Perennial Crucifixion

Pope washes feet

"While popes have for centuries washed the feet of the faithful on the day before Good Friday, never before had a pontiff washed the feet of a woman. That one of the female inmates at the prison in Rome was also a Serbian Muslim was also a break with tradition."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9960168/Pope-washes-feet-of-young-Muslim-woman-prisoner-in-unprecedented-twist-on-Maundy-Thursday.html

Dershowitz v. Chomsky debate Israel

Chomsky recently gave the Edward W. Said lecture in London on March 18, 2013, which is adapted here under the title 'The Cruelty That Keeps Empires Alive': http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-cruelty-keeps-empires-alive?paging=off

The actual lecture can be seen here: http://www.mosaicrooms.org/edward-w-said-london-lecture-2013-full-video/

Job: Lecturer in Theology and Religion at Durham University

"The Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University invites applications for the post of Lecturer in Contemporary Catholic Theology and/or Catholic Studies who, in addition to sharing fully in research, teaching, and supervision, will serve in the newly created role of Deputy Director (Academic Development) of the Centre for Catholic Studies (CCS)."

"The postholder will be expected to research and teach in the broad field of contemporary Catholic theology / Catholic studies. Areas of subject specialism may include, among others:

Catholic theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries;
Catholic moral theology;
Catholic social thought and practice;
social-scientific study of Catholic practice, history and tradition in the modern period."

https://ig5.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_durham01.asp?newms=jj&id=80169

Art and Religion III: 'Why Painting Matters'

Just because I think there are many parallel discussions going on in both religion and art

Beautiful

Jobby jobs

Post Doctoral Fellowships at St. Louis University
"The Research Fellow will be responsible for one of six use cases that will test the functionality and feature set of the software. The successful candidate for this position will collaborate with Professor Monica Green of Arizona State University on an edition of an eleventh-century medical text in Latin. The main tasks will be to complete transcriptions of the extant manuscript witnesses, assist in creating the editorial apparatus, and prepare the edition for digital publication using features of the software in development. In addition to the work of scholarly editing, the Research Fellow will also participate in bug reporting, usability testing and weekly staff meetings."
http://www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?JobCode=175731802
https://jobs.slu.edu

Assistant Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Grand Canyon University
Grand Canyon University's College of Christian Studies is seeking an Assistant Professor to teach relevant subjects in the field of expertise to undergraduate and/or graduate students related to Theology and Biblical Studies with an emphasis on Christian world view and ministry. Designs course content and stimulating projects using active learning techniques which invigorate and challenge students' education; courses may be delivered in a classroom/lecture environment or online or a combination of methods.
http://www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?JobCode=175731312
http://tbe.taleo.net/NA6/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=GCU&cws=1&rid=3485

Art influencing the interpretive paradigm

From the MET: 82nd & Fifth; curators talk about works of art that have changed the way they see the world.

http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/

Brian Leiter on Religious Toleration

Brian Leiter talks about his book, 'Why Tolerate Religion?' 

http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/podcasts/recordings/Leiter_ReligiousToleration.mp3

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=6367

*Update Aug. 7, '13: One more here at freethoughtradio starts around the 20 min. mark

Have yet to read this but Leiter is definitely one to consider...
(Brian Leiter is the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago.)

Bignone's conviction; Relieve or Implicate the Pope?

Last week Argentina's ex-military leader Reynaldo Bignone, and others, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Dirty War for crimes against humanity committed at military base Campo de Mayo in Buenos Aires in the 1970s and 80s.



BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21766005
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18731349 
Argentina Independent: http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfromargentina/reynaldo-bignone-is-sentenced-to-life-in-jail/
SBS: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1746022/Argentine-ex-military-leaders-get-life


If you've paid attention, the recently elected pope's name has often been raised in relation to the Dirty War and his role in the kidnappings...

then and now

2005: "People fill Via Della Conciliazione boulevard about half a mile away from the facade of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican after Pope John Paul II's body was carried across the square into the Basilica for public viewing on April 4, 2005. With tens of thousands of mourners outside hoping for a glimpse of the body, 12 pallbearers flanked by Swiss Guards carried the late pontiff's body on a crimson platform from the Sala Clementina, where it had lain in state since the previous day. (LUCA BRUNO - AP)"

2013: "Visitors take photos of Pope Francis as he speaks from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who chose the name of Francis, is the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. (Michael Sohn - AP)"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/about-those-2005-and-2013-photos-of-the-crowds-in-st-peters-square/2013/03/14/aaf1067a-8cf9-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_blog.html 

 

Calvin and Hobbes: Expectation v. Reality

Habitus; developing techniques of the body

Baby Ava



KJ, age 4

Spirit Possession or Dubstep?

Significance of the pope?

With the recently elected Argentinian Pope Francis, Garry Willis raises a good question during the days that preceded the election: Does the pope matter?


"But didn’t Jesus say, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Mt. 16.18)? Yes, but he also ordered his disciples not to seek rank among themselves (Mark 9.33-37), and said “Do not call any man on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven” (Matthew 23.9, NEB). How do we reconcile these sayings? G. K. Chesterton gave the best answer. Christ, founding his church, did not choose Peter because he was above others, but because he was not above them:

He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward—in a word, a man… All the empires and the kingdoms have failed because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by a strong man upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.

In the coming election, we do not have to fear Dante’s hell-bound popes, Acton’s mass-murderer popes, or Newman’s in-need-of-death pope. Happily, we can expect the new pope to be a man ordinary and ignorable, like Saint Peter."

whether this turns out to be correct, we shall see; Pope Francis

The Construction of 'Mother Theresa'

"the myth of altruism and generosity surrounding Mother Teresa"

"the three researchers collected 502 documents on the life and work of Mother Teresa. After eliminating 195 duplicates, they consulted 287 documents to conduct their analysis, representing 96% of the literature on the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (OMC). Facts debunk the myth of Mother Teresa

In their article, Serge Larivée and his colleagues also cite a number of problems not take into account by the Vatican in Mother Teresa's beatification process, such as "her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce."

"At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as "homes for the dying" by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money—the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars—but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering," was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital."

Serge Larivée and his colleagues point out the positive effect of the Mother Teresa myth: "If the extraordinary image of Mother Teresa conveyed in the collective imagination has encouraged humanitarian initiatives that are genuinely engaged with those crushed by poverty, we can only rejoice. It is likely that she has inspired many humanitarian workers whose actions have truly relieved the suffering of the destitute and addressed the causes of poverty and isolation without being extolled by the media. Nevertheless, the media coverage of Mother Theresa could have been a little more rigorous." 

The study was conducted by Serge Larivée, Department of psychoeducation, University of Montreal, Carole Sénéchal, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, and Geneviève Chénard, Department of psychoeducation, University of Montreal.

The printed version, available only in French, will be published in March 2013 in issue 42 of Studies in Religion / Sciences religieuses.

 more here, here, and here, and of course google will yield many results.

*and most recently here: http://www.alternet.org/belief/mother-theresas-masochism-does-religion-demand-suffering-keep-people-passive?paging=off

A Class Divided

Child of Rage

Chomsky on Public Education and the Common Good

³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

Matthew 7:3-5

The question is: who has the log and who has the speck? Does it even matter? If it does, is the speck small enough for righteous condemnation of the log? Or is this flawed to begin with as it presupposes truth and righteous morality, which is subjective and relative to begin with?

  

'God's Architect'

Calvin and Hobbes: Snowman Evolution

Changes to LDS scripture in recent shift to digital

Joanna Brooks reports: "editorial changes that reflect a shifting official view on issues like polygamy, the Church’s history of racism, and the historicity of LDS scripture."

Jonestown

*Art and Religion II: "Harlem Shake"

Having decided to take a break, I stumbled across an internet meme that simply... well, take a look:


THIS is what is being pranced around the internet as the "Harlem Shake"! My first reaction was: 'that's not the Harlem Shake, the f*** are they doing?'  

I remember first seeing the Harlem Shake on a G-Dep video with P-Diddy, 'Let's Get It' in 2001:


Not quite the same...

Interestingly enough, somebody went to Harlem and asked them what they thought about the meme:



If we can make the analogy between music cultures and religion (and there really should be an anthropology of hip hop), there are two things that come to my attention in which there is a parallel with the anthropology of religion. One, the bastardization of a culture. And two, the critique from orthodoxy. The former alludes to the internet meme that is happening now, how different it is to the original and the silly audacity to use the same name. What perhaps started out in a college dorm room of goofy kids making fun of something that just happened to go viral. This takes the original name of a practice (in this case, dance) and strips it of its origins to create something new (these videos). We can say the same about meditation practices of 'Buddhism' or kids taking psychedelic cactii or the "white shaman" who takes spiritual practices from a culture and claims authority, promotes it to other persons, markets the "spiritual journey" and so on. The latter is the critique from those who do know and have a sense of identity to Harlem and the culture.This would be the critique from culture. The Zen Buddhists in Japan or the Native Americans and the purpose of peyote or sweat lodges in their spirituality. We could also talk about how certain Christians condemned how Christians in other countries adapted the religion into their culture. The Vatican has been known to condemn other churches as non-orthodox. This happens with the Greek Orthodox tradition as well. Much like these critiques, the people of Harlem and those who do the 'Harlem Shake' criticize those who have taken the name and have produced something different, that is, for me at least, far from the original 'Harlem Shake'.

While one, we should beg the question and indeed ask: how is hip hop culture like religious culture? Is it or is it not. And secondly, we can ask if these questions and critiques are legitimately similar. That is, are the critiques of bastardization and the critique of orthodoxy/legitimacy valid?

wealth inequality in america

hmmm

Sexuality and Religion: Expectation and Experience

Examples of dissonance(?): Gay and Mormon



expectation and experience...


A few LDS boys on what they think about girls



examples of expectation and ideation

*Creating Culture

 Last week, I had the opportunity to attend two seminars that in a way deal with the creation of culture. One, revisiting Leon Festinger's 'When Prophecy Fails' and presenting that the phenomena which was the object of study for this book could be fully explained by language and the patterns of old to new language. The cultural patterns of discourse and the synonymity or even metaphorical value of how language changes yet still functioning to a similar drum. The other seminar was one which measured the representation of Islam in the media. This seminar compared a study conducted in 1982 and replicated in... 2008 I think. Both are examples of how culture is created and then interpreted by scholars.

In the first seminar, about cognitive dissonance and the rich book: 'When Prophecy Fails'. Here the speaker, Dr. Timothy Jenkins, observes quite astutely that there were mutliple forces that were at play during the sequence of events that led up to a predicted end of the world on December 21 of 1954. Not only were there the role of the three mediums but also the social scientists themselves who infiltrated the group for study, and the media. The three brought into the group their own presuppositions and had to an extent pushed and forced the commitment of the prophecy as well as the existence of aliens. I would not disagree. The presuppositions of the mediums, the social scientists, and the press must have played a role in the way in which the events played out. This was the case with the Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo who also became part of the created culture and the roles that became them. In other words, the researchers were also part of the experiment and how it manifested. Nonetheless, I do not believe that it takes that much away from the findings of the social scientists. For Zimbardo, this was a door into thinking about social roles and how we embody those roles over time. This allowed him to consider a few insights into why good people do bad things or what he called the 'Lucifer Effect'. For Festinger, the events that surrounded the projected end of the world was a door into thinking about the theory of cognitive dissonance. That is, an investigation into the relationship between belief and behavior as well as the theory about internal states of cognitions in the face of new information. The good Dr. Timothy Jenkins, with a focus on Marian Keech (the medium who received writings from the aliens and predicted the end of the world) stated that the entire phenomena of Keech and the rest could be explained by language. In other words, the language and the rationale they made were nothing new and an investigation of past failed prophecies and the languages they used to justify what happened when the end did not come, would allow give sufficient explanation of the events surrounding this group without needing to talk about the theory of cognitive dissonance;  an investigation into language is a sufficient inquiry into cognition.

In retrospect, the argument that such phenomena could be explained by language and how old language becomes new language with a line of patternicity reminds me of american philosopher Richard Rorty, who also talked about the use of language and the abandonment of old language for the creation of new and the abandonment of being a slave to sociohistorical forces, that the greatest fear is finding one's self unoriginal. While Rorty provides somewhat of a romantic view as a solution for creativity and overcoming the cycles of being the same old fish. Jenkins talks about the old to new as a pattern that dates back ever since such prophecies were claimed. While I do not doubt that this may be the case, and I would not argue that indeed there were multiple forces including the social scientists who engaged in their observations contributed to the formation and perpetuation of culture of this cultic group. I think the emphasis on language and patternicity misses the point of where dissonance theory comes in and a gap that is all too commonly stepped over in anthropology. While discussions of power, discourse, and socio-historical forces shape persons and give rise to cultures, the people are not automatic sponges. There is individual variation. I think the study of belief in anthropology makes this clear. While we can talk about communal explanations and beliefs about certain things this does not mean that everybody believes it in the same way. And yet, anthropology has been reluctant, or so it seems, to take it further. 

While we can acknowledge that language indeed affects cognition, it is far from understood to what extent and the intircacies that revolve around this relationship. We are thinking and feeling agents. This, I would argue, is a human universal. All persons of all cultures have the capacity to think and feel within their own respective culture and language. The theory of cognitive dissonance is a motivational theory of expectation/anticipation and experience conglomerated in memory. By discussing cognitions and new cognitions from experience the discussion is enriched by taking language further into the phenomenological realm but also into the neurological and physiological realm of affect and action. What happens when things don't go according to plan? How was it that some believers would abandon one's job, house, and other possessions in anticipation of an event? If the second coming were tomorrow and you believed this, what would you do today? And then, what would you do when it didn't happen? The study of discourse patterns does not take it far enough but rather remains in a superficial realm of expression. The need to bridge the gap between communal and social forces that influence our thoughts of morality and the internalizing/embodying mechanisms that place value, with underlying emotional attachment, into the realm of cognition and action is ripe as ever.

The other seminar I attended complements this position. The representations of Islam in contemporary media has indeed influenced the way people, consumers of media, represent Muslims. In contrast to the early 80s in Britain, the press in 2008 presented much more negative views of Muslims and in relation to violent activities. I recalled a past seminar that mentioned the place of migrants into Great Britain and how the very first political movements were about worker rights, issues of race, and now the turn is into issues of religion. The emphasis on Islam is a recent stamp in the media. The causes that have led up to the present situation can be looked back into the early 90s and even further with the Iranian revolution, the Cold War, the Iraq war, Kuwait, and the politics of oil/energy, which is also to say global economics. Causes and histories are noticeably absent in the news. The emphasis on effect and action without the mention of reason is abundant. In so doing, the effect of negative impressions is noticeable in the people. Is the discussion of media representations sufficient to explain the animosity and negativity people form in their minds against those who are not like them? Does it explain the changes of views on morality throughout history? To an extent the explanations provide rich expositions of social, historical, and political forces but the gap of embodiment and identity remains. Is a theory of learning sufficient to explain the creation and perpetuation of culture?

Fully acknowledging the significance of studies into language and media, my contention is that these studies still fall short of an understanding of human cognition and the malleability it has as well as the power it has in creating and perpetuating culture. I think the investigations into psychology and the experiments conducted by Festinger, Zimbardo, Milgram, as well as case studies of brain lesions like the case of Phineas Gage, patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, and others are significant contributors to our understanding of culture and cognition. In the midst of it all we have religion as a significant social force not only for identity but morality as well to the extent that both influence and shape the way societies are governed, politics arranged and humanity glorified but subdued into passive submission under the auspices of particular ideologies, values, and methodologies of thought. 

Documentary: 'The Unbelievers'