The Department of Religious Studies is happy to welcome Dr. Charles Lippy to speak at the Avery Center, April 23 at 3:30.  The title of the lecture is “From Angelicans to Zen:  The Tangled Tale of Religous Diversity in South Carolina.”  It is open to the public and all are welcome.

We hope you can make it to our student club trivia night.

trivia night

We are so proud of Rachel’s hard work on her bachelor essay.  Come listen to her share her experience with us Feb. 21.

We hope you can join us for Dr. Irwin’s sabbatical lecture next Thursday, Feb. 14.  Please encourage students to attend the lecture, which will address reincarnation in western religious history.

We hope you can attend this lecture today cosponsored by the Department of Religious Studies.

We hope you can join us in welcoming our guest speaker Dr. Tobin Hart Nov. 29.  All are welcome and there is no charge.

Wallace Marshall (Reasonable Faith Charleston) and Alex Kasman (Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry) will address the question `God or Atheism: where does the evidence point?’ in a public debate. Following the debate, each participant will also take questions from the audience. The event is free and open to the general public.

We hope you can come!

GHOSTS, TROLLS, AND WITCHCRAFT A SABBATICAL LECTURE about religious change in Iceland by Prof. Margaret Cormack of the Department of Religious Studies. Beattey 220, 10/31, 6:30 PM

What do you do when, as the result of an administrative decision, a whole series of beings on whom you had relied for aid against the forces of evil (trolls, demons, draugar and magicians) are no longer accessible – in fact, no longer exist? This was the situation that faced Europeans in general, and Icelanders in particular, at the time of the Protestant Reformation. In Iceland, the trolls and draugar who inhabited the waste spaces and were active in the long winter nights still had to be dealt with; furthermore, there was a new emphasis on the possible harm caused by human magicians. A first-person account of the sufferings of a seventeenth-century Icelandic clergyman illustrates the failure of orthodox Lutheran theology to address these issues, while nineteenth-century folklore suggests practical ways of dealing with hostile supernatural beings. Bring your students to this Halloween kick-off!