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Lego Temples

Whenever it comes time to talk about the First or Second Temple (depending on whether it’s my Hebrew Scriptures or Christian Scriptures class) I invest my student by means of a class period playing with Lego. In fact, I up the ante by offering bonus points to whichever class ‘wins’ a competition where I take pictures of the temples, put them in a Google Form, and have our faculty and staff vote for the best.

In order to guide my students, I use recreations of these temples, usually produced by Faithlife, like this one:

Here are samples of the temples created this week (I give students about an hour to do this):

Super-tall Jesus featured!
Look’s like this semester’s winner in the making.
Pandering to faculty by adding them! Sometimes this works.

It’s a fun exercise. Faculty and staff have come to look forward to my email each semester where I have them vote. Obviously, most of my students love playing with Lego for an extended (block) class period. It’s a win-win!

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Innovation and Design and Religion?

Last year, my ‘Religion in the United States’ students had a simple semester project: find a lesser-known religious community in San Antonio, visit them, get to know them and learn about their religion, then do a presentation in class. I’m trying to add depth to this assignment in my second year teaching this class.

This year, my employer introduced ‘Innovation and Design’ (or ‘Design Thinking’; read ‘What is Design Innovation and Why You Need to Know’ if this is a new concept) curriculum to our school’s system. Admittedly, I was worried that this was a sign that we were putting more emphasis on STEM like so many other institutions who don’t care about the humanities. But I’ve decided that as a representative of the humanities I can either (A) fight STEM’s popularity or (B) prove that the humanities aren’t irrelevant but matter as much as STEM for our society and world.

Now, I’m not sure Innovation and Design (I&D, hereafter) is STEM, per se, but the labels are secondary to what I’m going to try to do. I’ve begun partnering with the faculty member that was hired to push our I&D identity and I’m beginning with last year’s semester project. Today, I met with my colleague and while we have a lot to work through (and get approved) it looks like my students will do something similar to what they did last year but (!) they’ll partner with I&D students so that our engagement with these communities is two-fold: (1) we get to know them, appreciate them, hear them, and share in their story while also (2) asking what project that particular community might like partner with us to address.

Now, what does this look like? Don’t know yet. But I’ll update you on this experiment-in-learning as Religious Studies meets I&D!

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Pre-knowledge and reading

This morning I’ve been reading, slowly, through Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies and I’m reminded of something: pre-knowledge impacts how you read. I can hear you say, ‘Duh!’, but here’s why this matters to me. Every year I wrestle with what type of reading to assign to my students in class and as homework. Every year I reform both sets of reading banking on the ‘less-is-more’ approach. In other words, I’d rather lower the page count and keep wrestling with ways to make the shorter reading more meaningful. My rationale is pretty simple: for my students much of what I teach them is brand new. Even when students take my Bible-related classes, they may come knowing basic stories and characters, but it’s rare that they think of reading the Bible in ways that is academic in nature (rather than liturgical, devotional, etc.). Since almost everything they are learning is brand new it would be a mistake to try to introduce a ton of content.

Why do I argue this? Well, because of experiences like the one I’m having today. I know almost nothing about AI other than what I’ve seen in YouTube videos or heard on podcasts. Every page is filled with a ton of new information. Since I lack pre-knowledge, this means that there are many times when I have to stop and look up things I don’t know. Now, while this makes for great learning, if I had to read large chunks of the book every day I wouldn’t be retaining much.

In fact, when I try to speed read through books like this (where I’m unfamiliar with the content) I catch my eyes glazing over and moving without purpose. I’ll have ‘read’ a paragraph without actually having read the paragraph. If I do this as a teacher with years of academic training and experience doing research…then I’m guessing my teenage students are doing it too. Therefore, my own experience reminds me that while it may be easy for me to read ten or twenty pages on religion or Biblical Literature because I’ve been swimming in these thought-worlds for years, for my students it’s all new, and therefore they need more time to digest what they’re reading.

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Religion according to the Supreme Court

According to the IRS, religion (or a ‘church’) has some mixture of attributes such as a ‘recognized creed and form of worship’, a ‘formal code of doctrine and discipline’, ‘literature of its own’, ‘regular religious services’, and so forth. This is a type of ‘family resemblance theory’ (see Andrew Henry’s video ‘What is Religion?’, starting about 3:40, for a good explanation) that understands religions as not having all the same characteristics but a limited range of shared characteristics.

More interesting is the chaotic reasoning of the Supreme Court. I was reminded of this while going over the topic with my ‘Religion in the United States’ students this week. The Freedom Forum Institute has a helpful summary of the various cases when the Court attempted to provide a working definition of religion titled ‘Has the Supreme Court Defined “Religion”?’ if you’d like more information but in gist it’s shifted from 1890 to 1972 as this list exemplifies:

  • ‘one’s views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will’ (‘Davis v. Beason’, 1890)
  • ‘a given belief that is sincere and meaningful occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God’ (‘United States v. Seeger’, 1965)
  • ‘beliefs’ that are ‘deeply held’ and vaguely related to ‘religion’ (see ‘Welsh v. United States’, 1971; ‘Thomas v. Review Board’, 1981)
Image via supreme court.gov.

In spite of (or because of?) these vague definitions that variously require some belief in a Creator God, to beliefs that are as meaningful to the person as belief in a Creator God is to others, to beliefs that are generally ‘religious’ in nature, the Supreme Court, the recent courts this decade has been very friendly to claims that someone’s First Amendment rights are being violated…at least when it concerns religion. For example:

  • American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019): a cross on public property maintained by tax dollar was allowed to stay
  • Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018): a baker’s choice to not make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage was upheld as a First Amendment right because of the baker’s religious objections to same-sex marriage
  • National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018): ‘a pro-life entity’ offering ‘pregnancy-related services’ won their case against California when California attempted to enforce a law where this ‘entity’ has to disclose that weren’t a licensed clinic when advising them regarding contraception and abortion
  • Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer (2017): a private religious preschool was allowed to receive state funds for a playground
  • Holts v. Hobbs (2015): A Muslim man was allowed to maintain a (one-half-inch) beard in prison in spite of the prison’s rules that people in the prison must be shaven
  • Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014): Hobby Lobby was able to opt-out of providing contraception to their employees as required by the Affordable Care Act
  • Town of Greece v. Galloway (2013): a city council was said to not be violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment although they opened many of their sessions with prayer from a Christian clergy

The exception may be Trump v. Hawaii (2018) when it was determined that Trump Administration didn’t intend a ‘Muslim ban’

Most of these cases have to do with actions which shows things have changed drastically from 1890’s ‘Davis v. Beason’ which determined that the First Amendment didn’t protect Latter-day Saints practicing bigamy or polygamy because ‘in the context of the First Amendment, “religion” refers primarily to “one’s views of his relations to his Creator” and “modes of worship” and is not intended to be “invoked as a protection against legislation for the punishment of acts inimical to the peace, good order, and morals of society.”‘

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Keeping It 101: The Podcast

Several days ago I shared lists of my favorite philosophy-related and Bible-related podcasts, but I haven’t gotten around to a list of religion-related podcasts. I’ll do that, eventually. In the meantime, I want to point out a new podcast that I think you’ll enjoy if (1) you’re interested in Religious Studies and (2) you like the podcast Ologies by Alie Ward. If that’s you, try Keeping It 101 by Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst.

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Pictures of my textual criticism activity

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’m experimenting with a new activity that is designed to teach my students the basics of textual criticism. Honestly, this year’s a bit of a test run. I haven’t built many lessons around the activity but I had an extra day in my calendar that allowed me to try something new. One class did the exercise yesterday and three more will do it today.

In this post, I want to share some pictures of my preparatory work so you can visualize it. Yesterday, I (1) printed the translations (see that there’s some diversity so the wording is different); (2) tore the edges; (3) went outside and rubbed the paper in the mud; (4) tore up the paper further and put them in baggies that I hid around my classroom area. Each group needed to find a baggie, reconstruct the paper the best they could, type out what they think the text says (I chose Mark 16 so some with have the longer ending and some the shorter), and then they had to compare and contrast their results. Here are the pictures:

Five different translations to simulate various manuscripts with their differences in wording, including one text in Spanish that represents a ‘Latin’ translation of a ‘Greek’ (English) text.
The initial damage.
Rubbed in mud.
Further damage!
Baggies to be hidden.

Finally, as a class, I wanted them to create their own standardized version from their different manuscripts but I ran out of time. In future versions of this class (Spring 2021!) I may add a class period prior to this exercise to talk more about the development of the Bible and then one afterward so we have time for them to create their standardized version.

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Making textual criticism fun! Hopefully.

Today and tomorrow I’m going to try something new. I want my students to have a basic idea of how they get their Bible but I want to do it in a way that is interesting and interactive (especially since Tuesday and Wednesday classes are our long ‘block’ periods of 1 hour 15/20 minutes rather than the normal 45 minute periods). Several years ago I heard of an activity that James D. De Young of Western Seminary used (I didn’t take his class) and I’m going to adopt and adapt some of his ideas.

First, in my activity English language translations will represent the Greek texts and Spanish will represent Latin. (Since my students don’t read Greek [some know Latin] I have to do it this way, obviously.) This way they can imagine the idea of a text’s mother language and then its secondary translation language.

Second, I’ll have them play the role of archaeologists. I’ll take six printed texts, cut them up, and put them in baggies that will be hidden near my classroom. I’ll create a map on the board so they know where to look.

Third, since the text will be damaged, they’ll need to ‘reconstruct’ it so it makes sense. This gives them a chance to play the role of papyrologist. I’ll make sure that some parts of some documents are missing completely so when it comes time to reconstruct, they’ll have to rely on other groups.

Fourth, not only will there be English and Spanish texts but the English text will be from mostly different English translations, but translations similar enough to mimic how close many ancient texts might be to one another. For example, I’ll be using the NRSV (2 x’s), RSV, and KJV. I’ll throw in one Spanish language text from the Dios Habla Hoy translation and then one tricky English paraphrase: The Message.

Finally, once each group has reconstructed their texts, they’ll have to debate over the version that they will produce as their official text.

Hopefully, in a oversimplified but interesting way, this will get them thinking about how they got their Bibles. If you’re interested in the document I’ll use to guide them, here it is:

How Do We Get Our Bible? Textual Criticism ExerciseDownload

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Things my students want to learn about American religion

A couple of days ago I shared a synthesis of the some sixty plus answers I received to the question ‘What do you want to learn about the New Testament?’ from my students taking that course. Today, I share the responses from the students taking my ‘Religion in the United States’ class. There’s about eighteen of them (far fewer students than my four blocks of New Testament). I asked them, ‘What do you want to learn about American religion?’ Here’s the collection:

  1. A few were interested in the diversity of religion in this country. One specifically wanted a percentage breakdown, Pew Forum-style.
  2. A couple mentioned being interested in the intersection between religion and politics.
  3. There’s some interest in the varying definitions of ‘religion’ held by many Americans. (This is the heart of the course, in my opinion.)
  4. By far (and it may have been a sort of snowball, Lemming-like thing since I was asking for students to say their answers aloud) my students were interested in fringe groups or ‘cults’. (Yes, I have a class dedicated to whether there’s a real difference between a ‘cult’ and a ‘religion’.) Specifically, a few named Scientology.
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Things my students want to learn about the New Testament

Since my classes last only a semester, I use the first day back from Winter/Christmas Break the same way I use the first day of school in August. I introduce myself to my students and ask them to introduce themselves to one another. Also, I give them a question and ask them to share their answer with the whole class. My question is simple: ‘What are you looking forward to learning about the New Testament?’ (I ask the same question to my ‘Religion in the United States’ students, but about ‘American religion’ rather than ‘the New Testament’. I’ll talk about this in a future post.) Their responses were interesting and worth sharing here. These are the cumulative responses of over sixty students:

  1. Many gave the obvious answer: Jesus. Many added specifics, like Jesus’ life, Jesus’ influence, his influence on religion, his impact on his contemporaries, his journeys, his ‘powers’, the narratives/stories about him, the geopolitical context of his day, why the Romans killed him, and there was a group who was fascinated by his ‘hidden years’ (i.e., teens, twenties).
  2. A couple felt like they knew a lot about Jesus, but want to know what else is discussed in the NT.
  3. Some were interested in how God is depicted in the NT, how God’s depiction in the NT is similar to or different from the OT, what God is like, how does God act, and what role does God play in morality in the NT.
  4. Several who took my Old Testament class last semester wanted to know how the New Testament connects to the Old.
  5. There were a few interested in the people around Jesus—Peter, James, John, Mary Magdalene, etc. Other said the same thing, but wanted to know more about these people as the ‘main characters’.
  6. Other interests included the miracles of the NT, the parables, the role of women in Jesus’ movement.
  7. There were a couple who cared mostly about the modern impact of the NT: why so many denominations? why do people have faith in Jesus now? how is Jesus depicted in movies? what moral principles can be derived from the NT?