Jesus was most recently portrayed in celluloid form by a Portuguese model with great hair. I’m talking about The Bible, a miniserie... Read More
Wandering Through the Desert: Sifting Through Our Past on our Way to Revelation
During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we cast our sins in to the desert, freeing ourselves from their oppressive burden, unshackling our hearts and minds so that we can begin the year anew. Six months l... Read More