The Department of Religious Studies has received grant support from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religious Studies to facilitate faculty conversations about how to improve the senior capstone seminar and other advanced seminars in the Religious Studies curriculum. Religious Studies faculty will be joined by the Wabash consultant Eugene Gallagher, the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College, where he has taught since 1978. Trained as a historian of religions, Dr. Gallagher has taught and published widely in the areas of religions of Western antiquity, American religions and comparative religions.  He is a past recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2001) and the Carnegie/CASE Connecticut Professor of the Year (2003), and he served as Faculty Fellow, Joy Shechtman Mankoff Center for Teaching & Learning from 2002-2010.  Dr. Gallagher will join faculty on August 17th for a full day faculty retreat.

On Sunday April 29th, Professor Margaret Cormack will hold a lecture on “Saints, Missionaries, and Icelandic Christian Identity” at a conference on Missionaries, Saints, and the Chritianization of Europe in Paderborn, Germany.

Guest lecture with Dr. Charles Kimball:  Lethal Religion:  The Explosive Mix of Religion and Politics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

April 17th at 7:00pm at the Wells Fargo Auditorium (Beatty 115)

Religious values have inspired acts of violence: 9/11, the continuing chaos in the Middle East, and the bombing of abortion clinics in the US are all examples.  These events present new challenges to peace, stability, economic vitality, personal safety and freedom.  This lecture will explore the explosive mix of religion and politics today in the three Abrahamic religions.

Guest lecture with Dr. Julie Ingersoll on  Christian Reconstructionism:  Biblical Law in Contemporary America

March 29th at 3:30 in Arnold Hall

Christian Reconstructionism is a fifty-year old movement seeking to “exercise dominion” in America, by building a culture based on Biblical Law. With growing influence in some surprising places, Christian Reconstructionism might just be the most important movement you’ve never heard of.

Guest lecture with Dr. Finbarr Curtis on  I Don’t Think about Things I Don’t Think About:  The Scopes Trial as  Secular Myth

March 13 at 3:30 in Tate, 202

Most conventional wisdom about the 1925 Scopes Trial, in which William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow debated whether evolution should be taught in public schools, has been shaped by the 1950s play Inherit the Wind.  In retelling events from the trial to craft a story of popular support for scientific progress, however, the play acts as a kind of secular mythology of an American public sphere that harmonizes respect for science with a free marketplace of ideas.

Sabattical lecture with Dr. Elijah Siegler on  Improving The Study Abroad Experience Using the Latest Pedagogy in Religious Studies

February 21 at 3:30 in Addlestone Library, room 227

This talk will be of interest to all faculty and administration interested in improving the educational experience of the College’s study abroad  programs, and to all faculty preparing for, or thinking about leading, a study abroad trip, and to those have come back from such a trip and asked themselves “well, what happened?”

Sabattical lecture with Dr. June McDaniel on Why Many Gods Become One God:  Indonesia’s Strategy For Avoiding Jihad

3:30-5:00 pm Arnold Hall, Jewish Studies Center

In Indonesia, the government has supported peace between the religions by  rewriting all of major religions as forms of monotheism.  This has created a   single common definition of religion, and a set of understandings and values shared by all accepted religions.  This paper will examine how interpretations of religion have been changed by this process, and how the government has used interfaith dialogue to combat the pressures of more militant forms of Islam. 

On Friday Jan. 27, Professor Margaret Cormack held a lecture on “Maðurinn, kirkjan og íslenskt umhverfi” (“Man, church, and the Icelandic environment”) and demonstrated her database of Icelandic churches at the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í Íslenskum fræðum in Reykjavík, Iceland. She is doing sabbatical research at the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, and thanks the College of Charleston’s Research and Development committee for support.

Brown Bag Series with Prof. John Huddlestun CONTINUES

A Duped Patriarch, an Unlucky King, and a Conflicted Diviner: Reading Biblical Stories in Multiple Dimensions

12:15 —1:15 pm Arnold Hall, Jewish Studies Center

Coffee, soft drinks, and desserts provided. Bring your own lunch.

In this final  brown bag series, we will engage in a close reading of a biblical story of Balaam, a professional diviner hired to curse the Israelites, in the book of Numbers. In our reading and discussion, we will draw upon a variety of interpretive approaches (literary, source-critical, historical, feminist, comparative, etc.) from the biblical scholar’s ever expanding toolbox.

Session 3:  November 16: Numbers 22-24 — Balaam the Diviner: The Defection of a Prophetic Hired Gun

Three Clergy Panel: Christians and Social Justice

Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 7:00 pm in the Stern Center Ballroom (4th Floor)  Sponsored by the Christian-Jewish Counsel of Greater Charleston

 What does God require of you? Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God — Micah Ch.6: v.8

The Three Rabbi Panel is one of the proudest accomplishments of Jewish Studies as it showcases the unity of the Charleston community and the importance of dialogue or, as in our case, trialogue. Now in its sixteenth year, with a new generation of rabbis, the Three Rabbi Panels have helped create a cohesive, welcoming, and open Jewish community.

This fall we are collaborating with the Christian Jewish Counsel of Greater Charleston on two panel discussions, together exploring six different responses to the Bible’s call to pursue justice. Opening the discussion to the Christian community highlights the virtues of religious cooperation and acceptance, an important feature of Charleston’s and South Carolina’s long history of religious tolerance.

This semester we challenge some of our community’s spiritual leaders to speak with candor about their denomination’s interpretation of justice and what law and tradition dictate about justice’s scope. What is justice and what does it require of us—action or belief, or both? Are charity and justice one and the same? Is there a relationship between belief in a Judeo-Christian God and the requirement to pursue justice? What is our obligation to others, both inside and outside of our own faith community? Should justice be the overarching principle in some of the controversial issues of our time: gay rights, poverty, and immigration?

Attendance at the mirrored panels is an opportunity for all of us to increase our knowledge-base, highlight the universal value of justice, and acknowledge important differences in its application.

A hearty thank you to the panelists for participating and to our moderators, Dr. Martin Perlmutter and Dr. James R. Sawers.

Presented by the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston and co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston.

THREE RABBI and THREE CLERGY PANEL FLYER