Notes on philosophy, religion, theology, pedagogy, "and so on and so on"
I pray for Mr. Metaxas because something’s clearly wrong with him. Not only did he write a trash biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, now he’s tweeting this about Jesus:
This is why books like Joan E. Taylor’s What Did Jesus Look Like? are so important. Read my short reflection on the book.
I’ve been thinking about religion in my home state. I’ve noticed there’s not much by way of a broad overview of the religious history of the state, so I’ve been collecting resources. Here’s a timeline and a few links that I’ve gathered thus far:
Timeline: Religion in California
1767-1784: Junipero Serra in Spanish California
1769-1821: Spanish Colonial Period
1769: Founding of Mission San Diego de Alcalá (SD)
1776: Founding of Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores) (SF)
1849: The ‘Gold Rush’ begins
Sept. 9, 1850: California Statehood
1851: Temple Israel founded in Stockton (longest continuous Jewish community)
1852: Tin How (Tianhou) Temple founded in San Francisco (oldest Daoist temple?).
1857: Sze-Yap Temple founded in San Francisco (first Buddhist temple) (SF)
Oct. 9, 1890-Sep. 27, 1944: Aimee Semple McPherson (LA)
1889: Temple Beth Sholom founded in San Leandro (oldest standing synagogue)
1900: The ‘Old Temple’ founded in San Francisco (first Hindu temple) (SF)
Apr. 9, 1906-1915: The Azusa Street Revival (LA)
Apr. 18, 1906: 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Oct. 24, 1912: Gurdwara Sahib Stockton founded in Stockton (first Sikh temple)
March 31, 1927-April 23rd, 1993: Caesar Chavez
1947: Founding of Fuller Theological Seminary
1949: Billy Graham’s Los Angeles Crusade
1952: Islamic Center of Southern California established (oldest mosque in California?)
1962: Graduate Theological Union (GTU) founded in Berkeley
1964: The Council on Religion and the Homosexual (i.e. beginning of the California Gay Rights Movement) (SF)
1965: Founding of the John Coltrane Church (N.L. Baham III,The Coltrane Church) (SF)
July, 1965: Jim Jones moves The Peoples Temple to Redwood Valley, CA
Apr. 30, 1966: Founding of the Church of Satan by Anton LaVey (SF)
1968: The ‘Gold Base’ headquarters for the Church of Scientology founded in San Jacinto (LA)
February 15, 1968: Caesar Chavez begins his 25-day water-only fast in Delano
1970: Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple open buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles (SF) (LA)
March, 1997: Heaven’s Gate suicide (Heaven’s Gate’s website) (SD)
May 21st, 2011: Harold Camping’s predicted day for the return of Christ
Online Resources:
USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture
Clifton L. Holland’s ‘An Overview of Religion in Los Angeles from 1850 to 1930′
Articles:
Eldon G. Ernst, ‘The Emergence of California in American Religious Historiography’
Books:
Theology and California: Theological Reflections on California’s Culture
Journals:
Every time I teach the Book of Job (I do this to close my class on the Hebrew Bible), it inches closer and closer to being my favorite book of the Hebrew Bible (if not the Bible—Christian Bible—as a whole). Pete Enns has a wonderful discussion that I’d highly recommend as I continue to believe that the theology of the Book of Job is some of the best theology (by poking at bad theology). Listen here: Episode 133 – The Book of Job.
Many years ago, I heard N.T Wright and Anne Rice at The Forum at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. (Thankfully, there’s evidence of this session on another blog, because who would imagine Wright and Rice as a pairing.) If I remember correctly, I may have heard Brian McLaren there as well. This week I rediscovered The Forum via their podcast episodes (iTunes; Spotify). They have some great episodes available. I’ve listened to the interview with Dr. Grace Kao, Professor of Ethics at the Claremont School of Theology and co-director of the Center for Sexuality, Gender and Religion, talk with the Dean of Grace Cathedral, Malcolm Clemens Young, ‘about individualism and inequality, solidarity and the common good, and discerning a sense of the global common good in a time of crisis.’ Also, the one with Dr. Wendy Doniger, about Hinduism and her book (which I’ve been ready slowly for a while now), The Hindus: An Alternative History. Next up: Dr. Christine Carter on ‘the New Adolescence’ and Dr. Katherine Sonderegger on Christian Systematic Theology.
By the way, how does one get a job as Dean of a Cathedral? I think going to work at Grace Cathedral every day, with that view of San Francisco, and with a job to facilitate discussions like these, sounds like a dream!
My wife shared this video with me: How to Create an Interactive Bitmoji Classroom. Personally, I haven’t thought of a way to use this with my students, but others might be inspired. I did create an image though that I think really does a good job of capturing the back wall of my classroom.
I’m going to try to make a habit of writing a few short notes on articles I read that may be interesting to the five or six of you who frequent this blog. These are not reviews. More like recommendations with some key take-aways. I begin with Gale A. Yee’s “Thinking Intersectionally: Gender, Race, Class, and Etceteras of Our Discipline”, JBL 139.1 (2020): 7-26. This article is Yee’s 2019 Presidential Address ‘as the first Asian American and the first woman of color to be elected president of the Society of Biblical Literature’ (p. 7).
What’s the focus?
The focus is on the importance of intersectionality to the field of Biblical Studies. In short, we should recognize different forms of identity—’Race, class, gender, age, ability, nation, ethnicity, and similar categories of analysis’—and how they interact or intersect with one another. Yee applies this to both the discipline of Biblical Studies and the specific passage of 2 Kings 4.1-7.
What did I learn?
A lot. But here are some key takeaways:
Since my summer vacation has been a ‘staycation’ thanks to Covid-19 (and all the Texans who couldn’t be bothered to do the oh-so-difficult task of wearing a face mask in public), I went local for my vacation reading. And yes, you’re allowed to feel sad for me when you realize my ‘vacation’ reading is basically my ‘always’ reading: Religious Studies. I read Thomas S. Bremer’s Blessed with Tourists which may sound like a book only a local could enjoy but it’s much deeper that just a local history. Blessed with Tourists is a fascinating exploration of the intersection between religion—especially pilgrimage—and tourism and how there’s a very thin line between the two.
The book is definitely filled with local history. For people interested in the history of Texas, broadly speaking, or San Antonio, more specifically, Bremer provides an overview throughout. Chapter 1, ‘Destination San Antonio’ and Chapter 2, ‘Alamo City’, provide the reader with a brief history of the Indigenous people of south Texas and the colonial Spain as well as the emergence of Mexico and the ever southward creeping United States.
Chapter 3, ‘Preserving Precious Heritage’ introduces the readers to the major players and events that prevented the Missions from falling into complete disrepair. ‘Chapter 4, ‘Religion at the Fair’ narrates the role of the 1968 world’s fair ‘Hemisfair ’68’ that really put San Antonio (back) on the map, revitalizing tourism and the city’s economy, while contributing to the eventual sustaining of the Missions. As someone who has participated in the Interfaith community of modern San Antonio, it’s also fun to read about older forms of Interfaith cooperation in this city.
Chapter 5, ‘Inside the National Park’ examines the tricky ‘church-state’ relationship as the Roman Catholic Church and the National Park Service have had to work together to preserve what is not only ecclesial history but local south Texan history. Who is responsible for what? When does state care for the park risk supporting Christianity? These are important questions that this chapter addresses.
The short conclusion ‘Reburying the Past’ looks at the controversy around the digging up of the bones of Native Americans buried near Mission San Juan and how those bones were restored. These final words remind us that San Antonio is an intersection of cultures: Anglo and Latinx, Indigenous and Spanish, to name a couple.
If you’re interested in San Antonio’s history, or Texas’, this book is an important one. But this book is also relevant for thinking about cities like Rome, Mexico City, or Mecca, where pilgrimage and tourism mix.
I’m not vehemently against the label ‘World Religion’ but I was uncomfortable enough with it to petition our school to change the name of our comparative religions course from ‘World Religion’ to ‘Religion in Global Context’. For many, this may seem like petty semantics. I get that. But when you’re obsessed with your area of study, sometimes being petty is necessary for precision, and precision is necessary for educating. Also, I’m convinced I don’t want to just teach ‘World Religion’, as it has been traditionally understood, but religion—that sloppy ‘term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes’ which is not natural but instead a ‘a second-order generic concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that a concept such as “language” plays in linguistics or “culture” plays in anthropology’ (see Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, pp. 281-282 in Critical Terms for Religious Studies).
In other words, I want my students to wrestle with how we define ‘religion’, what makes something a ‘religion’, and why we care so much about differentiating ‘religion’ from say ‘culture’, ‘worldview’, ‘philosophy’, etc. Sure, there are pragmatic reasons for this separation, but there’s also been a long history of political reasons for doing so. I know my students don’t know those reasons, but I sensed that the structure of the class—a class that focused mostly on surveying the ‘Great Traditions’ of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and Daoism—lended itself toward being an information dump that undermined other important religions like Sikhism and Shinto while overgeneralizing the unity of say ‘Hinduism’ or ‘Christianity’ as if these are monolithic realities.
I could ramble on about this but the ‘Keeping It 101’ podcast has two episodes that are way more entertaining and insightful than what I can write here, so if you’re wondering about the problems with the label ‘World Religion’, let me invite you to listen to one or both of these episodes:
Next time, I’ll start sharing how I hope to morph my class away from just a survey of the ‘Great Traditions’ and more toward a foundational class for Religious Studies and philosophy of religion that will equip my students to think not only about the ‘Great Traditions’ but all the other traditions as well. And it won’t be as hurried because honestly, teaching a survey of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and then some years Confucianism and Daoism) is almost impossible to do in a single semester if you want to avoid just providing an ‘info dump’.
I’ve talked about my positive experiences teaching an online summer school class. Twice! Now, let me turn to some negatives.
In my previous post, I shared Sam Kary’s ten item list that is aimed to help teachers teach online. There were three things on his list I didn’t do:
5. Use Personalized Learning and Engagement Platforms
7. Use Creativity Apps for Authentic Learning Experiences
8. Publish Work to Foster Class Community
I’m not sure that I need to do these three things. I’ll be thinking about it. I worry regarding 5 and 7 that introducing yet another app or platform to students will be overwhelming. I don’t know that more and more and more technology is the answer. The GSuite is integrated. It covers all the basics.
As regards 8, well, I could open a Blogger blog, or I could ask them to do more assignments where they respond to questions in the Google Classroom Stream. I’ll be thinking on this.
What are some things that didn’t go well from my experience? Here’s a list:
If I think of more negatives, I’ll post about them. These are the ones that came to mind this morning. Again, online teaching was fun. I thought my class was a successful effort. I’m glad I had a chance to do a practice run, because as Texas spirals into this ongoing first wave of Covid-19, I’m not optimistic we’ll be in class for long this fall.
I’m listening to a lecture (‘Consuming Creatures: The Christian Ethics of Eating Animals) by David Clough through Facebook Live right now. He has mentioned two things that caught my attention. The first is an interpretation of Mark 1.13, which contains the statement that ‘He [Christ] was with the wild animals…’ Clough suggested that this refers to Isaiah 11.1 -9’s Peaceable Kingdom. I had never understood that line, and I’ll have to think about this more, but it’s a marvelous reading that would really impact how I hear Mark 1.14-15, where Jesus (following the arrest of John the Baptist) goes into Galilee ‘proclaiming the good news of God’ which contains the claim ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’
The second is the art series by Stanley Spencer, ‘Christ in the Wilderness’, which may be inspired by Mark 1.13. It’s a beautiful series. And according to Clough, Spencer depicts the animals mentioned in Jesus’ sermons, imagining that he encountered them in the wilderness. Here are some samples:
The blog of Brian LePort 