Did you see this graphic making the rounds on the internet? As a scholar of religion I tend to think of the term “a religion” as naming — whether one agrees with classifying the world in this way or not — the members of a family often called “the world’s religions.” So, while Christianity is “a religion,” Methodism is not, for it is but a type of Christianity, as are Southern Baptists. But that’s not how this graphic works, for it concludes that there are 31 religions represented in the US House of Representatives (with the most dominant each getting their own color on the map), “including 26 different sects of Christianity.” Continue reading “Drawing Distinctions”
On Images
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“And You Shall Call His Name Jesus”
What’s in a name? Well apparently a whole lot according to one judge in Eastern, Tennessee, Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew, who not too long ago, ruled (while the parents were in court for not being able to agree on the child’s last name) that a 7-month old baby boy named Messiah, name be changed to “Martin,” arguing that only one person is deserving of such a name and “that one person is Jesus Christ.” The mother of the child, Jaleesa Martin, is appealing the decision. Continue reading ““And You Shall Call His Name Jesus””
On Imagination
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On the Spot with Craig Martin
“On the Spot” backs members of Culture on the Edge into a corner to talk about their backgrounds, their ongoing work, and what might be gained by an alternative understanding of how identity works.
Q: Craig, the shift that we’re all making at Culture on the Edge – from describing identities that either do or do not complement each other to studying the historically situated identification practices that make it possible to claim an identity – is not all that typical for scholars of religion. Do you agree? And if so, then what did you do your early work on and when (and why) did you start to make this theoretical shift?
A: I find that a lot of scholars claim that there is, of course, no essence to any religious or cultural tradition, but who then go on to talk as if there was. Continue reading “On the Spot with Craig Martin”
What’s Past is Past
Which way of picturing the past gets to count as anachronistic and which doesn’t?
For if we take the situated nature of human beings seriously — I mean really seriously, which necessitates that we include ourselves in the mix– then all talk of the past is anachronistic, right? Continue reading “What’s Past is Past”
On “Identity”
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Religion Before Religion
Listen to a January 2011 lecture (which eventually was published in The Sacred is the Profane), delivered at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, by Russell McCutcheon. Continue reading “Religion Before Religion”
On Power
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Islamophobia
The recent round of criticism of FOX News’s online interview of Reza Aslan has got me thinking a little more about this charge of Islamophobia that you often hear leveled by those on the political left — as in those who criticized any analysis of this episode that failed to out the FOX network (or other media personalities) as stirring the embers of hatred among some segments of the U.S. population of Muslims, either at home or abroad. While the bizarre questions posed to Aslan about not disclosing an identity that he in fact routinely discusses in the media — insinuating, it would seem, that some worldwide conspiracy would finally be evident if the American public knew that a Muslim author had written a book on Jesus?! — or the breath-taking conspiracy theories of some commentators on the political right (such as Glenn Beck, in action above) are quite troubling to me in a number of ways, I’m not so sure about this label of Islamophobia. Continue reading “Islamophobia”