Archives for May 2016

Imagine this scenario: “YOU TOOK MY JESUS!” said the first-semester student who is feeling displaced, disoriented, disappointed and enraged while being overwhelmed, even defeated, by the unexpected convergence of seminary courses’ too dense readings along with the absence of personal faith discourse in a progressive theological school.   “You must not ...

Today, Islam is paired with violence so often that these two concepts have become virtually synonymous. Conversations are often wedged between criticisms that Muslims are doing too much violence or not doing enough to stop it. Jihad, the Islamic keyword that has become equated with a distinctively Muslim kind of ...

Last time we talked about the body in the classroom. Our body, my body, the bodies of my students, are all shaped by institutional bodies that carry values, marks, love, deceptions, commitments and history. Just as our bodies carry constructions of race, gender, sexuality and so on, so too do ...

For the past fifteen years I have tried to teach about Islam as a religiously diverse tradition practiced by communities around the globe. I have done so in hopes that my students would be able to imagine Islam as a complicated phenomenon beyond either Islamophobia or Islamophilia. Sometimes, it is ...

It is that time of the year. After weeks and months of class sessions and office hours, the spring semester is now over. There is, of course, something left for us teachers to do before the semester is really finished. (I hear that groan.) Grading is, I think, on top ...