Archives for July 2016

We who believe in freedom cannot rest We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. (1) We have had a month of intense events in the US. The killings of Black precious people, this time, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, came to the news again, as if these killings ...

When I was teaching public high school, a colleague in the history department approached me to express his concern about our world religions curriculum. “I am scared to touch it,” he said. What he meant, first of all, was that he felt unprepared to teach about religion. The material was ...

At the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature last year, the Student Advisory Board organized an interesting session titled, “What I’m Telling My Students.” I find this a wonderful question for every faculty to consider. I would tell my students to write more because writing clarifies one’...

As a trend in twentieth-century world history, decolonization is a major topic in any class dealing with modern Muslim societies. This mundane fact comes as a surprise to some of my students, however, for reasons that I can illustrate by way of a short anecdote. A couple times a year ...

It is a challenge to do what you teach. “If you know these things happy are ye if you do them.” (John 13:17, King James Version – or the version of my childhood bible study) - my grandfather’s favorite verse. I know, in order to teach well in the fall, I ...