When religious leaders die

For me, Jimmy Carter’s death came too soon.

Not necessarily because of his age. He lived to the ripe old age of 100 and, in many respects, lived those years to the fullest.

No, and if I may be crass for a moment, Carter passed before I had a reporting guide ready for reporters looking to cover the faith angles of his life and legacy.

You see, as Editor for ReligionLink, I put together resources and reporting guides for journalists covering topics in religion. Each month, we publish a guide covering topics such as education and church-state-separation under Trump, faith and immigration or crime and houses of worship.

Early in 2024, I started to put together a guide to cover the passing of Jimmy Carter. Serving as Editor is only a part-time gig, and it usually takes all the time I have dedicated to the role to produce a single, monthly guide. But on the side, I started to make notes, identify sources and build a timeline for Carter’s life and legacy.

When he passed on December 29, 2024, the guide was not ready. Nor would it be in the matter of days necessary for it to be useful. So, the opportunity came and went. The draft of the guide to covering Jimmy Carter’s passing tossed on the editing floor.

The missed occasion, however, inspired me to work ahead more intentionally on guides for other famous faith leaders. The process of putting such guides together led me to reflect on what it means to remember, and report on, the passing of prominent figures in religion. 

Islam, Real and Imagined: PW Talks with John Tolan

In Islam: A New History, the historian chronicles the religion’s 1,400–year evolution through profiles of figures who showcase its diversity.

Why is a new history of Islam particularly relevant now?

Much of the current discourse on Islam is based on a traditional narrative about its origins and rise, as if everything we know about the religion was produced by Muhammad and his companions in the seventh century. But as recent scholarship shows, Islam emerged gradually and has been in constant change over the centuries. This pushes back on what Muslim fundamentalists believe is a “pure” form of Islam—an imagined, ideal society around Muhammad where Sharia was already the law of the land. The far right does the opposite, saying that this early Islamic society persecuted minorities, women, and so forth, and that it is essentially the same today. This means, for them, that Muslims are not able to adapt to modern Western societies. I hope to show people who are not on either of those extremes Islam’s rich history and diversity.

Who are some of the people from Islamic history you introduce and how do they illustrate these themes?

One of the chapters that was most fun for me is about Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan man who leaves home at the age of 22 and travels for 20 years, going as far as India, China, and beyond. He gets jobs as a judge and an administrator in Delhi and the Maldives. He’s appreciated wherever he goes, because he knows his Quran and Islamic law. At the same time, his testimony shows the diversity of the Muslim world and its constant engagement with others—with Christians, with Hindus, with Buddhists. His story reminds us that the real demographic center of Islam is much further east than the Middle East or North Africa, and that in all these countries Muslims have had to interact, often creatively, with people of other faiths. Still today, none of the top five countries with the largest Muslim population is Arab.

How does one make sense of such a vast and diverse religion?

I like to point readers to the cover of the book. You see this Indian-looking woman lying prostrate in prayer and receiving a paper with a text in Arabic, a verse from the Quran. This is Rabia al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Iraqi Sufi woman, portrayed a thousand years later by an Indian artist as a well-dressed, idyllic beauty of 18th-century India. That, to me, shows Islam’s paradoxical unity in diversity, because here she is, an Iraqi Sufi who speaks across borders and centuries, holding a verse from the Quran to which all Muslims would relate.

A version of this article appeared in the 03/24/2025 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: John Tolan

If Piety Is Always Political, Who Then Is A Saint?

On the outskirts of Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, lies the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco in Sant’Anastasia.

The walls of the shrine are covered in painted, votive tavolette — little, painted boards given as an offering in fulfillment of a vow (ex voto) and featuring devotional scenes and images of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ.

One of my favorites features a man in bed, with a heavily bandaged leg, his small children and wife praying to the Virgin and Child as they appear amidst a veil of clouds from their throne in heaven.

It is, in many ways, a visual embodiment of traditional notions of piety, defined as dutiful devotion to the divine.

But as I teach in my religious studies courses, piety can take a variety of forms.

It can be visual and sartorial, both highly personal and politically charged. More than an individual’s particular practice of religious reverence, piety is a socially defined and structured response to one’s emotional, social and material context. And in a time of political upheaval, social uncertainty and ecological anxiety, it might do well to revisit piety and its varieties.

How they do it in Deutschland: Signposts for Interreligious Dialogue in Germany

The Christmas market attacks in Magdeburg — and the heated political atmosphere that followed — have stressed a range of issues ahead of Germany’s snap elections on February 23.  

Voters across Europe’s largest economy are concerned about domestic security, immigration, upholding the rule of law and strengthening democracy against perceived enemies within and without.  

An important aspect of this equation is how followers of Germany’s various religious communities might work to address these concerns together.  

With a total population of nearly 85 million, there are an estimated 23 million Catholics (27 percent), 21 million Protestants (25 percent) and nearly 5 million Muslims (5.7 percent). There are also smaller populations of evangelicals (2 percent) and Orthodox Christians (1.9 percent), as well as Jews, Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Yezidis, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pagans and Sikhs. Notably, 44 percent of Germans (or 37 million) claim no religious affiliation, but may practice some form of spirituality or hold some kind of enchanted worldview.  

In my latest for Interfaith America, I explore how members of these various groups work together — or against one another — is of great importance for the future of plural, open societies like Germany. 

Religion + Culture: Top 24 Books of 2024

In the early hours of January 1, 2024, I completed a lifelong dream: to run 24 hours nonstop. What a start to the year!

A few hours later, I was unable to bend my left knee. A few days later, I was in a hospital bed with a blood clot (TMI? Sorry).

It was not, as you could imagine, how I hoped to start the year.

But as I lay there in the hospital, I had a book with me. A companion to distract me, humor me, entertain, or otherwise engage me.

I’m not sure what your 2024 was like. Maybe it was full of finish lines. Maybe it was full of metaphorical clots. Whatever the last year held I hope you had the chance to read some good books along the way.

Whether the year was wonderful, the worst, or decidedly in between, I hope reading helped you get here. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the books I’ve read, in 2024 or any other year.

And so, without further adieu, here are my top 24 books of 2024 (some new, some old), in the order I read them. Maybe you’ll find one of your next reads among them:

📖 The Longmire Defense, by Craig Johnson (2023) - I don’t read fiction all that much. And when I do, I’m picky. And the Longmire series from Craig Johnson continues to deliver. A crime thriller with grit and spirituality mixed in, I appreciate how nature plays such a distinct role in the series as well — letting the seasons of the planet, and life, have their due.

📖 Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, by Brian McLaren (2024) - In this bracing study, theologian McLaren (Faith After Doubt) challenges readers to recognize “the dangerous future into which we are presently plunging ourselves, our descendants, and our fellow creatures.”

📖 Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, by Nicholas Shakespeare (2023) - I’m a Bond fan. I make no qualms about that. But what I enjoy most about the Bond œuvre is the ability for the films, books, and assorted other phenomena to be time capsules revealing the culture, sexual ethics, politics, and economics of the times they were produced in. The same goes for Ian Fleming, the man. Say what you want about “the man who would be Bond,” but his life is one we should reckon with in order to understand Britain in the 20th-century.

📖 For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond, by Lisa Funnell (2015) - Speaking of the Bond universe’s sexual and gendered ethics, enter one of the best books I’ve read on the subject. Funnell, as her podcast declares, is “licensed to critique.” And critique she does. A phenomenal anthology on femininity and feminism in the Bond series.

📖 Righting the American Dream, by Diane Winston (2023) - A provocative new history of how the news media facilitated the Reagan Revolution and the rise of the religious Right. Read more HERE.

📖 Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, by Christiane F. (1978) - Still as haunting and hard-hitting as it was over 50 years ago. No glitz and glam here. This is a descent into the depths of human nature and misery. A poignant reminder that we are all just a few steps away from a life on the streets.

📖 Diesseits der Mauer: Eine Neue Geschichte der DDR, Katja Hoyer (2023) - A controversial history of the DDR, but one I thoroughly appreciated. Living in the former East, I appreciated the perspective shift this book presented on the history of Germany post World War II.

📖 Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-century Wisconsin, by Sergio M. González (2024) - I read a lot of books about immigration this last year. This one stood out for its focus on local history and the minutiae of how ministries in the Badger State accepted, expanded, and adapted because of an influx of Latino immigrants in the 20th-century.

📖 The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami (2019) - Staying on the topic of immigration, this is a telling tale of belonging and “Other”-hate in California’s High Desert. Lalami rarely takes a misstep with her works and this one is no different.

📖 The Bible: A Global History, by Bruce Gordon (2024) - An ambitious study of how a collection of prophecies, poems, and letters became a sacred text that has shaped cultures across time and space.

📖 The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels, by Pamela J. Prickett and Stefan Timmermans (2024) - If I ranked my favorite books in 2024, this one would be at the top of the list. A touching ethnography of death and dying in the wicked city of Los Angeles. I listened to this book while walking the streets of Venice Beach and Skid Row, Culver City and Hollywood. Every word resonated with what I saw. And while there is beauty and hope to be found, most of it was harrowing. A must read on the ethics of care in 21st-century America.

📖 Everything Now: Lessons from the City-state of Los Angeles, by Rosecrans Baldwin (2021) - For all the critique of this scattershot portrayal of the “city-state” Los Angeles, I loved Baldwin’s take on the megalopolis and its many sides. In particular, I thought the chapter on those in pursuit of Hollywood’s dream both textured and compassionately critical.

📖 The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly (2005) - I said I don’t read much fiction. And yet, this is my third fiction book on the list. Set in Los Angeles, this is the first in “The Lincoln Lawyer” series. I’m hooked and already started book two: The Brass Verdict.

📖 Our Migrant Souls, by Héctor Tobar (2023) - I had the opportunity to hear Héctor Tobar when he accepted the Zócalo Book Prize for this book in 2024. As he said that night, there are whole aspects of the Latino experience not yet encountered by the American masses. This book goes a long way in sharing those stories with poetic and powerful prose narratives of Latinx experience in the U.S.

📖 Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, by Oliver Burkeman (2024) - “Your limitations aren’t obstacles to a meaningful existence”—they’re key to building one, according to this refreshing guide from journalist Burkeman. Amid a sea of efficiency-focused, do-it-all self-help guides, this is a welcome alternative.

📖 Puerto Rico: A National History, by Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo (2024) - Ever since I read Fernando Pico’s 2006 History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People, I was looking for the next history of Borinquen to come along. This not only provides the necessary updates, but goes beyond, abandoning “great man” approaches to the nation’s history in favor of telling the story of its people, from the people themselves.

📖 Floss, by Roger Erickson (2024) - Erickson, who in 2003 became the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue, serves up an eye-popping debut collection full of artists, celebrities, and musicians. Hip-hop fans will take special delight in this vibrant celebration of American pop culture.

📖 Berlin Calling, by Paul Hockenos (2017) - On the theme of music, this book captures the spirit of punk in Berlin, expertly surveying the landscape out of which its leading luminaries and most radical expressions emerged. Next up on the list: Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno, and the Fall of the Wall.

📖 Borders: A Very Short Introduction, by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen (2024) - This has become one of the two books I assign to students when we start talking about borders (the other being Glorida Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera). A handy introduction to our bordered world and how, while borders are make believe, they remain very, very real.

📖 A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman, by Robert Hilburn (2024) - Biographer Hilburn (Paul Simon) serves up an affectionate tribute to Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter and film score composer best known for “I Love L.A.” and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”  Throughout, Hilburn astutely analyzes how Newman uses literary devices like the unreliable narrator to probe the absurdities of “a strange and tragic period in [America’s] history.” In the process, Hilburn makes clear, Newman broadened the boundaries of what pop music can do.

📖 Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes, by Mehmet Karabela (2021) - A thorough exploration of how (mostly) German Lutherans engaged with Islamic thought and helped give shape to Protestant identity in the wake of the Reformation. Karabela testifies to the ways in which the “strange” is not only more “familiar” than we at first might think but has played a role in the evolution of our own thought and practice.

📖 Searching for Jimmie Strother, by Gregg D. Kimball (2024) - In this thoroughly researched forensic biography, Kimball pieces together the life of James Lee Strother: a blind singer, guitarist and banjoist found at the Virginia State Prison Farm on a 1936 expedition by folklorist John Avery Lomax on behalf of the Library of Congress’s folk song archive. A fine-tuned, and rich retelling of a life too long lingering in the shadows of American folk history.

📖 Life Worth Living, by Matthew Croasmun, Miroslav Volf, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz (2023) - Welcome to the humanities! An excellent little primer on how to approach “the Question” of all our lives (and the many questions that come with it): what is really worth wanting?

📖 The Muslims of Caricom, by Sabir Nakhuda (2019) - As I write this, I am in Barbados conducting research with the Muslim community on the island. Nakhuda’s thoroughly researched oral histories are a gift to me and others who want to learn more about the vibrancy of Muslim life in a part of the world we rarely associate with global Islam.

Keeping religion at home: learning about, and from, domestic devotion

While shopping for a home outside Austin, Texas, James Yonkers — a self-confessed religion nerd — came across an unexpected find.

“We were looking at this lovely duplex and the real estate agent was showing me everything in the house, except for the downstairs closet next to the kitchen,” said Yonkers, “so, I got curious.”

Left alone to look around the house one more time, Yonkers could not help but open the closet door to look inside. What he found was the last thing he expected. Inside was a lavishly adorned altar to Ganesha, “with candles, a coconut, marigold, mango leaves and all these other elements around it,” said Yonkers.

Readily identified by his elephant head, Ganesha is widely revered in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions as a remover of obstacles and bringer of good fortune.

“Whoever owned the duplex before us, I hoped the good luck from Ganesha would stick,” Yonkers said, “because we bought the place!”

Domestic religious practices — that is, religious conduct within a household setting — provide an outlet for expressing and addressing the concerns of everyday life. An altar to Ganesha, where devotees can regularly perform puja — an act of reverence and worship — in the intimate surrounds of their home, not only beckons good luck but serves as a touchstone of resilience through the ups and downs of day-to-day life. 

Archaeologists have found protective deities, tools for conducting rites of protection and healing and shards of pottery used to hold libations and offerings in the homes of ancient peoples in places as diverse as Egypt to North America, Mesopotamia to Oceania. These practices were not divorced from a wider continuum of religious practice outside the home, but part-and-parcel to them.

In other words, practitioners the world over have long made religion a domestic affair, utilizing religious beliefs, actions and imagery to give shape and substance to hearth and home for millennia.

Beyond temples, synagogues and other places of public and communal devotion, a range of practices, material objects and rituals have provided solace, inspiration and an opportunity for regular devotion for individuals and families in the privacy of their personal space.

Today, the increasing privatization and individualization of spirituality and its associated customs means the home can often be a substitute for, or supplement to, communal houses of worship and the public display of religion.

Haunted Land, Popular Saints: Rituals of Death along the U.S./Mexico Border

It’s a gray, mid-May morning in Panteón Municipal #1, a city cemetery in Tijuana’s Zona Norte neighborhood. Alberto, the gatekeeper, saunters down a rocky pathway lined with palms, jacaranda, and gravestones to a prominent, red brick chapel, built over the tomb of one Juan Castillo Morales.

The shrine is covered wall-to-wall with candles, flowers, and plaques with names and messages of thanks to “Juan Soldado” (Juan the Soldier), as Castillo is known. Amid the array sits a stylized bust of a young soldier, resplendent in military attire, this morning bearing a black rosary and a blue-and-white Los Angeles Dodgers snapback hat.

The shrine is one of many unofficial memorials where loved ones remember lives of immigrants lost along the U.S.-Mexico border. From chapels erected around the graves of unofficial saints such as Castillo to digital memorials people carry with them into the desert to the crosses, flowers, and other mementos left along the border boundary itself, these monuments not only pay tribute to the individuals lost but bear witness to the ubiquity of death — and faith — in America’s southwestern borderlands.

Rosalba Ruiz-Hernández, a 46-year-old mother of five, stands in the shrine. Ruiz-Hernández, originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, was deported back to Tijuana after her own failed attempt to start a new life in the U.S. Two of her grown children still live in Long Beach, Calif., near her former husband. They are undocumented, she said, but they make a living. Two others are in Tijuana with her. Matías, her middle son, died in the desert on his way north to join his siblings in Southern California.

“I come to Juanito’s chapel to give thanks for the children who have their new life in Long Beach,” Rosalba said, “and to pray for Matías’ soul.”

Juan Soldado is an unlikely saint. According to the Roman Catholic Church, he isn’t a saint at all. On Feb. 17, 1938, Castillo was executed for the rape and murder of Olga Camacho Martínez, a young girl who is buried in a cemetery just up the road. William Calvo-Quirós, an associate professor of American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Michigan, said the young soldier, a convicted murderer and rapist, transformed over time into Juan Soldado — a “folk saint” who is venerated as a victim of state violence.

And Tijuana holds many such stories, of border “saints” who, in death and in life, suffered at the intersections between worlds. And beyond Tijuana, there are numerous other unofficial saints’ shrines populating the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: El Tiradito in Tucson, Ariz.; Jesús Malverde in Culiacán, Sinaloa; Niño Fidencio in Espinazo, Nuevo León; the Virgen de San Juan del Valle, outside McAllen, Texas; and El Señor de los Milagros in San Antonio. Each memorial is part of a rich tapestry of rituals and beliefs that immigrants and their loved ones carry with them, or depend on, to sustain them amid migration, uncertainty, and death.

Nobody knows how many of these saints exist, wrote historian Paul J. Vanderwood. But the popular devotions and informal canonizations that emerged around them are a testament to the unjust circumstances of their deaths and, by extension, the deaths of many in the borderlands. These are souls with “unfinished” business, Vanderwood wrote — they “clamor for assistance” and cry out for justice.

Hundreds of migrants die every year along one of the world’s deadliest land borders. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reports that 8,050 people died attempting to cross the border between 1998 and 2020. The agency recorded an additional 568 deaths in 2021 and 895 in 2022 — the most deaths recorded in a single year. Many more, who die from some form of exposure (heat stroke, hypothermia, or dehydration), are left unaccounted for and unclaimed. Then there are those who die somewhere in Mexico or Central and South America, en route to the U.S.-Mexico border.

This, said Calvo-Quirós, makes the border a nearly 2,000-mile stretch of “haunted land.”

Art, Immigration, and Faith

The amber appears to ooze across the floor like slow-flowing lava. Containing found objects and materials sourced from Salvadoran communities around Los Angeles, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s artwork is expansive and expressive of the materiality of often-marginalized Central American migrants in Southern California.

His artistic craft, Aparicio said, speaks to the innovative, resourceful, and resilient voices of migrants throughout the city and beyond. Artists of many kinds hope works like Aparicio’s can tell new kinds of immigrant stories — ones often full of faith and spirituality, migration and baptism, encounters with Jesus and varying experiences with church life.

Amid the leaves, bones, broken dishware, condom wrappers, beer holders, and archival papers in Aparicio’s work is a single flier for a church — a “Casa del Dios” advertising their services with Jesus’ words in bold red across the top: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The installation, on display at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, hints at how immigration and faith are represented in various artistic mediums.

While political conversations about immigrants and immigration policy tend toward broad, often dehumanizing stereotypes, artists such as Aparicio are using their art to help viewers reflect on the deep, and expansive, experience of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the U.S.

Giselle Elgarresta Rios, the first Cuban-American woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall in New York, wrote that art — perhaps more than other media — can help us better “see the souls of immigrants.”

Image And Power, Satire And Sacrilege At The Paris Olympics

When I teach a religious studies class, I try to pull something from the headlines to use for discussion. You know, something religion-y to get students thinking about religion’s continuing ubiquity and importance in the world today.  

Had I been teaching a class at the end of July 2024, there would have been only one option for that thing: the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

Not the bells ringing at Notre Dame Cathedral and not Sequana, goddess of the river Seine, galloping in gleaming silver with the Olympic flag. Worthy topics, to be sure. But none was more worthy of discussion — if social media were the measure of things — than a living tableau of LGBTQ+ performers posing in what seemed to be (or…possibly not) a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

It created some conversation and controversy, to say the least. And rather than adjudicating the right- or wrongness of the artistic choice, the ins and outs of the potential offense, whether the portrayal was Ancient Greek or Renaissance Italian, or the dynamics of French secular culture, global Catholicism and U.S. evangelical culture (again, all worthy topics), I would have used the kerfuffle as a case study in the power of the image and the power of satire in the world of religion.

The power of image

With or without religion, images are powerful. They move us to anger, they move us love; they move us to buy, they move us to believe.

And in his eponymous book, religion scholar David Morgan discusses the power of the “sacred gaze” — a way of seeing that invests an object (an image, person, time or place) with spiritual significance. Across a variety of religious traditions, Morgan traces how images in different times and spaces convey beliefs and produce religious reactions in human societies – what he calls, “visual piety.”  

As human products, images and religious ideas have grown together, with some images having the power to determine personal practice and identifications, rituals and notions of sacred space. As “visual instruments fundamental to human life,” images have their own materiality and agency. Think of the ubiquitous statue of the Buddha sitting in backyard or the glittery gold calligraphy of “Allah” or “Muhammad” hanging over a family’s living room; the brightly colored images of Ganesha and Krishna or a copy of Eric Enstrom’s “Grace” hanging in kitchens and cookhouses across the U.S.

Each of these images serve as markers of a whole range of social concerns, devotional piety, creedal orthodoxy or gender norms.

So too with da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” As one of the most well-known religious images the world over, the painting is not a part of any Christian canon. It isn’t even an accurate representation of what the Last Supper, as recorded in the Christian Gospels, would have been. Jesus’ disciples were not Renaissance European white men, they were probably not pescatarians, nor were they seated on one side of the table (or seated at that kind of table at all). But as a myth we knew we were all making, and as the National Gallery’s Siobhán Jolley pointed out on X, the painting morphed from being a sign (a painting portraying an interpretation of biblical texts) to a signifier (a bearer of meaning so pronounced that it came to visualize Jesus’ last meal with his followers for many).   

And in our contemporary culture(s), such visual cues carry a particular kind of power. In a highly visual society, bombarded by the rapid consumption of images on screens of varying size and intensity, images can transcend one context and speak to many — as did the recreation of da Vinci’s “Last Supper” (or…maybe not) when it resonated both positively and negatively with so many.

As a visual quotation of a popular image, we translated its meaning and the image spoke with power to various communities and subcultures. It tore people up and took the internet by storm. It manifested opprobrium and offense, celebration and adulation, as it was read as a sacrilege of the highest offense or as a symbol of vibrant tolerance and pleasing subversiveness. Along the way, it created a whole range of responses, on what is and what is not offensive, what is and is not idolatry, what is and is not Christian privilege, what is and is not persecution; the list could go on and on.

For all that it was (or was not), the Opening Ceremony moment (and it was, after all, but a blip on the screen) illustrated once again the power of religious images, even in increasingly secular societies.

The power of satire

In addition, whatever the performance was meant to represent, it was almost certainly meant as a form of satire.

A genre with generations of history, religious satire’s power lies in its ability to direct the public gaze to the vice, follies and shortcomings of religious institutions, actors and authority writ large. Whether calling out hypocrisy or corruption, religious satire has been used for centuries to take religious elites or established traditions to task.

Examples of savage satire and nipping parody abound across religious history. From the Purim Torah and its humorous comments read, recited or performed during the Jewish holiday of Purim to "Paragraphs and Periods,”(Al-Fuṣūl wa Al-Ghāyāt) a parody of the Quran by Al-Ma‘arri or the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer or Robert Burns’ poem “Holy WIllie’s Prayer,” authors and authorities, playwrights and poets have wielded scalding pens to critique what they see as the hypocrisy, self-righteousness and ostentation of religious communities.

As such, satire has been powerful as a means of protest both from without and within religious traditions. For example, the 16th-century rebel German monk and Reformer Martin Luther used his caustic touch to call what he thought were abuses within the Catholic Church to task. Jeering and flaunting his way through theological controversies and the dogmatic discussions of his day, Luther was not one to skirt the issue or back away from using humor and satire to prove his point. In fact, he was well known for his use of scatological references, offending his followers and opponents with vulgar references to passing gas and feces.

Each of these examples shows how satire relies on a combination of absurdity, mimicry and humor to highlight the problems its creators see with religious actors’ or institutions’ behaviors, vices or social standing.

To that end, the opening ceremony’s display was religious satire par excellence, insofar as it pushed a particular social agenda and advocated for certain recognitions for a marginalized community through its exhibition. The living display not only created a stir but captured the public imagination, sparking discussion and debate about Christian privilege, European culture and the acceptance and affirmation of LGBTQ+ individuals in religious communities. In this way, religious satire can also help create community and a sense of belonging among those who are in on the joke and jive with the critique embodied in the satire.

The persistent power of religion

The debate around the tableau will (hopefully) die down in the days and weeks to come (and perhaps already has in a media cycle that serves up a fresh controversy every 24-hours). But if I were to point to just one lesson in my religious studies classroom, I would highlight how the scene — for all it was or wasn’t — proved once again the power of images and satire in the field of religion.

It is another case study in how, even at supposedly “secular” events in a decidedly “secular” country, religion — and the primary and secondary images and satire thereof — remains persistently present and ubiquitously potent. And that, dear students of religion, is something to keep in mind for the next controversy, which is sure to come sometime soon.

Righting the American Dream: A Review of Diane Winston's Latest Book

You have probably heard it before. You will most likely hear it again. In fact, it’s almost so banal a “fact” that it’s become a truism: The media has a liberal bias. Some would even go so far as to say that the news media is a bastion of liberal ideology that does not reflect the diverse range of opinions held by most Americans. On social, cultural, and economic issues, it is believed, newswriters are partisans, prejudiced to the political left.

Using timely historical analysis, Diane Winston’s Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision challenges the “myth of the liberal news media,” detailing how outlets across the United States “normalized and circulated Reagan’s religiously inflected neoliberalism”—what she calls his religious imaginary. This not only influenced what consumers thought about Reagan’s tenure and its era but, Winston argues, shaped policies that led to the increased “income inequality, militant unilateralism and intergroup conflict” (200) we continue to see today.

On the Frontiers of Psychedelic-Assisted Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care

Hannah remembers exactly where she was when she got the news her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Out for dinner and drinks with friends in Seattle, she noticed the missed call first. Then, the text messages from her older sister. When she stepped outside to talk to her mom on the phone, her father was already gone.

“I just stood there, frozen,” the 38-year-old said, “looking out and taking in the details. The way the sidewalk smelled after recent rain. The squeaking sound of the restaurant door as it swung open. The way a red light reflected off a puddle across the street. Every detail just singed into my memory.”

But Hannah could not remember the weeks and months that followed. “There was just a blur, a blank spot,” she said. There were family gatherings, a funeral, boxes of photos, and other details that Hannah struggled to recall.

Though the particulars were missing, the despair she felt only deepened. After a couple of years, her prolonged feelings of sadness and hopelessness drove her to seek therapy. She was prescribed antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help. Hannah withdrew from her church community and friends, developed anger management issues, and struggled with suicidal thoughts.

But then, Hannah came across a 2013 study from the University of South Floridaabout how psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms,” can stimulate nerve cell growth in parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory.

She sought out a counselor in Oregon who could guide her as she used psilocybin to access aspects of her memory she wanted to get in touch with again to help process the pain she continued to feel at the loss of her dad. More than psychological treatment, however, Hannah was also seeking spiritual solace. She did not want simply to recall the facts or feelings of her intense grief; Hannah was in search of something deeper: “I wanted to remember, to see how God was at work even then, in one of the darkest moments of my life.”

Now a spiritual director who offers similar services in the Seattle area, Hannah is part of a growing number of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others seeking out psychedelic-assisted chaplaincy and spiritual care to address psychological trauma and unanswered spiritual questions. Some, in search of mystical experiences, are also looking for unexplored avenues of spiritual connection to process suffering or to encounter the divine.

As part of a more general renaissance of interest in the potential medicinal and spiritual benefits psychedelics may provide, a slew of researchers, chaplains, theologians, and spiritual care professionals are asking questions about how substances like psilocybin connect the potency of mystical experience with the promise, and possibility, of mental healing.

They hope that in the next decade or so, new studies, therapies, and theological revolutions will lead to a breakthrough in the use of psychedelics for religious insight and remedial spiritual care.

A Cross In The Barbed Wire: Mixed Reflections On Faith & Immigration

In February 2019, Miguel stared out at the San Pedro Valley in Mexico, stretching for miles below him from his position on Yaqui Ridge in the Coronado National Monument. Standing at Monument 102, which marks the symbolic start of the 800-mile-long Arizona Trail, Miguel remarked on how the border here doesn’t look like what most people imagine.

Instead of 30-foot bollards, all one finds is mangled barbed wire to mark the divide between Arizona and Sonora. Here hikers can dip through a hole in the fence to cross into Mexico, take their selfie, and pop back over.

“It’s as easy as that,” Miguel said, with a melancholic chuckle.

But for Miguel’s mother the crossing was not only difficult — it was deadly. She perished trying to find her way to the U.S. across the valley’s wilderness when Miguel was just four years old and already living in the U.S. with his father.

Not knowing exactly where she died, Monument 102 became a makeshift memorial for Miguel’s mother, the obelisk marking the U.S./Mexico border a kind of gravestone. The barbed wire itself even holds meaning for Miguel. “When I come every year to remember her,” he said, “and the knots in the barbed wire remind me of the cross.

“It may sound strange, but that gives me comfort,” he said.

Miguel is far from alone in making religion a part of the migrant’s journey. As migrants move around, across and through borders and the politics that surround them, religious symbols, rituals, materials and infrastructures help them make meaning, find solace and navigate their everyday, lived experience in the borderlands.

With immigration proving a top issue for voters in the U.S. and Europe this year, this edition of What You Missed Without Religion Class explores the numerous intersections between religion and migration.

From Puerto Rico to Palestine, with Solidarity

“We’ve been here before,” Margarita says as she holds a sign with bold, red and green letters exclaiming, Basta ya genocido! Variously translated as “enough is enough” or “stop already,” basta ya is a Spanish exclamation of exasperation. And Margarita is exasperated. “What I mean is [that] we’ve done this before,” she explains, “when they [the Israeli military] evicted families in Sheikh Jarrah in 2021, when Israel invaded Gaza in 2014, after Hurricane María, when they [the U.S. Navy] bombed Vieques, during the Second Intifada, I was out here, protesting. Enough is enough!”

Wearing a loose, floral, floor-length dress, brown jacket, and burgundy head covering, Margarita joined thousands of other Puerto Ricans in November 2023 demonstrating in Brooklyn and Manhattan on behalf of Palestinians, demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. At the march, Puerto Rican flags flew next to Palestinian ones alongside signs reading Puerto Rico con Palestina or “Puerto Ricans for Palestine.” Other protestors paired keffiyehs, headdresses that have become associated with Palestinians, with black-and-white banners representing Puerto Rican resistance to U.S. colonialism.

As a Puerto Rican convert to Islam, Margarita feels compelled to take to the streets. But even before she became Muslim, Margarita possessed a sense of solidarity with people in Gaza and the West Bank. “We share a history of oppression, of being under empire’s foot, of being a people without a nation,” she says, “so I’ll continue to show up until Palestine and Puerto Rico are free.”

Puerto Rican demonstrations for justice in Palestine, and Palestinian solidarity with Puerto Ricans, is nothing new. Forged in their common colonial condition, Puerto Ricans and Palestinians have long spoken up — and out — for each other’s fight against imperialism and for independence.

But for Puerto Rican Muslims in the archipelago and diaspora, that solidarity takes on additional, resonant meaning. For some, their faith imbues their solidarity with divine purpose. For others, it is solidarity that leads them to faith in the first place.

Feast or fast, food and faith

“You’d think we’d lose weight during Ramadan,” said Amina, a registered dietician who observes the Islamic month of fasting each year in Arizona, “but you’d be wrong.”

Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar calendar, is a month of fasting for Muslims across the globe. Throughout the month, which starts this year around March 11, observers do not eat or drink from dawn to sunset.

“It sounds like a recipe for weight loss,” Amina said, “but you’d be wrong. I’ve found it’s much more common for clients — of all genders and ages — to gain weight during the season.”

The combined result of consuming fat-rich foods at night when breaking the fast (iftar), numerous celebratory gatherings with family and friends, decreased physical activity and interrupted sleep patterns means many fasters are surprised by the numbers on the scale when the festival at the end of the month (Eid al-Fitr) comes around.

Christians observing the traditional fasting period of Lent (February 14 - March 30, 2024) can also experience weight gain as they abstain from things like red meat or sweets. Despite popular “Lent diets” and conversations around getting “shredded” during the fasting season, many struggle with their weight during the penitential 40-days prior to Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

The convergence of the fasting seasons for two of the world’s largest religions meet this month, and people worrying about weight gain during them, got me thinking about the wider relevance of food to faith traditions.

And so, in two pieces — one for ReligionLink and the other for Patheos — I take a deeper look at how foodways might help us better understand this thing we call “religion” more broadly.

What's behind the rising hate?

At the end of last year, the uptick in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the U.S. and around the globe captured headlines as part of the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war.

Reactions were swift and widespread, as university presidents resigned, demonstrators took to the streets in places such as Berlin and Paris and the White House promised to take steps to curb religious and faith-based hate in the U.S.

The topic of rising discrimination and incidents of hate remains contentious, as political polarization and debate over definitions challenge reporters covering the issues.

But before we come to conclusions, it’s important to consider a) what we are talking about - or - how we define antisemitism and Islamophobia and b) the long arc of “Other” hate across time.

In the latest editions of ReligionLink and “What You Missed Without Religion Class,” I unpack both so we can better understand and react to the surge in hate.

Tomorrow’s religion news, today

At the beginning of last year, I predicted the Pope would be big news in 2023.

While I thought it would be because of his declining health and increased age, it turned out that Pope Francis had big plans to cement his long-term hopes for renewal, which are likely to outlast his pontifical reign.

In 2023, Pope Francis remained busy, traveling widely, convening a historic synod, denouncing anti-LGBTQ+ laws and approving letting priests bless same-sex couples, overseeing the Vatican repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and facing various controversies.

For all the above, he was named 2023’s Top Religion Newsmaker by members of the Religion News Association, a 74-year-old association for reporters who cover religion in the news media.

Beyond Francis and the Vatican, there were other major headlines in 2023: the Israel-Hamas war, along with the rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the U.S. and around the globe, ongoing legislative and legal battles following last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the exodus of thousands of congregations from the United Methodist Church and the nationwide political debates over sexuality and transgender rights and the Anglican Communion verging on schism.

While it is one thing to look back on the top religion stories of the year, what about predicting — as I did with the Pope — what will be the big religion news in 2024?

In 2024, we will see ongoing wars in places like Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen and Nargono-Karabakh continuing to capture headlines. So too the state of antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination. The ubiquity and uncertainty of artificial intelligence should also be on our radars, as should news related to the intersections of spirituality and climate change, the fate of global economies and how religious communities adapt to the ruptures and realignments associated with an increasingly multipolar world.

For more on my predictions, as well as additional sources and resources to explore, click the link below.

And to go even deeper into 2024’s religion predictions, you can explore my analysis of religion’s role in ongoing conflicts, upcoming elections and more by checking out my column, “What You Missed Without Religion Class.”

Contradictory Conditions: Jewish Life in East Germany, Past and Present

It’s a decidedly blustery day on Karl Marx Street in Eisenach, in the eastern German state of Thuringia. Gold and rust-tinted leaves scatter the ground of a small park marking the site of the town’s former synagogue—burned down by a Nazi mob on Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogroms on November 9, 1938.

Tucked away in a quiet corner not far from Eisenach’s theater, the memorial is one of 32 sites across Thuringia—spots where synagogues were desecrated or destroyed that night in 1938. Of the many previously active synagogues, only a few remain today. Only one has been rebuilt for weekly services. The others are marked by memorial stones and stairways leading to nowhere—including empty lots or garden plots, apartment buildings, and even a grocery store. Where the small town of Vacha’s synagogue once stood, there is now a hobby shop.

These places dot the east German landscape, from Potsdam to Zwickau, Dresden to Magdeburg. Along with other memorials like Stolpersteine—stones with brass plates bearing the names of Holocaust (Shoah) victims, laid in the pavement in front of their former homes and businesses—they stand as stark reminders of the absent presence of the region’s once thriving Jewish population. They are places where the palpable influence of eastern Germany’s Jews remains potent, even where they are no longer present.

They also signal the Jewish community’s present absence. Since the Shoah, under sometimes radically conflicting conditions, a range of diverse Jews have returned, resettled, and restored a sense of Jewish life across the former East German Republic (GDR). But the community is less-than-half what it was in pre-war Germany.

In places like Berlin, Leipzig, and Erfurt, Jews’ stories over the last century speak to lives lived between far-right politics and those of the far-left, communism and capitalism, growth and decline, remembrance culture (Erinnerungskultur) and an ominously encroaching antisemitism. Looking at East Germany–past and present–through Jewish eyes reveals today’s controversies are nothing new.

The challenges Jews in Germany faced following the Holocaust, including perils to their very existence, have shaped Jewish lives in the east for decades. The story of how under such conditions they still preserved their heritage is decades long. Now, facing declining demographics, a resurgent antisemitism, and fearing a far-right political turn, eastern Germany’s Jewish communities are once again under threat. And, once more, they are not only preserving their heritage, but claiming their place in German society.

Your Favorite Stories from 2023

Each December, Religion News Association (RNA) members vote to select the Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year. This year, journalists on the religion beat chose the Israel-Hamas war and its reverberations as both the top international and domestic religion stories of the year.

No doubt, that is a story that will continue to dominate headlines for days — and months — to come.

Here on the Religion+Culture blog, you too cast your vote for the top stories of the year…even if you were not aware. Each year, I make a brief review of the stories that caught your attention here on KenChitwood.com. After crunching the numbers, I put together a Religion+Culture Top Ten, based on your clicks and views.

This year, you were tracking with some of the top stories around the world. But from time-to-time, you also chose to dig deeper into stories others might have missed. Good on you. From religious facial markings to Bible translation news, Hindu nationalism to religion at the Academy Awards, thanks for nerding out with me in the wide world of religion news.

Religion in your face

Ash Wednesday and the practice of religious facial markings

What Al-Aqsa means to Palestinians amidst continued conflict

For Norwegians so loved the Bible, a new translation made many mad

A critical look at Luther Country

Many who come to "Luther Land” never get to delve deeply into the man's life. Maybe that should change.

What is Hindu nationalism and how is it impacting the U.S.?

Barely anyone reads the Bible in Germany

So why are Luther Bibles selling so well?

Church planting after the fall (of the Berlin Wall)

Three generations after East Germany rejected Christianity, a small group of prayerful believers see an opportunity.

What one man learned about religion visiting every country in the world

Does the world really need interreligious dialogu

Whether or not you like it, interreligious dialogue is impacting your life.

Religion at the 2023 Academy Awards

Movies are filled with religious themes this year. What might we have to learn about this thing we call “religion”by heading to the cinema?

Religion at the Rugby World Cup

Rugby, Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, is a “hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.”

No doubt, rugby union is an aggressive, sometimes brutal, and incredibly demanding sport that pushes players’ bodies to the extremes: running, hitting, jumping, and grinding their way across the pitch for 80 minutes.

But what of their souls? How do these “gentlemen” (or women) bring their spirituality to bear in a sport many consider savage by nature?

In the lead-up to the Rugby World Cup (RWC) in France (September 8 - October 28, 2023), this month’s “What You Missed Without Religion Class” takes a look at how religion might play a role in the crowning of rugby’s world champions.

Within the field of religious studies, “religion and sport” research has traditionally focused on two areas: religion as sport and religion in sport. While one could make the case that rugby is religion in places like New Zealand, I consider what we might learn by looking at how the cultural phenomena of religion and sport intersect, overlap, and mimic each other in the wide world of rugby.

Faith and ‘footy’

Martin Lewis, a Christian chaplain for the Cardiff Blues — a professional Welsh rugby team — says that religion can play an important role in rugby players’ lives both on and off the pitch.

Lewis, a 6-foot-7 Welsh back-rower with more than 400 first class rugby matches behind him, said that even though spectators may not see it, faith influences some of the sports’ most prominent players. 

For example, Sonny Bill Williams, one of New Zealand’s all-time greats, converted to Islam in 2009, saying it helped him find his way in the chaotic world of professional sport.

Since retiring from professional rugby, the former All Black has become a prominent spokesperson for Islam on Instagram and other social media channels, not only sharing his personal pilgrimage journey but speaking out on social justice issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the recent “abaya ban” in France. In the aftermath of the 2019 attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, his mother and fellow All Black Ofa Tu’ungafasi converted due in part to his guidance.

Another famous faith-fueled player is Jonny Wilkinson, whose iconic drop goal in the dying minutes of the 2003 World Cup final ensured his place in rugby union lore, winning England their only Webb Ellis trophy to date. But beyond the highlight-reel, Wilkinson told Men’s Fitness that anxiety, depression and burnout haunted his career. Being a practicing Buddhist helped him make sense of his own mental health and find “spiritual ways to become more grounded in the present moment.”

Several big names you’re likely to see at the RWC are also vocal Christians. Siya Kolisi, captain of the current world champions, the South African Springboks, said he was “born again” following a public saga when his wife found provocative photos of another woman in his Instagram messages. Kolisi said his newfound spiritual commitments helped him fight off temptation and make better lifestyle choices.

Kolisi claims Christianity has not only made him a better husband, but a better player and leader on the field. That claim was put to the test when he tore his ACL in April 2023, putting his ability to play at this year’s RWC at risk. But in what The Daily Mail called a “medical miracle,” Kolisi went from “surgeon’s table” to “being back fit” in three months. His faith inspired him during the turnaround, he said, as he asked for prayers from supporters and regularly posted Bible verses alongside photos and videos of the personal training routine that brought him back to the pitch in time for the team’s RWC warm-up matches.

For each game day, he posts a different Bible verse, sometimes with a picture of his jersey draped over his open Bible. Upon his return against Wales in August, he posted a video with the following caption on Instagram:

Deuteronomy 31:8-9 The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Thank you Jesus ❤️🙏🏾Thank you for all the support [sic] and prayers through my rehab, im [sic] really grateful ❤️🇿🇦🙏🏾

It was liked over 62,000 times.

But religion can also cause controversy in the rugby world.

Israel Folau, a professional dual-code rugby player who has represented Australia and Tonga at the international level, was famously sacked by the Australian national rugby association after he paraphrased a Bible verse promising damnation for unrepentant "drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators.” In other posts, Folau claimed transgender people were evil and that the devil was influencing governments to allow primary school children to change their gender. 

Several fellow players supported Folau, defending his “religious freedom” and right to share his opinion in public fora. Others denounced his fundamentalist perspectives, including fellow Wallaby David Pocock, a Christian rugby rockstar and politician who has been an outspoken advocate for equal marriage rights for same sex couples and has called out homophobic abuse on the field of play.

Weeping Welshmen and post-game prayer

As a rugby chaplain, Lewis says it’s not his job to weigh in on such issues but focus on the individuals in front of him.  

Lewis said he offers “well-being support” that is “pastorally proactive and spiritually reactive” to Christians, Muslims, or those of no faith at all.  

Martin Lewis, rugby chaplain. (Courtesy Photo, Sports Chaplaincy UK)

“A lot of players are just looking for someone to talk to who isn’t their boss or a fellow player,” Lewis said, “and I’m there to have a chat and maybe offer a bit of advice.”  

More than that, Lewis said he’s been a shoulder to cry on — literally — for some of Wales’ biggest players. “Being a chaplain is all about journeying with people,” he said. To that end, he’s performed funerals for players and their families, celebrated births and marriages, and even got a call from thankful parents who said his counsel helped save their son from suicide.  

At this year’s RWC, Lewis said there won’t be any official chaplains like there were at the 2011 event. Instead, chaplaincy will happen in a more informal way, he said.

Nations like Fiji, Samoa, Namibia, and Tonga might even bring their own chaplains. “Some of their assistant coaches might even be pastors or spiritual leaders for the team,” he said, “and might lead prayer time or Bible study every day during training.”

Keen viewers might also catch players praying together on their knees before or after the game. Even players from different teams will often circle up and pray with one another, he said, “maybe even for forgiveness for the cheap shots they took at each other on the field.”

Off the field, churches are using the excitement around the event for outreach opportunities. Conversion stories like that of former Welsh international Brian Haywood have been translated into multiple languages to be handed out in the form of tracts and booklets at fan zones in France. Lewis himself will be hosting an event in advance of the RWC featuring the testimony of retired rugby player Nick Williams, first cousin of Sonny Bill.

Whether it’s outreach, outspoken players or pre-game rituals by fans and players seeking to bend the will of the rugby gods in their direction, religion will play a role at this year’s RWC.

The keen student of religion should take note.

As a sport chaplain, Lewis will be one of those observers. “Rugby is bringing in people from all over the world,” Lewis said “and many people come to the pitch with a faith background. You have to look after that.”

Asked to prophesy this year’s winner, Lewis doesn’t think he can discern the outcome. “The Springboks, All Blacks, and France are all looking pretty good,” he said, “but my heart has to stick with the Welsh.”

Given their recent form, that may take all Lewis’ prayers to prove true.

In the beginning, we argued over origins

At the most recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, the nation’s largest evangelical denomination upheld its policy of not ordaining women as pastors.

After voting to finalize the expulsion of churches with female pastors, Southern Baptists voted to further expand restrictions on women in church leadership, potentially opening up hundreds of new churches to investigation and expulsions.

The SBC's policies state, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

As gender studies professor Susan M. Shaw wrote for The Conversation, such “battles over women in ordained ministry in the SBC are not new.” The matter of women’s roles as preachers, teachers and leaders at large have been debated by Southern Baptists since the convention’s founding in 1845.

One of the points used to undergird the argument to exclude women from ordination is a doctrine known as the “orders of creation” (or “order of creation”), which affirms God’s role in establishing social domains in the family, church and society through the very “order” of creation of the world, as recorded in the book of Genesis.

Shaw wrote:

In 1984, as fundamentalists gained greater control, the SBC passed a resolution against women’s ordination. The resolution said that women were excluded from ordained ministry to “preserve a submission God requires because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.”

Indeed, the discourse around origins can be powerful.

In this post from “What You Missed Without Religion Class,” I explore the conflict over origins and show how dealing with the genesis of the universe isn’t necessarily about what happened (or not) in the past, but very much about ordering life, traditions and communities in the present.

Of αιτία and the κόσμος

For word nerds, etiology – when used within the realm of religious studies – refers to a quasi-historical or mythical description of origins. Drawn from the Greek term αιτία, these stories have to do with the cause or why of something — that which is responsible for a present condition, the reason for today’s state of affairs.

One type of etiology is a cosmogony, which is a myth on the origins of the cosmos (κόσμος) – a story that tells us how the grandest system of them all came into being in the first place.

When I first started studying religion, I was fascinated with cosmogonies.

I devoured stories like that of Rangi the Sky-father and Papa, the Earth-mother from the annals of Maōri teachings (akoranga), perused narratives about humanity’s creation from reeds (uthlanga/umlanga), as told among the Nguni peoples of Southern Africa (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi), and dove deep into Ancient Near Eastern origin myths like the “Enuma Elish,” the Hindu “hymn of creation” from the Rig Veda, and Maya myths like the Popol Vuh.

Coming from a Christian household, my original intentions were to compare these cosmogonies to that with which I was raised. I wondered what different traditions had to say about the origin of everything that ever existed and what these stories had to say about the relationship between humans and the cosmos.

Why origin stories matter

But my early investigations were plagued by a fatal problem: I was searching for an essence, archetype, or sacred thread that would link these various stories into one grand narrative or speak to some fundamental truth about how the Divine is related to life in the world today.

Today, some two decades after I first heard the story of the Rainbow Bridge — a Chumash narrative about how people came to the mainland from Limuw (Santa Cruz) Island after being created from the seeds of a magic plant by Hutash, the Earth-mother — I’ve come to view these texts from a very different perspective than what my previous lens could offer.

These texts matter, but less because of what they have to say about the essential nature of things (which I was in search of) or whether or not they are historically verifiable.

As a point of fact, the interpretation of creation myths has changed over time. Take, for example, how the “Creation story” in Genesis has been seen as everything from a poem to a quasi-scientific textbook concerning earth’s origins and used as a prooftext to support views ranging from “young Earth” creationism to evolutionary creation, “old Earth” creationism to intelligent design.

Instead, cosmogonies and etiologies matter because they provide a window into how communities, or the students and scholars who study them, utilize such stories to situate themselves in the world and in relation to others.

The search for origins always comes from a specific place, interested in defining truth from its own position. And, in doing so, establishing the otherness between “us” (placed perfectly in the perspective of eternal history) and “them” (hopelessly askew in the etiology of things).

As the SBC example shows, these accounts use some narrative from the past (i.e., the world’s creation, a nation’s origins, the conception of a community, or the genesis of a particular place or geological formation) to authorize a position in the present.

In other words, these origin discourses are not actually about how something came into being, but instead about legitimizing or benefitting the position of the one who is telling or hearing the tale today.

Comparing cosmogonies, evaluating etiologies

There are innumerable etiologies floating around the world. The student of religion is welcome to read and study them. In fact, it is critical that the student of religion pays attention to origin stories. But not for the reasons we might think. 

Rather, we should approach them as just-so stories that authenticate contemporary discourses or positions of power in the fertile soil of a past beyond our reach and understanding.

In the case of the SBC, that means reminding women that they come after men. And, further, because of that “fact,” they are not meant to serve as pastors.

The student of religion’s task in studying cosmogonies like that is to make sense of alternative orders of reality and how they shape social realities in contemporary contexts.

Above all, as we compare cosmogonies and evaluate etiologies, we should be careful to approach them as very human attempts at producing a comprehensive vision of ultimate importance. Even describing them carries the risk of uncritically reproducing them and therefore, legitimizing them.

We must always remind ourselves that as these stories are told and retold, studied and deciphered, they are meant to not only remind hearers of their place in the cosmos, but to form persons for a particular kind of religious, social, political, or economic life.

And finally, a humble student of religion will remember that’s as true of our evaluations as it is of the origin stories we study.