The Classical Ideas Podcast: Recent Episodes
Gregory Soden
Simply stated, religion matters. Religion matters not only for personal reasons, but also for social, economic, political, and military purposes. Unfortunately, studies suggest that religious knowledge and cultural literacy for any religious tradition is either in decline or is non-existent in the United States, despite being one of the most religiously diverse nation on earth. Today, religion is implicated in nearly every major national and international issue. The public arena is awash in religious explanations and arguments for nearly every issue. The goal of The Classical Ideas Podcast is to empower students with the core knowledge of major world religions to improve citizenship and agency in a diverse society. Welcome to the show!
MK Long is a historian and ethnographer of Buddhism and gender. Her current project highlights vernacular auto/biographical writings of Buddhist women in Myanmar, examining their rhetorical strategies of self-presentation and how they theorize Buddhist authority, temporality, and belonging. Long's study of vernacular literature of the 1980s-90s foregrounds its conditions of production, not only its relationship to Buddhist biographical and narrative traditions, but also authoritarian censorship, state-driven reorganization of monastic institutions, and shifting citizenship regimes. This work is shaped and informed by Long's ethnographic fieldwork in a large, mission-oriented nunnery in downtown Yangon, Myanmar, and its network of branch nunneries throughout the country.
Long's research has drawn support from the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship (SSRC-IDRF), the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA), and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies, awarded through the American Council of Learned Societies.
Long earned her doctorate from the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University with a graduate minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2024. She holds an M.T.S in Buddhist Studies (Harvard Divinity School, 2016), an M.A. in International Relations & Religion (Boston University, 2014), and a B.A. in Religion (Smith College, 2010).
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/templeton-working-group
Julian Butterfield is a scholar of medieval Chinese Buddhist literature with a special interest in how Mahāyāna Buddhist narratives depict and solicit feeling. His current monograph project recovers the aesthetic and affective dimensions of Lotus Sūtra devotion in fifth-to-eighth-century China, arguing that the transmission of this pivotal Buddhist scripture relied heavily on the cultivation of strong emotions among practitioners. A secondary, public-facing research project investigates the interactions of Buddhist media and musical experimentation from the nineteenth century to the present. Julian holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University, where his research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. He is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Princeton University.
Read: https://tricycle.org/magazine/eliane-radique-alien-roots/
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Visit Julian Butterfield: https://julianbutterfield.com/
Sara Swenson works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. Her current research explores how grassroots charity volunteers in Vietnam adapt Buddhist values and practices to navigate ethical struggles amid rapid urbanization and she is the author of "Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charities in Urban Vietnam" from Oxford University Press!
Visit Sara Swenson online: https://saswenson.com/about/
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Nalika Gajaweera (Research Affiliate, Walter H. Capps Center, University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, 2013) is an anthropologist of Buddhism, race, and ethics, with a focus on community well-being and resilience. Her current book manuscript, Transforming the American Sangha, funded by the Kataly Foundation, is an ethnography of the Insight Meditation movement in North America, focused on the efforts of practitioners of color to raise awareness of oppressive racial conditions in these communities. Her doctoral research examined how Buddhist ethics and practices of giving shaped Sri Lankan local NGOs doing humanitarianism work in the context of two disasters: the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and ethnic conflict that ended in 2009. A former Fulbright fellow, Dr. Gajaweera has conducted fieldwork in North America and South Asia, managing and conducting complex multi-stakeholder research projects, exploring power building efforts among marginalized groups. Funders for these projects included Kataly Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Hilton Foundation and GHR.
Nalika Gajawira will collaborate with Ann Gleig on a comparative ethnographic study of how Buddhist communities adopt and adapt popular spiritual exercises such as "secular" mindfulness and yoga classes within a wider Buddhist framework. Their work aims to illustrate the processes, frameworks and relationships that can enable more responsible relationships between specific religious communities and the word of spiritual wellness practices.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/templeton-working-group
Visit Nalika Gajaweera:
https://nalikagajaweera.com/
https://dornsife.usc.edu/crcc/profile/nalika-gajaweera/
Tara Isabella Burton (DPhil, University of Oxford; Visiting Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Visiting Research Fellow, Institutional Flourishing Lab, Catholic University of America) is a theologian and culture critic, and the author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians (Public Affairs, 2022) and Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (Public Affairs, 2020).She is a regular contributor on religion and culture to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and has lectured and taught seminars at Yale University, Hobart and William Smith College, Radford University, and Covenant College. Her research has been supported by the Mercatus Center and the Robert Novak Foundation.
Burton is currently at work on a book about the influence of the Western esoteric tradition, from alchemy to Freemasonry to 19th-century "occult" practices like Theosophy and spiritualism, in the development of what we think of today as "scientific progress." She argues that the category of the "magical" should be understood as part of a wider theological tradition of understanding what it means for human beings to have mastery over nature. Old Gods, to be published by Convergent (Penguin Random House) in 2026, will trace this influence to the resurgence of interest in "occult" practices in contemporary Silicon Valley culture.
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A moving study of how religion shapes Western climate discourse. Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we've built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but the end of the world, an apocalypse with all its biblical trappings. Why? In A Perturbed System, anthropologist Susannah Crockford argues that we must understand the climate emergency as a spiritual crisis, a result of Christian colonialism that we (religious or not) still struggle to describe without religious language. Climate discourse in the United States and northern Europe, Crockford shows, is framed by the same theological motifs that drove extraction, including ideas about prophecy, mediation, sacrifice, original sin, cult, messiah, and apocalypse. By listening to people on the edge of the crisis, A Perturbed System reveals a world in transition, what happens when worlds end—ecologically, socially, politically, and personally—and how we might live through these endings together. Susannah Crockford is a lecturer at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Ripples of the Universe: Spirituality in Sedona, Arizona, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/templeton-working-group Buy the book: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/C/S/au86433807.html
Ira Helderman PhD, LPC (Adjunct Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University; PhD, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2016) studies how psychotherapists' definitions of what is and is not religious shape their understandings of caregiving, health, and illness. His first book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press 2019), is the first comprehensive examination of the surprisingly diverse ways that psychotherapists have approached Buddhist traditions. Helderman publishes in peer-reviewed journals such as The Journal of the American Academy of Religion and, committed to public scholarship, writes regularly for popular publications such as Psychology Today, Religion Dispatches, and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Dr. Helderman is also a practicing psychotherapist and clinical supervisor who has worked in the mental health field for over 20 years in a variety of clinical settings from in-patient addiction treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals to his current private practice.
Helderman is currently studying the widespread psychotherapeutic use of Buddhist meditation. Though meditation is often described by patients as a way of easing spiritual yearning, it can also generate "adverse effects" like agitation, traumatic memories, and hallucinations. Dr. Helderman will examine how psychotherapists have conducted a "differential diagnosis" of such cases—distinguishing spiritual experience from psychopathology—and showing that how we define what is and is not "religious" shapes the fields of mental health, psychology, and religious studies.
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Visit Dr. Ira Helderman: https://irahelderman.com
Dr. Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is an expert in feminist ecclesiology. She studies wounds in the church, or moments where the church fails to live into its mission and causes harm. Racism, sexism, and the clergy sex abuse crisis are examples of the church failing to credibly be church. Guided by a feminist methodology, Selak integrates the lived experience of women with a robust vision for the church. Selak serves as a Visiting Scholar in the Center on Faith and Justice while working as a campus minister at a local independent school. She earned her Ph.D. in systematic theology at Boston College and M.Div at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Selak has over 15 years of experience in Catholic ministry, and her writing has appeared in Modern Theology, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Washington Post, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and America.
Her forthcoming book, The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm within Catholicism (Fordham University Press, 2026) puts forth a vision of the church in the shadow of wounds, guided by a feminist methodology. Selak argues that the Catholic Church must confront its own injuries in order to credibly be Church. Using a feminist framework, she develops a new ecclesiology around three wounds, racism, sexism, and clericalism, that actively harm the Body of Christ and distort its witness.
Attentive to history, pastoral practice, and lived experience, Selak shows how each wound is both inflicted by the Church and borne within the Church. She offers the resurrected body of Jesus, scarred yet no longer bleeding, as a guiding metaphor for ecclesial renewal, a body that does not deny its wounds but is transformed through them. Drawing on Karl Rahner, she grounds hope in the reign of God while insisting on concrete institutional and spiritual conversion.
Written for students and scholars, ministers and lay leaders, The Wounded Church uncovers overlooked histories tied to racism, sexism, and the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and proposes clear theological principles for reform. The result is a constructive, pastorally engaged vision that tells the truth about harm and imagines credible paths toward change, accountability, and justice.
You can use the code "church2026" at the link below to receive a discounted book and free shipping.
https://fordhampress.com/the-wounded-church-hb-9781531513368.html
Kaitlyn Ugoretz (Lecturer, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Japan; PhD, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, in progress) is an anthropologist of religion focused on the globalization of Japanese Shinto practices through popular culture such as anime, video games, and Marie Kondo's decluttering. The Associate Editor of The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and a member of the Sacred Writes 2021 public scholarship training cohort, Prof. Ugoretz also promotes public scholarship on Japanese religions through her award-winning educational YouTube channel Eat Pray Anime, in podcast interviews, cultural consulting, and her writing for venues including Religion News Service and The Conversation.
Ugoretz will conduct a digital ethnography of Japanese tidying guru Marie Kondo. She notes that while Western scholarship tends to consider Kondo to be "spiritual," the Japanese find her to be too "religious," reflecting aspects of Buddhist and Shinto traditions. This leads Ugoretz to argue that our understanding of spiritual yearning should expand---it is neither a new nor an American phenomenon. The boundary between what is "religious" and what is "spiritual" is historically and cultural constructed, and shaped by ideas of race, class, and globalization. She argues that spiritual yearning emerges from human existential needs and concerns, and should be distinguished from the capitalistic patterns of "spiritual consumption" that it often inspires.
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Visit Eat, Pray, Anime: https://www.youtube.com/c/eatprayanime
Kira Ganga Kieffer is a scholar of American religions, history, culture, and politics with a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University.
Kieffer's first book, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton University Press, May 19, 2026) examines the spiritual and religious roots of vaccine resistance in U.S. history. In general, her work examines contestations over authority through the interactions between religion, alternative health movements, politics, and consumption.
Order "Unvaccinated Under God" here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691224664/unvaccinated-under-god
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Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more about how religion shapes us all, even if we don't believe, subscribe to Liz's newsletter at LizBucar.com.
In the chaos of today's world, we're all searching for meaning. The wellness industry has sold us a promise that we can find it if we just buy the right products, attend the right retreats, and follow the right celebrity gurus. But is this true? Or are we picking and choosing from a self-care salad bar in ways that satisfy our hunger but don't truly nourish us? When we approach practices like yoga and ayahuasca as fitness routines and life hacks, we miss out on the sacred wisdom they have to offer us. But by digging into the real and often ancient religious traditions behind these practices, from Buddhism to Christianity and beyond, we can make them more meaningful, ethical, and effective—without the often unpleasant baggage of joining an organized religion. In this engaging and deeply personal book, award-winning scholar and writer Liz Bucar embarks on a quest to get to the heart of "spiritual but not religious" activities from detox diets to sound baths. As she tries out each practice for herself, she asks how we can get more out of it by tuning out the hype and taking the religious meaning behind it seriously—with emotionally profound and often surprising results. Whether it's as simple as setting an intention for a yoga asana or as complex as reevaluating what a "higher power" is, it's time to understand, experience, and simply get more out of our spiritual practices. It's time to dig deeper with Beyond Wellness.
Order the Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/774524/beyond-wellness-by-liz-bucar/
Visit: https://www.sacred-writes.org
Ann Gleig (Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Central Florida; PhD, Rice University, 2010) studies spirituality emerging from the encounter between Buddhism and American culture, particularly meditation and mindfulness. The author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019); and co-editor with Scott A. Mitchell of The Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism, she has published widely about how the incorporation of psychotherapeutic and social justice frameworks have transformed American Buddhist practices. A recipient of a Sacred Writes media partnership to write for Religion Dispatches, Dr. Gleig's public-facing work has also appeared in The Conversation and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
Ann Gleig will collaborate with Nalika Gajawira on a comparative ethnographic study of how Buddhist communities adopt and adapt popular spiritual exercises such as "secular" mindfulness and yoga classes within a wider Buddhist framework. Their work aims to illustrate the processes, frameworks and relationships that can enable more responsible relationships between specific religious communities and the word of spiritual wellness practices.
Ann Gleig, "The Deepak Chopra-Jeffrey Epstein friendship tells of a spirituality industry in crisis," Religion News Service:
https://religionnews.com/2026/03/06/the-deepak-chopra-jeffrey- epstein-tells-of-a-spirituality-industry-in-crisis/
Ann Gleig and Brenna Artinger, "The Buddhist Culture Wars #BuddhistCultureWars: BuddhaBros, Alt-Right Dharma, and Snowflake Sanghas," Journal of Global Buddhism Vol 22: 1(2021) https://www.globalbuddhism.org/article/view/1298
Ann Gleig and Amy Langenberg, "Supporting Survivors of Abuse," Abuse in Buddhism: Facing It, Preventing It and Healing From It, Dharmadatta Community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tlvm5gq-G0
Ann Gleig, Amy Langenberg and Sarah Jacoby, "Reflecting on Heartwood/Northwestern Symposium on Sexual Violence in Buddhism: Centering Survivors Voices," The Shiloh Project
https://shilohproject.blog/reflection-on-heartwood-symposium-on-sexual-violence-in-buddhism- centering-survivors-voices/
Ann Gleig, Talking About Cults: Abuse and the Study of New Religious Movements: https://www.ugapress.org/9780820377902/talking-about-cults/ Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI) https://www.spiritual-integrity.org/
Seek Safely: https://seeksafely.org/
Natalie Avalos (Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder; PhD, University of California Santa Barbara, 2015) is an ethnographer of religion whose research examines contemporary Indigenous religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonization. A Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area, Dr. Avalos is currently working on her manuscript, titled Decolonizing Metaphysics: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal. She served as a co-PI for a Luce Foundation-funded research group at the UC Humanities Research Institute, "Humanitarian Ethics, Religious Affinities and the Politics of Dissent." She is also the recipient of a Sacred Writes media partner fellowship to write about Buddhism and race for Religion Dispatches.
Avalos studies how Indigenous practitioners in the Denver metro area navigate the increasing use of Indigenous plant medicine like ayahuasca and psilocybin by white Americans for wellness purposes. Her informants are concerned about the metaphysical impacts of the decontextualized use of these plants, including how their commodification and increased white demand may limit Indigenous access. However, Avalos's study reveals that along with these risks are compelling possible benefits. Within their Indigenous religious context, plants are understood to have conscious, sacred intelligence revered within the larger social body. If Westerners could look through this sacred lens, plant medicines could help address human-centric biases created by colonial relations, and the West's spiritual yearning for a lost connection to the natural world. Such understanding could both benefit our ecological future and inspire rectification of historical and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
Learn more about John Templeton Foundation's Sacred Writes Working Group here: https://www.sacred-writes.org/templeton-working-group
Michiel van Elk (1980) is a researcher and writer in the field of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. Having received his PhD at the Donders Institute, the Netherlands, he has worked at several international institutions including the University of California Santa Barbara the École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Stanford University. He is currently affiliated as associate professor at Leiden University. He has conducted pioneering work on psychedelics, altered states of consciousness, feelings of awe, the evolution of religion and mystical experiences. His work, including more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles, book chapters and books, has been featured by the New York Times, Vice, Lonely Planet, New Scientist, The Daily Beast and Psychedelic Spotlight.
VISIT PRSM Lab: https://prsmlab.com/teams/michiel-van-elk/
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Laine Walters Young is the Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt in Religion, Psychology and Culture, and considers herself a feminist care ethicist working at the intersection of psychology and ethics. She has experience in non-profit administration as well as a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School where she studied Religion in Public Life, storytelling, and the possibilities of pluralism.
At the Cal Turner Program, she directs the interprofessional student fellowship at Vanderbilt, a group of masters-level students who journey together over a year to deepen their moral awareness and gain leadership skill.
Thank you to Sacred Writes for the support! Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Dr. Lizardy-Hajbi is the author of Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality (Fortress Press, 2024) and co-editor of Explore: Vocational Discovery in Ministry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). In addition, she is the author of a number of articles and reports, including Latino Congregations: Trends from the Faith Communities Today (FACT) and Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) Studies.
Read "Songs That Call Me Home to Puerto Rico": https://www.christiancentury.org/features/songs-call-me-home-puerto-rico
Visit: https://www.iliff.edu/faculty/rev-dr-kristina-lizardy-hajbi/
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Judith L. Bishop is Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Alice Andrews Quigley Chair in Women's Studies at Mills College at Northeastern University. She earned her BA from Baylor University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. Her research interests include: women in world religions; theoretical approaches to gender, body, and sexuality; and religion in public discourse.
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Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century,The Fetzer Institute, TheBerkley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common Life. Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local is his first book.
Read "Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local": https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802884121/becoming-neighbors/
Visit: https://www.amarpeterman.com/amar-site/meet-amar
Subscribe to "This Common Life" on Substack: https://amardpeterman.substack.com
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Mac Loftin is a lecturer on theology at Harvard Divinity School. This essay was adapted from his forthcoming book, "In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance" and was produced in partnership with The Narrative Project, an initiative of The Christian Century.
Read: How immigrants, student protesters and Muslims became the lepers of our time
View: In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance
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LJ Williams (they/she) is a queer African and Jewish ritualist and writer, pursuing an MDiv from Starr King School for The Ministry with a certificate in Entheogenic Justice Companioning. They are a longtime Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism community member, and served as a coordinator of a Chicago BLUUHaven. They were a Worship Learning Fellow at the Church of Larger Fellowship (2021-2023) and she received a B.A. from University of Illinois in Global Studies and Environmental Sustainability. She currently serves as board president of Young Adult Revival Network. She is interested in the intersections of land, religion, and revolutionary movements, embodied ritual and queer bodies. She loves arts, science fiction, and her family.
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Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India. Trained in architecture with a specialisation in Urban Design, she has previously worked as an architect and an academician. She was also part of a multidisciplinary team awarded a grant by India Foundation for Art to study the spatial and sensorial landscape of Kayalpattinam. Beyond academia, she is a published illustrator and storyteller, leading heritage walks independently and with organisations (past collaborators include Kochi-Muziris Biennale) to encourage inclusive and interdisciplinary conversations about architectural and urban histories and sustainable futures for heritage.
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Deirdre Jonese Austin (she/her) is a writer, womanist minister, and Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer raised in the South and in the Protestant Church. Her work, ministry, and research develop out of her own experience and explore topics at the intersection of faith, race, gender and sexuality, and justice. Jonese has a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. She is currently a PhD candidate at Duke University in Cultural Anthropology, pursuing certificates in Feminist and African and African American Studies. Her doctoral project explores how Black women dancers in the U.S. South cultivate the sacred in their relationships with their own bodies and sexualities, the divine, and other dancers, at Black churches and at pole-dance and fitness studios.
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Jimmy Hoke is a freelance scholar whose uses their research, writing, and teaching to enact genuine change. Their work engages and creates queer, trans, and feminist approaches to the New Testament and Early Christianity. They are the author of Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?, which reconstructs how queer wo/men engaged with impulses in Paul's letters. They are the Treasurer of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc. and teach courses at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Their current research and writing projects include exploring asexuality in first-century Judaism and Christianity, exploring the intersections of queerness and disability in the gospels, and reexamining the rhetoric of "sluttiness" in Paul's letters.
Visit Dr. Jimmy Hoke online: https://www.jimmyhoke.com/
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Samantha Carwyn is a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, where she earned a Master of Divinity with a concentration in Social Transformation and Church Leadership. Her thesis, Finding Sacred Inherent Worth Despite Adultification & Misogynoir, explores the intersections of gender, race, and the societal expectations placed on Black women. She is currently in care for ordination with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. In her community, Samantha engages in transformative resistance through education, storytelling, and artivism. As a public theologian, she is committed to building bridges between the church, academia, and everyday people to cultivate meaningful conversations.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Visit Samantha Carwyn: https://carwyncollaboration.com/home/
Dr. Amy Fallas is a PhD in History at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in History from Yale and her research examines religious difference, charitable networks, and historical memory in the Middle East. Her work has been supported by the American Research Center in Egypt, the American Society for Church History, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center among others. She is the Associate Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and serves on the steering committees of the History of Christianity and Middle Eastern Christianity units of the American Academy of Religion. Her scholarship appears in History Compass and Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations and her essays are published in the Washington Post, Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, the Revealer, Sojourners and more. On this episode, we mostly discuss her article Brothers in the Resistance, research in Lebanon about connections between Latin America and the Middle East, titled Hermanos fi al-Muqawama, She is based in Beirut.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan
Visit Amy Fallas: https://www.amyfallas.com/
Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), was awarded the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. She is also editor-in-chief of Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts (Bloomsbury, 2025), and her recent publications examine the book of Esther in the light of fan fiction studies, queer theory, and affect theory. Her research focuses on the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the cultural and literary norms that make them so resonant. Her latest project applies Sara Ahmed's "feminist killjoy" to the women of the Hebrew Bible, using biblical stories of unhappy women as a model for modern unhappy readers.
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Follow Esther Brownsmith on Bluesky @brownsmith.bsky.social You can get your copy of Trans Biblical directly from the publisher right here.
Christopher B. Zeichmann (he/they) is a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, who specializes in the study of the New Testament. His research focuses on a variety of questions related to sexuality, the Roman military, and the early Jesus tradition. His books include Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings (Pluto, 2025), Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (SBL Press, 2022), and The Roman Army and the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018).
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Raj Kumar Singh is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at the University of Delhi, currently studying the relationship between religion and economy in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala. He has published several articles and book chapters on Hindu nationalism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between Communism, Buddhism, and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion, has been researching, writing, and teaching in religious studies and applied ethics for over two decades. She examines ethical issues from multiple philosophical and religious perspectives. Her work is rooted in her upbringing as a daughter of an immigrant Hindu father from India and a Japanese Buddhist mother born and raised in Hawai’i. She utilized her experiences as a registered nurse and as an applied ethicist in several publications presenting Hindu perspectives on bioethical issues and on cultural humility. Her current creative nonfiction project combines her academic expertise with her long-term relationships with the women of the Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram, an intentional, spiritually-focused women’s community in rural central India. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Tess Starman (she/they) is a recent PhD graduate in Sociology at Howard University and is an incoming assistant professor at Simpson College. Her research specializes on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power at the nexus of religion and politics. She studies progressive Christian attitudes, religious exiting, and religion’s impact on political attitudes and engagement. We discuss her dissertation, entitled, “A Corrupted Faith: The Role of Power in the Process of Christian Disaffiliation and Rise of the Religious Nones,” which examines the religious exiting process and non-religious identity formation of ex-Christians. You can find her work at tessstarman.com.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Rebecca Wolfe is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. Graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2024, Rebecca’s research agenda focuses on the areas of gender, sexuality, the body, and mental health, particularly in the context of religion. Rebecca’s dissertation work examined bodily experiences of disordered eating and sexual dysfunction among people raised as women in purity culture, a Protestant evangelical movement. Rebecca has been published in academic journals including Health Affairs, Social Science and Medicine - Population Health, and Theology and Sexuality, and created public facing work on podcasts such as EDGES and Anthrodish, and through the Sage Knowledge video series.
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Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Qur’anic studies, gender studies and interreligious relations. Her award-winning monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 2020) received the Association of Middle East Women's Studies book prize and is being translated into multiple languages. She also authored Islam and Monotheism, an accessible primer on Islamic theology (Cambridge University Press 2022), edited One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock 2019), and is featured in the Netflix docudrama Testament: The Story of Moses (2024). Ibrahim holds degrees from Princeton University (AB), Harvard Divinity School (MDiv), and Brandeis University (MA/PHD). She serves as a faculty member at Groton School in Religious Studies and Philosophy.
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Visit Celene Ibrahim: https://www.celeneibrahim.org/
Amanda Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty member of the Feminist Studies and Race & Ethnicity Studies programs at Southwestern University. She is a proud graduate of San Antonio Community College. She received her B.A. in Women’s & Gender Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Baylor University. Her work focuses on the ways that white supremacy and sexism show up in U.S. Christian groups. She is the author of Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States: Faith, Race, and Feminism (Lexington Books, 2024). Her work has been published in Conscience Magazine, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociological Spectrum.
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Visit Dr. Amanda Hernandez: https://sites.google.com/view/amandadhernandez/
Buy the book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/intersectional-identities-of-christian-women-in-the-united-states-9781666941647/
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College. Her research interests include Hindu traditions, epic narratives, Indian cinema, and women in religion. She is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative(Oxford University Press, 2024) and the co-editor with Nell Shapiro Hawley of Many Mahabharatas(SUNY Press, 2021). Ongoing projects include a co-authored sourcebook with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer D. Ortegren entitled Women in Hindu Traditions (NYU Press) and a monograph about cinematic adaptations of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. She is also co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Hinduism Unit and on the editorial board for Reading Religion.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary, Lucas is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga. He is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers UP, 2025), which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. He is also the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2025), as well as the co-editor of Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature (Lexington, 2023). His academic work has appeared in Modern Language Studies, Canadian Jewish Studies, Flannery O’Connor Review, Journal of Jewish Identities, and Studies in American Jewish Literature. His public-facing writing has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues.
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Buy Shame-Sex Attraction: https://bookshop.org/p/books/shame-sex-attraction-survivors-stories-of-conversion-therapy-lucas-wilson/21360797?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAafHdvzZaNVuiBkf8kq3JdOu8i5UQCVYQZqAkrljmmJjkpO-cLhb2xifbGfyfQ_aem_-PIMbnt_hKHPY2E7FMxa6A
Tazeen M. Ali (she/her) is assistant professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, US Islam, and race and religion in America. She is the author of The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press, 2022). She has also published in Religion & Politics (now ARC Mag), The Conversation, The Maydan, and Middle East Eye. Ali is currently writing her second book, Muslims on Screen: Racism and Sexuality in Anglo-American Islam, which analyzes entertainment media projects produced by British and American Muslims. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Museum of American Religion. Ali earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University in 2019.
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Alexiana Fry (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen at the Faculty of Theology for a project entitled “Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism.” Her first book, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, released in October 2023 with Lexington Press. She received her Ph.D. in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University (ZA) in December 2021. Her dissertation project focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, migration, and trauma in specific biblical texts, and she continues to explore these constitutive features in both ancient and modern contexts.
Visit Alexiana Fry: https://www.alexianafry.com/public-scholarship
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Classical Ideas Linktree: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Peach (they/them) is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute. They are conducting ethnographic research into the dynamics of resistance and compliance in women’s interfaith organisations in the contemporary British public sphere. One of their key interests is how often-dismissed ‘convivial’ activities like crafting and food-sharing create conditions for meaningful relationship building in interfaith spaces. Recently they have been puzzling over the interactions between interfaith organising, counter-extremism policy and (anti-)carceral feminisms in the UK. They are funded by the Polonsky-Coexist and Woolf Institute scholarships.
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Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and affiliated faculty at the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023) and the co-editor of American Examples: A New Conversation about Religion, vol. 3 (University of Alabama Press, 2024). A scholar of law and religion, Lloyd is now writing about how law and religion construct mothers and motherhood through an interplay between ideas about care and neglect. She is a co-PI for the research project “Critical Perspectives on Care: Social Reproduction Theory in a Global Context.”
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Aisha R. Lovens (she/her/hers) is a PhD student in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary. She is a dynamic same-gender-loving minister, scholar-activist, womanist, and preacher committed to transformative theological inquiry. Her research centers on sex rhetoric in Black churches and theological institutions, with a particular emphasis on womanist theology and its liberative possibilities for marginalized communities. Her work seeks to challenge oppressive structures, amplify silenced voices, and foster a more inclusive and embodied understanding of sacred discourse. With a passion for preaching, teaching, and advocacy, she is a visionary leader who brings a depth of insight, intuition, and discernment to her ministry. She is dedicated to empowering communities to engage in critical reflection and bold action and seeks to create spaces for authenticity, healing, and liberation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Norfolk State University, a Master of Divinity, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.
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Classical Ideas-Sacred Writes seasons 1-8: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff is a PhD candidate in Religion at Harvard University. Her dissertation is a historical and ethnographic study of digital communities of post-evangelical feminists in the twenty-first century. She is also writing a biography of millennial author Rachel Held Evans. Hanson Woodruff’s work has been supported by the Louisville Institute, the SSRC’s Religion, Spirituality and Democratic Renewal fellowship, and the Weatherhead Center. Her research and teaching interests include evangelicalism and post-evangelicalism, religion and gender, and religion and American politics.
Visit Kelsey Hanson Woodruff online: https://www.kelseyhansonwoodruff.com/
Visit tge 2025 Sacred Writes Carpenter Cohort online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan
Seasons 1-8 of Sacred Writes/Classical Ideas episodes: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Dr Angela Puca is an academic and a university lecturer who has taught at several universities worldwide and has been based at Leeds Trinity University since 2016.
She holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in philosophy. In 2021, The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Religious Studies on Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism, published by Brill. Her research focuses on magic, witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, shamanism, and related currents.
Author of several peer-reviewed publications and co-editor of the forthcoming ‘Pagan Religions in five Minutes’ for Equinox, she hopes to bridge the gap between academia and the communities of magic practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube Channel and other social media platforms. CONNECT & SUPPORT💖
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Shaonta’ Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She also holds affiliations with the African and African American Studies Department and the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality. She received her B.A in Sociology from the University of Washington, her M.A. in Sociology and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Middle Tennessee State University, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati. Her scholarship draws on Race, Religion, Social Movements, and Intersectionality literatures to explore how identity markers like religion inform Black political ideology construction. Shaonta’s current book project examines the experiences of Black Christian Millennials during Black Lives Matter. Her research has been published in Sociology Compass, Humanity & Society, and Religions.
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Visit Dr. Shaonta' Allen: https://linktr.ee/ShaontaTheSociologist
Binu 'Ben' Varghese is a PhD student in religion and society at Princeton Theological Seminary. His research focuses on intersections of race, politics, and religion among Indian diasporas in transnational contexts. He draws his theoretical formulations from the colonial history of Dutch slavery in India and alternative readings of Indian American history and memories. In addition to his research project, Binu is also interested in religion and capitalism, and religious nationalisms in India and America. He is currently serving as the editorial assistant of the Journal of World Christianity. His upcoming research essay is titled “Liminality as Decoloniality: Decolonizing Indian American Christianity,” which will be published in The Routledge Handbook of Politics and Religion in Contemporary America. We also discuss “Indian Flag at the Capitol Insurrection and ANti blackness among Indian Christians” from the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024
SueJeanne Koh is the Graduate Futures Program Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She develops programming for humanities doctoral students focusing on professional development and diverse career pathways. She is also the Director of Adult Education and Resident Theologian for St. Mark and New Hope Presbyterian Churches (PC(USA)). In this capacity, she creates opportunities for both churches to collaborate on racial justice and other pressing social issues. She has written articles and book chapters on settler colonialism and theology, Asian American theology, as well as co-written a piece on contingent labor with Franklin Tanner Capps (JAAR). With Capps, she is currently working on a book project on Christian nationalism, informed by blood discourses and legal proceedings significant for Asian American racial formation.
Visit Suejeanne Koh: https://x.com/suejeannekoh
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Farha Ternikar (Ph.D., Sociology, M.A. Religious Studies) is the director of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at Le Moyne College, Syracuse. Her current manuscript “Faith and Food Networks: Muslim women’s acts of resistance and resilience in the American Diaspora” examines how in addition to race and gender, global Islamophobia continues to play an important role in how we can understand the role of food for Muslim communities both in the United States and India. She teaches courses in feminist theory, and race, gender and pop culture. She is the author of Intersectionality and the Muslim South Asian Middle Class: Beyond Hijab and Halal (2021), and several articles including “Beyond Hijab and Modest Fashion”, “Feeding the Muslim South Asian American Family”, and “Hijab and the Abrahamic Traditions”. Her piece “Muslim American Women,” co-authored with Inaash Islam, was recently published in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures.
Links:
Book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793649393/Intersectionality-in-the-Muslim-South-Asian-American-Middle-Class-Lifestyle-Consumption-beyond-Halal-and-Hijab
Article: https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/gatherings/vol1/iss1/9/
Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024
Robert Monson is a writer, musician, and scholar that looks closely at Black and womanist theologies as well as Black disability theology. His work engages Black religious identities, Christian nationalism, disability, and more. He is currently a PhD student and is a host for two podcasts: Black Coffee and Theology and Three Black Men: Theology, Culture, and the World Around Us.
Visit Robert Monson online:
https://www.threads.net/@robert_the_contemplative
https://musingsfromabrokenheart.substack.com/
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024
Natalie Avalos is an assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the Ethnic Studies department at University of Colorado Boulder. She is an ethnographer of religion whose teaching and research examine Indigenous religious life, land-based ethics, healing historical trauma, and decolonization. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a special focus on Native American and Indigenous Religious Traditions and Tibetan Buddhism and is currently working on her manuscript titled Decolonizing Metaphysics: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal, which explores urban Indigenous and Tibetan refugee religious life as decolonial praxis. She is a Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area.
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Visit Natalie Avalos: https://natalieavalos.wordpress.com
Emma Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Islam subfield of the Department of Religion at Princeton University. They are also pursuing a graduate certificate from the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Their work focuses on Islam in South Asia along with Islam, Gender, and Sexuality. Their research draws on anthropological fieldwork and social media archives to examine how queer activists in Northern India navigate religion and secularism, especially situated within the context of rising Hindu nationalism. In addition to the dissertation project, Emma’s interests include secularism studies, religious racialization and identity, queer and trans studies in religion, and religious nationalisms.
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Dr. Michael Brandon McCormack is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies, Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities , and former Director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. He earned his Ph.D. in Religion in 2013 from Vanderbilt University. His research explores the intersections between Black religion, popular culture, the arts, and activism. His work has been published in Black Theology: An International Journal, the Journal of Africana Religions, the Black Scholar, and the recent volume, Moved By the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives. His most recent research focuses on the relationships between religion and discourses of afro-pessimism, afro-futurism, “Black optimism,” and notions of “Black joy” as resistance.
Moved By the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793647771/Moved-by-the-Spirit-Religion-and-the-Movement-for-Black-Lives
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https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024
Phoebe Farag Mikhail is a Coptic Orthodox Christian and the author of Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church (Paraclete Press). She holds an M.A. in International Education and is a lifelong learner of theology, currently taking courses at Pope Shenouda III Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Plough, Christianity Today, and other publications.
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Visit Phoebe Farag MIkhail: https://beingincommunity.com/
Dr. Strozier is a lecturer at Georgia State University. She is continuing her research in the areas of religion, gender, sexuality, and health focusing the disproportionality of black women's maternal mortality, and women's reproductive decisions, using digital platforms. Her pedagogical focus is anti-racist and decolonial teaching strategies, while shifting humanities curriculum to focus on professional skill development within the gaze of critical skills. Dr. Strozier is dedicated to research and teaching as forms of activism.
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Visit Dr. Ashlyn Strozier: https://www.instagram.com/gapeach82/
Bhakti Mamtora (Ph.D., Religion, University of Florida) is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona. Broadly, her research interests include print culture, book history, migration, and transnational religion. Her current book project employs archival, textual, and ethnographic methods to examine the genesis and reception of the Swāmīnī Vāto in the Swaminarayan Sampraday during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published journal articles in Fieldwork in Religion and Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, and entries in Hinduism in Five Minutes and Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024
Samira Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at CU Boulder. Her research focuses on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the US. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (UNC, 2018) was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You (Beacon Press, 2023) was called “the epitome of a book meeting a moment” by Oprah’s “Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2023.” Mehta’s current academic book project, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality and Contraception in Tri-Faith America examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics in the mid-twentieth century. Mehta is the primary investigator for a Luce Foundation funded project, Jews of Color: Histories and Futures.
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Read Dr. Samira Mehta: https://www.beacon.org/cw_contributorinfo.aspx?ContribID=12658&Name=Samira+K.+Mehta
Sophie Bjork-James (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family (Rutgers 2021, winner of the Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize) and the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (2020). She has been interviewed on the NBC Nightly News, NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC Radio 4’s Today, and in the New York Times. Her work has received support the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.
Visit Sophie Bjork-James online: https://sophiebjorkjames.com/
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Chauncey Handy is Assistant Professor of Religion at Reed College. As a Chicano scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Chauncey’s work focuses on the intersection of race/racialization, theories of ethnicity, Latinx theorization of identity, and the reception history of the Hebrew Bible (for example his Bible, Race, and Empire course at Reed). He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Reed College. He is working on turning his dissertation, Mestizo Poetics of Belonging: Deuteronomy’s Construction of Israelite Ethnicity, into a published book. In this project, he considers the nature of ethnicity as presented in the text of Deuteronomy through the lens of Gloria Anzaldúa’s articulation of mestizaje (racial-ethnic intermixture). His argument emphasizes the value of socially located approaches to Hebrew Bible and seeks to theorize engagement with religious categories of belonging that advocate for a just society.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023
Vic Thasiah is a professor of religion and a lead faculty member in the environmental studies program at California Lutheran University. He is also the founder and co-president of the nonprofit environmental organization Runners for Public Lands. His research focuses on Chinese nature poetry, Native American perspectives on land and running, and environmental philosophy and activism. He is currently working on a book titled Ground Truth: The Natural World, Outdoor Recreation, and Environmental Activism.
Read Drag Sun, Tiger Moon: https://www.irunfar.com/dragon-sun-tiger-moon-fastpacking-the-backbone-trail
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Sonja Thomas is an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Colby College, where she teaches courses on South Asian feminisms, transnational feminisms, gender and human rights, feminist theory, and postcolonial and native feminisms. Sonja is associate editor for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and the author of Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India. She has written articles on tap history and blackface abroad (specifically in Asia). She is currently researching and writing her second book on Catholic missionary priests from India serving in rural Montana and North Dakota. The project is titled Indians and Cowboys: Race, Caste, and Indian Missionary Priests in Rural America. She is also conducting research on the 1961 Babe Ruth World Series hosted in her hometown, Glendive, Montana.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023
Read Wondering About the Appearance of the Indian Flag at the Capitol Riots? by Dr. Sonja Thomas
Check out Sonja Thomas' book: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743844/privileged-minorities/
Sarah Dees is a scholar of American and Indigenous religions and assistant professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the history of the study and representation of Native North American religious traditions, including the relationship between the production of knowledge about religion and policies limiting the free exercise of religion. Her first book manuscript examines the study of Native American religions in the assimilation era by a Smithsonian research agency. She has taught classes on American religions, Native American religions, religion and museums, method and theory in the study of religion, religious freedom and discrimination, and religion and health. She is also interested the intersections of religion, culture, art, and music. You can see what she’s up to at www.sarahedees.com.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023
Tamisha A. Tyler (she/her/hers) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, and Theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana. Her research interests include Theopoetics, Theology and the arts, Afrofuturism, Black popular culture, and Science Fiction. Her dissertation, Articulating Sensibilities: Methodologies in Theopoetics in Conversation with Octavia E. Butler, explores Butler’s work in the Parable Series as an embodied, artistic, and theopoetic response to the theological, economic, and ecological upheaval in Butler’s dystopic world. She is part of the Level Ground artist collective in Los Angeles, CA and her work can be seen in Feminism in Religion’s blog, and Fuller Magazine. Her latest project explores religion in the literary world of Octavia Butler.
Visit Tamisha Tyler online: https://www.tamishatyler.com/
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Corwin Malcolm Davis is a PhD candidate at Emory University in Person, Community, and Religious Life, and earning a certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Corwin earned a B.A. Degree from Belmont University and a M.Div. from Vanderbilt University Divinity School as the Dean's Scholar. At Emory, Davis has received the George W. Woodruff Fellowship, the Centennial Scholars Fellowship, and externally, fellowships from the Louisville Institute and the Forum for Theological Exploration. His work has also been recognized in scholarship through the receipt of Emory’s 2022 Studies in Sexualities Graduate Award, and in public writing through features in literary publications such as Columbia Journal.
Visit Corwin Malcolm Davis online: https://corwinmalcolm.com/about
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This episode discusses the article "3HO's Boarding Schools Were a Living Hell" from Baaz News with the authors Stacie Stukin and Philip Deslippe.
Read: https://www.baaznews.org/p/3hos-boarding-schools-abuse-yogi-bhajan?utm_medium=web
Visit Stacie Stukin online: https://www.staciestukin.com/
Visit Philip Deslippe online: https://philipdeslippe.com/
Read Stacie Stukin in Los Angeles Magazine: https://lamag.com/featured/yogi-bhajan
Read Stukin and Deslippe "How Siri SIngh Sabib Yogi Bhajan Created an Empire": https://www.baaznews.org/p/yogi-bhajan-siri-singh-sahib-expose
Danielle is a poet, painter, teacher, and word-witch. The author of Bones & Honey, The Holy Wild Grimoire, The Sacred Hags Oracle, Seasons of Moon and Flame, Woman Most Wild, and The Holy Wild (published by New World Library), she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. Ever grateful to her many teachers, Danielle has most recently studied with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Singing Over the Bones Training, 2019), Bayo Akomolafe (We Will Dance with Mountains, 2022), and John Cantwell and Dr. Karen Ward of Sli An Chroi (2018-2024). She holds a BA in painting from Arcadia University, is the founder of The Hag School, and believes in the emerging power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists in healing our ailing world. She splits her time between the whiskey-soaked streets of a Pennsylvania steel-town and the wilds of upstate New York. Find her praying under pine trees, wandering through the haunted places, and whispering to her grandmothers’ ghosts.
https://danielledulsky.com/about/
Rebecca Cooper teaches religion at the middle school level in the suburbs of Washington D.C.
Elyse Ambrose (Ph.D., Religion and Society, Drew University) is a blackqueer ethicist, creative, and educator. Their forthcoming book, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (T&T Clark) offers a transreligious and communal-based sexual ethics grounded in blackqueer archive. Ambrose’s photo-sonic exhibition, “Spirit in the Dark Body: Black Queer Expressions of the Im/material,” explores black queer and trans spiritualities, identity, and poiesis. Currently Assistant Professor in the Departments for the Study of Religion and of Black Study at the University of California, Riverside, their commentary is featured in the Huffington Post, Vice, BMoreArt, and CBC Radio One’s Tapestry podcast. Their research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Columbia University's Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice, Henry Luce Foundation, and Yale University LGBT Studies Fellowship.
Dr. Sana Patel, (Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of Ottawa) has distinguished herself as a scholar specializing in Digital Islam. She is the recipient of the 2023 Digital Religion Research Award presented by The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. After completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on systemic Islamophobia in Canada, Sana is keen on exploring how Islamophobia manifests in online spaces and how digital technology shapes global anti-Muslim experiences. Her research interests include studying digital religion, religious diversity, religious authority, religion and immigration, Islamophobia, and nonreligion. Sana’s recent publications include: “Religion and Media in Canada” (2021), “Hybrid Imams: Young Muslims and Religious Authority on Social Media” (2021), and “Islamophobia in North America” (2023).
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024
Nancy A. Khalil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an appointment in the Arab and Muslim American Studies Program. Her research broadly focuses on the politics of the idea of American Islam and her forthcoming manuscript is on the profession of the Imam in America. Her academic work has been supported by several foundations, including the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, MSA National, IIIT, and the Islamic Scholarship Fund. She completed her PhD in anthropology at Harvard University, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale’s Center on Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration and the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
Dr. Khalil previously served on the board of directors for Islamic Relief USA and the Muslim Justice League. Before academia, she was the Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley College. She is committed to serving the American Muslim community as a translator and bridge between academia and public service.
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Patrick J. D’Silva (Ph.D., Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is a faculty member of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. His current research projects include analyzing the intersection of race, religion, and cultural appropriation in contemporary science fiction, as well as the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have engaged with yoga. His previous research examines the circulation of esoteric breathing practices between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia during the early-modern period. He is the co-author (with Carl Ernst) of the forthcoming Breathtaking Revelations: The Science of Breath from the Fifty Kamarupa Verses to Hazrat Inayat Khan. He lives in Boulder, CO with his family.
Visit Patrick D'Silva online: https://www.patrickjdsilva.com/
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Charles McCrary (Ph.D., Religion, Florida State University) is an assistant professor of religious studies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He researches and teaches broadly on American religion, especially topics related to politics, race, secularism, and science. His first book, Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (University of Chicago Press, 2022), examines the history of “sincerely held religious belief” and how that became a standard for legal understandings of religion in religious freedom cases. He is currently in the early stages of a project about a “crank,” in which he explores how religious, scientific, and political fringes are defined as such. McCrary has written in scholarly journals as well as popular outlets such as The Revealer, Religion & Politics, and The New Republic.
Read The Making of a Crass Religious Freedom Celebrity: https://newrepublic.com/article/175783/praying-coach-book-religious-freedom
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Rev. Aizaiah G. Yong (Ph.D., Practical Theology, Claremont School of Theology) serves as Assistant Professor of Spirituality at the Claremont School of Theology in Southern California, USA. He is an ordained Pentecostal Christian minister within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a recognized facilitator in the Compassion Practice and an Internal Family Systems Practitioner. Growing up in a multiracial and immigrant family, he is committed to sustaining transformational and collective efforts that address ongoing realities of social oppression with presence, passion, and peace.
Multiracial Cosmotheandrism: https://orbisbooks.com/products/working-title-multiracial-cosmotheandrism-a-practical-theology-of-multiraciality-inspired-by-the-life-philosophy-and-mysticism-of-raimon-panikkar-tentative
Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024
Spirited Renewal: https://www.spiritedrenewal.org/
In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout.
For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the power failure that brought about societal collapse. Since then they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home.
Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their original homeland, the “land where the birch trees grow by the big water” in the Great Lakes region. Accompanied by five others, including his daughter Nangohns, an expert archer, Evan begins a journey that will take him to where the Anishinaabe were once settled, near the devastated city of Gibson, a land now being reclaimed by nature.
But it isn’t just the wilderness that poses a threat: they encounter other survivors. Those who, like the Anishinaabe, live in harmony with the land, and those who use violence.
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black queer preacher, teacher, public administrator, and justice advocate. She is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and the Government Fellow for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. In 2021, Rev. Naomi founded Salt | Yeast | Light, an organization that develops spaces of spiritual education, disruption, reflection, transformation, and public action.
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Visit Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart:
https://twitter.com/oholyshift
https://www.instagram.com/oholyshift/
https://linktr.ee/heartleaps?fbclid=IwAR0KBxltXNIzvz1JYA_CmaXLj425I-Rn2YZqcjBSu3Ay50yFH5om-fqtrB8
Maxwell Greenberg (he/they) | (Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Cultural Studies at Goucher College) is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator who researches and teaches about race, religion, gender, and place. He earned his PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from UCLA (2021), before serving as the Friedman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Washington University in St. Louis (2021-23). He works at the intersection of Jewish, Religious and Indigenous Studies, and is particularly interested in how Judaism and Jewish memory function as unstable tools of statecraft in the US. Greenberg is passionate about building community with a network of scholars, artists and organizers who engage with religion as a connective tool for coalition building with movements to end racism and transmisogyny.
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Elizabeth Jemison is Associate Professor of Religion at Clemson University where she teaches courses on American religion. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South, published by UNC Press in 2020. Her next book project, tentatively titled, Christian Motherhood: Race and Southern Churchwomen’s Organizing during Segregation, examines how women’s religious groups across racial lines mobilized to defend Christian motherhood with conflicting results. She has written for Patheos and Religion & Politics. At Clemson, Jemison received the Provost’s Outstanding Junior Teacher Award in 2022 and the College of AAH Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020. She was a Young Scholar in American Religion in the 2015-2017 cohort.
Follow Elizabeth Jemison online: https://twitter.com/eljemison
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Matthew J. Smith (he/him/his) holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Alma College in mid-central Michigan. He is a transdisciplinary scholar of race, religion, and U.S. empire whose research and teaching also center on gender/sexuality, science & technology, and the environmental humanities. His first book project explores the biopolitics of conversion in U.S. Protestant Missions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, interrogating the missionary discourse of plasticity as a central grammar in the modern scientific production of race. Smith also serves as the Director of the Religious Studies Program at Alma College, teaching a wide range of course offerings on the study of religion as it is lived in people’s everyday lives.
Follow Dr. Matthew J. Smith https://twitter.com/smithmj303?lang=en
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Lauren Horn Griffin (PhD, University of California Santa Barbara) is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. Her first book, Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (Brill 2023), showed how confessional debates played a critical role in the development of national identities. Her current project investigates contemporary negotiations of national, religious, and racial identities in Catholic communities online. Adding Catholicism to current conversations about what many are calling white Christian nationalism in the U.S., she shows that while Catholics have long imagined the nation in terms of religious identity, many currently mobilize ideas of Catholic tradition to construct images of a munti-national white Western Civilization.
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Darius M. Benton, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown, teaching courses in Organizational Communication and Religious Communication. He also serves as the inaugural program director for the MA in Strategic Communication degree. Dr. Benton earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organizational Leadership from Regent University, his Master of Divinity degree with a certificate in Religious Education from Emory University, and Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication from Norfolk State University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and professional educator with varied experiences from Pre-K through collegiate levels, an ordained minister, executive leader, and social scientist. Dr. Benton’s research and publications focus on organizational culture; specifically examining issues of race and gender, religious leadership, and youth serving organizations.
Visit Darius Benton online: https://www.dmbenton.com
This episode is made possible with support from Sacred Writes.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023
Darnise C. Martin, PhD is a Professor, Author and Life Transformation Coach with 15 years of training and experiences in helping people create Whole Life Abundance. Dr. Darnise has a life- long passion for helping people tap into their spiritual connections for authentic transformation in the areas of Relationships, Spirituality, Life Purpose and Career, Self-Worth, and Well-Being. Dr. Darnise is a scholar, professor, published author and speaker, with a doctorate in Religious Studies. Dr. Darnise was also featured on Tavis Smiley’s radio program on National Public Radio (NPR), and has appeared on KJLH radio in Los Angeles. She has consulted on feature length documentaries such as Dark Girls and Light Girls for the Oprah Winfrey Network. She continues to speak throughout the community offering empowerment and relationship workshops. Dr. Darnise is the author of Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (New York University Press, 2005), coeditor of Women and New and Africana Religions, and the personal development book, 40 Something: 10 Radical Lessons for Women on How To Live and Love Without Losing Themselves. Visit Dr. Darnise at www.drdarnise.com
This episode made possible with support from Sacred Writes.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023
Prea Persaud is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida and a Visiting Instructor in the Religion Department at Swarthmore College, PA. Her research focuses on Hinduism in the Caribbean and the intersection between race and religion. In her dissertation, “God Must be a Trini: The Transformation of Hinduism into a Caribbean Religion,” she uses Hinduism in Trinidad to challenge studies on diasporic Hinduism that center India as the homeland, scholarship on the Caribbean that ignores the influence of Asian migration, and the rigidness of categories within the study of religion. She is on the steering committees for the North American Hindu Unit and the Religion in South Asia Unit at the American Academy of Religion and a member of the Intersectional Critical Hindu Studies Group. Her recently publications include several chapters in the edited volume Hinduism in the 5 Minutes edited by Steven Ramey, and “Creolization, Caribbeanness, and Other Categories in the Study of Caribbean Hinduism” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion edited by Michael Altman.
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Eugenia Rainey studies religion as negotiated process. She explores this process at the intersection of Lucumí, an Afro-Cuban religion, (also referred to as La Regla de Ochá or Santería) and medicine. Her work focuses on how the cultural competency paradigm that emerged out of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society influenced the adaptation of Lucumí practice outside of Cuba and racial identity formation in south Florida. Rainey's identity as Cape Verdean and multiracial inform her scholarship on processes of racialization in the United States and Latin America. With her thorough grounding in religious practice, her work highlights devotees' experiences and perceptions of the medical encounter. Through this research she seeks to better understand how the healthcare infrastructure impacts lived religion and how Lucumí in the US accommodates the healthcare needs of devotees as well as the healthcare infrastructure. Her research is supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Reed Foundation, as well as Tulane University and Dartmouth College.
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Yolanda M. Santiago Correa was born and raised in the archipelago of Puerto Rico as the only child of Miguel and Yolanda. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Religion & Culture at Southern Methodist University. Her academic work and interests focus on Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad, music, and the relationship between racial and religious identity and imagination. Yolanda is a creator and co-host of Majestad Prieta: A Podcast on Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, y la Diáspora and is a team member of the AfroLatiné Theology Project.
Jennifer T. Kaalund (Ph.D., New Testament and Early Christianity, Drew University) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on Christian Scriptures, contextual Biblical hermeneutics, and African American history, culture, and religion. She is the author of Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration: Diaspora, Place, and Identity (Bloomsbury T&T Clark Press, 2018). She currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
Follow Dr. Jennifer Kaalund: https://twitter.com/jkaalund
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Soumia Bardhan is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Operating at the transdisciplinary intersection of intercultural communication, global communication, and Islamic studies, she explores the complex ways diverse communication practices associated with Islam/Muslims shape MENA (Middle East and North Africa) culture and politics, challenge Islamophobia, facilitate the deliberative capacities of Muslim minority groups, and influence U.S. foreign policy. Her first monograph, on the digital rhetoric of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is under contract with the University of Alabama Press. This book nuances how we understand the rhetoric of Islamism and challenges U.S./Euro-centric narratives of the relationship between (and future of) religion and politics in the MENA region. Soumia was awarded the University of Notre Dame’s Global Religion and Research Initiative grant to develop an interdisciplinary course titled “Religion and Communication in the Middle East.” She teaches intercultural/critical intercultural communication; transnational rhetoric; religion, culture, and communication; gender, politics, and Islam; and directs Global Study courses focusing on Islam and intercultural dialogue in Spain, France, Morocco, and India.
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Oluwatomisin "Tomi" Oredein is currently an Assistant Professor in Black Religious Traditions and Constructive Theology and Ethics and the Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX. Anchored in her American African identity, her scholastic and creative work engages theopoetics, womanist theology and ethics, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and Black theology from an African diasporic perspective. Tomi is most intrigued by how cultural, social, and religious liminalities can be sites of generative theological and ethical exploration. She has written academic, creative, and ecumenical pieces that foreground questions of care, modes of recognition, and cultural perception from her American African lens. She is the author of the forthcoming book with the University of Notre Dame Press (May 2023), The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice. Her future works include a solo-authored book on a theological ethics of care entitled Making a Human: A Theological Ethic of Care and co-editing a book on theopoetics exclusively featuring racially and ethnically minoritized scholars, entitled In Color: Embodied Approaches in Theopoetics.
Buy The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye here: The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye
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Marcus Evans is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in the department of Philosophy & Religion at Western Kentucky University. Marcus is currently interested in religion and spirituality in Afro-Asian encounters and arts (e.g., music, films, novels, graphic designs, performances, etc.). His dissertation explores Afro-Asian style and spirituality in the hip-hop productions of RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan. He has recently contributed an article titled “Buddhism and Afro-Asian Masculinities in RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists” to a forthcoming volume titled Buddhist Masculinities, edited by Megan Bryson and Kevin Buckelew (Columbia University Press).
This episode sponsored by Sacred Writes.
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-spring-2023
Playlist discussed in this episode:
- “Bring Da Ruckus” (1993) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhRNgqPlyk
- “Reunited” (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40a5UNO5T44 (music-video)
- “Second Coming” (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V33vEEL4Peo
- “One Blood Under W” (2000) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmmtW5cD6HI
- “Chi-Kung” (2003) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjr3k882waE (music-video)
- “Life Changes” (2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnLxyCHGB1M
- “Ruckus in B-Minor” (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-XwMytbaIE
- “Fate of the World” (2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cKvJUka_VM (music-video)
Dr. Popy Begum is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Saint Louis University. She received her B.A. in International Criminal Justice and a Certificate in Dispute Resolution from John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and her MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the Centre for Criminology, Oxford University. Her dissertation study of Hindu and Muslim sex workers in New Delhi combines ethnographic field observations of the red-light district and 102 in-depth interviews via respondent-driven sampling.
Sara Moslener is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Religion at Central Michigan University, where she teaches courses on the history of religious and racial discrimination in the United States. She has been studying evangelical purity culture for over 15 years and has numerous publications, including the book Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence (Oxford University Press: 2015). Sara’s work has been featured in The Revealer, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Sojourners Magazine, Jezebel, Religion Dispatches, Religion & Politics, Religion News Service, and The Baffler. She has appeared on numerous podcasts and is a regular contributor to the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
Justin Friel (He/Him) is currently a Ph.D. student in the Joint Doctoral Program with the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. His research explores how religion, culture, and politics influence and affect one another and the ways these forces shape the formation and performance of Queer identities. Within that, Justin's research interests include white Christian nationalism, TikTok, popular culture, and utopia. Justin has an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy and currently works time as a therapist focusing on sex, sexuality, spirituality, and identity.
Visit Justin Friel online: https://www.theholyqueer.com/
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Heather R. White is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department and Gender and Queer Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound and a Research Associate at the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her research focuses on religion, identity, and politics with an emphasis on queer, post-secular, and critical race theories as frameworks for interpreting recent U.S. history. White is the author of Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
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Arwa Hussain is a Ph.D. candidate in Religions and Cultures and 2022-23 Public Scholar at Concordia University in Montreal. Her current research interests deal with Islamic communities, particularly her own community, the Dawoodi Bohras, gender and agency, and social media platforms. Her dissertation combines digital ethnography and personal experience to understand how pious Dawoodi Bohra women embed their agency within a religious community and represent themselves on social media, the first study of its kind to shed light on this dynamic community and its women. Her doctoral research is supported by Concordia University and the FRQSC, awarded by the government of Quebec. Arwa holds an M.A. and M.Phil. degree in History from the University of Karachi, Pakistan, where she received the Hamida Khuhro Gold Medal of Excellence. As a Concordia Public Scholar, Arwa has produced a number of pieces of public scholarship, including for the Montreal Gazette, The Conversation, and the Concordia blogs; as well as a spotlight roundtable discussion on the potentials and pitfalls of social media for Muslim women at 4th Space, Concordia University.
Follow Arwa Hussain on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arwahussainphd
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Orit Avishai is an ethnographer at Fordham University, where she teaches in the Sociology Department and in the Program on Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work considers how ideology and culture, broadly defined, shape social institutions, identities, political dialogue, and cultural practices. Her recent work has focused on Jewish Orthodoxy, and her book, Queer Judaism, LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel is forthcoming from NYU Press. Her other work has been published in a variety of venues, including Gender & Society, The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and AJS Review. Her recent public-facing writing has appeared in The Conversation, The Katz Center Blog, and Religion Dispatches. Dr. Avishai has degrees from The University of California at Berkeley, the Yale Law School, and Tel Aviv University Law School.
Buy "Queer Judaism, LGBT Activism, and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel https://nyupress.org/9781479810031/queer-judaism/
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Jeannie Sellick is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies Ph.D. program. She defended her dissertation, “The Strongest Seed: Jerome’s Fashioning of an Ascetic Masculinity in Late Antiquity” in June 2022, and she is perpetually excited to share it with anyone who asks. She specializes in constructions of gender and sexuality in the religious traditions of the ancient and late antique Mediterranean, with a particular focus on queer masculinities. When she’s not teaching or writing, you can find Jeannie hanging out with her geriatric dog, Missy, critiquing Marvel movies, and perfecting her buffalo wing recipe.
Follow Dr. Jeannie Sellick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAtheistNun
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M. Cooper Minister is Associate Professor of Religion at Shenandoah University, where they teach courses on death, medicine, sex, gender, and theories of religion. Their books include Rape Culture on Campus and Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods (co-edited with Sarah Bloesch). Their current project is a memoir about being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 33 and learning to persist in between life and death on the dance floor.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort
Dustin Gavin (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. He received his B.A. in Journalism from Howard University, an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, and completed his second M.A. in Religion and Visual Arts at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. Dustin's research examines the overlap and confluence of sacred and profane idioms to examine the histories, aesthetics, and embodied performances of black women, sissies, and femmes across U.S. Southern regions.
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Listen to the complete Sacred Writes-Classical Ideas collection:
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Indhira Udofia (she/they) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Joint Program in Social Work at NC A&T University and UNC Greensboro. Their dissertation project looks at the impact of religious trauma on Black Millennials and Generation Z, exploring the impact of institutional violence on gendered and sexual minorities within Black religious spaces. Her extensive experience providing therapeutic and spiritual services in clinical and community settings (since 2009) and faith communities (since 2014), shaped her deep passion for helping communities and individuals recover from trauma, especially in spaces of spiritual abuse and grief. Indhira believes that their work is a collaborative effort to empower others in their own healing journey. Using strengths-based methodologies and client-based appropriate rituals, restorative practices, and trauma-informed consultation, they work to address power dynamics, conflict resolution, self-care, and other issues that may arise within a healing framework, for the flourishing of the collective. Indhira’s love of the arts, especially music, and her travels all over the world, allow her a perspective that is inclusive, welcoming, and informed.
Follow Indhira Udofia:
-https://twitter.com/BlaQTraumaNerd
-https://linktr.ee/imudofia
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Listen to the complete Sacred Writes-Classical Ideas collection:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JzteHE3RIyOKA9xosmK6W
In the early 1960s, thousands of Black activists used nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation at lunch counters, movie theaters, skating rinks, public pools, and churches across the United States, battling for, and winning, social change. Organizers against segregation had used litigation and protests for decades but not until the advent of nonviolence did they succeed in transforming ingrained patterns of white supremacy on a massive scale. In this book, Anthony C. Siracusa unearths the deeper lineage of anti-war pacifist activists and thinkers from the early twentieth century who developed nonviolence into a revolutionary force for Black liberation. Telling the story of how this powerful political philosophy came to occupy a central place in the Black freedom movement by 1960, Siracusa challenges the idea that nonviolent freedom practices faded with the rise of the Black Power movement. He asserts nonviolence's staying power, insisting that the indwelling commitment to struggle for freedom collectively in a spirit of nonviolence became, for many, a lifelong commitment. In the end, what was revolutionary about the nonviolent method was its ability to assert the basic humanity of Black Americans, to undermine racism's dehumanization, and to insist on the right to be.
Buy the book: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663005/nonviolence-before-king/
The illuminations of The Saint John’s Bible have delighted many with their imaginative takes on Scripture. But many struggle to appreciate the calligraphy more deeply than merely noting its beauty. Does calligraphy mean something? How is it beautiful?
This book, written by a biblical scholar who has spent years working with this Bible, shows how calligraphic art powerfully interplays visual form, textual content, and creative process. Homrighausen proposes five lenses for this artform: gardens, weaving, pilgrimage, touching, and enfleshing words. Each of these lenses springs from the poetry of the Song of Songs, its illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible, and medieval ways of understanding the scribe’s craft. While these metaphors for calligraphic art draw from this particular illuminated Bible, this book is aimed at all lovers of calligraphy, art, and sacred text.
Jonathan Homrighausen, a doctoral candidate in Hebrew Bible at Duke University, teaches in Judaic Studies at the College of William & Mary. His research explores the intersection of Hebrew Bible, calligraphic art, and scribal craft. He is the author of Illuminating Justice: The Ethical Imagination of The Saint John's Bible (Liturgical Press, 2018) and articles in Religion and the Arts, Image, Teaching Theology and Religion, Transpositions, and Visual Commentary on Scripture.
Buffalo isn’t just a city full of great wings. There is a great hot dog tradition, from Greek- originated “Texas red hots” to year-round charcoal-grilling at Ted’s that puts Manhattan’s dirty water dogs to shame. This is also a city of great sandwiches. It’s a place where capicola gets layered on grilled sausage, where sautéed dandelions traditionally make up the greens in a comestible called steak- in-the-grass, and chicken fingers pack into soft Costanzo’s sub rolls with Provolone, tomato, lettuce, blue cheese dressing, and Frank’s RedHot Sauce to become something truly naughty.
Food and travel writer Arthur Bovino ate his research, taking the reader to the bars, the old-school Polish and Italian-American eateries, the Burmese restaurants, and the new-school restaurants tapping into the region’s rich agricultural bounty. With all this experience under his belt (and stretching it), Bovino has created the essential guide to food in Buffalo.
Arthur Bovino is a restaurant, food media, and travel writer. The Daily Meal’s founding Eat/Dine editor, Bovino is a graduate of New York City’s International Culinary Institute. He has appeared on the Today Show and ABC News.
Buy the book: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781682681220
For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous categories—such as religion, science, and art—has collapsed under the weight of postmodern critiques, calling into question the possibility of progress and even the value of knowledge. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm aims to radicalize and move beyond these deconstructive projects to offer a path forward for the humanities and social sciences using a new model for theory he calls metamodernism. Metamodernism works through the postmodern critiques and uncovers the mechanisms that produce and maintain concepts and social categories. In so doing, Storm provides a new, radical account of society’s ever-changing nature—what he calls a “Process Social Ontology”—and its materialization in temporary zones of stability or “social kinds.” Storm then formulates a fresh approach to philosophy of language by looking beyond the typical theorizing that focuses solely on human language production, showing us instead how our own sign-making is actually on a continuum with animal and plant communication. Storm also considers fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting a turn toward humble, emancipatory knowledge that recognizes the existence of multiple modes of the real. Metamodernism is a revolutionary manifesto for research in the human sciences that offers a new way through postmodern skepticism to envision a more inclusive future of theory in which new forms of both progress and knowledge can be realized.
This episode features a conversation with Dr. David Newheiser, editor of "The Varieties of Atheism." The Varieties of Atheismreveals the diverse nonreligious experiences obscured by the combative intellectualism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. In fact, contributors contend that narrowly defining atheism as the belief that there is no god misunderstands religious and nonreligious persons altogether. The essays show that, just as religion exceeds doctrine, atheism also encompasses every dimension of human life: from imagination and feeling to community and ethics. Contributors offer new, expansive perspectives on atheism’s diverse history and possible futures. By recovering lines of affinity and tension between particular atheists and particular religious traditions, this book paves the way for fruitful conversation between religious and non-religious people in our secular age.
George Tyrrell insisted that the quest for the historical Jesus was no more than scholars staring into a well to see their own reflections staring back. Jesus is the mirror image of those who study him. A similar phenomenon accompanies the quest for the historical Magi, those mysterious travelers who came from theEast, following a star to Bethlehem.
In this work, ancient historian and scholar Eric Vanden Eykel helps readers better understand both the Magi and the ancient and modern interpreters who have tried to study them. He shows how, from a mere twelve verses in the Gospel of Matthew, a varied and vast literary and artistic tradition was born. The Magiexamines the birth of the Magi story;its enrichments, embellishments, and expansions in apocryphal writing and early Christian preaching;its artistic expressions in catacombs, icons, and paintings and its modern legacy in novels, poetry, and music.
Throughout, the book explores the fascination the Magi story elicits in both ancient and modern readers and what the legacy of the Magi story tells us about its storytellers--and ourselves.
https://www.bradonishi.com/
The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots in Preparing for War.
Combining his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with an immersive look at the steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, Onishi crafts an engrossing account of the years-long campaign of White Christian nationalism that led to January 6. How did the rise of what Onishi calls the New Religious Right, between 1960 and 2015, give birth to violent White Christian nationalism during the Trump presidency and beyond? What propelled some of the most conservative religious communities in the country--communities of which Onishi was once a part--to ignite a cold civil war?
Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Onishi pulls back the curtain on a subculture that birthed a movement and has taken a dangerous turn. In taut and unsparing prose, Onishi traces the migration of many White Christians to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in what is known as the American Redoubt. Learning the troubling history of the New Religious Right and the longings and logic of White Christian nationalism is deeply alarming. It is also critical for preserving the shape of our democracy for years to come.
Robin Waterfield is an independent scholar and translator living in southern Greece. In addition to thirty volumes of translations of works of Greek literature, he is the author of numerous books, ranging from children’s fiction to Greek history, most recently The Making of a King, also published by the University of Chicago Press
The complete surviving works of Epictetus, the most influential Stoic philosopher from antiquity.
“Some things are up to us and some are not.”
Epictetus was born into slavery around the year 50 CE, and, upon being granted his freedom, he set himself up as a philosophy teacher. After being expelled from Rome, he spent the rest of his life living and teaching in Greece. He is now considered the most important exponent of Stoicism, and his surviving work comprises a series of impassioned discourses, delivered live and recorded by his student Arrian, and the Handbook, Arrian’s own take on the heart of Epictetus’s teaching.
In Discourses, Epictetus argues that happiness depends on knowing what is in our power to affect and what is not. Our internal states and our responses to events are up to us, but the events themselves are assigned to us by the benevolent deity, and we should treat them—along with our bodies, possessions, and families—as matters of indifference, simply making the best use of them we can.
Together, the Discourses and Handbook constitute a practical guide to moral self-improvement, as Epictetus explains the work and exercises aspirants need to do to enrich and deepen their lives. Edited and translated by renowned scholar Robin Waterfield, this book collects the complete works of Epictetus, bringing to modern readers his insights on how to cope with death, exile, the people around us, the whims of the emperor, fear, illness, and much more.
If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses--discourses, specifically, of race.
Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as "other" due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Purported heathens have also contributed to the ongoing significance of the concept, promoting solidarity through their opposition to white American Christianity. Gin Lum looks to figures like Chinese American activist Wong Chin Foo and Ihanktonwan Dakota writer Zitkála-Sá, who proudly claimed the label of "heathen" for themselves.
Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans' sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen: Religion and Race in American History (Harvard UP, 2022) thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.
Dr. Lloyd Daniel Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and core faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He has published essays on the history of race and religion, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, the Sanctuary Movement, and material religion.
Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh guest hosts and the topic of conversation is Barba's new book, Sowing the Seed: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, out from Oxford University Press.
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Dr. Elizabeth Bucar is the Director of Sacred Writes, Professor of Religion, and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University. An expert in comparative religious ethics who has published on topics ranging from gender reassignment surgery to the global politics of modest clothing, Bucar’s current book, Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation, is on the ethics of religious appropriation. She is also the author of the award-winning trade book, Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard University Press, 2017). Bucar’s public scholarship includes bylines in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and Zocalo Public Square as well as several podcasts. She has a PhD in religious ethics from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. Follow her on Twitter @BucarLiz. Link to her Pious Fashion episode on NBN: https://newbooksnetwork.com/141-on-pious-fashion-and-muslim-women
Related Links:
Book Links https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42764-1 https://www.amazon.com/Single-Payer-Healthcare-Reform-Establishment/dp/3030427633/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=ff67f93f-80cf-47ed-99eb-12f0856c7435 Other Scholarship about the Movement for Single Payer https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/14998 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/johs.12247 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1936724415625306 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321522000683 http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Issue-8-1-White-and-Finnegan4.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296484229_Vermont_and_Healthcare_Reform_Organizing_Human_Rights_Promise_and_Praxis Single Payer Organizations https://www.healthcare-now.org/ https://www.blhct.org/ https://www.mosp.us/ https://pnhp.org/ http://healthoverprofit.org/ https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/ Book Description
The recent rise of “Medicare for All” in American political discourse was many years in the making. Behind this rise is a movement composed of grassroots activists and organizations that have been working for more than three decades to achieve the goal of establishing a single-payer healthcare system in the United States. In the past decade, the Single Payer Movement has grown and garnered more public and political support than ever before. This relative success cannot be attributed to any one political figure or political era. The story of how this happened, and how it is tied to a turn against establishment politics on both the left and right, as well as the rise of outsider politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, takes place during the Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. During each of these eras, activists experienced shifting opportunities that they interpreted through the telling of stories. These narratives of opportunity encouraged participation in particular forms of grassroots mobilization, which then affected the outcome of each era. This has had lasting effects on the development of healthcare policy in the United States. In this book, Hern conducts a political ethnographic analysis in which she uses historical records, interviews, and participant observation to tell the story of the Single Payer Movement, establish the lessons that can be learned from this history, and develop a framework―the Environment of Opportunity Model―that involves a holistic understanding of social movement activity through the analysis of narrative practice.
Arson and vandalism at houses of worship. Bullying at schools and harassment at the grocery store. Political scapegoating and institutionalized discrimination. Muslims in the United States--and beyond--have faced Islamophobia in a range of forms. This ground-breaking book argues that Christians should be at the forefront of efforts to end the prejudice, discrimination, and violence, that Muslims face. Writing for Christians of all denominations, Jordan Denari Duffner offers an introduction to Islamophobia, discusses the unfortunate ways that Christians have contributed to it, and offers practical steps for standing in solidarity with Muslims. Viewing Islamophobia as both a social justice and a religious freedom issue, Duffner makes the case that Christian faith calls us to combat religious discrimination even when it is not directed toward our own faith community. She weaves together insights from Catholic social teaching, examples from Protestant leaders, and expertise from Muslim scholars and activists, resulting in a compelling book that will be of interest to academic and lay audiences alike.
Visit Jordan Denari Duffner online: https://jordandenari.com/about/
NOTES Stacie Stukin is an arts and culture writer born and raised in Los Angeles. She has written about travel, design, women's health and food for publications like The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, W Magazine and Lucky Peach. She's also the West Coast Editor of Naturally, Danny Seo Magazine.
Philip DeSlippe is a historian of American religion with a background in American Studies and literature whose research focuses on Asian, metaphysical, and marginal religions in modern America. DeSlippe is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and writing a dissertation on the early history of yoga in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. His work includes a new and definitive edition of the metaphysical classic The Kybalion for Tarcher/Penguin in 2011, dozens of articles for popular audiences in such venues as Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Yoga Journal, Air & Space Smithsonian, the Indian news site Scroll.in, and Tides, the magazine of the South Asian American Digital Archive.
Relevant Reading:
https://www.baaznews.org/p/yogi-bhajan-siri-singh-sahib-expose https://twitter.com/StacieStukin https://twitter.com/PhilipDeslippe https://religionnews.com/2020/08/18/yogi-bhajan-yoga-guru-and-founder-of-3ho-more-likely-than-not-sexually-abused-followers-says-report/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/yogi-bhajan/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271568190_From_Maharaj_to_Mahan_Tantric_The_Construction_of_Yogi_Bhajan%27s_Kundalini_Yoga https://rishiknots.com/
Dr. Erin MacLeod's work situates itself in the perspectives of postcolonial studies, social movements, intercultural communication, migratory processes and globalization through its investigation into issues of identity, gender, culture, class, race and space/geography. She is the author of Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the Search for the Promised Land (NYU Press, 2014). MacLeod holds a PhD in Communications from McGill University and a Master's in English Literature from the University of Toronto, and has taught and lectured at both the college and university levels in Ethiopia, Canada and Jamaica.
Visit the book: https://nyupress.org/9781479882243/visions-of-zion/
Dr. William "Chip" Gruen is professor of religious studies at Muhlenberg College and is Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding.
The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (2019)
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reception-of-jesus-in-the-first-three-centuries-9780567000194/
Religionwise Podcast: https://www.muhlenberg.edu/religionandculture/religionwisepodcast/
http://hardcorezen.info/
Brad Warner was born in Ohio, grew up in Africa, and lived in Japan for eleven years, where he got ordained as a Zen monk. He now resides in the Hipsterville part of Los Angeles. He began sitting zazen when he was eighteen years old under the instruction of Tim McCarthy and was made a dharma heir of Gudo Nishijima Roshi in the futuristic year 2000.
He also travels the world showing people how to sit down and shut up. He has given talks and led Zen meditation retreats in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, Israel, Belgium, Spain, and Japan. His books have been translated into fewer languages than those of anyone you’ve ever seen on the cover of a meditation magazine, but there are editions in Finnish, Polish, German, and Greek. And supposedly there’s one in Hebrew, but he’s never seen a copy. Or maybe he has but doesn’t know it because he can’t read Hebrew. He wishes someone would point it out to him somewhere if the book actually exists.
He plays bass guitar in the hardcore punk band Zero Defex (0DFx). He has had major roles in several movies, including Zombie Bounty Hunter M. D. and Shoplifting from American Apparel. He also wrote, produced, and directed his own film, Cleveland’s Screaming. Plus, he made five albums for Midnight Records under the semi-fictional band name Dimentia 13.
When he’s not doing zazen, Brad can be found at record stores all over the world searching for obscure psychedelia and songs to add to his incredible cheesy seventies playlist. He enjoys bad science fiction movies and cats, though dogs are okay too. He’s a vegetarian but tries not to be a total pain in the ass about it.
Dr. Avery-Natale specializes in race and racism, identity, social movements, and social theory. He is the author of the book, Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications: Punk and Anarchy in Philadelphia.
Dean Sluyter (pronounced slighter) has taught meditation and led workshops and retreats since 1970, at venues ranging from Ivy League colleges to maximum-security prisons. A grateful student of sages in several traditions, he has completed numerous retreats and pilgrimages in India, Tibet, Nepal, and the West. Dean’s previous books include Natural Meditation, winner of the 2015 Nautilus Gold Award for best book on body, mind, and spirit practices. His media appearances have included Coast to Coast AM, National Public Radio, the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and USA Today.
From 1977 to 2010, Dean taught English and developed the Literature of Enlightenment program at the Pingry School in New Jersey. He now lives in Santa Monica, where he teaches meditation, sings with the Westside Threshold Choir, plays old songs on the ukulele, and happily zips about on his Vespa. He is married to documentary filmmaker Yaffa Lerea.
Buy the book: https://www.newworldlibrary.com/Books/ProductDetails/tabid/64/SKU/87695/Default.aspx#.YobCOFjMJFw
John Lardas Modernis professor of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College. He is the author of The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs and Secularism in Antebellum America, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press. Alison Renna is a PhD candidate studying the history of ideas. In her dissertation, “The Symbiotic Mind: A History of Religion, Ecology, and the Microbial World,” she writes about the ways that religion, social theory, philosophy, ecology, neuroscience, and psychology shaped one another through the twentieth century, beginning with the birth of information theory in the 1940s and ending with research into the human microbiome-brain connection in the 2010s.
Buy "Neuromatic" from Class 200 at the University of Chicago Press: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo105080439.html
Buy Awkward Rituals: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo141943025.html
Dr. Charles McCrary is a scholar of American religion, focusing on secularism, religious freedom, race, and science. He is the author of Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers. His work has been published in academic journals including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion & American Culture, and Religion. He also has written for popular outlets such as Religion & Politics, The Revealer, and The New Republic, many of which are linked in the show notes of this episode. Before coming to ASU, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.
C. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary humanities scholar who is fascinated by the historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and cross-cultural exchange. He has a PhD in the history of medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010) and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is the author of many books on the history and practice of Buddhism and Asian medicine. Connect with him online at piercesalguero.com.
Visit "Buddhish": http://www.beacon.org/Buddhish-P1771.aspx
Dr. Brent Landau is on faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Religious Studies.
Corey Wozniak is a teacher in Las Vegas.
Read "The Buddha at the Bellagio": https://therevealer.org/the-buddha-at-the-bellagio-teaching-religion-in-sin-city/
Paul Stephenson is a historian of late antiquity and the author of New Rome: The Empire in the East and Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor.
Jennifer Koshatka Seman is a lecturer in history at Metropolitan State University in Denver. Her work has appeared in Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses and the Journal of the West.
Visit "Borderlands Curanderos" at University of Texas Press:
https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/seman-borderlands-curanderos
Follow Dr. Jennifer Koshatka Seman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenniferseman
Follow Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmichelSW
Buy the book:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979482
Dr. Franck Billé is Program Director at the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author and editor of three books about East Asia, including Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity.
Visit Kaya Oakes online: https://www.oakestown.org/
Visit "On Religion with Greg Soden" at New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/academic-partners/on-religion
Amanda Furiasse received her PhD in Religion and Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Florida State University in 2018. Her research unfolds at the convergence of religion, health, and technology and explores how African communities use religious ritual as a mechanism to heal from violence and trauma. She is Co-Founder and Curator at the Religion, Art, and Technology Lab where she produces multi-sensory exhibitions for the public on the relationship between faith, aesthetics, and innovation. She has worked previously at the Museum of Florida History and Loyola University Museum of Art where she has produced public programming and educational curricula for K-12 learners and the general public. She maintains an active commitment to producing educational programming, public scholarship, and research which excites and inspires people to take an active role in their worlds and explore religion’s dynamic and evolving role in their lives and societies.
Visit The Religion, Art, and Technology Lab: https://www.ratlabmuseum.org/projects
RAT LAB Twitter: https://twitter.com/RatLabMuseum
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Kristian Petersen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press in 2017), and editor of Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation & Harvard University Press, 2021), and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge, 2021). He also co-hosts the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast on the New Books Network.
Follow Dr. Kristian Peterson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/babakristian
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
In this episode, Dr. João Chaves and Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh discuss Brazil and the book “Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora,” out now from Baylor University Press.
In this episode, Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh is in conversation with Dr. Brett Hendrickson on the book "Mexican American Religions: An Introduction (Religion in America)," out now from Routledge!
Follow Dr. Hendrickson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bbhendrickson
Follow Dr. Sánchez-Walsh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmichelSW
Visit Dr. Hendrickson at Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/authors/i21462-brett-hendrickson
Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is the V. O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair of Catholic Studies and a professor in the Departments of Religious Studies and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the author, most recently, of Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland, out now from the University of North Carolina Press.
Follow Dr. Nabhan-Warren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KristyNabhan
Arlene M. Sánchez-Walsh, PhD, is a professor of religious studies and the author of the award-winning book Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (Columbia University Press, 2003). She has authored more than a dozen articles and book chapters on the subject of Latino/a Pentecostalism, and has served as a media expert for outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and On Being with Krista Tippett, and served as an expert on Latino/a religious history for the PBS series God in America. Sánchez-Walsh’s current writing projects include a textbook on Pentecostalism in America, and a monograph on Latinos/as and the prosperity gospel. Her current research is on the rise of nonbelief among Latinos/as.
Follow Dr. Arlene Sanchez-Walsh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmichelSW
Dr. Alana M. Vincent is Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Religion and Imagination at the University of Chester. She works on post-Holocaust Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian dialogue, and popular culture (primarily science fiction and fantasy).
Dr. Alana Vincent on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfAMV
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
N.A. Mansour is a historian and a PhD candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, where she is writing a dissertation on the transition between manuscript and print in Arabic-language contexts. She produces podcasts for different venues, co-edits Hazine.info, and works for different museums and archives. She also writes for the general public on culture, Islam and history.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Dr. Lee-Shae Salma Scharnick-Udemans is the Senior Researcher in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape. With degrees in religious studies and media from the University of Cape Town, she also has extensive experience working in television production. Dr. Scharnick-Udemans researches, teaches, and supervises in the areas of religious diversity, pluralism, the political economy of religion, new religious movements, and the media.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LSudemans
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Dr. Krista Melanie Riley (she/her/hers) is a pedagogical advisor at a college in Montreal, Quebec. She holds a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University, where her research focused on discussions about gender, bodies, and sexuality on Muslim feminist blogs. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Muslimah Media Watch.
Dr. Shannon Trosper Schorey is a scholar, writer, and researcher in the tech industry. She is an expert in science and technology studies, American religious history, and new religious movements. After leaving higher education, she began working in the private sector and is focused on emerging and cloud technologies.
https://www.shannontrosperschorey.com/
https://twitter.com/STSchorey
https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Jolyon Baraka Thomas (he/him/his) is assistant professor and interim graduate chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan and Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan. He is currently finishing a book on religion and public schooling in Japan and the United States, and his articles on religion and capitalism have appeared in Material Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. He also regularly writes for public-facing venues such as Killing the Buddha, Marginalia, The Revealer, Sacred Matters, and Tricycle.
Follow Dr. Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jolyonbt
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Dr. Samah Choudhury is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ithaca College. She speaks and writes about Islam, humor, and the politics that accompany what it means to be socially legible in the United States. Her current book manuscript looks at the ways that Islam and Muslims are articulated through standup comedy and how they speak back to broader transnational practices and discourses of race, masculinity, and secularism.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Follow Dr. Samah Choudhury: https://twitter.com/SamahChoudhury
Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, the son of two Puerto Rican migrants, was raised by his mother, father, grandmother, and uncle in a small affordable housing community outside of Hartford, Connecticut. He has completed degrees in Biblical Studies, Social Theory, and Liberation Theologies and is currently completing a PhD in History at Union Theological Seminary. In addition to his academic work which explores the intersections of religion and progressive social movements, Jorge serves as the Associate Director for Strategic Programming at the Hispanic Summer Program—an organization that creates educational spaces focused on the academic study of religion and theology from a Latinx perspective. Jorge lives in Manhattan with his partner and very floofy Bernedoodle.
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JJRodV
Visit online: https://www.jjrodriguezv.com/
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Kecia Ali (Ph.D., Religion, Duke University) is Professor of Religion at Boston University, where she teaches a range of classes on Islam. Her research focuses on Islamic law; women and gender; ethics; and biography. Her books include Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (2006, expanded ed. 2016), Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (2010), Imam Shafi‘i: Scholar and Saint (2011), and The Lives of Muhammad (2014), about modern Muslim and non-Muslim biographies of Islam’s prophet. She co-edited the revised edition of A Guide for Women in Religion, which provides guidance for careers in religious studies and theology (2014). Her research also includes gender, ethics, and popular culture.
Download "Half of Faith: American Muslim Marriage and Divorce in the 21st Century" for free at:
https://www.keciaali.com
Visit Dr. Kecia Ali on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kecia_ali
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Andrew Ali Aghapour (he/him/his) is a scholar and comedian based in Durham, North Carolina. He is the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Religion in America Initiative at the National Museum of American History, and the co-author, with Peter Manseau, of the forthcoming Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Technology in America (Smithsonian Books, 2021). Andrew holds a Ph.D in religious studies from UNC Chapel Hill and an M.Phil in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge University. He is the writer/performer of Zara, a one person show about immigration and the history of monotheism. Andrew was the co-founder, with Michael Schulson, of Religion Dispatches' The Cubit, and the managing editor, under Myrna Sheldon, of Harvard Divinity School's Cosmologics.
Follow Dr. Aghapour on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrewAghapour
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Anne Mocko is Associate Professor of Asian Religions at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. She is a specialist in the religions of South Asia, and has spent several years living in Nepal, but has also spent time in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. She is primarily interested in the ways ritual performances and ritual change can shape collective ideas and ideology. Her first book on the role of ritual in shaping and changing ideologies (Demoting Vishnu: Ritual, Politics, and the Unraveling of Nepal's Hindu Monarchy) was released by OUP in 2016, and was released in South Asia through Adarsh Books in 2020 under the title Unraveling the Crown. She is currently working on a popular-audience book (entitled Eco-Karma) about how the daily rituals and religious habits of India's Jains might help non-Jains to reimagine environmental impacts and responsibilities.
Follow Dr. Anne Mocko on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theMockOwl
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Kaitlyn Ugoretz (she/her) is a digital anthropologist and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a BA and MA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania with a double concentration in Chinese and Japanese studies. Her research interests include Japanese religions, globalization, media, and digital technology. Supported by dissertation fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation, she is conducting an ethnography of the growth of transnational, online Shinto communities based on social media. Kaitlyn hosts the educational YouTube channel Eat Pray Anime, which explores religion and history in Japanese pop culture, and writes on Asian religions for Religion For Breakfast.
Follow Kaitlyn Ugoretz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KaitlynUgoretz
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2021-cohorts
Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, yoga, and digital culture in South Asia at the University of Denver which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. Her research examines the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics through online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sundaram's current monograph project titled Globalizing Dharma examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively "branding" religious identities through a neoliberal "Vedicizing" of virtual spaces. Her most recent article explores how West Bengal’s Tourism initiatives use Instagram to foster virtual, ethnonationalist, social networks during Durga puja. Spotlighting issues of access/accessibility to religious spaces and the viability and visibility of online counter-narratives, especially those from minoritized/marginalized caste, gender, and class communities, Dr. Sundaram shows how Asur tribal groups who seek to recover an alternative history of their ancestor Mahisasura, are not only excluded, but, effaced through this kind of digital cultural marketing campaign. A forthcoming piece examines so-called YouTube yogis and how the commercial landscape of yoga as part of lifestyle "cures" becomes an unwitting partner in Hindu nationalist project of repatriating yoga as a national cultural artifact.
Follow Dr. Dheepa Sundaram on Twitter: https://twitter.com/themodsisyphus
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Dr. Adrienne Krone is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegheny College. She has a Ph.D. in American Religion from Duke University. Her research focuses on contemporary religious food justice movements in North America and her current project is an ethnographic and historical study of the Jewish community farming movement.
Follow Adrienne Krone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdrienneKrone
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Brook Wilensky-Lanford is the author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press, 2011), and former editor-in-chief of the online magazine of religion, culture and politics Killing the Buddha. She received her PhD in American Religion from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia. An Associate Editor of The Commons at the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life, Brook is fascinated by utopias, origin stories, religious liberalism, and spirituality.
Follow Dr. Wilensky-Lanford on Twitter: https://twitter.com/modmyth
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is a systematic theologian, specializing in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. from Boston College, and is also a proud graduate of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (M.Div) and Santa Clara University (BA, BS). Dr. Selak's dissertation, "Toward an Ecclesial Vision in the Shadow of Wounds," examined the wounds of racism and sexism in the Roman Catholic Church utilizing contemporary trauma theory and the ecclesiology of Karl Rahner. Her work has been featured in Modern Theology, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Washington Post, America, and Commonweal. Dr. Selak currently serves as Associate Director of the Women's Center at Georgetown University.
Follow Dr. Annie Selak on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aselak
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Read "What the Church Owes Families," here: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/what-church-owes-families
Sahar Ahmed is a PhD candidate in the School of Law at Trinity College Dublin. Her research examines and offers a reinterpretation of the right to freedom of religion under International Human Rights Law and Islamic jurisprudence. Sahar is from Lahore, Pakistan, where she worked as a Barrister for many years.
Follow Sahar Ahmed on Twitter: here.
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Kashif Shaikh is the Co-Founder and President of Pillars Fund. In 2010, Kashif and a small group of Muslim philanthropists founded Pillars to strategically organize wealth within their communities and support American Muslim civic institutions and leaders building a more just, equitable society. For the next five years, Kashif volunteered his time and resources to grow and lead Pillars. In 2016, he was asked to be Pillars’ first full-time executive director and transitioned Pillars from a volunteer-run fund to a fully operational foundation. Under his leadership, Pillars has invested more than $6 million in Muslim community organizations and initiatives to build collective power and transform what is possible for Muslims in the United States.
At the heart of Kashif’s career in philanthropy is a dedication to promoting racial equity and creating opportunities for Muslims and people of color to tell their stories through art. Prior to launching Pillars, Kashif was a program officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, where he helped manage a portfolio of more than $20 million and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. He also managed the Foundation’s corporate partnerships and helped develop corporate social responsibility strategies for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago Bulls. His career began at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, where he developed strategies to engage the organization’s largest corporate partners.
Kashif’s expert insight on Muslims in philanthropy has been cited in The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and Chicago Sun Times, among others. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Peabody Awards, Chicago Humanities Festival, and Mortar, a nonprofit based in his home town of Cincinnati that helps entrepreneurs from historically marginalized communities access resources to start and run successful businesses. He has been named a Philanthropy Forward Fellow by the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group, a New Profit Civic Lab Entrepreneur, and an Ambassadors for Health Equity Fellow. In 2017, Crain’s Chicago Business named him to their 40 Under 40 list.
Kashif holds a BA from Ohio State University and MA from Northwestern University
Kersti Francis is a writer, editor, and medievalist based in Tucson and Los Angeles. Francis’ works at the intersections between religion, magic, gender, and sexuality is so interesting. I loved this conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. She is on Twitter (@kerstifrancis), where she tweets about feminism, queerness, history, and much more.
Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh: https://twitter.com/AmichelSW Guest host Arlene M. Sánchez-Walsh, Ph.D., is a professor of religious studies and the author of the award-winning book Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (Columbia University Press, 2003). She has authored more than a dozen articles and book chapters on the subject of Latino/a Pentecostalism, and has served as a media expert for outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and On Being with Krista Tippett, and served as an expert on Latino/a religious history for the PBS series God in America. Sánchez-Walsh’s current writing projects include a textbook on Pentecostalism in America, and a monograph on Latinos/as and the prosperity gospel. Her current research is on the rise of nonbelief among Latinos/as. Dr. Felipe Hinojosa: https://twitter.com/fhinojosa71
Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Felipe Hinojosa received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 2009 and joined the faculty at Texas A&M that same year. His research areas include Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, American Religion, Race and Ethnicity, and Social Movements. In addition to serving as Director of the Carlos H. Cantu Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment, Prof. Hinojosa serves as editor for the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and online moderated forum Latinx Talk. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review, and in edited collections on Latina/o Studies. Dr. Hinojosa’s first book, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) was awarded the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His new book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021) is set in four major cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston) where in 1969 and 1970 Latino radical activists clashed with religious leaders as they occupied churches to protest urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Dr. Tanya Luhrmann is the author of "How God Becomes Real" and is the Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department. She is a medical and psychological anthropologist, and also an anthropologist of religion.
Dr. Brian Carwana Brian has a PhD in religion, a business degree, and worked as a strategy consultant. He is the Executive Director of Encounter World Religions where he has been teaching people about ethno-religious communities and facilitating actual “encounters” for 20 years.
Purchase "How God Becomes Real" here.
Visit Dr. Tanya Luhmann online https://www.tanyaluhrmann.com/
Visit Dr. Brian Carwana online https://religionsgeek.com/
Dr. Rhiannon Graybill is Associate Professor of religious studies at Rhodes College and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose work brings together biblical texts and contemporary critical and cultural theory. Her latest book, Text After Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible, is a study of sexual violence and rape in the Hebrew Bible and is out now from Oxford University Press.
Texts After Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible from Oxford University Press
Download "Womanpriest" for free as an eBook from Fordham Press here: https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823288298/womanpriest/
Jill M. Peterfeso is Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Guilford College. She is a cultural historian of American religion whose published scholarship focuses on gender and sexuality, resistance to authority, and social justice, specifically in Roman Catholicism and Mormonism.
While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change.
In order to understand how womenpriests navigate tradition and transgression, this study situates RCWP within post–Vatican II Catholicism, apostolic succession, sacraments, ministerial action, and questions of embodiment. Womanpriest reveals RCWP to be a discrete religious movement in a distinct religious moment, with a small group of tenacious women defying the Catholic patriarchy, taking on the priestly role, and demanding reconsideration of Roman Catholic tradition. Doing so, the women inhabit and re-create the central tensions in Catholicism today.
Dr. Shaily Patel is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity at Virginia Tech. She is an expert on ancient magic, early Christian literature, and ideological criticisms of the New Testament. She is currently writing a book about the ways in which early Christian writings featuring Simon Peter are caught between two simultaneous but opposing cultural trends: the allure of “magic” in the Roman imagination and the categorial vilifying of magicians among ancient writers. In her wider work, she is concerned with the problem of representation in historical accounts, especially the representation of groups and ideas that challenge established “orthodoxy.”
Follow Dr. Shaily Patel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vox_magica
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Swati Chawla is assistant professor at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University and a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Virginia. Her doctoral research is focused on migration, citizenship-making, and contemporary Buddhisms in the Himalayan regions of postcolonial South Asia. Her masters and M.Phil. work focused on the Tibetan Buddhist female monastic tradition in exile. She hosts the Twitter channel #himalayanhistories.
Follow Swati Chawla on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChawlaSwati
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Dr. Constance Kassor is an assistant professor of religious studies at Lawrence University, where she teaches courses on Buddhist thought and Asian religious traditions. Her research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and she is currently involved in several projects related to the Madhyamaka philosophy of the 15th-century thinker, Gorampa Sonam Senge. She is also interested in religion and comics, women and gender minorities in Buddhism, pedagogy, and digital humanities.
Sarah F. Porter (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University with a concentration in New Testament / Early Christianity and a secondary field in archaeology. She holds an M.Div. from Vanderbilt University Divinity School with a certificate in gender, sexuality, and religion, and she earned her B.A. in English and Religion from Southwestern University. Currently, she is a William R. Tyler Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Her dissertation, “Early Christian Deathscapes,” examines the production and flow of affects through the martyria, cemeteries, and homilies of fourth-century Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey).
Follow Sarah Porter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/portersf
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar (she/her/hers) is an adjunct professor at Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) in the Religious Studies Department. She received her Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (Old Testament) in May 2020 from Drew University. Her dissertation is interdisciplinary and focused on how the discipline of biblical studies is increasingly responsive to social issues, namely, sexual trafficking. Dunbar’s dissertation, entitled “Trafficking Hadassah: An Africana Reading of Collective Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Book of Esther and the African Diaspora,” is a dialogical cultural study of sexual trafficking in the book of Esther and during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. She assesses sexual trafficking in both contexts, evaluates the traumatic impact of trafficking on Africana collective identity, and examines and critiques ideologies and stereotypes that were espoused to justify sexual abuse against Africana girls and women.
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Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
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Suzanna Krivulskaya (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of History at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches courses in U.S. and digital history. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in modern U.S. history and studies the relationship between sexuality and religion. Her current book project, tentatively titled Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism, investigates how pastoral sex scandals have been covered in the popular press and how Protestant denominations and the reading public responded to the coverage. Her articles have been published by the Journal of American Studies, Current Research in Digital History, and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Her chapter on fundamentalist sex and sexuality is forthcoming from the Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism. She has published in popular outlets like Religion Dispatchesand Religion in American History, and the Revealer. She is also the recipient of the 2019-2020 LGBTQ Religious History Award from the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network.
Follow Dr. Suzanna Krivulskaya on Twitter: https://twitter.com/suzzzanna
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Dr. Lynne Gerber (she/her/hers) is an independent scholar. She is the author of Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual-Reorientation in Evangelical America (Chicago, 2011). She is currently working on a history of religion and HIV/AIDS in San Francisco.
Read: "FOR CLERGY WHO MINISTERED THROUGH THE AIDS CRISIS COVID IS BOTH EERILY FAMILIAR AND PUZZLINGLY DIFFERENT"
https://religiondispatches.org/for-clergy-who-ministered-through-the-aids-crisis-covid-is-both-eerily-familiar-and-puzzlingly-different/
Listen: Dr. Lynne Gerber on "Sexing History" Podcast: https://www.sexinghistory.com/episode-7/
Abel R. Gómez (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religion Department and earned a Certificate of Advanced Studies from the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University. His research focuses on sacred sites, ritual, and decolonization in the context of contemporary Indigenous religions. Abel is currently completing his dissertation, an ethnography of sacred sites protection movements among the Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco and Monterey regions. He is a steering committee member for the Native Traditions in the Americas Unit of the American Academy of Religion and recently served on the committee organizing the annual Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits Powwow in San Francisco. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and religion from San Francisco State University and an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Missouri.
In our conversation, we discuss his dissertation “Sacred Sites, Ceremony, and Belonging in Ohlone Territory: A Case Study of Indigenous Survival,” the Spanish colonial history of California, the mission system, Junipero Serra, and the conversions, terror, and trauma of indigenous people in the region.
Read: Statues topple and a Catholic church burns as California reckons with its Spanish colonial past
You can follow Abel on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/jaratura
You can follow Sacred Writes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sacred_Writes
Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
Ambre Dromgoole (she/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. She graduated from Oberlin College & Conservatory in 2015 with a B.A. in Musical Studies and Religion, where she received the Jonathon Kneeland Prize for Religion and the Africana Studies Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service upon graduation. She then obtained an M.A. in Religion from Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music with a concentration in Black Religion and the Arts receiving the Hugh Porter Prize of Distinction. Ambre is interested in the convergence of Black religion and popular culture, focusing on the emergence of various musical genres from women in the Black Holiness-Pentecostal tradition.
Read "What Breonna Taylor and Sister Rosetta Tharpe Taught Me About Black Women and Friendship"
https://therevealer.org/what-breonna-taylor-and-sister-rosetta-tharpe-taught-me-about-black-women-and-friendship/
Follow Ambre Dromgoole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ambrelynae
Visit Ambre Dromgoole's website: https://www.ambredromgoole.com/
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/
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Mark Van Buren is a Mindful Living Trainer, yoga/meditation instructor, personal trainer, and musician, that has been promoting health and wellness for years. He runs workshops and retreats around the New York City and New Jersey regions.
Mark’s first book is A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness and Your Life IS Meditation - Wisdom Publications (which we spoke about on episode 75), and his new book is “Your Life is Meditation,” the topic of this conversation. It was fabulous to have Mark back on the show. If you want to find Mark, you can visit him at authormarkvanburen.com
Gary Gach is the author of Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism.
Follow Gary Gach's work online at: https://linktr.ee/GaryGach
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Dr. Susannah Crockford is Crockford, an anthropologist with interests in spirituality, politics, ecology, economics, and survivalism.
Follow Dr. Crockford on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/SusCrockford
Pre-order Ripples in the Universe https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo86433786.html#.X72d5XtXTuE.twitter
Dr. Donovan Schaefer is an assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Schaefer is the author of Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power.
Dr. Brian Carwana is the Executive Director of Encounter World Religions. Brian has a PhD in religion and politics from the University of Toronto. You can visit him online here: https://religionsgeek.com/
Megan Goodwin, PhD, is Program Director for Sacred Writes,
a Luce-funded project promoting public scholarship on religion hosted by Northeastern University. Her first book, Abusing Religion: Literary Persecutions, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions is available through Rutgers.
Visit Dr. Megan Goodwin's website here
Visit (and listen to) Keeping it 101: https://keepingit101.com/
Dr. Maia Kotrosits is assistant professor of religion at Denison University and is the author of the book “The Lives of Objects.”
Follow Dr. Maia Kotrosits on Twitter: https://twitter.com/maiakotro
Dr. David Newheiser is a research fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University. His first book, Hope in a Secular Age (CUP, 2019), argues that an uncertain hope is required to sustain commitment of any kind: personal, political, or religious.
Buy "Hope in a Secular Age" here: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595100
Follow David Newheiser on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dnewheiser
Visit his website: https://dnewheiser.net/
Joe Drape is an award-winning sportswriter for the New York Times. He is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen and American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise. His book Black Maestro was the inaugural winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. A native of Kansas City and graduate of Rockhurst High School, Drape earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Southern Methodist University.
Support Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/Classicalideas
Visit Joe Drape on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joedrape
Andrea Miller is an editor at Lion’s Roar magazine and is the author of "Awakening My Heart: Essays, Articles and Interviews on the Buddhist Life," out now from Pottersfield Press.
Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Heart-Articles-Interviews-Buddhist/dp/1988286883/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Andrea+miller+awakening+my+heart&qid=1607819477&sr=8-1
Classical Ideas Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Classicalideas
Karim Amin is an Educator and Arts Activist from West Baltimore. Karim is currently a graduate degree candidate pursuing a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Baltimore. Karim was a charter member of Black Arts district coalition, the committee responsible for establishing the Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts district, the first Black Arts district in Maryland. Karim currently is the executive director Voices of 21217, a youth based nonprofit focused on developing arts programming and funding to bring mixed used development to the Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts district located in West Baltimore. You can visit Karim’s website at voicesof21217.com to get in touch.
Support Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Dr. Harold D. Morales is responsible for developing the center’s vision, recruiting committee members, organizing and overseeing committee work, and speak publicly about the center’s projects and activities.
Dr. Morales' research focuses on the intersections between race and religion and between lived and mediated experience. He draws on these critical lenses to engage Latinx religions in general and Latinx Muslim groups in particular. He is currently focusing on developing public scholarship initiatives through his research on mural art and social justice in the city of Baltimore and through the CSRC and its collaborative projects.
Richard W. Newton Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His research examines the making of social difference in light of the anthropology of scriptures. He curates his website at: https://www.sowingtheseed.org
Classical Ideas LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/Classicalideas
Dr. Steve Taylor is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, and the author of several best-selling books on psychology and spirituality. He is the current chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. His books include Waking From Sleep, The Fall, Out of the Darkness, Back to Sanity, The Calm Center and The Leap. His latest book is Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World. His books have been published in 20 languages, while his articles and essays have been published in over 50 academic journals, magazines and newspapers. He writes blog articles for Scientific American and for Psychology Today.Eckhart Tolle has described his work as ‘an important contribution to the shift in consciousness which is happening on our planet at present.’
Visit Dr. Steven M. Taylor online here: https://www.stevenmtaylor.com/
Yujiro Seki is the documentary filmmaker of the film "Carving the Divine." Carving the Divine offers a rare and intimate look into the life and artistic process of modern-day Busshi – practitioners of a 1400 year lineage of woodcarving at the beating heart of Japanese, Mahayana Buddhism.
For more information, visit: https://www.carvingthedivine.com/
Hersch Wilson is a thirty-year veteran volunteer Firefighter-EMT with the Hondo Fire Department in Santa Fe County, New Mexico. He is also a story-teller, committed to explaining how First Responding can change how we see and experience our own lives. In his “real job” he is a writer, speaker, and consultant. He is the author of "Firefighter Zen," out now from New World Library.
Buy "Firefighter Zen": https://www.amazon.com/Firefighter-Zen-Field-Guide-Thriving/dp/1608686884/ref=sr_1_1?crid=24PZQ4UR1SWNK&dchild=1&keywords=firefighter+zen&qid=1603160557&sprefix=firefighter+zen%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-1
Meido Moore Roshi was a disciple of the lay Zen master Tenzan Toyoda Rokoji, under whom he endured a severe training in both Zen and traditional martial arts. He also trained under Dogen Hosokawa Roshi, and later under So'zan Miller Roshi. All three of these teachers are in the lineage of the famous Omori Sogen Roshi, perhaps the most famous Rinzai Zen master of the twentieth century. Meido serves as abbot of Korinji, a monastery near Madison, Wisconsin, and is a guiding teacher of the international Rinzai Zen Community, traveling widely to lead retreats.
Buy the book: https://www.shambhala.com/hidden-zen.html
Dag Hammarskjöld served as secretary-general of the United Nations from 1953 until his tragic death in a suspicious plane crash in 1961. During those years he saw the fledgling international organization through numerous crises with skill that made him a star on the international stage. As readers of his now-classic diary, Markings, are aware, Hammarskjöld understood political leadership as an honor calling for resourcefulness, humility, moral clarity, and spiritual reflection.
Buy Roger Lipsey's books here: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/g-n/roger-lipsey.html
Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center (www.tallahasseechan.com) and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s (1930–2009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Guo Gu has edited and translated a number of Master Sheng Yen’s books from Chinese to English. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Visit Tallahassee Chan Center on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Tallahasseechan
Dr. Arlene Sánchez Walsh is a professor of religious studies and the author of the award-winning book Latino Pentecostal Identity, which was released by Columbia University Press in 2003, as well as the book Pentecostals in America from Columbia University Press in 2018. She has served as a media expert for outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and On Being with Krista Tippett, and served as an expert on Latino/a religious history for the PBS series God in America.
Rachel Quist specializes in East Asian Buddhist imagery with focuses in pre-modern Japan and China. Her research centers on questions of interaction with imagery, materiality and object agency, and the accessibility of image-based practices. She has written on topics such as Buddhist reliquary design and expressivity, the didactic project underlying the hell tableau at Baodingshan, and the construction of a collective memory surrounding the Shingon monk Kōbō Daishi at the temple complex of Mount Kōya. Rachel is currently conducting research on early imperial patronage of Daigoji, a Shingon temple in Kyoto, for her dissertation.
Michael VanHartingsveldt received an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature before teaching in South Korea in at an English immersion school. While there, he became enamored with the religious art of East Asia. He finished a Master’s degree in East Asian art and its markets from Claremont Graduate University in 2017, after which he worked for two years as an Asian Art collections specialist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Michael has collaborated with the Los Angeles office of The Japan Foundation in the curation of three exhibitions and two public lecture series. He now studies at the University of Kansas.
S. Brent Rodriguez Plate is a writer, editor, public speaker, and college professor. He's interested in how sensuality affects spirituality. His writings all circle around questions of the ways sense perceptions influence ways of being religious, and how religious traditions change our ways of perceiving the world around us. In other words, religion and spirituality are rooted in the body. Along these lines, he has authored and edited fifteen books, while his essays have appeared in Salon.com, the Los Angeles Review of Books, America, Religion Dispatches, The Christian Century, The Islamic Monthly, Killing the Buddha, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other venues. Having taught at the University of Vermont and Texas Christian University, he is currently visiting associate professor at Hamilton College, NY.
Visit Dr. Brent Plate online at: https://www.sbrentplate.net
Dr. Maldonado-Estrada is Assistant Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College where she teaches classes on religion and masculinity, Catholics in the Americas, urban religion, and religions of Latin America. She is an ethnographer and her research focuses on material culture, contemporary Catholicism, and gender and embodiment. She is the author of Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020).
Pre-order "Lifeblood of the Parish" and use the code "LIFEBLOOD30" at checkout to receive 30% off your order.
Preorder here: https://nyupress.org/9781479830497/lifeblood-of-the-parish/
Jonathan McFarland teaches Classical Ideas and World Religions at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri.
In this special episode, friends, family, past students, and colleagues of George tell stories about why they loved him. George founded Classical Ideas and World Religions at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri in 1989-1990 and taught the course until 2016. George passed away May 14, 2020 in Columbia, Missouri.
Dr. Sarah Shaw is a faculty member and lecturer at the University of Oxford. She has taught and published numerous works on the history and practices of Buddhism, including An Introduction to Buddhist Meditationand The Spirit of Meditation.
Order Mindfulness: Where It Comes From And What It Meansfrom Shambhala here: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/o-t/sarah-shaw.html
About Dr. Laury Silvers:
The Sufi Mysteries arise out of my desire to talk about the people and places I researched as a scholar of early Islam and Sufism beyond the constraints of academic skepticism. They are my love song to these early pious folk, mystics, and Sufis as human beings—who lived in a particular historical moment with all its complications—and to my experience of Islam.
I am a North American Muslim of the Sufi variety and a retired academic and activist. I received my doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook in 2002 and taught Religion and Islamic Studies at Skidmore College and the University of Toronto. I am presently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. I live in Toronto with my partner, Michael, and our dog, Billie Girl, and near my stepdaughters, their partners, and their mother.
You can find Dr. Silvers online at: https://www.llsilvers.com/
Chris Hannah is the vocalist and guitarist of the band Propagandhi.
Propagandhi "Duplicate Keys Icaro": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGf8vrXhFQY
Follow Chris Hannah on Twitter: https://twitter.com/propagandhi
Follow Chris Hannah on Patreon here.
Alison Melnick Dyer is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions at Bates College. She is an expert on gender and Tibetan Buddhism. She is currently writing a book about the life of Mingyur Peldrön, an 18th century Buddhist nun and religious leader. Melnick Dyer is especially interested in the ways that privilege influences gender in religious communities. She earned her B.A. at the University of Michigan and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.
Follow Dr. Melnick-Dyer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ALISONMELNICK
Dr. Rebecca Epstein-Levi is the Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Vanderbilt University. She’s an expert on Jewish sexual ethics, and is working on a book project on sex, risk, and rabbinic text. She has written for Alma, Religion Dispatches, Feminist Studies in Religion, the Jewish Theological Seminary’s newsletter Gleanings, StyleWise Blog, and State of Formation.
Follow Dr. Epstein-Levi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RJELevi https://twitter.com/RJELevi
Dr. Brett Krutzsch is an expert on LGBTQ politics and religion in the United States and a scholar at NYU's Center for Religion and Media, where he serves as editor of The Revealer. He is the author of the 2019 book Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics from Oxford University Press. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, Medium, the Advocate, and he has been featured on NPR and several podcasts.
Follow Dr. Brett Krutzsch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrettKrutzsch
Visit the Revealer Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7rxDzi4FmQN0GYMuxseHyS
Visit The Revealer Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-revealer/id1497578518
Dr. Sajida Jalalzai is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is an expert in the study of North American Islam. Jalalzai earned her PhD from Columbia University, specializing in American Religions. She is currently writing a book on Muslim leadership education in three Protestant Christian seminaries in the United States and Canada: Hartford Seminary, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, and Claremont School of Theology.
Follow Dr. Jalalzai on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SajidaJalalzai
Read Bernie Sanders has brought out the Muslim vote in ways I’ve never seen before.
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Dr. Kayla Renée Wheeler is an assistant professor and an expert in contemporary Black Islam in the United States. Dr. Wheeler is writing a book on the history of Black Muslim fashion in the United States. The book is based on five years of research, including interviewing Black Muslim fashion designers and attending fashion shows in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Newark. Dr. Wheeler is also the creator of the Black Islam Syllabus, a free resource guide that highlights the experiences of Muslims of African descent. Her writing has been featured in Sapelo Square and The Conversation.
Visit Dr. Kayla Wheeler on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/krw18
Visit the Black Islam Syllabus here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1avhgPrW30AFjegzV9X5aPqkZUA3uGd0-BZr9_zhArtQ/edit
Dr. Shreena Gandhi is a multi-faceted cultural historian of religion with expertise in religion, race, the Americas and Hinduism. Trained at Swarthmore, Harvard and the University of Florida, Professor Gandhi currently teaches at Michigan State University, where she starts off the first few weeks of all her classes introducing students to the concept of structural white supremacy and why that is important for a better understanding religion in the U.S. Her research and public scholarship are on the history of yoga, and she is revising a manuscript on this using the framework of white supremacy and cultural appropriation.
You can follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/shreenaniketa
Dr. Vicki Brennan is an anthropologist who studies religion, sound, music, and urban space in Africa and the African Diaspora. She is an Associate Professor of Religion and the Director of African Studies at the University of Vermont. Her research is based on more than fifteen years of field research in southwest Nigeria, primarily in Lagos and Ibadan. She has also conducted research in Nigerian immigrant and African American communities in the United States. Her book, Singing Yoruba Christianity (Indiana UP, 2018), examines how members of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement in Lagos, Nigeria use music, dance, and other media as a means of producing moral community and reinforcing ethical values and modes of self-making. She is currently researching how claims to urban space by members of religious communities in Lagos, Nigeria are produced, circulated, experienced, and contested through sound. She is also writing an ethnographic biography of a Nigerian-American visual artist.
Dr. Brian Clites is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. He is an expert in clergy sexual abuse, and he has spent the last eight years interviewing Catholic survivors in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois. In his upcoming book, Surviving Soul Murder, Clites explains how survivors have transformed their pain into legal and political reforms, and how the Catholic scandal has changed the way that other Americans think about sexual assault.
Follow Clites on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/brianclites
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Dr. Tia Noelle Pratt is a higher education professional, researcher, and inclusion & diversity specialist based in Philadelphia, PA. She received her PhD in sociology from Fordham University. A sociologist of religion, she is an expert in systemic racism with experience researching and writing about how systemic racism impacts African-American Catholics.
Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/TiaPhD
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Read "Black Catholics, Racism, and the Sex Abuse Crisis: A Personal Reflection from The Revealer.
Read "There is Time for the church to support black Catholics—if it has the will to do so" from America: The Jesuit Review.
Emily Crews is a Ph.D. candidate in History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her dissertation project traces the relationship between movement and identity formation in the context of Nigerian immigration to the United States, exploring the ways in which Pentecostalism conditions, and is conditioned by, the attempts of people to make themselves feel “at home” in a foreign culture. Her teaching interests are broad, but focus mostly on such areas as migration, gender, sexuality, and the body, as well as religions in the African diaspora.
Emily teaches sections of REL 105, “Honors Introduction to the Study of Religion,” as well as REL 310 course, “Religion Goes to the Movies.”
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emilydcrews
Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, painter, and word-witch. The author of Woman Most Wild and The Holy Wild., she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and believes in the emerging power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists in healing our ailing world. As an Irish-American, Danielle’s witchcraft is deeply rooted in Celtic philosophy and Irish mythology. She believes fervently in the role of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting white-body supremacy and environmental unconsciousness, is committed to centering the voices and teachings of POC and LGBTQIA+ folks in her work as founder of Living Mandala Yoga, LLC and The Hag School and supports organizations and initiatives that do the same. Parent to two beloved wildlings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art, and intentional sensuousness. Find her praying under pine trees, wandering through the haunted places, and whispering to her grandmothers’ ghosts.
Find her online at https://www.danielledulsky.com
Julia M. Gossard is Assistant Professor of History at Utah State University. She specializes in early modern European and Atlantic history with an emphasis on gender, family, and childhood. With funding from the American Historical Association, the Newberry Library, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Dr. Gossard wrote her first book, Coercing Children: State-Building and Social Reform in the Early Modern French World, which is under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press. You can find her online at JuliaMGossard.com or on Twitter @JMGossard.
Dr. Cristina Rosetti completed her Ph.D., in religious studies at the University of California Riverside. She writes about Mormon fundamentalism.
Follow her work on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/CristinaMartaR
Dalena Storm Is a writer and educator. Her undergraduate training at Williams College was in Asian Studies with a Religious Studies Concentration, and her experiences in the study and practice of various religious and spiritual traditions, as well as her travels throughout Asia and Europe, influence much of her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, where she participated in a number of workshops that combined the study of fiction and nonfiction. She teaches a Winter Study course at Williams College called "How to Write Auto-Fiction." She is the author of The Hungry Ghost” out from Black Spot Books, an imprint of Vesuvian Media Group. You can find her work on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/DalenaStorm or online at https://www.Dalenastorm.com.
Dr. Kelly J. Baker is the author of the award-winning Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (University Press of Kansas, 2011); The Zombies Are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (Bondfire Books, 2013); Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces (Blue Crow Books, 2017); the award-winning Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (Blue Crow Books, 2018); and Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness (Blue Crow Books, 2019).
Follow Kelly J. Baker on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/kelly_j_baker
Read "It's the End and Nothing Feels Fine" here: https://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dispatch/its-the-end-and-nothing-feels-fine/
In this special dual-published episode, Oran Parker of Find the Good News Podcast interviews Classical Ideas host, Greg Soden.
Visit: findthegood.news
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Dr Tim Hutchings is a sociologist of digital religion. His PhD (Durham University, 2010) was an ethnographic study of five online Christian churches. Dr Hutchings is interested in the relationship between religion, media and culture, with particular attention to digital forms of Christianity. His research has included studies of online worship; digital evangelism and formation; online community; digital publishing and e-reading; apps and games; and death and dying. His research led to the publication of his book Creating Church Online: Ritual, Community and New Media (Routledge, 2017).
You can follow him on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/tim_hutchings
Buy Creating Church Online here.
Tim Hutchings on Academia.edu.
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DEBORAH EDEN TULL is the founder of Mindful Living Revolution. She is a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher, public speaker, author, activist, and sustainability educator. She trained for seven years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery in Northern California, and she has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about conscious, sustainable communities internationally for the last 25 years. She is the author of two books, The Natural Kitchen, which came out in 2010, and Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening our Connection with ourselves, each other and the planet, out in 2018 from Wisdom Publications. She lives in North Carolina and offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally.
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Deborah Eden Tull
http://deborahedentull.com/
Buy "Relational Mindfulness" by Deborah Eden Tull:
https://www.wisdompubs.org/book/relational-mindfulness
Robert Schaefer is a professional chef and lifelong Buddhist practitioner. He received the Jukai ceremony at the Korinji Rinzai Monastery in Wisconsin under the direction of Roshi Meido Moore.
You can find his Zen Facebook group here.
You can follow Classical Ideas on Twitter here.
Roshi Grace Schireson is a teacher in the Suzuki Roshi Lineage of Soto Zen, empowered by Sojun Mel Weitsman. She has also practiced in the Rinzai tradition and was encouraged to teach koans by Keido Fukushima Roshi. Grace is the author of Zen Women and co-editor of Zen Bridge. Grace is the head teacher of the Central Valley Zen Foundationi, president of Shogaku Zen Institute, and teaches meditatioin at Stanford University. A clinical psychologist by profession, you can reach her at https://www.graceschireson.com.
Buy Naked in the Zendo.
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Chris Murray is a social studies classroom teacher and religious literacy teacher education facilitator in Maryland.
You can find him on Twitter https://twitter.com/Mrmurraytweets
Read about Chris Murray in the Washington Post here.
Madison Tarleton is a Ph.D. candidate and scholar of Medieval Judaism in Christian Europe, antijudaism & antisemitism. Madison is studying at the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology’s joint PhD program.
Read The Krampus Conundrum here: https://sacredmattersmagazine.com/the-devils-in-the-details-the-krampus-conundrum/
You can follow her work on Twitter https://twitter.com/madisontarleton
You can follow the artwork of Elliot Lang on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ellistrator/
Dr. Geoffrey Barstow is assistant professor of religious studies at Oregon State University. His research focuses on the history and theory of vegetarianism in Tibet. He is the editor and contributor to the new book "The Faults of Meat: Tibetan Buddhist Writings on Vegetarianism," out now from Wisdom Publications. He is also the author of the academic monograph “Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet," out in 2018 from Columbia University Press.
You can follow Geoffrey Barstow on Twitter here
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Dr. Jackson W. Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Coordinator of the Nordic Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Crawford is the author and translator of The Wanderer’s Havamal and The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes. Both books are available from Hackett Publishing.
Visit Crawford online at: https://www.jacksonwcrawford.com
Visit Jackson Crawford on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/jacksoncrawford
Purchase The Wanderer's Havamal here.
Dr. Simran Jeet Singh is columnist for Religion News Service, Senior Fellow at the Sikh Coalition, Chaplain at New York University & Columbia University, and serves on the Governor’s Interfaith Advisory Committee for the State of New York.
Follow him on Twitter here.
Visit his website here
Read How colonialism still colors our ideas about who gets to teach religion here.
Dr. Samira Mehta a scholar of religion and the politics of the American Family and an assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has a degree in divinity from Harvard University, and a PhD from Emory University, Her book is Beyond Chrismukkah: Christian-Jewish Interfaith Families in the United States, from the University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
Visit: www.samiramehta.com
Dr. Liz Bucar is a professor in the department of philosophy and religion and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University in Boston. Dr. Bucar is the author of the award-winning Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress which came out from Harvard University Press in 2017, and was issued in paperback in July 2019. Furthermore, Bucar writes and teaches about gender, sexuality, and politics in everyday religious practice. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los AngelesTimes, and Teen Vogue.
Dr. Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist who studies sexuality, gender, and moral transformation within Islamic and Christian traditions and communities. She is author of three books, including the award-winning Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard University Press, 2017). At Northeastern Bucar teaches courses on sexual ethics, Islam, the politics of the veil, and the popular comparative religion program in Spain that includes a 150-mile hike on the Camino. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and Teen Vogue.
Visit her website: http://bucar.hcommons.org/
Follow Dr. Bucar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BucarLiz
Dr. Shari Rabin is a scholar of modern Judaism and American religions. Her first book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-century America (New York University Press, 2017), was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies and a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Rabin is currently an assistant professor of Jewish studies and religion at Oberlin College.
Follow Dr. Shari Rabin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sharirabin
Find Dr. Shari Rabin online: https://sharirabin.com/
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Ordained as a Soto Zen priest, Brad Warner is also a punk bassist, filmmaker, and blogger. He is the founder of Angel City Zen Center in Los Angeles and the author of Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up, and several other books about Zen Buddhism. His writing appears on SuicideGirls.com and in Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and Alternative Press. He lives in Los Angeles.
You can visit him online at https://www.hardcorezen.info
Jordan Baggs is a senior at The Ohio State University. She double-majors in International Religions and Religious Studies and minors in French. She is a member of The Ohio State Marching Band.
Mike Dimkich is a guitarist in the band Bad Religion, a cyclist, and a runner.
Follow him on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/miketheserb/
Dr. Stephanie Brehm, author of the brand new book, America’s Most Famous Catholic (According to Himself): Stephen Colbert and American Religion in the 21st Century, out now from Fordham Press. She received her PhD from Northwestern in Religious Studies Department. Her academic work uses ethnographic and media studies methods to explore the intersection of entertainment, mass media, and religion in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American society. She is currently the Assistant Director for Academic and Strategic Initiatives in The Graduate School at Northwestern.
Buy the book here!
Online:
https://www.stephbrehm.com
https://www.facebook.com/AmericasMostFamousCatholicColbert/
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https://www.instagram.com/stephbrehm/
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Dr. Chris Babits is an Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in History from UT-Austin in May 2019. His work examines the intersections of religion, medicine, gender, and sexuality in the modern United States. His current in-progress book project, To Cure a Sinful Nation: A History of Conversion Therapy in the United States, will tell the 140 year comprehensive history of conversion therapy practices in the United States.
Follow him on Twitter here.
Find his website here.
Dr. Amy Artman teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. Her research interests are in Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity, focusing on women in American religions, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Kathryn Kuhlman. Her other research interests include world religions, and bodies and theories of American religion. Artman's newest book is "The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity," out now from Eerdsmans. You can buy the book here. You can follow Artman on Twitter here.
Guest host Dan Jones is an independent scholar in religious studies, media studies, communication, nature studies, and more. He serves as a book review editor at the journal Religious Studies Review. You can follow Dan Jones on Twitter here.
Mark Coleman has taught meditation retreats and trainings worldwide for twenty years. He is the founder of the Mindfulness Institute and Awake in the Wild Programs. A senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, he lives in Northern Calilfornia.
Visit him online at https://www.markcoleman.org
Buy "From Suffering to Peace" here
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Dr. Maren Freudenberg is a research associate at the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and the associate editor of the journal Entangled Religions.
You can visit her online: https://ceres.rub.de/en/people/maren-freudenberg/
Read the article "Dynamics and Stability in Globally Expanding Charismatic Religions: The Case of the Vineyard Movement in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland" here:
https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/article/view/8353/7701
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Dr. Alex Gardner is the author of the brand new biography, “The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great,” out now from Snow Lion, an imprint of Shambhala Publications. Gardner is the director and Chief Editor of the Treasury of Lives, which we talk about extensively in this conversation. Gardner completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan. You can follow Gardner on Twitter at twitter.com/treasuryoflives.
Order "The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great" here.
Lama Palden Drolma is a western teacher trained by Tibetan Buddhist masters. She the founder of Sukhasiddhi Foundation. She is a licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, coach, and has studied Buddhism in the Himalayas with some of the preeminent Tibetan masters of the 20th century. She was authorized to become one of the first western lamas by Kalu Rinpoche. You can find Lama Palden’s work online at https://www.LamaPalden.org
Buy "Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy," here.
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Jay Wexler is a professor at the Boston University School of Law and is the author of the new book, “Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others are Demanding Their Rightful Place in Public Life.” The book is out from Stanford University Press.
Visit Wexler online at https://www.jaywex.com
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Buy "Our Non-Christian Nation" here.
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Dr. Ira Helderman is a psychotherapist in private practice and he holds a PhD in religious studies.
Buy "Prescribing the Dharma" (University of North Carolina Press) here.
Visit Dr. Ira Helderman on Twitter here.
Visit Dr. Helderman's site here.
Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. Miller's research is primarily in contemporary ethics and philosophy of religion. For examples of some of his work, please see recent pieces in the Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, Slate, Prospect Magazine, Relevant Magazine, Michael Hyatt Magazine, The Conversation, Newsweek, Aeon, Greater Good Magazine, Nautilus Magazine, Fathom Magazine, Institute of Art and Ideas, Character.org, and Christianity Today.
Miller's first trade book has just been released: The Character Gap: How Good Are We? from Oxford University Press. Miller has also published two academic books with Oxford – Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (2013), and Character and Moral Psychology (2014). The edited volume from the Character Project, Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, is out with Oxford.
Follow Miller at https://www.twitter.com/charactergap
Gesshin Claire Greenwood is the author of Bow First, Ask Questions Later and the popular blog That’s So Zen. She trained in Japanese Zen monasteries, including in the kitchen, for several years before returning to the United States to obtain a master’s degree in East Asian Studies. She lives in San Francisco, where she cooks, teaches meditation, and works in the mental-health field.
Find her online:
https://www.gesshin.net
https://twitter.com/GesshinClaire
Buy "Just Enough: Vegan Recipes and Stories from Japan's Buddhist Temples here.
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Stanley Lombardo is Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Kansas. His previous translations include Homer's Iliad (1997, Hackett) and Odyssey (2000, Hackett), Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony (1993, Hackett), and Sappho, Tao Te Ching (1993, Hackett, with Stephen Addiss), Poems and Fragments (2002, Hackett), a PEN Center USA 2003 Literary Award Finalist.
Buy Lombardo's Epic of Gilgamesh from Hackett here.
Jason Josephson-Storm is Professor of Religion and Chair of Science and Technology Studies at Williams College in Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2006 and has held visiting positions in the US, France, and Germany. He has three primary research foci: Japanese Religions, European Intellectual History, and Theory more broadly. He spoke to me on the cusp of a research leave for the 2019-2020 school year, in which he will complete his next book. You can follow him on Twitter @Ghost_Image_.
You can buy "The Myth of Disenchantment" here or here.
Support me on Patreon here.
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Sam Kestenbaum is an independent religion journalist. He writes for The New York Times and is a contributing editor and former staff writer for The Forward. He spent several years working in Asia and the Middle East, where he edited a newspaper in Sana, a website in Ramallah, and a magazine in Beijing.
In recent pieces, Sam explores enchanted politics in his profiles of of Jonathan Cahn, a doomsday prophet-pastor who says the Bible predicted the presidency of Donald Trump, and Marianne Williamson’s run for the presidency in the 2020 Democratic Primary race. Sam’s two most recent long pieces, titled #MAGA Church: The Doomsday Prophet Who says the Bible Predicted Trump,” and “The Curious Mystical Text Behind Marianne Williamson’s Presidential Bid,” are both out now in the New York Times.
Read "The Curious Mystical Text Behind Marianne Williamson's Presidential Bid" here.
Read #MAGA Church: The Doomsday Prophet Who Says the Bible Predicted Trump here.
Visit Sam Kestenbaum's website here.
Follow Sam on Twitter here.
Dr. Judith Weisenfeld teaches in the Department of Religion at Princeton University where she is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Weisenfeld is the author of New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration, out now in paperback from New York University Press.
Please visit her website at judithweisenfeld.com and follow her at twitter.com/jlweisenfeld.
Buy the book here or here.
Dr. Brett Malcolm Grainger is a scholar of American religion and an award-winning journalist. He is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and the author ofChurch In The Wild: Evangelicals In Antebellum American and In The World but Not of It: One Family's Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America.
You can view his work at his Academia.edu page here.
L. Benjamin Rolsky received his PhD from Drew University in American Religious Studies. His work has appeared in a variety of academic and popular venues including Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion as well as The Christian Century, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CNN Opinion, and the Religion and Culture Forum at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching interests include religion and politics, the study of popular culture, and critical theory.
Rolsky’s first book, The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left: Politics, Television, and Popular Culture in the 1970s and Beyond, is forthcoming this Fall from Columbia University Press.
Visit his website: https://www.benjirolsky.com/
Follow Rolsky on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LBRolsky
Order "Rise and Fall of the Religious Left" from Columbia University Press
Order "Rise and Fall of the Religious Left" from Amazon
Anthony Kaldellis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University. He is the author of many books, including The Christian Parthenon, Hellenism in Byzantium, and The Byzantine Republic. The focus of today’s conversation is his latest book, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, out now from Harvard University Press.
Buy Romanland: here or here.
Ben Connelly is a Minneapolis-based Soto Zen teacher in the Katagiri-lineage. He offers a wide variety of secular mindfulness trainings, including for police departments, corporate settings, correctional facilities, and addiction recovery groups. He teaches at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center and is the author of Inside the Grass hut, Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara, and most recently Mindfulness and Intimacy, out now from Wisdom Publications.
You can visit Ben's author profile at: Wisdom Publications.
Monk Yun Rou was ordained in China as a Taoist monk in 2012. His writings and teachings propagate Taoist ideas and focus on environmental conservation, and political and social justice. Yun Rou began his formal martial arts training in 1980 and practiced a wide range of Chinese kung fu styles before settling on tai chi. A student of some of China’s top tai chi grandmasters, he was named Tai Chi Master of The Year at the 2011 World Congress on Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine and Yun Rou was the keynote speaker at the International Tai Chi Symposium in Louisville, Kentucky. Yun Rou is the author of Mad Monk Manifesto.
Follow him online at https://www.monkyunrou.com/
Philippa J. Meek is a Doctoral fellow at the University of Exeter. Meek researches public perceptions versus the realities of plural marriage within Fundamentalist Mormon communities. This episode gives a detailed overview of the court cases Loving V. Virginia, Obergefell vs. Hodges, Lawrence vs. Texas, and then discusses what possible path forward there is for legalization of plural marriage in the United States.
You can find her work on Academia.edu: here
You can follow her on Twitter: here
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Dr. Duane Bidwell works to reduce suffering and promote abundant life in all of his teaching, writing, and research.
Experiences as chaplain, pastor, spiritual director, pastoral counselor, HIV/AIDS professional, and non-profit director inform his work as teacher-scholar-clinician. CST students have given him teaching and mentoring awards three times since 2014. He is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and practitioner of vipassana (insight meditation) in the Theravada Buddhist tradition.
His most recent book, When One Religion Isn’t Enough: The Lives of Spiritually Fluid People (Boston: Beacon, 2018), examines complex religious bonds–the experience of being formed by more than one religious tradition at the same time. The book builds on his work in transreligious pastoral theology and in Buddhist-Christian studies. Library Journal named it a Best Book 2018.
Buy the book here.
Mitch Horowitz is a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library, a lecturer-in-residence at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles, and the PEN Award-winning author of books including Occult America; One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life; Mind as Builder; and the The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality. Mitch has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Salon, Time.com, and Politico.
He is the voice of popular audio books including Alcoholics Anonymous and The Jefferson Bible. Mitch has discussed alternative spirituality on CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, NPR’S All Things Considered, and throughout the national media. His work has been censored in China.
Mitch enjoys the Misfits and Dead Kennedys.
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MitchHorowitz
Dr. Jolyon Thomas is the author of "Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan," out now from the University of Chicago Press. Dr. Thomas is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Follow Jolyon Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jolyonbt
Buy "Faking Liberties here.
Dr. Nora Rubel is the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester in New York. Dr. Ben Zeller is associate professor of religion at Lake Forest College in Illinois. They are co-editors of the book "Religion, Food, and Eating in North America" from Columbia University Press (2014).
Buy the book from Columbia University Press
Eric Ripert is chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin on 7th Avenue in Manhattan’s Theater District, author of the autobiography “32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line” from Random House, numerous cookbooks, and host of the television series AVEC Eric.
Buy Eric Ripert's books: Eric Ripert Books
Follow Eric Ripert on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ericripert/
Follow Eric Ripert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericripert
Visit Le Bernardin: https://www.le-bernardin.com/
Philip Deslippe is a historian of American religion with a background in American Studies and literature. His research focuses on Asian, metaphysical, and marginal religions in modern America. Philip is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and writing a dissertation on the early history of yoga in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.
Sign up for Philip Deslippe's course on Yoga history at:
https://www.yogicstudies.com/courses
Find Philip Deslippe online at: https://philipdeslippe.com/
Support this show on Patreon at:
https://www.patreon.com/classicalideaspodcast
Dr. Kate Kingsbury obtained her doctorate in Anthropology from Oxford University. She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta where she teaches anthropology courses such as Introduction to Anthropology, Anthropology of Religion and Ethnographic Field Methods.
Kate Kingsbury on Academia.edu
Follow Kate Kingsbury on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfKingsbury
Dr. Andrew Chesnut earned his Ph.D degree in Latin American History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995 and joined the History Department faculty at the University of Houston in 1997. He quickly became an internationally recognized expert on Latin American religious history. Professor Chesnut was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Bishop Walter Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at VCU in 2008.
Professor Chesnut’s early work, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (Rutgers University Press, 1997), traces the meteoric rise of Pentecostalism among the popular classes in Brazil following the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church. His second book, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford University Press, 2003) focuses on the three groups that have prospered most in the region’s pluralist landscape, Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African disasporic religions (e.g., Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou). Professor Chesnut's most recent book is Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press, 2012). It is the first in-depth study of the Mexican folk saint in English and has received widespread media coverage.
Follow Dr. Andrew Chesnut on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AndrewChesnut1
Visit: https://skeletonsaint.com/
Buy Devoted to Death by Andrew Chesnut:
https://www.amazon.com/Devoted-Death-Santa-Muerte-Skeleton/dp/0190633336/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Devoted+to+Death%3A+Santa+Muerte%2C+the+Skeleton+Saint&qid=1553112579&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Further reading on exorcism:
Driving Out the Devil from Catholic Herald
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theglobalcatholicreview/2018/04/exorcising-the-demons-of-africa/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theglobalcatholicreview/2018/08/why-is-exorcism-all-the-rage/
Dr. Ann Gleig is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Central Florida. She is co-editor of Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism and has published widely on contemporary Buddhism. She is the author of “American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity,” from Yale University Press.
Buy the book: American Dharma
Follow Dr. Ann Gleig on Twitter: https://twitter.com/agleig
Corey Ichigen Hess is an ordained Zen monk and body therapist. He lived a monastic life for many years at Sogenji Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan. He teaches meditation classes and works with individual clients doing private embodiment process coaching sessions, Sourcepoint Therapy®, Structural Integration®, and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy at his home on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington.
Here are the links mentioned in the show:
Zen Embodiment Blog
Corey Hess Body Therapy
Michael Vanhartingsveldt (featured in episode 47 & 92) is a contributing columnist at Buddhistdoor Global. He works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He did his masters in East Asian Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and he also works as a lecturer for the Japan Foundation.
Link to episode #37 from "The Way Of Improvement Leads Home" podcast episode mentioned in the introduction can be found here: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/the-way-of-improvement-leads-home?selected=ADL9037171567
Dr. Rachel Lindsey is Assistant Professor in Saint Louis University’s Department of Theological Studies. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Religion from Princeton University, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Missouri State University. She is the author of Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth Century America from University of North Carolina Press. We discussed Communion of Shadows and her fantastic projects, Lived Religion in the Digital Age and Arch City Religion. You can find Dr. Lindsey’s projects at archcityreligion.org and religioninplace.org.
Follow Rachel Lindsey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmclindsey
Dr. Chris Jones holds a Bachelor of Arts from Oklahoma Baptist University, a Master of Theology from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Univ of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the sole religious studies professor at Washburn University.
You can find his spectacular Twitter presence here:
https://twitter.com/ProfChrisMJones
You can find his professional website here:
https://hcommons.org/members/profchrismjones/
Dr. Michael Coogan is lecturer on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School and the director of publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum. He is the author of God and Sex, The Ten Commandments: A Short History of an Ancient Text, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, and numerous textbooks on the Old Testament. He joined me on the phone to talk about his brand new book, God’s Favorites: Judaism, Christianity, and the Myth of Divine Chosenness, out from Beacon Press.
Dr. Nicole Kirk is a historian of American religious history, associate professor, and the Frank and Alice Schulman Chair of Unitarian Universalist History at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, Illinois. She joined the faculty at Meadville Lombard in 2012 after earning her Ph.D. in American Religious History at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is the author of "Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store." The book is out now from NYU Press.
Visit Nicole Kirk online: https://www.nicolekirk.com/
Visit Nicole Kirk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Prof_in_Chicago
Dr. Andrew Chesnut earned his Ph.D degree in Latin American History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995 and joined the History Department faculty at the University of Houston in 1997. He quickly became an internationally recognized expert on Latin American religious history. Professor Chesnut was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Bishop Walter Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at VCU in 2008.
Professor Chesnut’s early work, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (Rutgers University Press, 1997), traces the meteoric rise of Pentecostalism among the popular classes in Brazil following the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church. His second book, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford University Press, 2003) focuses on the three groups that have prospered most in the region’s pluralist landscape, Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African disasporic religions (e.g., Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou). Professor Chesnut's most recent book is Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press, 2012). It is the first in-depth study of the Mexican folk saint in English and has received widespread media coverage.
Follow Dr. Andrew Chesnut on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AndrewChesnut1
Visit: https://skeletonsaint.com/
Buy Devoted to Death: https://www.amazon.com/Devoted-Death-Santa-Muerte-Skeleton/dp/0190633336/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Devoted+to+Death%3A+Santa+Muerte%2C+the+Skeleton+Saint&qid=1553112579&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Jonathan Homrighausen is an Episcopal writer and scholar on Scripture, art, and interreligious dialogue. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Duke University, after earning his MA in Biblical Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.
His latest book, Illuminating Justice: The Ethical Imagination of The Saint John’s Bible (out from Liturgical Press in 2018), explores the call to social ethics in The Saint John’s Bible. It was a true pleasure to speak with Jonathan about his book and his interest in the Saint John’s Bible. I think you will find him a wealth of knowledge in the intricate design and construction of this marvelous Bible. Without further delay, please enjoy our conversation.
You can find him online here: https://jdhomie.com/
You can buy his book from Liturgical Press here: https://litpress.org/Products/4455/Illuminating-Justice
Alicia Batten received her BA in Humanistic Studies from McGill University, and completed an MA and PhD in Theology, with a focus on the New Testament, at the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses upon the origins and development of early Christianity, with particular emphasis upon the ancient Mediterranean cultural context (s), including material culture. She also thinks it important to study the shifting manner in which biblical texts are interpreted over the centuries, and is currently writing a commentary examining the text reception and impact of the Letter of James. Beyond her academic interests, Alicia enjoys gardening, art, and reading works of fiction and poetry.
Visit her Waterloo faculty profile: https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/people-profiles/alicia-batten
Rima Fujita was born in Tokyo and now resides in Southern California. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with her B.F.A. and has exhibited her work internationally to much acclaim. As a descendant of the Last Samurai her creative aesthetics is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Bushido and Buddhism.
Known for her distinctive style with vivid colors on black surface, Rima’s works are extracted from her dreams and meditation process. They are ethereal and evoke a timeless sense of longing and peace, and yet if examined deeply her images trigger a powerful ripple of infinite emotions. She is inspired by “Nibiiro,” an expression of a very dark grey color from the Heian period in Japan (AD 794 to1185). If you mixed all colors that exist in Nirvana, the Buddhist land of Perfect Bliss, it would become “Nibiiro.”
Rima’s life passion lays in her philanthropic work. In 2001 she established “Books for Children,” an organization that produces children’s books and donates them to children in needs around the world. She has created 4 children’s books and has donated more than 12,000 books to the Tibetan children in exile. All profits go to support the Tibetan children’s education. H.H. The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Betty Williams, the Nobel Peace Laureates personally gave her special recognition in 2006 at the International Peace Summit in Japan. His Holiness The Dalai Lama calls her, “An artist who creates beautiful art.”
Visit her online: https://rimafujita.com/
Dr. Barbato researches the mechanisms and strategies of interreligious communication with a focus on high-level actors and cultural diplomacy, such as the Pope. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Münster in Germany and is in partnership with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies in the UK. She is currently developing a project on Hindu-Christian dialogue. She’s also a scholar of Jainism and is the author of Jain Approaches to Plurality: Identity as Dialogue, published by Brill in 2017.
We discuss current events, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Jainism, and her book.
Follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/melanie_barbato
Buy her book here.
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson is the elected Allsherjargoði (high priest) of the Icelandic pagan group, Ásatrúarfélagið, or Ásatrú Association. He is also a musician and composer.
You can find Ásatrú Association's translatable website at: https://asatru.is/
Dr. Giulia Evolvi is the author of "Blogging My Religion: Secular, Muslim, and Catholic Media Spaces in Europe," out now from Routledge. Evolvi is a Research Associate at the Centrum für Religionswissenshaftliche Studien (CERES) in Germany and she manages the Religion and Materiality Focus Group for the Käte Hamburger Kolleg project.
Follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/giuliaevolvi
Buy American Sutra from Harvard Press here
Bio from: https://www.duncanryukenwilliams.com/
Duncan Ryuken Williams was born in Tokyo, Japan to a Japanese mother and British father. After growing up in Japan and England until age 17, he moved to the U.S. to attend college (Reed College) and graduate school (Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in Religion). Williams is currently an Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Previously, he held the Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair of Japanese Buddhism at University of California at Berkeley and served as the Director of Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies for four years. He has also been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition and served as the Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University from 1994-96.
He is the author of a monograph entitled The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Soto Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan(Princeton University Press, 2005) and co-editor of seven volumes including Hapa Japan (Kaya Press, 2017), Issei Buddhism in the Americas (U-Illinois Press, 2010), American Buddhism (Routledge, 1998), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard University Press, 1997). He has also translated four books from Japanese into English including Putting Buddhism to Work: A New Theory of Economics and Business Management (Kodansha, 1997). His latest book is American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War(Harvard University Press, 2019). He has previously received research grants from the American Academy of Religion, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Japan Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Numata Foundation/Society for the Promotion of Buddhism. In 2011, Williams received a commendation from the Japanese government for deepening the mutual understanding between the peoples of Japan and California.
Roger Lipsey is a biographer, art historian, translator, and, for many decades, a participant in the Gurdjieff teaching. Among his recent books is Hammarskjöld: A Life,which has been hailed as the definitive biography of Dag Hammarskjöld. His latest book, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy, is out now from Shambhala Publications.
Buy the book here:
https://www.shambhala.com/gurdjieff-reconsidered.html
Sean Michael Wilson is an award-winning Scottish graphic novel/comic book writer. He has written more than 30 books, published by a variety of US, UK and Japanese publishers and translated into 12 languages. His books are of two broad types: 'western' style graphic novels, including original story ideas and various books on social issues; and a unique line of manga style books on Japanese themes, unmatched by any other English language comic book writer.
His latest book is an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching in collaboration with Cary Kwok and William Scott Wilson.
Find him online:
https://seanmichaelwilson.weebly.com/
https://www.instagram.com/seanmichaelwilson/
Buy the book: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/u-z/sean-michael-wilson.html
Dwight Hwang is a California-based Gyotaku artist. His notable artistic achievements include a 2018 solo showcase by Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Japan Foundation, as well as providing cover art for the book "Simply Fly Fishing" by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard.
You can follow Dwight Hwang on Instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/fishingforgyotaku/
You can find Dwight Hwang's website and store here:
https://fishingforgyotaku.com/
Guest discussant Michael Vanhartingsveldt (featured in episode 47) is a contributing columnist at Buddhistdoor Global. He works at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. He did his masters in East Asian Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and he also works as a lecturer for the Japan Foundation.
Dr. Margaret Winslow is Professor Emeritus of Earth and Atmospheric Science at City College of New York. She was a field geologist for three decades and is the author of two travel memoirs recounting her field experiences in South America. Those titles are “The Cusp of Dreadfulness: Fifteen Seasons in Tierra Del Fuego and Patagonia,” and “Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond.” She is most recently the author of the book “Smart Ass: How a Donkey Challenged Me to Accept His True Nature and Rediscover My own” from New World Library.
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/margiewinslow
Visit her website: https://www.margiewinslow.com/
George Coe is a religious studies, current events, and world history teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. He runs a popular blog with teaching resources at: https://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com/.
This conversation talks about constitutionality of teaching about religion; how to arrange a semester of teaching high school religious studies, a wide-range of resources that he and I have used to with success in our own classrooms, and a deep dive investigation of a typical religious studies class in a typical United States high school. This is a snapshot of a hardworking teacher doing great work for teenagers in the United States.
Follow George Coe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggcoe
Allison Coffelt lives and writes in Columbia, Missouri. She works as the director of education and outreach for the annual documentary-based True/False Film Festival, as well as hosting the fantastic True/False Podcast, featuring interviews and commentary with documentary filmmakers, available anywhere you get podcasts. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford Public Health Magazine, and more. She won the 2015 University of Missouri Essay Prize. The topic of today’s conversation is her new book, “Maps Are Lines We Draw,” out now from Lanternfish Press.
Buy the book from Lanternfish Press
Brevity Magazine review of "Maps Are Lines We Draw"
Dr. Christopher Ives teaches in the area of Asian Religions at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. In his scholarship, he focuses on modern Zen ethics. In 2009 he published Imperial-Way Zen, a book on Buddhist social ethics in light of Zen nationalism. Currently he is engaged in research on Zen approaches to nature and Buddhist environmental ethics. He is the author of "Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage," out now from Wisdom Publications.
Find the book here: Zen on the Trail from Wisdom Publications
Sam Kestenbaum is an independent religion journalist. He writes for The New York Times and is a contributing editor and former staff writer for The Forward.
Sam Kestenbaum on Twitter: https://twitter.com/skestenbaum
To find his work, you can visit Sam Kestenbaum's website:
https://samkestenbaum.com/
Sylvia Chan-Malik is Associate Professor in the Departments of American and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She talks, teaches, and writes about the intersections of race, gender, and religion, with a focus on the history and cultures of Islam and Muslims in the United States. Her research highlights the lives, voices, histories, and representations of Muslim women, and reveals how critical legacies of Black freedom, women’s agency, and global liberation struggles have continually marked U.S. Muslim women’s engagements with Islam.
She is the author of Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam (New York University Press, 2018).
You can find her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/schanmalik
You can find her website here: https://sylviachanmalik.com/
Charles C. Haynes is vice president of the Freedom Forum Institute / Religious Freedom Center and a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center.
Haynes is best known for his work on First Amendment issues in public schools. Over the past two decades, he has been the principal organizer and drafter of consensus guidelines on religious liberty in schools, endorsed by a broad range of religious and educational organizations. In January 2000, three of the guides were distributed by the U.S. Department of Education to every public school in the nation. These are “A Parent’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools,” “A Teacher’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools,” and “Public Schools & Religious Communities.”
Haynes is the author or co-author of six books, including First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America, and Religion in American Public Life: Living with Our Deepest Differences. His column, Inside the First Amendment, appears in newspapers nationwide.
He is a founding board member of the Character Education Partnership, and serves on the steering committee of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools and the American Bar Association Advisory Commission on Public Education. He chairs the Committee on Religious Liberty, founded by the National Council of Churches.
Widely quoted in news magazines and major newspapers, Haynes is also a frequent guest on television and radio. He has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal and on ABC’s “Evening News.” In 2008, he received the Virginia First Freedom Award from the Council for America’s First Freedom.
Haynes holds a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate from Emory University.
Chris Grosso is a youth mental health group facilitator with Newport Academy, public speaker, writer, and author of Indie Spiritualist (Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster, 2014), Everything Mind (Sounds True, 2105) and Dead Set On Living (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, 2018). He writes for Revolver Magazine, ORIGIN Magazine, and Huffington Post,and has spoken and performed at Wanderlust Festival, Celebrate Your Life, Yoga Journal Conference, Sedona World Wisdom Days, Kripalu, Sun Valley Wellness Festival, and more.
Chris is passionate about his work with people who are in the process of healing or struggling with addictions of all kinds. He speaks and leads groups in detoxes, yoga studios, rehabs, youth centers, hospitals, conferences, and festivals worldwide. He is a member of the advisory board for Drugs over Dinner, hosts The Indie Spiritualist Podcast on Ram Dass’s esteemed Be Here Now Network and is a member of The Evolutionary Leaders.
Andrea Miller is the deputy editor of Lion's Roar magazine (formerly the Shambhala Sun), a publication force within Buddhism that so many of you will already know, and the author of two picture books: The Day the Buddha Woke Up and My First Book of Canadian Birds. She's also the editor of three anthologies, most recently All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance. I spoke with Andrea on the heels of her trip to India to attend the International Buddhist Conclave, which afforded her the chance to attend sacred Buddhist sites. She has a brand new piece out in December, 2018 called “The Buddha Was here.”
Read "The Buddha Was Here": https://www.lionsroar.com/the-buddha-was-here/
Follow Andrea Miller on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndreaMillerSun
Andrew M. Henry (M.A.) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at Boston University and founder of the educational YouTube channel, Religion for Breakfast. Andrew has produced over 50 video lectures on a variety of religious studies topics, used by educators worldwide. You can follow him on twitter @andrewmarkhenry.
Religion for Breakfast on YouTube can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/religionforbreakfast
DEBORAH EDEN TULL is the founder of Mindful Living Revolution. She is a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher, public speaker, author, activist, and sustainability educator. She trained for seven years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery in Northern California, and she has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about conscious, sustainable communities internationally for the last 25 years. She is the author of two books, The Natural Kitchen, which came out in 2010, and Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening our Connection with ourselves, each other and the planet, out in 2018 from Wisdom Publications. She lives in North Carolina and offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally.
Affiliate RSVP Link Partnership with SHIFT Network:
https://shiftnetwork.infusionsoft.com/go/st/a19089
Classical Ideas on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/classicalideaspodcast/
Classical Ideas on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Classical_Ideas
Deborah Eden Tull
http://deborahedentull.com/
Buy "Relational Mindfulness" by Deborah Eden Tull:
https://www.wisdompubs.org/book/relational-mindfulness
Corey Ichigen Hess is an ordained Zen monk and body therapist. He lived a monastic life for many years at Sogenji Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan. He teaches meditation classes and works with individual clients doing private embodiment process coaching sessions, Sourcepoint Therapy®, Structural Integration®, and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy at his home on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington.
Here are the links mentioned in the show:
NHK Sogenji Documentary Film Footage
Zen Embodiment Blog
Corey Hess Body Therapy
Tahil Sharma grew up in an interfaith family and practices Sikhism and Hinduism. He is a Program Manager for Faith Outreach at Brave New Films and an Interfaith Minister in Residence at the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
You can find him at: https://twitter.com/interfaithman
Matthew Bowman received his PhD. in history from Georgetown University. He is associate professor of history at Henderson State University, where he teaches courses in American history since the Civil War, race, and American religion.
He is the author of "Christian: The Politics of a Word in America," out now from Harvard University Press, and several other books.
Find him online here: http://www.matthewbowman.net/
Danielle Dulsky is the author of “The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman,” out now from New World Library.
Visit her online:
https://www.danielledulsky.com
https://www.instagram.com/wolfwomanwitch/
Margaret Arnold is the Associate Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, Massachusetts. She received her PhD in Religious and Theological Studies from Boston University. Her new book, “The Magdalene in the Reformation” is out now from The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Get the book here:
The Magdalene in the Reformation from Harvard University Press
Mark Van Buren is a Mindful Living Trainer, yoga/meditation instructor, personal trainer, and musician, that has been promoting health and wellness for over a decade. He has run dozens of workshops and retreats all over the tri-state area, and has been asked to speak at numerous colleges including Columbia, Montclair State, and Bergen Community. A handful of yoga studios have already opened their doors to his message, allowing him to give talks and run guided meditations and retreats.
He has worked extensively with children and adults with autism and other special needs, and even released two solo albums, based on his inward journey through meditation, under the band name “Seeking the Seeker.”
Van Buren holds a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from Montclair State University and two Associate Degrees from Bergen Community College in exercise science and music. He is currently the owner and head instructor of Live Free Yoga Studio in River Edge, NJ (www.livefree4life.com), and in recent years a bestselling author.
You can find him online here: https://www.authormarkvanburen.com
This episode introduces Sikhism, including an overview of the basic beliefs, practices, important people, and specific goals of the Sikh religion, practiced by around 25 million people worldwide, with its spiritual home in Amritsar in Northwestern India in the state of Punjab. My guests are Dr. Harbaksh & Jasmine Sangha, and Dr. Chetan and Ranjana Hans.
Benjamin P. Marcus is the religious literacy specialist with the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, where he examines the intersection of education, religious literacy, and identity formation in the United States. He has developed religious literacy programs for public schools, universities, U.S. government organizations, and private foundations, and he has delivered presentations on religion at universities and nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked closely with the U.S. State Department, Interfaith Youth Core, the Foundation for Religious Literacy, and the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in the United Kingdom. In February 2018, Marcus was accepted as a Fulbright Specialist for a period of three years. As a Specialist, he will share his expertise on religion and education with select host institutions abroad. Marcus chaired the writing group for the Religious Studies Companion Document to the C3 Framework, a nationally recognized set of guidelines used by state and school district curriculum experts for social studies standards and curriculum development. He is a contributing author in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Religion and American Education, where he writes about the importance of religious literacy education. In 2015 he served as executive editor of the White Paper of the Sub-Working Group on Religion and Conflict Mitigation of the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group. Marcus earned an MTS with a concentration in Religion, Ethics, and Politics as a Presidential Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He studied religion at the University of Cambridge and Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.
DEBORAH EDEN TULL, founder of Mindful Living Revolution, teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives. She is a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher, public speaker, author, activist, and sustainability educator. She trained for seven years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery in Northern California, and she has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about conscious, sustainable communities internationally for the last 25 years. She currently resides in the mountains western North Carolina and offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally.
You can find her online here: https://www.deborahedentull.com
The topic of this episode focuses on Dr. Daniel Hummel's piece, “The Limits of Evangelical Christian Nationalism during the Cold War,” which appears in the new book “North American Churches and the Cold War,” out now on Eerdsman Publishing.
Dr. Daniel Hummel is a Scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. Dr. Hummel is a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, “A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship.” Dr. Hummel is also a contributor to the Washington Post in middle east current events.
Link to the book on Eerdsmans: North American Churches in the Cold War
Dr. Hummel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielghummel
Randall J. Stephens is an Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. He previously taught at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne) and Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, Massachusetts). He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History(University of South Carolina Press, 2009). His latest book is The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll (Harvard University Press, 2018). Stephens has written for the Atlantic, Salon, the Wilson Quarterly, Christian Century, the Independent, History Today, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and the New York Times. He has been interviewed for news and culture programs on the BBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, KBYU-FM 89.1, Austrian Youth Radio, and NPR. Stephens is one of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturers.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an author, Zen priest, teacher, divine seer, artist, and Drum medicine woman. Her work has been featured in Essence Magazine, CNN, CBS NEWS, KPFA Radio, Buddhadharma, and Lion’s Roar. She holds a M.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from California Institute of Integral Studies. She spoke to me from Green Gulch Farm, a Zen practice center within the San Francisco Zen Center. She is the author of “Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging,” out now from Wisdom Publications. You can find her online at Zenju.org, where she has three episodes published of her own podcast, Teachings of the Hollow Bones.
John Camardella teaches religion and social studies at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, Illinois. This conversation touches on the organization, implementation, and day-to-day operations inside a high school course focused on world religions.
You can read more about Mr. Camardella here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/07/viewing-religion-through-a-cultural-lens/
or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/PHS_Religions
A native of Connecticut, Sarah Anne Shockley is a multiple award winning producer and director of educational films, includingDancing From the Inside Out, a highly acclaimed documentary on disabled dance.
She holds an MBA in International Marketing and has worked in high-tech management, as a corporate trainer, and teaching undergraduate and graduate business administration.
As the result of a work related injury in the Fall of 2007, Sarah contracted Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) and has lived with debilitating nerve pain since then. She has been a columnist forPain News Network, and is a regular contributor to The Mighty. Sarah is the author of a number of books on living with chronic pain, including The Pain Companion (New World Library, 2018). She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This bonus episode is a recording of me reading the Gospel of Mark in its entirety. This is meant to serve as a classroom or educational resource.
You can find the text I read here:
https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=Mark&qs_version=ESV
Eric Lancaster is an instructor of Japanese at the University of Missouri and an instructor of religious studies at Columbia College. He is a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theatre troupe, whose film, "Kaiju Bunraku," was screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Samhita Arni is the author of the NYT Bestselling graphic novel, Sita's Ramayana, (collaboration with Patua artist Moyna Chitrakar) available from Tara Books. She is also the author of The Mahabharata-A Child's View and The Missing Queen.
You can find her online here:
https://www.samarni.com
https://www.samarni.com
Sarah Klaassen is the pastor of Rock Bridge Christian Church in Columbia, Missouri. In September 2017, her church congregation voted to become a sanctuary church and seeks to protect those at risk of deportation.
You can read more about her church's decision here: Rock Bridge Christian Church
Robin Waterfield is the author of numerous books about ancient Athens including Xenophon's Retreat, Why Socrates Died, Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens,and more. He has also translated the works of Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, and more from ancient Greek. You can find him online at:
http://www.robinwaterfield.com/
This episode is a discussion with Dr. Preston Jones about the book “Is Belief in God Good, Bad, or Irrelevant: A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism, and CHristianity.” Jones is the editor and co-author of the volume with Dr. Greg Graffin, singer for Bad Religion. The book was released in 2006.
Dr. Preston Jones is a professor at John Brown University in Arkansas. His research focuses on the American Empire in the period 1898-1917 and the personal experience of combat. He has published 8 books, more than 200 articles, and he has interviewed more than 100 combat veterans.
You can find the book from InterVarsity Press: https://www.ivpress.com/is-belief-in-god-good-bad-or-irrelevant
Paul Moses, former Newsdaycity editor and senior religion writer, is a professor of journalism at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He was the lead writer on a Newsdayteam that won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of The Saint the Sultan (2009, Doubleday) and An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians (2015, NYU Press).
Follow him on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/PaulBMoses/
TWIN TEMPLE dwells within a dark legacy of classic American music; from the funeral jazz & Voodoo of New Orleans, to the haunting sounds of Delta blues murder ballads, to the noir-1920’s big band sounds of smoky Prohibition speakeasies. And yet, they inject America's hallowed musical heritage with a surprising blend: gothic romance, ritual, macabre humor, and brash contemporary topics inspired by the candor of confessional poetry.
You can find their work at: https://www.twintemple.com
Dr. Carrie Duncan is an Assistant Professor of ancient Mediterranean religions at the University of Missouri. She is a senior staff member on the following projects in Jordan: the Ayn Gharandal Archaeological Project, the Petra North Ridge Project, and the Madaba Plains’ excavation. She teaches courses on the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, the Jesus of history, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and more.
Mary DeMocker is cofounder and creative director of 350.org’s Eugene, Oregon, chapter. She has written about conscious parenting and climate activism for the Sun, EcoWatch, Mothering.com, Spirituality & Health, Oregon Quarterly, and the Oregonian. She lives with her family in Eugene, Oregon.
You can find her at: www.marydemocker.com and https://twitter.com/MDeMocker/
Dr. Francis Stewart completed her doctoral thesis on punk rock as a surrogate for religion, with a particular emphasis on Straight Edge punk, in 2011 at the University of Stirling.
Within the thesis, Stewart examined the notions of community, authenticity, integrity, DIY, and salvation. She also engaged with the connections between music and the expression of emotions, particularly those emotions which are deemed socially 'undesirable' or 'negative'. She also engaged with the question of what do we mean by the terms 'religious', 'spiritual' and 'faith'.
Her book, "Punk Rock is My Religion: Straight Edge Punk and 'Religious' Identity" is out now from Routledge.
Follow Stewart on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_F_Stewart
Michael R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of the newly published"Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era from NYU Press, as well as The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement from Columbia University Press. He earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University.
Dr. Pablo Mendoza is Assistant to the President for Social Equity at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri and was previously the Director of the Mizzou Multicultural Center. He has taught Cheng Man-Ch'ing (Zhang Manqing) Yang-style Tai Chi Ch'uan (Taijiquan). This form is based on martial applied defensive moves that are synchronized to breathing patterns that assist with relaxation and meditation.
Michael Downing teaches creative writing at Tufts University. This conversation features a deep dive into Michael’s nonfiction book "Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, hailed by the New York Review of Books as a 'dramatic and insightful' narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, and by the Los Angeles Times as 'a highly readable book, important for the healing it invites in giving voice to the thoughts and feelings of Zen Center members who have remained silent until now.'"
Visit: www.michaeldowningbooks.com for more information.
A veteran journalist, essayist, and award-winning education writer, Linda K. Wertheimer is the author of Faith Ed: Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance. Faith Ed, released on Aug. 18, 2015, by Beacon Press, focuses on public schools’ ups and downs as they teach about world religions.
See https://www.lindakwertheimer.com/ for more information
Linda on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindakwert
Buy the book: Faith Ed book at Beacon Press
Raghunath tours the world, leading yoga workshops, yoga teacher trainings, kirtans, & the practical applications of yogic philosophy. He annually takes a group on pilgrimage through holy places of India and sometimes fronts the bands Youth of Today and Shelter.
Find him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raghunathyogi/
Visit his website: https://www.raghunath.yoga/
Buy his kirtan album, Krishna Kirtan, here: http://merchnow.com/catalogs/raghunath
Shulem Deen is a writer, journalist, and author of the award-winning memoir "All Who Go Do Not Return." He is a regular contributor to the Forward, and in 2015 was listed in the Forward 50, an annual list of American Jews with outsized roles on political and social issues. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, Salon, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. He serves as a board member at Footsteps, a New York City-based organization that offers assistance and support to those who have left the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
Follow Shulem on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/shdeen
Buy his book here: All Who Go Do Not Return
Griffin Hardy is the Communications Director for Ministry Against the Death Penalty (MADP), founded by Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking."
Mission Statement: "The Ministry Against the Death Penalty believes in the dignity of all people and fosters creative, reflective and educational programs that awaken hearts and minds, inspire social change, and strengthen our democracy’s commitment to human rights." Furthermore, MADP "believe in the dignity and rights of all persons and recognize that government-sanctioned killing and the practice of torture is a violation of those rights and a denial of human dignity."
Find out more at: https://www.sisterhelen.org
Dr. Daniel Hummel is a Scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. He is currently a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hummel is also a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, “A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship.” Dr. Hummel’s unique take on the Israel-Palestine situation is tinted with his own expertise in Christian Zionism, and we discuss that issue in a lot of depth in this conversation as well. Dr. Hummel is also a contributor to the Washington Post in middle east current events.
Meido Roshi is the abbot of Korinji monastery in Wisconsin. In 2008 Meido Roshi received inka shomei ("mind seal"), designating him an 86th-generation Zen dharma heir and a 48th-generation holder of the lineage descended from Rinzai Gigen. Meido Roshi's book The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice is out from Shambhala Publications in March 2018. The focus of our conversation is this book and I highly recommend picking up a copy. It’s incredibly accessible to anyone, even if you’ve never read a book about Zen in your life.
Visit: https://www.korinji.org
Michael Vanhartingsveldt is a contributing columnist at Buddhistdoor Global. He works full-time at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. He did his masters in East Asian Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and he also works as a lecturer for the Japan Foundation. Michael collaborates on "Carving the Divine TV" with filmmaker Yujiro Seki.
Hugo Bernard is the author of "Naked Monk." His first work of Buddhist fiction was a short story written in high school. He is working on several novels, in different genres, using fiction as a tool to better grasp Buddhist teachings. With these stories, his goal is not to ‘teach’ but to ‘explore’ how the Dhamma resonates in challenging scenarios. He hopes to accomplish this while telling stories that are a pleasure to read.
https://hugobernardblog.wordpress.com/
Professor Rabia Gregory’s primary research interest is the history of Christianity in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. She approaches the study of religion through book history, material culture, and theories of gender. Her first book, Marrying Jesus in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe: Popular Culture and Religious Reform, published by Ashgate, uses previously unpublished cultural artifacts to revise long-standing assumptions about religion, gender, and popular culture. In the book, she demonstrates that by the fourteenth century, worldly, sexually active brides of Christ, both male and female, were no longer aberrations and provide a history of the dispersion of theology about the bride of Christ in the period between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and explains how this metaphor, initially devised for a religious elite, became integral to the laity’s pursuit of salvation.
Follow her on Twitter @RabiaGregory
Sonny Zaide is a 23rd Generation Quanzhen Longmen (Qingcheng Shan) Taoist / Daoist Initiate and the owner of the Purple Cloud Center for Eastern Medicine. He is a Licensed Acupuncturist, Certified Practitioner and Teacher of Qigong and Qigong Healing.
Sonny on Twitter
Purple Cloud Center
Professor Peter Adamson holds a joint appointment with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and King's College London. His primary areas of interest are late ancient philosophy and Arabic philosophy. He is also the host of the History of Philosophy podcast.
Find his work at: https://historyofphilosophy.net/
Janica Towne Anderson (author of "Zen Odyssey)" is a master falconer and has been a student and teacher of esoteric traditions for fifty years. She has worked as a research assistant in the psychology department at Harvard University and served as an instructor at Esalen Institute. She founded Big Sur Tapes, which preserved and published audio archives from teachers such as Ram Dass, Buckminster Fuller, and Alduous Huxley.
Miguel Chen is the bass player for long-running Fat Wreck Chords punk rock band Teenage Bottlerocket. He is the author of I Wanna Be Well, out 2/20/2018 on Wisdom Publications. He is a meditation practitioner, an RYT-500 yoga instructor, and the owner of Blossom Yoga Studio in Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming. In addition to appearing in countless Teenage Bottlerocket press pieces, Miguel has been featured by Lion’s Roar, PunkNews, Full Contact Enlightenment, LionsRoar.com, Modern Vinyl, and more. https://miguelchen.net/
Shozan Jack Haubner is the pen name of a Zen monk whose essays have appeared in The Sun, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and the New York Times, as well as in the Best Buddhist Writing series. His book Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk is the winner of a 2012 Pushcart Prize. His most recent book, “Single White Monk: Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex (Although Not necessarily in that order) is out now from Shambhala Publishing.
Shozan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShozanJHaubner
Buy Shozan's book: Shozan Jack Haubner at Shambhala
Kevin Singer is co-host of the Neighborly Faith Podcast. After graduating from college at N. Illinois University, he planted (a term indicating the establishment of a new church) two churches with the Southern Baptist Convention while earning an M.A. in Theological Studies from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Kevin earned a second M.A. in theology from Wheaton College studying Christianity and Hinduism. Kevin is currently completing a PhD in Higher Education at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. He serves as a graduate assistant for the IDEALS project.
Check out Neighborly Faith: Neighborly Faith Podcast
Robert Kennedy, S.J. is one of several practicing Catholic men and women who are recognized by the Buddhist community as zen teachers. He is a licensed psychoanalyst and professor emeritus of theology at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City. As a Christian Fr. Kennedy has found meaning and deep reverence in the practice of zen. He is active in interfaith work, teaching zen to persons of all faiths, conducting retreats in the United States, Mexico, Ireland and England. He studied zen in Japan with the Japanese master Yamada Roshi. He continued his study under Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York; in 1997 he received inka, the formal seal of approval, from Glassman Roshi and received the title Roshi, or Master. He holds doctorates in Theology from the University of Ottawa and from St. Paul University in Ottawa, a Masters in Theology from Sophia University in Tokyo, and a Doctor of Ministry in Psychology and Clinical Studies from Andover-Newton in Boston. He is a graduate of the Blanton-Peale Institute of Religion and Health in New York. Roshi Kennedy has written two books on Zen and Christianity: Zen Gifts to Christians and Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit. In 2017, Roshi Kennedy received two honorary doctorates, one from St. Peter's University, and one from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
His website is: www.kennedyzen.org
Born and raised in Japan, Yujiro Seki discovered his passion for film-making when he was in high school. Yujiro earned a BA Degree in Film from the University of California, Berkeley. His forthcoming documentary film, "Carving the Divine," offers a rare and intimate look into the life and artistic process of modern-day Būshi – practitioners of a 1400 year lineage of woodcarving that’s at the beating heart of Japanese, Mahayana Buddhism.
Please visit www.carvingthedivine.com for more information. www.carvingthedivine.com
Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center (www.tallahasseechan.com) and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s (1930–2009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee. In the 1980's, he played bass in Judge and Death Before Dishonor in the New York Hardcore scene.
See his writing at: https://www.lionsroar.com/author/guo-gu/
The author of The Five Roles of the Master Herder and the bestseller The Tao of Equus, Linda Kohanov speaks and teaches internationally. She established Eponaquest Worldwide to explore the healing potential of working with horses and offer programs on everything from emotional and social intelligence, leadership, stress reduction, and parenting to consensus building and mindfulness. Her main website is eponaquest.com. More information about The Five Roles of a Master Herder is available at masterherder.com.
Melissa M. Wilcox received her doctorate in Religious Studies from U.C. Santa Barbara in 2000. Her transdisciplinary research program focuses on gender studies and queer studies in religion, with particular emphasis on the U.S. and Europe in the context of transnational queer and religious politics. Her books include Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community (Indiana University Press, 2003); Sexuality and the World’s Religions (co-edited with David W. Machacek; ABC-CLIO, 2003); Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Indiana University Press, 2009); and Religion in Today’s World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, 2013). Her 2009 book received the annual book award from the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Her newest book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, is forthcoming in 2018 from the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press, and she is currently working on two textbooks focused on sexuality and queer studies in religion.
Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, “The Collected Letters of Alan Watts,” released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts is a facilitator and educator who is committed to creating a world where everyone wins. She honors each individual for the gift she or he is, and believes that love and nurturance are the most important aspects in human healing. She regularly leads workshops at the Esalen Institute and you can find her upcoming events online at www.annewatts.org.
Alan Watts was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (along with her sister, Anne) of the new volume, “The Collected letters of Alan Watts,” out now from New World Library. This is part one in a two-part series on the Life of Alan Watts, featuring Joan and Anne Watts.
Anita Feng (Zen Master Jeong Ji) serves as the guiding teacher at Blue Heron Zen Community in Seattle, Washington. She has practiced Zen in the lineage of Zen Master Seung Sahn since 1976. In the late ’70s she lived and studied intensively with Zen Master Seung Sahn at the Providence Zen Center. She received Inka from Zen Master Ji Bong 2008 and received final transmission as a Zen Master in 2015.
http://www.anitafeng.com/wp/
Patricia Riely is a student in the Ruhaniat, a universal Sufi order founded by Samuel Lewis, whose teacher, Inayat Khan, lived from 1882-1927. Riely also is an important organizer for the Ozark Sufi Camp, a large, biannual Sufi gathering at the Lake of the Ozarks in mid-Missouri, United States. We talk a lot about the Sufi camp in this episode. Anyone wishing to learn more can check out OzarkSufiCamp.org.
A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New York Times; his work has also appeared in The New Yorker and National Geographic. He is an advising editor for the Journal of Asian Studies and teaches courses on religion in Beijing. He is the author of The Souls of China, Wild Grass, A Mosque in Munich, and The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. He is based in Beijing and spoke to me from Berlin, Germany.
Max Perry Mueller received his PhD from Harvard University. He is a historian of American religion and an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of Race and the Making of the Mormon People, published by the University of North Carolina Press in September 2017.
Dinty W. Moore is author of The Accidental Buddhist and The Mindful Writer. He is a professor of nonfiction writing at Ohio University, the editor of Brevity Magazine, and lives in Athens, Ohio.
www.dintywmoore.com
Brandon used to be a member of a church called the “Church of God Preparing for The kingdom of God." The group holds an apocalyptic view of end times prophecy and the end of the world as we know it. Brandon left in 2013.
Kim 'Skipper' Corbin is the host of the New World Now podcast at New World Library, where she serves as a senior publicist/social media manager. She has also been a passionate promoter of the benefits of adult skipping since 1999 via her iskip.com website, which has been featured in Time, Newsweek, and People Magazines. Her website iskip.com offers an information source and gathering place for people all over the world who enjoy a good skip.
Gregg Deal is an artist, a husband, a father and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.
Dr. Li Dan is professor of Chinese Literature in the College of Humanities and Communications at Shanghai Normal University, China. She was appointed the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at the University of MIssouri from 2015-2017. She is the author of 44 academic articles and one book, Approaching to the Poetics. We spoke at the University of Missouri Confucius Institute on November 21, the anniversary of the death of Confucius.
Brad Warner is most recently the author of It Came from Beyond Zen! and numerous other titles including Don’t Be a Jerk, Sit Down & Shut Up, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, There is No God and he is always with you, Sex, Sin, and Zen, Hardcore Zen, and Hardcore Zen Strikes Again. A Soto Zen priest, he is a punk bassist, filmmaker, Japanese-monster-movie marketer, and popular blogger based in Los Angeles. You can find him online at www.hardcorezen.info
Rev. Molly Housh Gordon started her tenure as the third settled minister of the Columbia, Missouri Unitarian Universalist congregation 2012. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
Rev. Housh Gordon Sermon Archive Link: https://uuchurch.net/sermon-archive
Dennis Kelley is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He received his Master’s and Doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with emphases in American Indian Religious Traditions, Religion in American Culture, and Myth and Ritual Theory. His most recent book is Tradition, Performance, and Religion in Native America: Ancestral Ways, Modern Selves, and is currently working on a book tentatively titled Having Had a Spiritual (Re)Awakening: Religion and Alcohol Addiction Recovery in Indian Country.
Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Tradition-Performance-Religion-Native-America/dp/0415823633/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509903178&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=dennis+kelly+tradition+performance+religion
Rev. Josh Privitt was called as Associate Pastor at St. Peter’s UCC in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014 after graduating from Eden Theological Seminary with a Masters of Divinity.
Baha'u'llah is the founder of the Baha'i Faith. 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. This discussion with Dr. Sahba Jalali and Kurt Saxton offers insight into the auspicious nature of 2017 for the world's Baha'i population.
Seido Ray Ronci is a Rinzai Zen monk and the director of the Hokoku-An Zendo meditation center in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of the poetry collection The Skeleton of the Crow, winner of the 2009 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry, and This Rented Body (2006). He contributed to the Zen poetry collection America Zen: A Gathering of Poets, published in 2004. His work has also appeared in Tricycle, Narrative, and Rattle. Seido Ronci is an associate professor at the University of Missouri, where he teaches critical theory and literature.
Dr. Sheetal Dharmadhikari is a member of the Brahma Kumaris. The Brahma Kumaris are a spiritual movement associated with the United Nations and are present in UNICEF. Founded in India in 1937, Brahma Kumaris has spread to over 110 countries on all continents and is an international NGO.
Dr. Gopal and Anantha Gopalaratnam are founding members of the Shanthi Mandir Hindu Temple and Community Center of Mid-Missouri.
Jessie Starbuck, a Columbia, Missouri native, grew up attending the Columbia Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). She went on to study art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI and returned to Columbia in 2006 to pursue an education degree. Jessie is now an Art Teacher in Columbia, Missouri.
Ryan is the author of “The Assassination of Joseph Smith: Innocent Blood on the Banner of Liberty,” published in 2015. After obtaining his Master of Education from Weber State University in 2004, Ryan began writing opinion pieces for Northern Utah newspapers on family, freedom, politics, and religion. He was a blogger on the subject of faith for two years; many of his posts were featured on realclearreligion.org. He was also an associate editor for Great American Documents for Latter-Day Saint Families (2012). He has contributed to Lifezette.com (Faith section). Professionally, he has experience in business, public relations, and public speaking, along with religious education. He has been teaching and writing for 18 years.
www.authorryancjenkins.com
Dr. Gabrielle Malfatti serves as Director of Global Engagement and Associate Teaching Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Missouri College of Education. In 2013 she established Mizzou Ed Teach Abroad, a program designed to give future teachers an opportunity to internationalize their preparation with international co-teaching experiences and cross-cultural mentoring. She is a founding board member of the Ashera Foundation, serves on the Advisory Council for Vidyashilp Academy in Bangalore, India. Dr. Malfatti has led multiple workshops and presentations on leadership, international education and intercultural issues in the U.S., Canada, Colombia, Cuba, England, Ghana, India and Thailand.
Jainism is an ancient Indian religion emphasizing non-violence. This conversation is an introduction and a deep dive all at once with Nishant Jain.
Suggested follow-up episode on the concept of Ahimsa can be found on the "History of Philosophy of India" podcast.
Link:
https://hopwag2.podbean.com/e/hpi-15-mostly-harmless-non-violence/
Mary Hartigan is a conservative Jewish woman and has been an ardent Zionist since age 15. She converted to Judaism in the 1980's and is an active presence in her local congregation.
This episode features the Hinduism creation story. The story features Brahma, the creator god, and Sarasvati, the goddess of knowledge, wisdom, music, and art.
Script: https://genius.com/Plato-euthyphro-full-text-annotated
Episode 6 is a full cast performance of Plato's classic text, Euthyphro. The questions discussed: What is piety and what is impiety? Do the gods love something because it is holy, or is something holy because it is loved by the gods?
Socrates performed by Mackenzie Everett-Kennedy
Euthyphro performed by Greg Soden
Kurt Saxton has been a member of the Columbia Missouri community for about 15 years. Kurt has been a Baha'i for over 10 years, and has served on the Local Spiritual Assembly for roughly that same amount of time. The Baha'i Faith has no clergy; the Local Spiritual Assembly handles administrative affairs within the Baha'i community. As there is no clergy within the Faith, the views and opinions about Baha'i matters and Baha'i Writings are strictly his own, and in no way are meant to be authoritative.
Visit: www.bahai.org for more information
David Amponsah is an assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia with a PhD from Harvard University, a Masters from Harvard, a masters from Indiana University, and a Bachelors from the University of Ghana. He is a historian of religion who researches the intersection of religion and society in Africa, with special attention to colonialism, culture, and politics. His research is grounded in African social, cultural, political, and intellectual history, and is principally concerned with the modern period. His work has appeared in the Journal of Africana Religions, the Journal of Religion in Africa, African and Asian Studies, and more. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Unholy Interplay: Shrines, Priests, and British Rule in the Making of Colonial Ghana,1800–1966” in which he examine the connection between indigenous religion and colonialism.
Eric Lancaster is an instructor of Japanese at the University of Missouri and an instructor of religious studies at Columbia College. He is a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theatre troupe, whose film, "Kaiju Bunraku," was screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This conversation talks about the importance of teaching and studying religion.
George Frissell retired in 2017 and taught high school English and religious studies in Texas and Missouri. In 1990, he founded Classical Ideas and World Religions at Hickman High School in Columbia, MO. He is the founder of the Speak Your Mind Forum series and the Columbia, MO Amnesty International chapter for the public school system.