For the first time ever in the history of this column, I am going to gloat. Yesterday was the Program for Jewish Civilization‘s sixth annual presentation of senior theses and the work our students did made me truly proud. I mean, proud in the way that one sighs, “Oh, this is why I became a professor. ‘Cuz I was sort of forgetting there. But now it’s OK. Now I remember.”
This is the set up: The seniors spend the better part of the year researching and writing a thirty-page thesis on anything relating to Judaism that interests them (in consultation, of course, with our faculty). They are paired up with a faculty adviser with expertise in their chosen area.
They meet their advisers privately a minimum of four times during the semester. Then they meet an additional four times with the director of the senior colloquium, Rev. Dennis McManus, D.Phil., to discuss, refine and criticize …
The story focuses on a 54-page advertising plan that somehow dropped into the Times‘ outstretched hands “through a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone.” The financial force behind the plan is the “conservative billionaire” Joe Ricketts who, according to a proxy, “is very concerned about the future direction of the country” (as conservative billionaires are wont to be).
The prospectus itself details a media strategy to flesh out the connections between Barack Obama and his controversial pastor,…
“No, no civil war. I’m an optimist,” observes my colleague, the anthropologist and Georgetown School of Foreign Service Professor Gwendolyn Mikell.
Dr. Mikell is here reflecting on the recent explosion of sectarian strife in Nigeria–strife which is often understood by analysts in the Western media as predicated on ethno-religious conflict between the Muslim north and Christian south.
The treacherous headline grabber in all of this has been the jihadist group Boko Haram. This fundamentalist Islamist sect advocates the imposition of Sharia law and has engaged in horrendous assaults on Christian communities. Amongst the most frightful was last year’s Christmas massacre which resulted in the deaths of dozens of Catholic worshipers in Madala.
Professor Mikell complexifies the media narratives and argues against “Nigeria-on-the-brink” ruminations. In a piece in the Huffington…
Addressing the 2012 graduating class of Liberty University today Mitt Romney enthused: “[W]hat the next four years might hold for me is yet to be determined. But I will say that things are looking up, and I take your kind hospitality today as a sign of good things to come.”
Things are looking up, especially after Barack Obama’s evolving views on same-sex marriage look like they are about to send fence-sitting conservative Christians charging into Romney’s arms.
So the presumptive GOP nominee’s main job today was to further exploit the opening granted to him by his opponent (Please note: I am not necessarily saying Obama was tactically mistaken in endorsing gay marriage. I am saying that the immediate benefits accrue to Romney).
With a friendly audience in front of him, Romney did what he had to do:
President Obama told ABC news yesterday that on the subject of same-sex marriage he has been “going through an evolution on this issue.”
He may indeed be going through an intellectual evolution in his thinking about the rights of gay people to marry. His recent remarks indicate that he has undergone a theological evolution as well. Recall that Obama cast his new-found stance on this issue as a reflection of his Christian scruples (a point I hope to explore in greater detail forthwith).
But permit me now in my capacity as a student of Faith and Values campaigning to point to a third type of evolution in his thinking: Obama’s strategists have completely given up on religious conservativesand concluded that they are irredeemably lost to Mitt Romney.
This observation needs to be properly contextualized. In 2008, Democrats were still reeling from the damage that the so-called…
About 30 seconds before Professor Matthew Bowman of Hampden-Sydney College sat down for an interview with me, I whispered to him:
Matthew, this interview is not for our colleagues in the American Academy of Religion. It’s not for the specialists that we write for in our scholarly publications. It’s for intelligent people everywhere, who will benefit from the breadth of your knowledge on this subject. So keep it real!
And keep it real he did.
With his inner wonk summoned, validated, and released, Dr. Bowman (author of the fine monograph, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith) proceeded to dazzle us with highly sophisticated insights about the Mormon community, rendered in clear, accessible locutions.
Our guest tries to make sense of an extremely curious demographic finding: When it comes to voting for a Mormon president, conservative Evangelicals and secular…
Perhaps at no point in recent American history have so many citizens come to the conclusion that there is something profoundly and even unalterably wrong with our country.
Take for example, the widely cited embarrassment of Congressional approval ratings. Earlier this year, they had plummeted to a cringe-inducing all-time low of 10 percent. Or, perhaps, consider the Sinophobia that afflicts many Americans as they watch Chinese industries boom and Beijing come to play an increasingly prominent role in global geopolitics. In recent years, seemingly with particular visibility in the present election cycle, grim narratives of American decline and defeat are ubiquitous.
Not necessarily so, says Robert Lieber, the distinguished professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. Lieber is the author of the recent work, Power and Willpower in the American…
What says Berlinerblau? Berlinerblau is cautiously optimistic and says what he has been saying for at least seven years. Secularism’s engagement with the Democratic Party has devolved into an abusive relationship.
Asleep-at-the-wheel secular leaders, clinging to the sepia-tinged memories of knightly JFK and principled card-carrying separationist studs like Michael Dukakis, never fully understood that for more and more Democrats the affair was over.
The non-believing wing of American secularism (which is presently and regrettably estranged from the larger, less overheated, believing majority) has been slow to recognize this. As I noted in my 2008…
Forgive the purplish title of this post. And forgive that this post actually refers to another post I wrote somewhere else. But please trust that the predicament of secularism has been preoccupying me for more than a decade.
The article I am referring to is entitled “The Death of American Secularism” and it just appeared in the New Humanist, published by the Rationalist Association of the United Kingdom.
Now, I don’t think American secularism is dead yet. Though in that piece as well as the many others I have written, I find myself using terms like “concussed,” “woozy,” “disoriented,” “comatose,” and so forth to describe the patient.
Today’s episode of Faith Complex was conceived in the aftermath of a disturbing crime which has received comparatively little play in the national media.
In broad outline, the case involves the brutal murder of an Iraqi-born American citizen and mother of five, Shaima Alawadi, in her home near San Diego. There are conflicting reports regarding a note found near the victim’s body (Ms. Alawadi died three days after the attack). In some versions, it reads: “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist.”
The initial reaction to this matter was that it was a hate crime aimed at a Muslim-American woman whose wearing of the hijab drew conspicuous attention to her identity. As our interviewer and our guest, Dr. Jerusha Lamptey, make clear, however, there is no definitive evidence that this was in fact a hate crime. In recent weeks, commentators have questioned the idea that this…
A few times a year, evincing uncharacteristic civic-mindedness and personal grace, I do some pro bono lecturing in front of local religious groups. Invariably, such groups are comprised of really, really old people.
How old? Even older than my moms!, as I like to tell my moms when I call her up every night to report on my daily activities like the good Jewish boy she raised me to be.
Now, as is most likely the case with you dear colleague, I spend the majority of my lecturing life in front of really, really young people. The types of people who say “Whatevs,” “obvs” “idk” and call each other (and sometimes, regrettably, even me) “dude.”
They wear stained sweatpants to class and drink water out of huge plastic bottles–appalling cultural artifacts of high toxicity and dubious hygienic standing. As far as those healthy little bastards are concerned, I’m really, really old…
That deafening, churning, leather-on-wood sound you just heard is the sound of the entire Romney campaign “pivoting to the general,” as the pundits like to say.
In the coming months, Mitt and his Faith and Values team will need to figure out how to draw lucrative religious voting blocs to the Republican side of the ledger. Faith-based politicking is always a complicated affair, and for these reasons I offer a few hopefully helpful suggestions on how the Romney team ought to proceed:
Bait the secularists (if you must): Secular-bashing is among the easiest, and most intellectually dishonest, forms of Faith and Values politicking out there. Easy, because there is widespread confusion as to what “secularism” means. The dreaded “ism” can conveniently stand in for anything a politician loathes: godlessness, gang violence, pornography–it’s all good. Or, bad as the case may be.
I was asked this afternoon by the “On Faith” page of The Washington Post to write (quickly) about Rick Santorum’s sudden decision to terminate his candidacy.
My remarks are here and if you think you’ve heard Berlinerblau sing that song before then you have because I have been bellowing this same chorus for five years: Divisive religious rhetoric does not work in presidential campaigns.
Why the Cains and Perrys and Bachmanns and Gingrichs and Santorums of the nation don’t listen to Professor B., I don’t know. But should any Republican candidate seek my services as a Faith and Values consultant–and I want to stress for my readership (and potential clientele) that I am not aligned with any one party–this is what I would tell them:
On Meet the Press this morning, reports Politico, Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) speculated that Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith would be held against him in his potential run against Barack Obama:
Asked whether he thought that the Obama campaign would raise Mormonism as an issue against Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, Labrador said, “I think the media is going to do that for the Obama campaign.”
While anti-Mormon prejudice is real–nearly a quarter of voters in 2007 said they would not vote for one–this claim seems a bit off the mark. To begin with, Obama has shown zero interest in damning any religious or (non-religious) group during his tenure as president.
Truth be told, most sitting presidents in recent memory, Republican or Democrat, have been extremely reluctant to invoke faith in anything but a positive, abstract, vague and platitudinous manner.
Actress Corey Tazmania instructs Young Master Berlinerblau at a public rehearsal for Michael Clark's Who's Zoo? at the Whitney Museum
The funny thing about professional dancers is that they are always trying to get non-professionals to dance. Not content to be preternaturally fit, they insist on being gracious as well.
Do novelists—who are neither usually fit nor gracious—encourage rank amateurs to indulge their hankering for prose? Has some Hollywood producer ever pitched a literary spin-off on “Dancing With the Stars” entitled “Writing With the Fictional Masters”? I rest my case.
Yesterday, at the Whitney Biennial 2012, I learned a little more about the endearing qualities of dancers. I attended with my son who, as you may recall, studies ballet. Much to my surprise, the visit would yield…
In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Christian Conservatives somehow neglected to get behind one candidate. Confronted with a slate that featured pro-choice Rudy Giuliani , flipfloppin’ Mitt Romney (a Mormon), and John McCain (who they simply hated), they finally coalesced around Mike Huckabee.
The former governor of Arkansas actually entered the race early, in January of 2007. He was scarcely noticed until December where he picked up: 1) steam, 2) the fealty of Chuck Norris, and, 3) the admiration of Iowans who then gifted him with a caucus victory in January 2008.
In 2012 the Christian Right witnessed the exact opposite scenario. The field was now flooded with candidates whose worldview was congenial to its own. These ranged from Catholics like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich (a convert), to Evangelicals such as Tim Pawlenty (a convert from Roman Catholicism) to…
I teach in two distinct performative modes. In the first, primarily used for social-science instruction, I am the INTIMIDATING KNOWLEDGE EXPERT. From the moment I take attendance—and you better be in your seat when I call your name, Chuck—we are on the clock. My clock.
I speak drone on for about 75-80% of the class. The maws of my tense charges are sandblasted with facts, theories, counter readings, historical illustrations, and the occasional human interest story.
Don’t yawn, or appear to be texting because I will call on you. Oh yes I will. And you will stammer. And the pleasure will register on my face in the way that unsightly extras in a Kung Fu movie toothily smile and flail their arms at the Act Two thrashing of the Good Guy.
In the second mode, I affect a completely different teaching persona. I am now, to use a term I particularly abhorred from the 90s, a…
(Getty photo at TMZ.com. Click on photo to get to source page.)
Denver Broncos quarterback and polarizing Evangelical icon Tim Tebow is joining the New York Jets. Those would be my New York Jets. I confess to being baffled. And intrigued by the cultural implications of it all.
I am not baffled because there is anything unusual about a Conservative Christian playing football in New York or anywhere else for that matter. A modern professional football team is, after all, a collection of really ripped, really talented Evangelical players and really ripped, really talented non-Evangelical players.
What’s baffling (aside from the fact that the Jets already have a perfectly good, if somewhat uneven, quarterback in Mark Sanchez) is the incongruity of the fit between the player and the city. This particular Evangelical…
I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine, a Roman Catholic priest, which illuminates another aspect of the current debate about HHS Mandates and “religious freedom.”
Readers might recall my first two pieces on the subject (parsed by the blog of the Cardinal Newman Society as “Georgetown Prof. Stands Against the Bishops“). In the first, I made the point that the entire debate will go nowhere unless the aggrieved parties (who I noted are generally religious and politically conservative Evangelicals and Catholics) confront a distinction well known to theorists of secular states.
This would be the difference between the “right to conscience” (always granted by the genuine secular state) and the right to act on one’s conscience (most definitely not always granted by the genuine secular state or any other type of state I know of, genuine or otherwise).
The Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004 brought into being the existence of an office to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. In 2006, the administration of President George W. Bush appointed the first Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Gregg Rickman.
President Barack Obama’s appointee was Hannah Rosenthal. In this episode of Faith Complex we sat down with the Special Envoy to discuss her work as it pertains to Europe and the post-Arab Spring Middle East.
Ms. Rosenthal’s office does not lack for “business.” She describes an alarming uptick in European anti-Semitism, especially on college campuses. The degree to which the consistently pervasive rhetoric of anti-Zionism in Europe crosses over into anti-Semitsm is a subject we discuss at length.
Ms. Rosenthal also calls attention to some of the bright spots. These include the earnest efforts of the…
Posts on Brainstorm present the views of their authors. They do not represent the position of the editors, nor does posting here imply any endorsement by The Chronicle.
directs the program in history and philosophy of science at
Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and
Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.
is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the communications program at Columbia University, and a prolific author whose most recent book is a novel, Undying.
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