Religious Studies

91�� religious studies professor says Twelver Shi’ism is open to discourse

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:09:22 +0000

91�� religious studies professor says Twelver Shi’ism is open to discourse Rachel Sauer Mon, 03/17/2025 - 09:09

Bradley Worrell

Associate Professor Aun Hasan Ali’s book about Islam’s School of Hillah explores the dynamics and formation of Twelver Shi’ism, arguing that the faith was open to diverse intellectual traditions

Twelver Shi’ism, the largest branch of Shi’ite Islam, tends to be viewed as fundamentally authoritarian, particularly as seen through the lens of the ideology of the Iranian government.

Aun Hasan Ali, associate professor in the 91�� Department of Religious Studies whose area of focus is on Islamic intellectual history, particularly pre-modern Twelver Shi’i traditions, says he believes that modern perceptions of the faith have been colored by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

“It was an unprecedented moment in a lot of ways, because for the first time in the history of Shi’ism, you had a theory of government where the jurist was the head of the state,” he says. “Traditionally, there was always a kind of separation between those two spheres.”

Aun Hasan Ali, 91�� associate professor of religious studies, argues that modern perceptions of Twelver Shi'ism have been colored by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

As a result, Ali says the idea took root among some in the West and also in the Muslim Sunni tradition that Shi’i clerics were free to make whatever political or religious decisions they pleased, because they were not bound by the history of tradition. However, that’s not an accurate portrayal of how jurists and other followers come to decisions in Twelver Shi’i religious tradition, he adds.

Instead, Ali makes the case that Twelver Shi’ism is better understood as a “discursive tradition,” which, as defined by noted cultural anthropologist Talal Asad, involves researching foundational Islamic texts, such as the Quran and the writings of exemplary historical Shi’i religious figures, for context. Ali says his own definition of discursive tradition is tied less to foundational texts and more to how noted Shi’i religious figures interpreted those texts, as that is how most followers of the faith first engage on religious topics.

“In the same way that someone addressing ethics in contemporary philosophy needs to address (Immanuel) Kant, for instance, I view that as a parameter of the conversation,” he explains. “Similarly, when it comes to Islamic tradition, there are important figures that one needs to address. So, in the simplest terms, a discursive tradition should be thought of as a conversation across time and space among experts.”

In contrast to the idea that scholars make decisions based solely upon their authority, Ali contends that thinking of the Twelver Shi’i faith as a discursive tradition means the faith continually remains open to discussion, debate, mediation and modification.

Ali’s ideas on discursive tradition were shaped in part by his PhD dissertation on the School of Hillah, a center of religious learning that played a major role in preserving and promoting Twelver Shi’i Islamic religious traditions, while also being open to integrating diverse intellectual traditions, during its formative years, from the 12th to 14th centuries. Ali’s revised dissertation was published in 2023 by I.B. Taurus as the book, The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shi’i Islamic Tradition, which is being translated into Arabic for wider distribution.

Recently, Ali spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about the importance of the School of Hillah in the formation of Twelver Shi’ism and its profound effect on the Shi’i faith today. His answers have been lightly edited and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Why does the School of Hillah take root in what is now southern Iraq?

Ali: Hillah becomes a center of scholarship for two reasons. One is that you have a (regional) Shi’i dynasty come to power that patronizes these scholars. The second reason is that you have the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, which pushes a lot of people looking to escape that devastation southward.

So, you end up with a concentration of scholars who are sought-after in the region. People travel to Hillah from the Levant, from Bahrain and from Iran. They travel there because they were seeking expert education, and the major figures of Hillah were the undisputed experts. (Students) came there to receive that kind of education in the same way that today somebody might come to CU seeking a world-class program in astrophysics. The same thing was happening in Hillah; they came there to learn from these masters.

With the Mongol invasion, sure, there’s devastation, but there are also opportunities. There are trade routes that enrich particular families in the area, and, as we all know, education requires money, so the influx of wealth also becomes a reason why they’re able to offer patronage to those scholars.

In The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shi’i Islamic Tradition, which is being translated into Arabic for wider distribution, author Aun Hasan Ali explores the School of Hillah, a center of religious learning that played a major role in preserving and promoting Twelver Shi’i Islamic religious traditions.

Question: Is the School of Hillah equivalent to what we would think of today as a university or maybe a seminary?

Ali: Certainly, it’s different in the sense that it’s not primarily organized in brick-and-mortar institutions. It’s more unstructured. Classes took place in the home of an individual, a prominent scholar.

It’s similar in the sense of curriculum. What I mean is that certain texts come to be understood as definitive of a tradition. And that’s part of the reason why Hillah is so important. A lot of the texts that we think of today as being definitive of Shi’i tradition were written in Hillah and continue to be studied today, so we can think of it in terms of there is, not uniformity, but an expectation that anybody who masters this tradition would read these texts. In that sense, it’s similar.

It’s also similar in the sense of structures of authority. Just as someone wishing to put forth a view in, let’s say, American jurisprudence, has to engage particular jurists; similarly, somebody wishing to put forward a view in Shi’i theology has to engage with the views of particular jurists. So, structures of authority can be similar in that way. The idea of a curriculum can be similar in that way, but it’s not organized as a single space in primarily brick-and-mortar institutions.

That was actually one of the points in the book. The organizing principle of the School of Hillah is these large families in which particular types of expertise is concentrated. So, one family may have an expertise in genealogy; another family may have an expertise in philosophy; while another family may have an expertise in law. These large families (in the community) structure the School of Hillah. And, of course, people intermarry between these families, so it becomes a network of intellectuals.

Question: For the students who completed their studies at Hillah, did they generally go on to become clerics and religious scholars?

Ali: If we look at the contemporary Twelver Shi’i tradition, it runs the full gamut. Before you have modern schools, people learn basic numeracy and literacy in religious institutions, which is the same as it was in the West.

Some of those people, after getting basic literacy and numeracy, go on to become merchants or preachers, for example. A smaller group will become teachers within the institution, and then a (small percentage) of those will become the next generation of masters of the tradition. Most people don’t reach that level, because it takes a long time—we’re talking maybe 20 years or more—to be considered competent within that tradition. It’s a very grueling process, and most people leave before they finish the entire process.

Question: Can you talk about how your idea of discursive tradition contrasts with the idea of jurists having the authority to make whatever decisions they want?

Ali: That’s exactly the idea I was pushing back against in the book—this kind of free-for-all idea about authority. That’s not to say authority isn’t important, or that jurists don’t exercise that kind of authority. But again, they do it within the horizons of possibility that are shaped by discursive tradition, as a conversation across space and time.

And yes, there’s a kind of push and pull where a really important figure can push a conversation forward, can expand at the horizons of possibility, but it’s not an arbitrary process. It’s a process that’s linked to the past at the same time that it looks ahead.

Question: Were there any major developments or contributions that came out of the School of Hillah that made a profound impact on Islam today?

Ali: Philosophy becoming integrated into theology is something that we can look to Hillah for, within the Shi’i world. That development takes place earlier within the Sunni world, but in the Shi’i world, Avicenna’s philosophy, or Avicenna’s metaphysics, comes to be integrated into Shi’i theology. In that time period, the integration of mysticism into Shi’ism is also something that happens in Hillah.

"There’s a kind of push and pull where a really important figure can push a conversation forward, can expand at the horizons of possibility, but it’s not an arbitrary process. It’s a process that’s linked to the past at the same time that it looks ahead."

When we think of (Islamic) law, that’s really one of the most important contributions that happens at Hillah, and you see the integration of advanced mathematics and advanced science into law. For example, in Islamic law, figuring out the direction of prayer from a distance, given the curvature of the earth is also a complicated thing, which leads to advanced discussions of science and mathematics integrated into the chapter on ritual prayer, for instance. Those would be a few examples.

At Hillah, you also have the production of these kinds of biographical dictionaries. So, when Muslims evaluate a piece of information, part of the way they evaluate it is by looking at who communicated that information. You can imagine that it would be very useful to have a kind of a biographical dictionary, where you could look up a particular individual and see what they were like. Were they known to be somebody who had scholarly expertise? Were they known to be somebody who was an upright person? Or were they known to be unscrupulous in the way that they narrated information? These kinds of biographical dictionaries, which facilitate legal discussions and conversations, were produced at Hillah.

Question: Despite the School of Hillah’s contributions to Islamic thought, you say there is not much scholarship about it. Why do you think that is?

Ali: I believe a lot of it has to do with the history of Islamic studies in the West—and that only in recent years has Shi’ism gotten the attention it deserved. Previously, scholars who studied Islam largely dealt with Sunni sources. And so, even when they talked about Shi’ism, they were talking about it through the lens of Sunni authors and Sunni sources.

This is despite the fact that Shi’ites—while making up somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the (Muslim) population—their contributions, intellectually, to Islamic tradition has been disproportionate.

Things started to change in the 1980s and 1990s, but even among scholars focused on Shi’ism, they have tended to focus on its origins, or trying to explain how the Iranian Revolution happened, so in both of those ways Hillah was ignored.

Question: Do you have any particular hopes for your book?

Ali: In general, the book has been received well. I think that people (in Islamic studies) recognize this was a crucial period in Shi’i religious history that hadn’t really been sketched out the way I did in the book.

In terms of contributing to a broader discussion, my hope is the book brings together theoretical conversations in religious studies with meticulous historical scholarship. In Islamic studies, it’s sometimes separated by people who do theoretically rigorous projects and people who do meticulous historical scholarship. I tried to do both, and I hope that the book contributes to bridging the gap between these two different approaches within Islamic studies.

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Associate Professor Aun Hasan Ali’s book about Islam’s School of Hillah explores the dynamics and formation of Twelver Shi’ism, arguing that the faith was open to diverse intellectual traditions.

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Loriliai Biernacki wins American Academy of Religion Book Award

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:46:32 +0000

Loriliai Biernacki wins American Academy of Religion Book Award Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/11/2024 - 13:46

The award jury called Biernacki’s 2023 book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, ‘both striking and original’

Loriliai Biernacki, professor of religious studies at the 91��, is one of this year’s winners of the American Academy of Religion Book Award (AAR).

The group’s annual award “recognizes new scholarly publications that make significant contributions to the study of religion,” according to the award announcement. Biernacki’s book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, published by Oxford University Press, won in the category of constructive-reflective studies, beating out five other finalists.

“Loriliai Biernacki makes a fascinating case for the contemporary relevance of Abhinavagupta’s 11th-century Indian philosophy,” the AAR jury said. “By analyzing wonder (camatkāra) as rooted in the material rather than in a cognitive faculty, The Matter of Wonder is both striking and original in its approach. The links she draws with viruses and AI in particular make this work pertinent and fresh.”

A faculty member at 91�� since 2000, Biernacki researches Hinduism, gender, New Materialism and the religion-science interface. She’s published dozens of book chapters and journal articles, as well as two other books: God's Body: Panentheism across the World's Religious Traditions and Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, the latter of which won the Kayden Award in 2008.

"As I was working on this book, reading these medieval Sanskrit authors, I found myself continually marveling at how prescient and cogent these medieval Indian thinkers were, so it felt very important to be able to connect us today to the thought of these writers so many centuries ago," Biernacki says. "Also, feel fortunate to be at the University of Colorado, which has been supportive of my work here."

Biernacki’s fellow recipients this year include Sinem Arcak Casale, Elizabeth O’Brien, Molly Farneth, Carlos Eire, Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst.

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The award jury called Biernacki’s 2023 book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, ‘both striking and original.’

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Balancing yoga traditions with modern wellness requires flexibility

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 20:28:37 +0000

Balancing yoga traditions with modern wellness requires flexibility Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/20/2024 - 14:28

Cody DeBos

91�� scholar Loriliai Biernacki reflects on the differences between ancient yoga and yoga as it’s practiced today during Yoga Awareness Month

As yoga enthusiasts across the country celebrate Yoga Awareness Month in September, it’s difficult to ignore how much the practice has evolved—especially in the West. Yoga, born as a spiritual and meditative practice rooted in centuries-old Indian traditions, has become a global phenomenon often centered on physical health and wellness.

A 2022 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that almost 17% of U.S. adults 18 or older had practiced yoga in the preceding 12 months, and about 57% of those who did incorporated meditation into their practice.

But even when it incorporates meditation and other mindfulness practices, how closely does modern yoga resemble the practice that was born millennia ago in India? Loriliai Biernacki, a 91�� professor of religious studies who teaches a course called Yoga: Ancient and Modern, notes that what is taught in studios now may bear varying degrees of resemblance to yoga’s origins.

Loriliai Biernacki, a 91�� professor of religious studies, notes that what is taught in studios now may bear varying degrees of resemblance to yoga’s origins.

Mental mastery to physical wellness

Yoga’s traditional roots go far beyond the stretches and poses seen in most local studios and fitness centers today. According to Biernacki, the earliest yoga practitioners focused on mental mastery and spiritual growth. Historical documents also point to beliefs that accomplished “yogis” could acquire magical powers to read another person’s mind or transform objects.

“The goals are essentially what we might think of as enlightenment,” Biernacki explains, “with the terms ‘mokṣha,’ ‘kaivalya,’ and ‘nirvāṇa,’” which are Sanskrit words that describe yoga’s founding ideals of liberation, detachment and karmic release.

In its original context, yoga emphasized learning to control the mind and finding peace rather than achieving physical fitness.

As described in the Sir Edward Arnold translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the yogi is one who:

Sequestered should he sit,
Steadfastly meditating, solitary,
His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away,
Quit of belongings. In a fair, still spot
Having his fixed abode,--not too much raised,
Nor yet too low,--let him abide, his goods
A cloth, a deerskin, and the Kusa-grass.
There, setting hard his mind upon The One,
Restraining heart and senses, silent, calm,
Let him accomplish Yoga, and achieve
Pureness of soul, holding immovable
Body and neck and head…

However, modern yoga, especially as practiced in the West, has shifted its priorities.

“Yoga practice today is very much focused on bodily health if one goes to a studio to practice yoga,” Biernacki notes. Poses, or āsanas, are now central to most yoga classes, and the practice is commonly associated with physical wellness, flexibility and relaxation.

“Āsana is not something we find in yoga as a practice in the early part of the first millennium, but by about the 12th century or so, we do begin to see an incursion of emphasis on a variety of different bodily postures in the practice of yoga,” Biernacki explains.

This shift is no accident. Commercialization has played a significant role in transforming yoga from a spiritual journey into a global wellness trend. Biernacki points to the influence of marketing and the rise of yoga as a booming industry as key factors driving this shift.

“Of course, commercialization has played an outsized role. A great resource on this score is Andrea Jain’s book on yoga transformation in the modern period, Selling Yoga,” she says.

While physical health is undoubtedly valuable, evolving goals raise the question of whether modern yoga has strayed too far from its roots. The answer may lie in how individuals choose to practice yoga and whether there is room to reconnect with its original mental and spiritual aspects, Biernacki says.

The Pashupati Seal, dated to about 2500 BCE and discovered in 1928 in the Mohenjo-daro area of what is now Pakistan, is considered one of the first yogic depictions. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Appropriation or evolution?

As yoga’s popularity has grown in the West, so too have discussions around cultural appropriation. Some question whether certain modern adaptations of yoga—those that have been commercialized or stripped of their spiritual components—disrespect the practice’s origins.

Biernacki says she believes the issue isn’t black and white: “It’s probably a mix of cultural appropriation and some modicum of paying homage to the insight and wisdom that we find in these traditions of yoga.”

On one hand, the commercialization of yoga can lead to a superficial understanding of a practice with centuries of spiritual depth, she says. Western yoga classes and studio branding may use terms like namaste or chakra without studying their spiritual significance.

On the other hand, Biernacki notes that some modern yoga instructors do attempt to preserve the roots of the practice. “I do find it interesting that there are a number of teachers who are, in fact, emphasizing connecting yoga with its literary roots in a way that does take the history of yoga seriously,” she says. “Especially popular is the classic text ‘Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra,’ which is keyed into yoga as a way of mastering the mind.”

Ultimately, the question of cultural appropriation depends on how individuals and studios approach the practice, Biernacki says. For some, yoga may be a mindful homage that embraces historical context while adapting to modern needs. For others, yoga may simply be a brand or a lifestyle with beautiful aesthetics.

Balancing act

As yoga continues to evolve, it’s unclear whether modern adaptations will dominate or if instructors and practitioners alike will seek a return to its traditional roots. Biernacki suggests that both trends will likely coexist.

“I suspect that traditional practices will probably be more popular, but there will be some modern adaptations,” she says.

This resurgence echoes a broader cultural shift towards mindfulness, as an ever-growing body of research supports the benefits of yoga for conditions ranging from depression to back pain to cancer.

The rise of interest in traditional practices could signal a desire to reconnect with yoga’s deeper spiritual roots. Biernacki points out that many instructors already strive to bring these philosophies into their practice and remind students that yoga is about more than just physical postures.

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91�� scholar Loriliai Biernacki reflects on the differences between ancient yoga and yoga as it’s practiced today during Yoga Awareness Month.

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The Exorcist maintains its terrifying staying power

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:46:38 +0000

The Exorcist maintains its terrifying staying power Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/21/2023 - 12:46

Bradley Worrell

The film, which turns 50 this December, continues to leave a mark on Christians and the larger American public as both a horror film and a story about the battle between good and evil

When attendees gathered last month for the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion—the largest professional association devoted to religious studies in North America—the event featured two different panel discussions related to the movie The Exorcist, which marks its 50-year anniversary this December.

That says something about both the movie’s popular appeal as well as the tremendous influence it has had on religious believers, says Deborah Whitehead, associate professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the 91��, whose focus includes religion and its intersection with American culture.

The Exorcist made $441 million worldwide following its Dec. 26, 1973, release and went on to receive 10 Academy Award nominations, a first for a horror movie. The movie’s influence was felt far beyond the box office, however.

Deborah Whitehead, associate professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at 91��, studies religion and its intersection with American culture.

“The film had a big cultural impact,” Whitehead says. “In particular, it was actually very significant in influencing evangelicals’ conceptions of evil and possession.”

Recently, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine spoke with Whitehead about what made the movie a blockbuster success upon its release, its themes of good versus evil and science versus faith and why the idea of demonic possession is much scarier than zombies or killer robots. Her answers were lightly edited for style and condensed.

Question: When The Exorcist was released in late 1973, it was a huge commercial success. Why do you think that is?

Whitehead: There are so many different angles to take on that. On the one hand, even though the director, William Friedkin, said he wasn’t making a horror movie, audiences and film scholars have classified it as a horror movie. I think that was part of its appeal. …

Another element is that Friedkin was a very famous director. He’s up in that pantheon with Francis Ford Coppola and others who are making films around this time that capture the uncertainty of the time period, of 1973. With Watergate and the Vietnam War, we’re losing faith in government and our government’s ability to make good decisions internationally and domestically. … I think there are all these ways in which the film captures the Zeitgeist of that time period.

Question: Some have pointed to the film’s underlying battle between good and evil. Do you think that played a factor as well in its appeal?

Whitehead: The religious element is the big appeal, absolutely. The film deals with these universal human questions about good versus evil and doubt versus faith.

It’s sort of science versus religion, too. The mom (in the movie) initially seeks help for her daughter by turning to science, and science fails her. They do all these really invasive, painful procedures … that really don’t help. So, she finally turns to religion out of desperation.

Of course, there’s the Catholic piece. The Catholic Church officially give the film a cautionary rating and a critical review. Protestant groups and leaders also condemned the film. But the studio and distributors viewed all of the negative publicity as a potential marketing strategy, in a kind of 'see the movie your church doesn’t want you to see' vein.

But in internal correspondence between the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is the national organization governing the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., the reaction was more nuanced. Some even felt that the film could spur people to have discussions about belief and about good and evil. And faith wins in the end, so I think there was some positive sense that maybe this will spur people to rediscover what’s important about religion in a secular age.

The Exorcist film was based on the bestselling 1971 novel by William Blatty, who also wrote the film's screenplay and was its producer.

Question: Any thoughts as to whether people of faith can find value in a film like The Exorcist?

Whitehead: I would think it’s mixed. Even the author of the book, William Blatty, was really upset at the final cut of the film, because Blatty was Roman Catholic, and he was writing the book about a priest who has a crisis of faith and then overcomes that crisis of faith at the end to sacrifice himself to save this young girl. So, for him, it was really a story about the affirmation of religious belief in an uncertain world.

But the way that the director cut the film actually leaves it with a lot more ambiguity. Friedkin was a non-religious Jewish director, and he famously told Blatty, 'I'm not doing a commercial for the Catholic Church.'

That’s not what the film was about for him. He was much more interested in these deeper questions of doubt and uncertainty.

Of course, there were segments of the Christian public in the United States who were extremely critical of the film—who felt that it wasn’t portraying Catholicism or Christianity correctly. And there was a subset of the evangelical population who felt the film was dangerous because of the demonic elements.

They would never watch it, or have their kids watch it, because demons are real, and you really can get possessed by playing with a Ouija board or any number of other seemingly innocuous things that kids and adults do. It confirms for them that the world is a very dangerous place—that it’s riddled with evil, and so you want to stay away from those things. You want to stay away from films, books, games or other activities that would involve any contact with evil.

Question An Exorcist film released in October, Exorcist: Believer, featured a Catholic priest, a Baptist minister and a non-traditional religious person attempting to exorcise two demon-possessed children. So, there is a multi-cultural element in this new version?

Whitehead: I haven’t seen the new film, I should say. But I understand from reading reviews that the new film makes exorcism a much more ecumenical affair. Rather than just being the province of the Roman Catholic Church, now we’ve got Protestant clergy involved, and I think an African American traditional religious healer as well.

That’s a really interesting shift. It is suggesting that exorcism and demon possession are sort of universal in all religions. That is a very different message than the first film, where exorcism is something that exclusively belongs to the province of the Roman Catholic Church.

I think that does reflect that maybe people are more inclined today to see all religions as more fundamentally similar to each other than they were in 1973.

Question: The new movie reportedly did fairly well at the box office. One might think this topic would be of less interest today, given that younger audiences are less religious than their predecessors?

Whitehead: The way I would phrase it is not a decline of belief, but a decline of religious affiliation over time in the U.S.

A version of the film's now-iconic movie poster, originally created by graphic designer Bill Gold. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Demographic data suggest that at least a third of all Americans are unaffiliated with a particular religious tradition, where ‘unaffiliation’ is broad enough to encompass both belief and belonging. It means that they might believe, but they don’t go to services anymore. Or it means that they may go to services, but they don’t consider themselves to belong to any one particular tradition. That number also includes atheist and agnostics and those who explicitly deny or equivocate on the question of belief. So, that’s a really big category that has increased a lot in the last 50 years.

But despite that data, we have other data which suggests that Americans are still really fascinated with the paranormal. They’re still fascinated with the idea of mystical experiences. Many Americans, including younger generations, say that they experience a sense of awe or wonder in relation to something, whether that’s nature or the cosmos or prayer.

So, what that suggests is that the capacity for belief in something that’s larger than the self or some set of forces that operate in a supernatural way outside of the realm of modern science is still there. It’s just that people aren’t looking for the answers or the framework to interpret or explain or understand those experiences in organized religion as much today as they were in the past.

Question: If you were to compare the ‘scare factor’ of demonic possession versus other movie horror tropes, like zombies or killer robots, how would they rank?

Whitehead: That’s a good question. My answer is that possession is way more terrifying than those (other) things because it’s an internal enemy.

If you’ve got zombies, killer robots, malevolent aliens, serial killers or whatever, they are entities that are outside you. But to think about an evil force that actually enters into your body and controls your mind and controls your body—that’s truly terrifying. There’s something about the idea of totally losing control of your body and your mind and giving it over to this evil force who can really command you to do whatever horrible things it wants. …

What can you do? What’s your recourse?

Question: There are reportedly two more Exorcist films in development, so it seems Hollywood believes this theme will continue to resonate with audiences?

Whitehead: Or it indicates that Hollywood is out of new ideas? (laughs) I mean, we’re so much into sequels. Oh, my gosh, all the reboots! It just seems to be really endemic in Hollywood right now.

I don’t know if it is a kind of nostalgia for what are now perceived as simpler times—even though at the time they weren’t perceived as simple. Or if it’s a lack of new ideas, or just trying to capitalize on past financial success with the hope of making more money. So, I’m not sure what the motivations are there. …

Part of the genius of the original film was: How do you sit with the ambiguity of doubt, of not having clear answers, of not knowing what to do when you are confronted with evil and suffering in the world? And the newer film doesn’t seem to be doing that. It doesn’t seem to have the same magic. It will be interesting to see if those new ones get made and what the response to them is. Or if it’s sort of like the Star Wars movies, which by the time we got to the last three, we’re all sick of it, right? We’re like, ‘Come on, stop; you’re ruining it.’

Top image: A still image of the priest in The Exorcist (Photo: Warner Bros.)

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The film, which turns 50 this December, continues to leave a mark on Christians and the larger American public as both a horror film and a story about the battle between good and evil.

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Expert explains why Mormon women embrace multi-level marketing

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 17:51:00 +0000

Expert explains why Mormon women embrace multi-level marketing Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/24/2023 - 11:51

Orla McGrath

Deborah Whitehead, associate professor of religious studies, explores connections between entrepreneurship, gender and religion among Mormons

It’s no accident that multi-level-marketing schemes are widely adopted in Mormon communities, which are tight-knit, entrepreneurial and well-trained, through missionary work, for sales.

That is the conclusion of Deborah Whitehead, associate professor of religious studies at the 91��, who has written an article recently published in the journal Mormon Studies Review that traces the links between “startup culture, multi-level marketing, Mormonism and entrepreneurship.

While Whitehead cites LuLaRoe, a billion-dollar multi-level marketing (or MLM) company launched in 2013 as a primary example of this business model, she also focuses on a general examination of the connections between Latter Day Saints (LDS) theology and the “self-starter” mindset closely associated with the multi-level-marketing business model.

Deborah Whitehead has been an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado since 2007.

The Federal Trade Commission defines multi-level marketing as “businesses that involve selling products to family and friends and recruiting other people to do the same.” With Utah’s high concentration of MLMs making it the “unofficial world capital of multi-level marketing,” Whitehead connects LDS church culture and self-reliance.

“Missionary training translates well into direct sales,” Whitehead writes, noting that missionaries perform door-to-door “sales” pitches and can withstand rejection. She also notes that LDS theology doesn’t demonize social media when used as a tool for “spreading the ‘good news’ about a product.”

“LDS communities tend to be tight-knit and close, so when somebody is passionate about a product, it will be easier to go into these circles and sell it,” Whitehead says. “This also applies to other kinds of media messaging or getting other people involved in your business.”

“One thing I found interesting about the women in LuLaRoe is that many wanted things not just for themselves, but also for their families. They wanted to be entrepreneurs, because they consider it part of their divinely ordained roles as wives and mothers to care for their children, and operating a business from your home enables them to achieve their financial goals while still being a stay-at-home mom,” Whitehead says, underscoring the link between theology, gender and entrepreneurship.

As an example, Whitehead details a moment from the childhood of DeAnne Stidham, one of the founders of LuLaRoe, in which Stidham’s mother returned from work and began throwing cash to her children while exclaiming, “Mom did this for you!”

This episode could be seen as both fulfilling these “divine roles,” but also a way to “justify a mother’s absence from her children while working outside of the home,” Whitehead writes, noting that remote MLM work is marketed as a solution to this problem.

While LuLaRoe showcased a particularly negative side of the monetization of religious values and entrepreneurship, Whitehead says it can be a positive thing, especially in reference to blogging: “Mormon women have used blogging to showcase their creative and practical skills, and many blogs about fashion, sewing, cooking and even resourceful food storage methods have become hugely popular and lucrative.”

While there can be a comfortable partnership between Mormonism and capitalism—it is not the only way to interpret these situations ... From another perspective, when understood correctly, this theology is supposed to keep capitalism in check—you work hard for yourself and your family, but you don’t exploit other people.”

“While there can be a comfortable partnership between Mormonism and capitalism—it is not the only way to interpret these situations,” Whitehead says. “From another perspective, when understood correctly, this theology is supposed to keep capitalism in check—you work hard for yourself and your family, but you don’t exploit other people.”

Whitehead’s interest in religious culture in the United States goes beyond startups and MLMs: “Over the last 12 years, I have developed a particular interest in religion, media and culture, and within that broad area I focus mainly on present-day U.S. religion and representations of gender,” Whitehead says.

“I have written pieces on evangelical women and mommy blogging, emergency food storage, and various other intersections of religion, gender and digital media.”

Meantime, Whitehead is working on another article about LuLaRoe, this time focusing on “the corporate feminism that is a large part of the company's rhetoric.” She is also working on a book about evangelical Christians and digital media, which is under contract with Routledge.

Deborah Whitehead, associate professor of religious studies, explores connections between entrepreneurship, gender and religion among Mormons.

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Simchat Torah: A Jewish holiday of reading, renewal and resilience

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 17:28:37 +0000

Simchat Torah: A Jewish holiday of reading, renewal and resilience Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/14/2022 - 11:28

Samuel L. Boyd

Simchat Torah is about more than beginning to read the Torah all over again. It’s about the need to reexamine what we think we know, over and over again.

Reading can cause many different emotions. For some people, beginning a new book produces excitement about where the narrative will take them. Then there’s the pleasure of the plot itself, watching how events unfold. Finally, there’s the sense of joy at the end: satisfaction, gratitude and anticipation at the prospect of beginning the journey of reading all over again.

The Jewish holiday known as Simchat Torah, which begins at sunset on Oct. 17, 2022, encompasses all these emotions. During the festival, Jews celebrate another year of reading and studying Torah: the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—which, according to Jewish tradition, were divinely revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai.

As a scholar of the Bible and the ancient Near East, I am struck by the ways in which Simchat Torah cultivates a sense of humility and resilience in the midst of profound joy.

Joy of Torah

Simchat Torah is Hebrew for “the joy of Torah.” It is a celebration, often accompanied by dancing and singing, to mark the completion of the annual reading of this section of the Bible. Each week of the year, congregations around the world read a particular portion of the Torah, called a parashah, in a specified order.

At the top of the page: Simchat Torah celebrations in Netanya, Israel, in 2013 (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images). Above: Jewish men in Tehran, Iran, dance during Simchat Torah as one holds the covered Torah scroll (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi).

On Simchat Torah, the scrolls that contain this literature are removed from the ark, the special place where they are kept at the front of the synagogue. While one or two scrolls are taken out during readings in the usual weekly service, Simchat Torah is one of the few times of year that all the scrolls are taken out of the ark.

Celebrants circle seven—or, in some traditions, three—times around the bimah, the stage where the scrolls are read during services, while holding these scrolls and dancing. This dancing, called hakafot in Hebrew, occurs both in the evening and the morning of Simchat Torah.

In some Jewish communities, people say they become the very “feet” of the scrolls, carrying them so the scrolls themselves can participate in the dancing and joy. The rejoicing can extend into the streets.

The last liturgical section for the year is read, from the Book of Deuteronomy. During the same service the first section of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is also read. In this fashion, Simchat Torah connects the ending of the reading cycle with the beginning of the new one.

In 2022, Simchat Torah will take place from sundown Oct. 17 to sunset Oct. 18 in most of the world, immediately after a holiday called Shemini Atzeret the day before. In Israel and for Reform Jews, however, both holidays are combined on the same day. In either case, the celebrations come on the heels of another weeklong festival called Sukkot, or the festival of booths, when Jews commemorate the ancient Israelites’ wanderings in the desert after fleeing slavery in Egypt.

Centuries of celebration

Unlike Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, the celebration of Simchat Torah does not appear in Bible.

Aspects of divinely ordained rejoicing and regular reading of the Torah do, however, appear in the book of Deuteronomy. For example, Deuteronomy 16 commands the Israelites to “rejoice” in the festival of booths. In Deuteronomy 31, Moses commands the priests to read the law, or Torah, to all Israel during Sukkot.

The origins of the celebration of Simchat Torah as known today are likely medieval. One of the most influential compilations of Jewish laws is called the “Shulchan Aruch,” written by a 16th-century Spanish rabbi named Joseph Karo. The overall features of the holiday, or “yom tov” in Hebrew, are set forth there.

Lifelong journey

For modern Jewish thinkers, the celebration of Simchat Torah embeds some of the most profound aspects of life, including themes of humility and strength even amid suffering and a troubled world.

Simchat Torah joyously marks the end of the annual cycle of readings from the Torah (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images).

Writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, for example, saw in Simchat Torah a reminder that we never know everything, and much less than we think we know. Even for a text as familiar as the Bible, an entire lifetime of reading the Torah week after week, year after year cannot begin to yield all the possible interpretations.

So, according to Wiesel, Simchat Torah is a time to take joy not only in completing the liturgical reading cycle, but in the reminder that we always need to look again, and be willing to begin again—even stories that we think we know so well.

As Wiesel observed, this aspect of Simchat Torah could transform a person and how that person lives with others. He famously once said that “people become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.” The celebration of Simchat Torah had profound significance, in Wiesel’s view, since the very act of reading could make a better world.

Likewise, the biblical scholar Baruch Schwartz calls attention to a prayer spoken during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the High Holy Days, which take place weeks before Simchat Torah. The words of the prayer speak the desire for “the discernment and understanding needed in order to comprehend the Torah’s deepest mysteries.” For Schwartz, this prayer anticipates the deeper meanings of Simchat Torah, and prepares celebrants for them.

There is joy in ending and once again beginning the Torah because of its many puzzles. Bringing intellectual energy to interpreting these texts opens windows into the seemingly unending dimensions of the Bible—and also into what it means to be human. Simchat Torah underscores the importance of revisiting the familiar, and, in so doing, cultivates humility.

Reading the Bible in a world gone wrong

The biblical command to have “joy” in reading the Torah also lays a framework for resilience in the midst of troubled times. Wiesel, himself born on Simchat Torah in 1928, recounted witnessing Jews who had no Torah scrolls and lived amid unthinkable horror in a concentration camp. Yet, during Simchat Torah, one adult picked up a child and delightedly danced with him as though he were a Torah scroll.

Simchat Torah represents renewals in endings—almost as though Jewish communities are receiving the revelation from Moses again for the first time, starting with the book of Genesis.

Such a cycle is not redundant, but instead can promote resilience. As Wiesel notes, the biblical command to “rejoice” becomes the means through which tragedy can be endured—helping to explain Simchat Torah’s power and vitality today.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Simchat Torah is about more than beginning to read the Torah all over again. It’s about the need to reexamine what we think we know, over and over again.

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There is no one ‘religious view’ on abortion: A scholar of religion, gender and sexuality explains

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:22:53 +0000

There is no one ‘religious view’ on abortion: A scholar of religion, gender and sexuality explains Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/24/2022 - 08:22

Samira Mehta

Views on abortion differ not only among major religious traditions, but within each one

The Catholic Church’s official line on abortion, and even on any artificial birth control, is well known: Don’t do it.

Surveys of how American Catholics live their lives, though, tell a different story.

The vast majority of Catholic women have used contraceptives, despite the church’s ban. Fifty-six percent of U.S. Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, whether or not they believe they would ever seek one. One in four Americans who have had abortions are Catholic, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for reproductive health.

It’s a clear reminder of the complex relationship between any religious tradition’s teachings and how people actually live out their beliefs. With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that protects abortion rights nationwide, religious attitudes toward a woman’s right to end a pregnancy are in the spotlight. But even within one faith, there is no one religious position toward reproductive rights – let alone among different faiths.

People opposed to abortion gather at the Washington Monument during the 2017 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/AFP via Getty Images).

Christianity and conscience

As a scholar of gender and religion, I research how religious traditions shape people’s understandings of contraception and abortion.

When it comes to official stances on abortion, religions’ positions are tied to different approaches to some key theological concepts. For instance, for several religions, a key issue in abortion rights is “ensoulment,” the moment at which the soul is believed to enter the body – that is, when a fetus becomes human.

The catch is that traditions place ensoulment at different moments and give it various degrees of importance. Catholic theologians place ensoulment at the moment of conception, which is why the official position of the Catholic Church is that abortion is never permitted. From the moment the sperm meets the egg, in Catholic theology, a human exists, and you cannot kill a human, regardless of how it came to exist. Nor can you choose between two human lives, which is why the church opposes aborting a fetus to save the life of the pregnant person.

As in any faith, not all Catholics feel compelled to follow the church teachings in all cases. And regardless of whether someone thinks they would ever seek an abortion, they may believe it should be a legal right. Fifty-seven percent of U.S. Catholics say abortion is morally wrong, but 68% still support Roe v. Wade, while only 14% believe that abortion should never be legal.

Some Catholics advocate for abortion access not despite but because of their dedication to Catholic teachings. The organization Catholics for Choice describes its work as rooted in Catholicism’s emphasis on “social justice, human dignity, and the primacy of conscience” – people making their own decisions out of deep moral conviction.

Other Christians also say faith shapes their support for reproductive rights. Protestant clergy, along with their Jewish colleagues, were instrumental in helping women to secure abortions before Roe, through a network called the Clergy Consultation Service. These pro-choice clergy were motivated by a range of concerns, including desperation that they saw among women in their congregations, and theological commitments to social justice. Today, the organization still exists as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

There are myriad Protestant opinions on abortion. The most conservative equate it with murder, and therefore oppose any exemptions. The most liberal Protestant voices advocate for a broad platform of reproductive justice, calling on believers to “Trust Women.”

Who is a ‘person’?

Protesters listen during the 2022 Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).

Muslims scholars and clerics, too, have a range of positions on abortion. Some believe abortion is never permitted, and many allow it until ensoulment, which is often placed at 120 days’ gestation, just shy of 18 weeks. In general, many Muslim leaders permit abortion to save the life of the mother, since classical Islamic law sees legal personhood as beginning at birth – though while many Muslims may seek out their religious leaders for guidance about or assistance with abortion, many do not.

Jewish tradition has a great deal of debate about when ensoulment occurs: Various rabbinic texts place it at or even before conception, and many place it at birth, but ensoulment is not as key as the legal status of the fetus under Jewish law. Generally, it is not considered to be a person. For instance, the Talmud – the main source of Jewish law – refers to the fetus as part of the mother’s body. The biblical Book of Exodus notes that if a pregnant woman is attacked and then miscarries, the attacker owes a fine but is not guilty of murder.

In other words, Jewish law protects a fetus as a “potential person,” but does not view it as holding the same full personhood as its mother. Jewish clergy generally agree that abortion is not only permitted, but mandated, to save the life of the mother, because potential life must be sacrificed to save existing life – even during labor, as long as the head has not emerged from the birth canal.

Where Jewish law on abortion gets complicated is when the mother’s life is not at risk. For example, contemporary Jewish leaders debate whether abortion is permitted if the mother’s mental health will be damaged, if genetic testing shows evidence of a nonfatal disability or if there are other compelling concerns, such as that the family’s resources would be strained too much to care for their existing children.

American Jews have generally supported legal abortion with very few restrictions, seeing it as a religious freedom issue – and a question of life versus potential life. Eighty-three percent support a woman’s right to an abortion, and while many might turn to their clergy for support in seeking an abortion, many would not see a need to.

A different view of life

As much diversity as exists in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, there is likely even more in Hinduism, which has a range of texts, deities and worldviews. Many scholars argue that the fact so many different traditions are all lumped together under the umbrella term “Hindusim” has more to do with British colonialism than anything else.

Most Hindus believe in reincarnation, which means that while one may enter bodies with birth and leave with death, life itself does not, precisely, begin or end. Rather, any given moment in a human body is seen as part of an unending cycle of life – making the question of when life begins quite different than in Abrahamic religions.

Jizo statues sit along the Daiya River and Jiunji Temple in Nikko, Japan. (Photo by John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images).

Some bioethicists see Hinduism as essentially pro-life, permitting abortion only to save the life of the mother. Looking at what people do, though, rather than what a tradition’s sacred texts say, abortion is common in Hindu-majority India, especially of female fetuses.

In the United States, there are immigrant Hindu communities, Asian American Hindu communities, and people who have converted to Hinduism who bring this diversity to their approaches to abortion. Overall, however 68% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Compassionate choices

Buddhists also have varied views on abortion. The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice notes: “Buddhism, like the other religions of the world, faces the fact that abortion may sometimes be the best decision and a truly moral choice. That does not mean there is nothing troubling about abortion, but it means that Buddhists may understand that reproductive decisions are part of the moral complexity of life.”

Japanese Buddhism in particular can be seen as offering a “middle way” between pro-choice and pro-life positions. While many Buddhists see life as beginning at conception, abortion is common and addressed through rituals involving Jizo, one of the enlightened figures Buddhists call bodhisattvas, who is believed to take care of aborted and miscarried fetuses.

In the end, the Buddhist approach to abortion emphasizes that abortion is a complex moral decision that should be made with an eye toward compassion.

We tend to think of the religious response to abortion as one of opposition, but the reality is much more complicated. Formal religious teachings on abortion are complex and divided – and official positions aside, data shows that over and over, the majority of Americans, religious or not, support abortion.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Views on abortion differ not only among major religious traditions, but within each one.

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Students opening doors

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 22:15:56 +0000

Students opening doors Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/22/2022 - 16:15

Tim Grassley

Meet three 91�� students who are creating supportive, stronger communities by improving understanding, accessibility

The COVID-19 pandemic demanded that 91�� students change the way they interact. They took classes at home and had limited student group contact. On-campus students followed tight schedules to reduce the virus’ spread.

While the pandemic’s restrictions were isolating, students sought stronger, inclusive communities and, in many cases, used creative means to generate understanding and connection with others in need.

What follows are three profiles of 91�� students who strive to make their communities stronger: an anthropology PhD student who researches the experiences of people with blindness, a philosophy major who uses a website and social media to connect with fellow cancer survivors, and a graduate student in religious studies who encourages students to expand what they believe they can accomplish.

When people give you grace, in the end it motivates you.”

Blind grad student works to improve 91��’s vision

Kevin Darcy grew up in blue collar, manufacturing communities in Massachusetts and Florida that valued independence and masculinity. In his junior year of high school, he lost his vision.

“For a long time, like 15 years, I had a lot of perceived and actual stigma that I internalized, and I refused to accept the idea that I was blind,” says Darcy, now a PhD student in anthropology at 91��. “The way I think about it now is that, when I lost my vision, I was afraid that the image I have about myself wouldn't align with the image that other people create about me when they see me.”

At age 27, Darcy, a first-generation student, began attending Metropolitan State University in Denver and studied biological anthropology. While on a research trip to Peru his senior year, he faced the fact that his blindness would limit his ability to study historical health and disease. But that moment also opened another career path.

“I realized two things: If I stayed in biological anthropology, someone is always going to have to look over my shoulder and confirm my analysis,” Darcy says. “But I also realized that living people had a lot more to say, and they’re more fun to hang out with.”

He enrolled in a medical anthropology program at CU Denver, where he earned his master’s in anthropology. His research focused on health and the environment, as well as immigration and food systems. In 2015, Darcy enrolled in 91��’s PhD program in anthropology, intending to continue studying immigration, food and the environment.

Early in his studies, he felt frustrated by implicit bias.

Kevin Darcy is a PhD student in anthropology.

“I think I was feeling the discriminatory experiences more because, as a first-generation student, I was already feeling like an outsider,” Darcy says. “Everyone seemed to know what to do as a graduate student except me.”

In 2017, Darcy nearly left the university because he had experienced several acts of overt discrimination. He was shocked to be publicly singled out for his disability. However, when he expressed his intent to leave, a faculty member and his Digital Accessibility Office supervisor offered him an opportunity to make 91�� more inclusive.

In his research for the Digital Accessibility Office, Darcy discovered an outsized reliance by faculty and staff on students with disabilities, whom they expected to function as experts in particular technologies.

“The assumption behind this is that people have been blind for a long enough period to learn how to use the technology, and that they have the socio-economic resources to purchase it and get trained on it,” Darcy says. “There is a push for people with disabilities to advocate for themselves, which is great, but oftentimes that advocacy shifts to individual responsibility.”

In anthropology, a faculty member offered to become his dissertation advisor, and Darcy began to focus his thesis on market-oriented incentives in universities, like academic tenure and intellectual property, which solidify a hierarchy in which certain groups are given preference at the expense of people with disabilities, he says.

Darcy is still gathering data, but his early findings suggest a need to improve communication about disability and strengthen training for faculty, students and staff to support students with disabilities so they finish their degrees. While there are clusters of disability experts across campus, these groups have not effectively shared their information or found ways to deliver training, Darcy contends.

“I just don't want the knowledge that I produce to sit up in the ivory tower,” Darcy says. “I want to make a positive impact for the people I do research with. Hopefully, I can make some changes.”

Student leverages website and social media to support fellow cancer survivors

In 2020, Aspen Heidekrueger launched a blog documenting her experience surviving leukemia at age 12 and the challenging aftermath. Now, she seeks to bring people with chronic illness together through social media and her website.

Heidekrueger’s blog, called Complicated Cancer, focuses on continuing health issues related to her chemotherapy, which lasted two-and-a-half years. By blending pop culture, memes, philosophy and her reflections to give insight into the experience of surviving cancer, Heidekrueger offers advice and encouragement to readers.

“When I was struggling with debilitating, chronic health problems, I felt so alone and so misunderstood,” says Heidekrueger, who is pursuing a bachelor’s in philosophy. “It was so difficult to connect to people, and I had no one telling me that what I was feeling was normal. I never want anyone else to feel that way, if I can help it.”

In 2021, Heidekrueger began creating content for TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram, which she hoped would reach more people undergoing cancer treatment and clarify the experience for a larger audience. She did not anticipate the commonality of her experience and those of people with other chronic health issues, already gaining more than 210,000 followers on TikTok alone.

“I have been able to connect with so many people struggling with cancer or chronic illness,” Heidekrueger says. “Because all those people are experiencing similar things—lots of days of feeling sick, countless doctors, hospitals and physical limitations—it all manifests the same way emotionally and mentally.”

The growing audience is an exciting opportunity for Heidekrueger to offer support for people who might struggle finding understanding communities. While her mother has helped her overcome barriers, she knows that during hard times people on whom survivors relied in the past might be less dependable.

Aspen Heidekrueger, a philosophy undergraduate student, discusses her experience with cancer in her blog, Complicated Cancer.

“When I got cancer, my dad left because it was too much for him,” Heidekrueger says. “That, unfortunately, happens a lot with chronic illness issues like cancer—one parent will leave if they can't handle it. It’s awful.”

Because of that fragile support system, even one faculty or staff member who expresses concern offers students an advocate who helps them persist in their studies and recognizes their humanity. For Heidekrueger, that person was Dom Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy.

“At office hours, I told him the bare bones minimum about some of the stuff that was happening with my health and cancer at the time,” Heidekrueger says. “He immediately said, ‘That is so much. Do you have a good support system? What can I do for you?’ And that was from just telling him the smallest details.”

From Heidekrueger’s point of view, Bailey’s expression of concern and follow-up helped her feel that someone at 91�� was available and understood the challenges of trying to complete a college degree while dealing with chronic illness. That readiness to help and be empathetic reflect what she seeks to accomplish on her website and social media.

“To have someone I knew who was there, who really cared about me, was invested in my well-being, could help me through any hard course material and connect me with other professors—it was a lifesaver,” Heidekrueger says. “If I can do small things that help make people feel infinitely better, I want to do that, too.”

To foster a supportive community like the one she had, Heidekrueger plans to expand Complicated Cancer by creating chatrooms where cancer survivors can share their experiences and give support and advice.

“I want them to have someone who can say, ‘This is what it's like. You might feel this way, and that's normal. Here's how you can get through it,’” Heidekrueger says.

“Everyone deserves to have some hope, some encouragement, someone to connect to their pain and give them reasons to move forward.”

Faculty approachability strengthens students’ work

Graduate school appeared impossible for first-generation student Blake Trujillo.

Only certain types of people went on to continue their education—and he, the first person in his family to complete a bachelor’s degree at a university, did not see himself as one of them. At least at first.

“That's something that is often neglected,” says Trujillo, a master’s student in religious studies. “If you don't have someone with you who's been (through the application process), then it becomes a much more difficult experience, especially at the graduate level.”

Born in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, Trujillo moved to Silverdale, Washington, at a young age. He attended Central Washington University (CWU) in Ellensburg, where he was a middle-distance runner and studied political science.

After completing his bachelor’s degree in three years, he wanted to stay at CWU and continue to run track. On a whim, he decided to take a few religious studies classes and fell in love with the subject.

“It opened my eyes,” Trujillo says. “I realized that maybe the world isn't exactly how I picture it and there are new aspects to religion that we can explore and discover.”

Blake Trujillo is a master’s student in religious studies.

Of particular importance was his undergraduate advisor, Lily Vuong, whose dynamic lectures and mentorship encouraged Trujillo to reframe what he believed possible in religious studies. Vuong, who is an associate professor of religious studies at CWU, also encouraged Trujillo to consider pursuing a graduate degree.

Vuong helped Trujillo put together a compelling application with which he gained admission to 91�� and, just as important, earned a strong financial aid package.

With high expectations for his first year, Trujillo hoped to enjoy the best of 91��’s residential experience, spend time digging through the library’s vast access to primary texts and explore his research interest in Gnosticism, or a set of religious beliefs in some early Christian and Jewish sects that emphasizes personal spiritual knowledge over orthodox teachings and traditions. He also wanted to replicate the mentorship he received at CWU.

Trujillo is excited to practice being an approachable scholar, replicating the mentorship he received. He hopes the informal manner with which he interacts with students encourages them to seek him out. In conversations with students, he wants to help them see themselves at their best and create an environment that gives them opportunities to become that person.

“Professors are brilliant, and at the same time, this is an avenue that anyone can pursue and should believe that they can pursue. If I can do it, anyone can,” Trujillo says.

Trujillo believes leveling his position of influence and power as much as possible makes him appear more human. That effort creates familiarity with students, which he hopes leads to more students seeking out mentorship.

“Some faculty seem like mythical figures who went to mythical universities, and it can be tough to want to approach someone like that,” Trujillo says. “I want students and professors to know they can approach me and talk.”

Trujillo argues that if faculty maintain distance to give the appearance of expertise, they might inadvertently encourage their students to submit work that is not their best. Instead, he believes intimidated students try to simply meet the established requirements. In his experience, when you give students the benefit of the doubt and make yourself available, they meet even higher expectations.

“After I built a connection with Dr. Vuong, my advisor for undergrad, I felt much worse turning in something that I thought was bad,” Trujillo says. “I knew she had given me a certain amount of grace and kindness, so I felt like I needed to step up to the plate.”

“When people give you grace, in the end it motivates you.”

(Header image illustration by Alex Steele)

Meet three 91�� students who are creating supportive, stronger communities by improving understanding, accessibility.

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Russian church leader puts the blame of invasion on those who flout ‘God’s law,’ but taking biblical law out of its historical context doesn’t work

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:23:08 +0000

Russian church leader puts the blame of invasion on those who flout ‘God’s law,’ but taking biblical law out of its historical context doesn’t work Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/22/2022 - 08:23

Samuel L. Boyd

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, preached a sermon on March 6, 2022, in which he suggested the violation of “God’s law” provided divine license for the war against Ukraine.

In particular, Kirill pointed to Ukrainian acceptance of gay rights and the promotion of gay pride parades as specific examples of behavior that goes against God’s law. “This is a sin that is condemned by the Word of God - both the Old and the New Testament,” he said during his sermon.

Yet few readers of the Bible realize that the laws in biblical times worked differently than today.

Legal collections in the ancient world

In my research on the Bible and its legal material, I have come to the conclusion that much of the modern debate about the Bible in political discourse could be ascribed to mistaken literary genres.

For example, laws from the Code of Hammurabi, an often-cited legal collection from King Hammurabi of ancient Babylon, have the familiar structure of modern, practiced law: If someone does something wrong, then that person is guilty according to the details of the law.

At the top of the page: Russian President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Patriarch of Russia Kirill and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (in background), at a monastery outside Moscow in 2017 (Alexey Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images). Above: Stele of Hammurabi. Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre, Iraq. (via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY).

However, Hammurabi himself rarely referenced the collection. At times, his own royal decrees were in violation of what the inscription says should happen.

The Code of Hammurabi was not simply a reflection of law in everyday Mesopotamia. Instead, it was likely a collection of possible legal cases and scenarios assembled by royal scribes.

These cases demonstrate a range of hypothetical legal responses that could ensure maximal justice in society. They may resemble real law, but they are not a direct representation of what happened in every case.

The laws were placed on a rock monument that contained an image of King Hammurabi seated before the god of justice, Shamash. The presentation of these laws on the inscription was for the purpose of making the king look good through propaganda, but, as research shows, not in order to codify practiced law.

Scholars believe that the Code of Hammurabi influenced some of the legal collections in the Bible, such as in the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible traditionally attributed to Moses. There is evidence that, like Hammurabi’s law code, laws in the Bible were not necessarily practiced.

For example, a law in the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, also believed to have been written by Moses, says that if a son is persistently rebellious against his parents and gets drunk, the parents will bring the son to the town elders. The men of the town then stone the son to death.

But what counts as “rebellious,” and how drunk would qualify the son to be deemed guilty?

The Bible does not say. Ancient rabbis viewed the passage as not able to be practiced at all. The prophet Jeremiah applied the law metaphorically to Jerusalem’s destruction in 586 B.C., but there is no evidence that the law was actually practiced.

There is another story of one ancient rabbi, Hananiah ben Hezekiah, who locked himself in his room, burning 300 barrels of oil to keep his light on in order to figure out how the laws of the Bible worked together. This incredible amount of exertion highlights how different these laws actually are and how they cannot be reconciled into one simple legal vision.

Laws, the Bible and ancient Israel

While there is evidence that some sense of legal reality in ancient Israel looked like some of the biblical laws, the relationship was not exact.

It seems, instead, that the genre of legal collections in the Bible functioned according to the literary conventions of its day.

The fact that laws in the Bible look like other ancient Near Eastern laws does not mean that the laws in the Bible have no unique features. Scholars have noted an innovation that occurred in the laws in the Bible: There is no king who acts as the lawgiver.

All of the other laws in the ancient Near East were given by the king. The Mesopotamian god of justice, Shamash, endowed Hammurabi with wisdom, but Hammurabi himself derived the laws.

Yet the earliest legal collection in the Bible, in the book of Exodus, lacks the role of the king as a lawgiver for the first time in the history of the ancient Near East. The biblical laws, instead, come directly from God.

The original intent of some of these legal collections may have been to emphasize the need for freedom against larger dominant imperial forces. They were used as statements expressing convictions about justice, divinity and society, but without recourse to ancient Near Eastern kings.

In fact, one law in Deuteronomy relegates the king to a much smaller role than royalty otherwise occupied in ancient society. This law stipulates that the primary job of a king is to study the legal material in the Bible. It also commands that the king not act arrogantly toward other Israelites.

Given these historical observations, “God’s law,” at least in the Bible, limits royal authority and provides a statement against imperialism, all of which would seem to undermine Kirill’s use of divine statutes to promote war and support Putin’s agenda.

But one can only see such functions of these laws when understood in their ancient context.

How and when the perception changed

Byzantine Emperor Justinian brought about legal reforms in the sixth century (Richard T. Nowitz/Collection The Image Bank via Getty Images).

The modern sense of legal collections as practiced law derives in some manner from the legacy of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. He inaugurated an expansive legal reform in the Roman Empire in the sixth century.

It included precepts such as “innocent until proved guilty,” which would become a maxim for many later legal systems, such as the notion of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in America.

Modern Christian thinkers tried to identify three enduring uses of the law in the Bible, the second of which applies a civil relevance to these statutes. The idea is that when a civil code that includes God’s laws is used in society, it should, in theory, curb evil.

One can find such sentiments in statements by modern legislators in America, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s comments at The King’s College in New York in a commencement address in 2019.

There, he blamed what in his view is America’s current moral bankruptcy on a fourth-century Christian belief called Pelagianism that highlights free will in humanity.

Hawley claimed that such a Pelagian attitude was at the root of a 1992 court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the individual was ruled to have the “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

For Hawley, this sentiment contradicts the belief that all humanity should be subject to God’s rule, evidenced in the need for a personal relationship with God.

For Kirill, the use of “God’s law” in the war in Ukraine is an attempt to provide a divine mandate for Putin’s actions. Yet such a claim presupposes that biblical law was enacted in history and should be implemented in modern society.

Moreover, this sort of argument envisions a legal authority over Ukraine from the Russian Orthodox Church, a claim that has been vigorously contested by many who think that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be independent from oversight in Moscow.

Yet the Bible’s laws and its vision of society were more complex than such a direct application that Kirill in Russia or Hawley in the U.S. advocate.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why translating ‘God’s law’ to government law isn’t easy

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 16:18:50 +0000

Why translating ‘God’s law’ to government law isn’t easy Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/17/2022 - 10:18

Samuel L. Boyd

The relationship between certain interpretations of the Bible and public life in the U.S. continues to be in the headlines. During the March for Life anti-abortion rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2022, the Bible featured prominently, with passages from the books of Jeremiah and Proverbs, among others, on display.

The Museum of the Bible in D.C., located near the site of the rally, offered free admission during the March. A prominent speaker at the event was the Catholic priest Mike Schmitz, who hosts a popular podcast called “The Bible in a Year” and has published articles on his website pertaining to the Bible and abortion.

Some religious groups take the relationship between the Bible and American law and society even further. A movement called “dominionism” and a particular version of it called “theonomy” in Christianity have become prominent in part through politicians associated with the movement, such as Michele Bachmann and Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

Many Christian dominionists want, in some fashion, to apply God’s law and Christian principles to American politics.

Yet few readers of the Bible realize that the laws then were not practiced in the way many think of laws functioning today.

Legal collections in the ancient world

In my research on the Bible and its legal material, I have come to the conclusion that much of the modern debate about the Bible in American society could be ascribed to mistaken literary genres. Ancient texts that might look like law codes today were not necessarily enforced as the law of the land in biblical times.

Stele of Hammurabi (Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre, Iraq, via Wikimedia Commons).

However, Hammurabi himself rarely referenced the collection. At times his own royal decrees were in violation of what the inscription says should happen.

The Code of Hammurabi was not simply a reflection of law in everyday Mesopotamia. Instead, it was likely a collection of possible legal cases and scenarios assembled by royal scribes.

Scholars believe that the Code of Hammurabi influenced some of the legal collections in the Bible, such as in the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible traditionally attributed to Moses. T here is evidence that, like Hammurabi’s law code, laws in the Bible were not necessarily practiced.

But what counts as “rebellious,” and how drunk would qualify the son to be deemed guilty.

Laws, the Bible and ancient Israel

While there is evidence that some sense of legal reality in ancient Israel looked like some of the biblical laws, the relationship was not exact.

It seems, instead, that the genre of legal collections in the Bible functioned according to the literary conventions of its day.

All of the other laws in the ancient Near East were given by the king. The Mesopotamian god of justice, Shamash, endowed Hammurabi with wisdom, but Hammurabi himself derived the laws.

And given how the distinct collections in the Bible differ and change over time, the legal material shows a remarkably adaptable sense of how ancient Israelite society constantly evolved in its response to historical events.

But one can only see such functions of these laws when understood in their ancient context.

How and when the perception changed

The modern Western sense of law collections and judicial sensibility derives in some manner from the legacy of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. He inaugurated an expansive legal reform in the Roman Empire in the sixth century.

Emperor Justinian brought about legal reforms in the sixth century (Richard T. Nowitz/Collection The Image Bank via Getty Images).

It included precepts such as “innocent until proved guilty,” which would become a maxim for many later legal systems, such as the notion of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in America.

Later Christian thinkers tried to identify three enduring uses of the law in the Bible over time into modernity, the second of which applies a civil relevance to these statutes. The idea is that when a civil code that includes God’s laws is used in society, it should, in theory, curb evil.

One can find such sentiments in statements by modern legislators, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s comments at The King’s College in New York in a commencement address in 2019.

There, he blamed what in his view is America’s current moral bankruptcy on a fourth-century Christian belief called Pelagianism that highlights free will in humanity.

For Hawley, this sentiment contradicts the belief that all humanity should be subject to God’s rule, evidenced in the need for a personal relationship with God.

Yet the Bible, its laws and ancient debates that stem of from its vision of humanity and society were more complex than such a direct application that Hawley and others advocate.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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