Holy smokes, a mere six weeks away from graduation.  I could write a lot about that subject alone, but seeing as there’s so little time remaining with Seminar, it’s time to dust off this blog and get cracking on the good old topic of religion again.  Doubtless, people missed hearing from me.

Augustine’s The Trinity (or De Trinitate for those who prefer the fancier equivalent) is, to quote Nathan, “not exactly bedtime reading.”  The first book alone presents a mind-boggling series of explanations of how the concepts of a single God and the Trinity are not mutually exclusive, how Christ is both completely human while still entirely divine by means of becoming a servant, among others, though everything started to blur together after the two main points.  Out of the three of us—a Christian, a Jew, and a Buddhist (I just now realized how appropriate we would be for one of those campy college brochures)—we were all pretty much empty-handed when it came to following Augustine’s reasoning.   

So for right now, here’s my thoughts on the subject—something that’s been bothering me for a long time but is unrelated to any specific part of the text.  Throughout all of Augustine’s layered, increasingly  complex reasoning about Christ (reminds me of following someone leading a run with say, x-minute miles; easy enough to start off but fairly soon you’ll be left behind if you’re not practiced enough), I couldn’t help but be reminded of Christ as presented in the Gospel of Mark: simple and straightforward.  Those most highly praised by Christ were the ones who essentially said “ok,” and left it at that.  Augustine’s writing in this regard reminds me of those who were admonished by Mark’s Christ in that their beliefs and their religion as a whole needed to be, in a sense, qualified by passing a test of logic. 

This is not to say that I think Augustine’s faith was shaky.  He even explicitly states in the beginning of the first book that he accepted the doctrine of the Trinity by faith and was looking to justify it second, rather than the other way around.  Even Thomas wasn’t actually condemned by Christ after he demanded he would believe only after he put his fingers in His wounds (if I recall correctly), just that those who did not see but believed anyway were better off.  A particular lesson in whatever-grade religion class comes to mind, regarding mysteries such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Assumption, anything: “You (the indefinite ‘you’) don’t have to understand it, just believe it.  It’s very hard to understand; you probably can’t understand it.  So you just believe it.” 

Jesus’ take, according to Mark’s Gospel, seemed to be along the same lines as that grade-school lesson I learned back in the days of uniforms and shirts whose sleeves were never long enough for my then-gangly arms.  (Let’s also ignore for the moment the overwhelming urge to call out what a cop-out “just believe it” seems like.  Physicists could tell the world there’s one galaxy or billions and most people would probably buy it either way; physicists used to tell us matter might be made of little vibrating strings, and remember what the reaction was?  To quote some fellow students, people “ate that shit up.”  Bit incongruous then, then that people will roll their eyes at plausibility of many theological beliefs.  Oops—my bitterness is showing.  Anyway.)  It makes sense too; Christ preached to people who probably had less education than I did when I learned that lesson.  But provided that Christ’s take (as alluded to in Mark) was spiritually-based as well as pragmatic, where, then, does this place the morality of Augustine and his exhaustive work on theological matters that addle the religious-studiesest of young undergraduate minds?   

Right there is where I find myself grappling occasionally.  And attempting to work through the problem with the added mess of actually being a Christian feels like trying to do so with a drunk conscience.  I’ve never had this problem any time I’ve worked with Islamic theology or beliefs (coincidence that Islam forbids drinking?), but for some reason, being invested in Christianity while “doing” Christianity seems to screw up the process.  It’s difficult as hell to follow Augustine when treating the writings on a purely detached basis.  But caring for your own purposes about what he says becomes especially hard when you try to do it punch-drunk from the idea that to disagree with Augustine might be blasphemous (or something of that nature), or to believe Augustine when he might be off about something, but the worst is something more broad that I alluded to earlier, something I can best describe through analogy.  

Time for another instance from my pre-college religion classes, this one from high school:  that to have knowledge of a thing (or a person) is to have power over it/him/her.  Thus, when God spoke to Moses He called Himself “I am Who am”, because to give any other information would give away Who God is, thus giving Moses a sort of power, however slight, over God.  Assuming this is correct for the sake of argument, Augustine’s work reminds me of someone ransacking another’s personal files for any and all information they can get.  Better yet: everyone’s probably familiar with the term “shouldn’t play God,” whether or not they agree with it.  Compared to the “just believe it” priority of Mark’s Jesus (again, assuming that’s what Mark was aiming at), Augustine’s work looks like an attempt to play God—or, rather, an attempt to be God’s boss.  It seems that by trying to discover all the in’s and out’s of God’s logistics, the individual is trying to gain an upper hand over God, tell Him what He subsequently can and cannot do.  And that’s something that seems completely contrary to Christianity (which teaches followers to be completely dependent upon Christ for their salvation), Islam (literally translated meaning “submission”), and Judaism.  So as a practicing Christian, it’s that part about theological writings, particularly Augustine’s, that scares me. 

On a less moral but equally relevant note, it’s here that I remember the main point of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Counter-Reformation-work Praise of Folly: blatantly railing against the petty debates and “look at how smart and religious I am because I’m up to here in completely superfluous theological details but have never actually read the Bible”-ism of theologians and corrupt clergy of the time, Erasmus simultaneously raises up those who simply believe, who back in his day might have been denounced by the religiously decorated as unsophisticated.  

Just there, however, is an important detail.  It’s clear from both The Confessions and the intro of The Trinity that Augustine was devout to the point of almost ravenously seeking God.  As a brilliant scholar, he went about it in a scholarly fashion, so it makes sense.  Such is different from the theologians Erasmus knew and evidently couldn’t stand, as apparently they were in it for the reputation.  That’s why I’m uneasy questioning Augustine’s works for any reason (I seriously can’t win here) as they were done with the best of intentions, but nevertheless the risk present to the rest of us—of becoming like the vain theologians Erasmus knew, or telling God what He is and isn’t like based on our own conclusions—still hangs around.

To be honest I really don’t like what I wrote here.  I hate discussing this topic because I’m afraid I look either like a ”Bible beater,” paranoid, or whining about how hard it is for my good and holy  self to do the assigned reading.  None of that’s my intention, but rather my reaction to the readings and others like it based on the presence of personal faith.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, I’ve found it to be a hindrance more than a help when working on the readings from a purely academic perspective; I didn’t realize how used to “just believing” the hard parts I had gotten.  But while that signifies being a bad academic, it signifies being a good believer in the way of Mark’s Gospel.  See what I mean when I say there appears to be a conflict of interest?

Nonetheless,  people have been pulling it off for a long time, and with the likes of Augustine being lauded by Catholics and Protestants alike, (not to mention centuries of Islamic theological work) seems to point that work in theology is God-approved, and that the deciding factor is one’s intention while wracking both brains and books.  But still, for the purposes of an undergraduate Seminar course, things can be a bit messy, though hopefully this is good practice for the future.  Actually just writing down the reaction helped a lot.  So to whoever did, thanks for reading. J   

So here I am, working on my independent study (I’m so studious), and I just realized that Orsi’s account of religion as one of relationships—between adults, God, children, and the saints—seems fairly congruous to Christoph Schwobel’s argument that in the view of Chrisitan theology, the “human being is seen as relational being.  All human beings have their being in relationship to God, to themselves, and to the world, both as a world of personal and social interaction and as a material cosmos.”*  

I love it when similarities crop up like that. 

*Christophy Schwobel, “Recovering Human Dignity.”  God and Human Dignity, p. 47  

  Reading the Introduction of Robert Orsi’s book Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them reminds me of the personality or IQ quiz advertisements that pop up along the sides of several websites.  I always felt the appeal behind them was that it gave the person the opportunity to learn more about themselves; or at the very least, how they appear to the outside world.  And let’s admit, that sort of thing is always fun: the pop-culture (as opposed to serious philosophical) form of self-knowledge, like future telling or personality quizzes, appeal to our innate interest in our own selves. 

It’s here that I again commit the apparent cardinal sin of religious studies and reveal my own religious tradition, which is Roman Catholicism.  Since the cat’s been out of the bag for a pretty long time though (actually, was the cat ever in the bag?  Good heavens, I’ve been living in religious studies sin), I’ll go one step further and explain that my religious background makes me intrigued in Orsi’s book in the same way as the personality quiz.  As Orsi at least used to be Catholic, his perspective will obviously not be entirely etic, though I’m still curious to know how someone who (at least used to be) fully integrated in Catholicism views it through the lens of a scholar of religion.  So far, I have high hopes: his work seems thorough, and I found his explanation on the need to study other religious traditions to be the best articulated one I’ve yet read. 

This is not to say I’m not skeptical about certain aspects of Orsi’s statements that I predict he will rely heavily upon in his coming chapters: obviously Catholicism is a religion highly influenced by the local culture, but I’m worried Orsi will use “culture” as some sort of catch-all word for loose religious ends or discrepancies that might not fit his theory, and I curious how his views on culture will mesh with the worldwide centrality of the Papacy to the Catholic Church.  The author of another book earlier in the semester for another class seemed to do so, attributing everything controversial about her religion to “cultural” problems, rather than investigating the implications of the religion itself.

Thankfully, Orsi appears to be a much more competent scholar than this other author, and thus my worries are relatively limited.  But I am very much looking forward to reading Chapter 3 of Orsi’s book…that of the role of children in Catholicism.  While it does appeal to my personality-quiz interest—obviously I was a Catholic child at one point, and so was Orsi—I am more interested in his theory of the roles of children in the Church because of his emphasis that they must be treated as entirely separate entities from adults.  Here I want to stipulate that I agree with Orsi, as far as I understand it.  What I am curious about here is if Orsi wants to consider children as adults-in-the-making, as a sort of quasi-adult, or as entirely different species: here I’m thinking of the relationship between the caterpillar and the butterfly (I know, I know, they’re not different species, but it’s the radicalism of the change, and the fact that this radical change happens relatively overnight, that I want to emphasize here).  Orsi’s desire to characterize children as being in an entirely separate category, though this seems beneficial, seems problematic as the development of children from children to adults is a very gradual process, even more so in the spiritual and intellectual sense than in the purely physical.  How can we put them into a cleanly defined box when children have this property, when we were all once children ourselves?  This emphasis on separating children, I’m afraid, tends to dehumanize them, and without mincing words it kind of freaks me out to do so.  Nonetheless, I’m intrigued by Orsi’s proposal of how people should view children in a religious context.  Who knows—even if we don’t get to Chapter 3 in class, I might even read it on my own.   

                Early in the fall last year, my old roommate said she was upset she wasn’t raised in a religious background.  It wasn’t for any spiritual yearning, but rather, so that she could have had something off which to ground her morals.  If I remember correctly, she said something like, “I wish I could have had that foundation, just that belief in something [such as an afterlife].” 

                Considering that I always thought she was a hard-core atheist, I was shocked that I had lived with her for two semesters and never discovered this sentiment of hers.  Such matters aside, however, I think this expression reveals curious facets of religion from an atheist standpoint: that even if it is not true, it can be valued for its providing a moral grounding for believers, and thus might be worth following. 

                It ‘s not so much the desire for moral grounding that gets me, but the statement that she wanted “that belief in something” that gets me.  It alludes to something that I’ve picked up among people who were raised in a religious background but are currently non-practicing; this treatment of religion of something perhaps should be present in one’s early upbringing, but then, as one’s reason increases and takes over, is shed as some natural process of growing up.  This seems to make religion a comforting part of one’s childhood, and a watchful God and the story of redemption seem to be placed next to stories of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: not altogether necessary to a normal childhood, but one that’s pretty much expected, as well as the fact that these nice stories will someday be left behind as the child becomes an adult.  Religion is comforting and useful, even if ultimately it’s not true.    

                My old roommate’s desire to have something to believe in made me wonder at this.  Would any belief, any faith tradition, have been ok?  It makes me think about the concept of faith: in my opinion one should believe something because he/she genuinely believes it’s true.  But the way my old roommate talked about it, she made it seem like faith was a take-your-pick of anything that will do.  But doubtless people have faith in this fashion: how many people are their current religion because it’s what they were born into, or what was convenient for their lifestyle or geographical location? 

Despite the above digression, the idea of religion’s role mainly being some larval stage, or a cocoon, or more accurately some shell that will eventually be molted as people grow up, both for tradition’s sake and elementary moral foundation, strikes me as an odd way to conceive religion, but one that probably deserves more attention.   

  Bharativa Temple—in my case, an unusual spot to spend a Sunday morning.  Being short on time today, I’ll skip the descriptions of the place, although Bud was right when he said that there was a sense of ease about the place.  That could be a long post in its own right, and I’ll probably get to it later.  But I’ll skip to what sticks with me: that even now on Tuesday, I’m still trying to wrap my Abrahamic-oriented head around the Hindu belief of a single God taking infinite manifestations in the forms of other gods. 

  But first, a disclaimer.  I’m always nervous that when I voice my questions about the theology of other religions I sound almost bratty, like some little kid making slights about a new food he refuses to eat.  Such, however, is not my intention at all.  In fact the only reason I’m asking these questions is because I genuinely wish I knew the answer, not some “gotcha” objective.  That being said, I’ll continue. 

  While the above statement about God’s identity and ability to manifest seems easy enough to nod to, it’s the logistics of that belief that I have yet to digest.  The crux of my question is that when the “Supreme” (I think that’s the Hindu term for the one God), manifests in say, Ganesha, is all of the Supreme manifested in Ganesha, or simply a piece of the Supreme, while other pieces are manifested into however many gods also exist?  This goes into my subsequent question, about how the gods, if they are all just different instances of the same god, can have children together as is the case in Hindu stories.  Does this mean that more of the Supreme exists now that two gods had a child?  Or is the child simply another type of manifestation of the Supreme, and is how the Supreme wishes to manifest itself?  I think what confused me here is do the gods, in creating a child, act on their own accord or is the action of the two gods due to the single will and action of the one Supreme of which they are both composed.  Basically, my question is how can one entity act as two different parties, creating a new third god who also traces back to the original Supreme.  In trying to phrase my question, however, it doesn’t seem as confusing as I originally thought.  If the Supreme is in fact the Supreme, why couldn’t it act as two separate entities yet still be the same Supreme?  And then, if the two entities are in fact the Spureme, then of course the third created god could only be the Supreme manifested as well.  It actually reminds me of the Sufi writings of Ibn-Arabi, whose writings are famous for his descriptions about the manifestations of God in both male and female forms. 

 Despite this, I would still be curious to know if the two gods creating the third (I wish I knew specific names and stories here to make it easier), are manifestations of the whole Supreme in different forms, or if they are manifestations of “pieces” of the Supreme, and are a sort of showcase for that “piece.”  While this would still seem to make sense in how the third created god would be a manifestation of the Supreme (as it doesn’t seem to conflict with the will or ability of the Supreme), it would presumably change the logistics of the Supreme’s manifestation in the gods, thus I’m curious to know Hinduism’s specific stance here. 

  While I was trying to grasp this concept of the Supreme being put into several different forms, it was suggested to me that I should just think of it in terms of the Trinity.  To that, I have to say “no dice.”  I don’t get the Trinity, for starters.  But in Christianity, at least in Catholicism, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit is incarnated as another form.  To that someone might reply that they don’t need to be: they could simply be seen as separate manifestations of God as they are.  To that, I’m still not sure if it works.  Unlike the gods of Hinduism, the three parts of the Trinity don’t interact on levels familiar to human beings, and any time I try to relate anything to the Trinity I quickly get jumbled up.  Thus, unfortunately, I’m  not sure if the analogy is accurate, so I’m not keen on accepting it.  Seems I have to try to grasp Hindu beliefs without any help: to be honest, I think that’s a better idea, as using something as theologically loaded as the Trinity for a lens might distort what Hindus actually believe.       

  Finally, more amusing to me than making me ask questions, was how the Hindu importance of meditating on the Supreme as a distinct form and a distinct manifestation, is the polar opposite of the very serious Muslim belief that God is never to be likened to any form.  There are different advantages to both priorities (I guess in both theological and meditative senses), but it made me smile that for once, there seemed to be a definite, put-your-finger-on-it difference to point out between religions.  Also, the benefit and priority placed by Hindus on the ability to meditate on the Supreme as a distinct manifestation, was novel to me, who is more familiar with the Muslim stipulation on this subject.  (As far as I know, Catholicism doesn’t have much to say here, as pictures of Christ are everywhere but pictures of God are rare, but I have a feeling the Vatican would go for the Muslim stance.)

  I enjoyed the trip to Bharativa Temple, as it made me curious about the specifics of Hindu beliefs and made a religion that felt distant seem much more accessible, despite the questions the visit sparked.    

  Diana Eck’s book A New Religious America, without mincing words, was an inspiring read but not a very informative one.  For the purposes of this blog post, I’m choosing to pick on the chapter titled Muslims in America.  It’s about Muslims living in America.

  The information found in this chapter is informative from a historical viewpoint, in that it describes how and when Muslims started to arrive in America, and the subsequent treatment of both themselves and their religion by their neighbors (or in the case of the many Muslim slaves brought from Africa, by their masters), up to the present day.  But enough book reporting: that’s just not fun. 

  On to the critical part.  Muslims in America is historically enlightening, as well as the information about the in’s and out’s of the lives of today’s American Muslims.  Regarding the treatment of the actual topic of religious pluralism in America, in this case particular to the United States’ Muslim population, Eck’s statements are typical of the type of literature I seem to be encountering left and right this semester.  Emphasis on Islam being a misunderstood religion, often wrapped up in stereotypical images of the exotic Middle East, is an idea repeated throughout the chapter, if implicitly.  Eck does so by emphasizing the idea of Muslims trying to establish themselves as fully as any other religious group in the United States, and that religion acts like a base line off which American Muslims are building schools, stores, and careers.  Contrary to the stereotype that Muslims are terrorists plotting to destroy some building or another, Muslims in the States are actually concerned with having a decent place to educate their kids. 

  I completely agree with Eck on this point, but do not like the rosy overtones Eck uses to explicitly declare America’s growing religious plurality, and the constant restatement of this idea made it seem worn out by the end of the first chapter.  Throughout much of A New Religious America, I didn’t feel like I was reading a book, so much as a lengthy brochure for America as some religious utopia in which we will all soon, in the scholar Sherman Jackson’s words, “be holding hands and singing Kumbaya.” 

  But not all scholars agree with such sunshiny sentiments.  Au contraire, dear readers.  Au contraire. 

  While at the gym this morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe came on between two TV’s playing ESPN, and as usual I didn’t really care.  This time around, however, a book flashed on the screen titled The Trouble with Islam Today.  As is normally the case when I see such books, I thought it was written by a sensationalist.  But the book’s author, NYU professor Irshad Manji, is herself a Muslim (and an NYU professor.  So I’m assuming she’s pretty smart).  The gist of the discussion between Manji and the show’s hosts were that Islam’s role in terrorist acts should be seriously investigated.  As support, the group noted that in the past eight years, the vast majority of terrorists have been Muslim, as well as the websites related to Islam (in some form or another) that these terrorists often visited.  The entire discussion took place in light of the recent Ft. Hood Tragedy, in which 12 people were killed by a Muslim psychiatrist in a shooting spree.  (Click here for the discussion clip.)

  A voice such as Manji’s is an interesting contrast to Eck.  While Eck is quick to dissuade people from being suspicious of Islam as a religion that encourages terrorism, Manji says that Islam’s possible role in such terrible acts should be actively investigated (her tag line being “Let’s analyze Ft. Hood, not sanitize it”). 

  Though Manji’s input puts into further relief that Eck’s book seems altogether too idealistic to provide a full picture of the pluralizing of America, I can’t help but wonder if the two ideas are necessarily mutually exclusive.  The majority of terrorists in the past eight years have been Muslim, ok.  But something seems wrong with the idea of treating every Muslim with suspicion on basis of religion.  To this, the commentators on Morning Joe stated that the Islam of terrorists is akin to the Christianity of Timothy McVeigh.  (But they also note the Oklahoma City attack isn’t considered an act of Christian extremism.)  So where does that lead?

  Eck’s book is a good starting point for pointing out many, many examples of emerging religious diversity and plurality in America.  But I don’t think enough substantial information is provided in the book beyond that statement, which presents problems when authors such as Manji come onto the current religious scene. 

Philip Gleason’s piece, The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?  explores the various ways the “melting pot” terminology has been born and raised through various streams of immigration into America, anti-immigration laws that resulted, and various other political and social movements. 

                Gleason is correct, however, to wonder at the accuracy of the melting pot analogy/symbol/metaphor/theory when decribing the attitude of ethnic groups in America towards each other.  Despite the different versions of the Melting Pot, the analogy (at least that’s what I’ll call it for the purposes of this blog) throughout seem to be inaccurate for a few reasons. 

                Melt things together, and it will homogenize them all; thus it makes sense that the pioneers of the melting pot stipulated that a new “American” ethnicity would rise out of the various overseas ingredients (though I’m curious to know why they were so certain this new American would be some sort of superman). 

                But this hasn’t been how the mechanics of intermingling ethnic groups (by which I mean intermarriage…or is plain old intercourse the word nowadays?) have worked.   A child with an Irish mother and Czech father doesn’t consider herself a new breed of person…ask her what her background is, and she’ll simply state the two ethnicities.  She’d consider herself a simple mixture of two groups that she lists as separate quantities, not some emergent third ethnicity.  I very much doubt that while in America, she would answer “American” to the question of her background.  Even through two or three generations in America, people retain identity to their ethnic background, despite how many origins it has—they’ll list them all.  And while it’s possible to think that very far down the line, people might be so intermingled that everyone will contain a little bit of every ethinic group, with globalization and continued immgration and emmigration, I doubt such a thing will ever occur. 

                 In addition to the melting pot not actually melting us together to yield a homogenized ehtnicity, other terms of the analogy seem to give a distorted view of what, exactly, Americans are made of.  Though the melting pot terminology will likely not ever be completely removed from describing-American-groups vocabulary, thankfully I don’t think people take the term as seriously as Gleason alludes to in his paper.  Granted, the only times I’ve ever the term growing up were in grade school lessons and a song in SchoolHouse Rock (to which cartoons of smiling afro’ed white people in bellbottoms jumping off a spoon handle into a giant cauldron swimming-pool comes to mind)—not people who professionally study the term’s evolution through history.  Nonetheless, the term in everyday parlance is used more as a figure of speech than anything else, a simple buzzword for the number of groups living together in America who are able and not opposed to intermingling, whether or not they actually do.  The “melting pot” term seems problematic only when one thinks the implications of the name accurately mirrors the logisitcs of the phenomenon, and luckily most people don’t seem so devoted to the analogy. 

As the discussion between myself, Nathan, and Ryan demonstrated during the ride back to campus from the synagogue, any number of things from the service could be discussed at great length, in infinite detail.  And as I normally write novel-length blog posts, in most cases I’d be glad to do so.  Being short on time, however, I’m going to stick with just discussing what stands out most in my memory of the service: the constant music, and constant ritual. 

Shortly after we arrived, the cantor started singing, and it seemed as though it did not stop for the nearly three-hour length of the service.  This is quite different from what I expected, as the only thing I was fairly confident would happen was a sort of sermon by the rabbi.  Apart from the rabbi being entirely absent (threw me for a loop there, though I guess this reinforces the Jewish importance of community that one could pick up throughout the service), there was almost no sermon; save for the interpretations of the two bat mitzvahs, about five minutes each, the rest of the service there was movement everywhere to complete the next ritual, the next reading, and the constant singing that accompanied each one.

I am not really sure how to interpret the constant music or singing, though obviously it’s integral to the service.  This could even be seen simply by looking at the pamphlet for the synagogue: the cantor’s name and position is listed directly under the rabbi’s. 

The very high proportion of ritual (under which I’m including the various readings) to the parts that seemed to allow for more personal interpretation of sorts, reinforces that Judaism is a religion more concerned with orthopraxy than orthodoxy.  If I remember correctly from my World Religions class last semester, this is in fact the case. 

There are several other aspects of the service that I hope we get to talk about in class.  The relaxed attitude of the congregation compared to the still, silent one of the average Christian church, the significance of women wearing or not wearing a head covering, and the emphasis on the Jewish community throughout the service (both within and without the actual rituals and readings) are just a few topics.  I wouldn’t say I was confused during the service—I feel like I got the gist of it, but I have no doubts there are several subtleties and themes that I missed, which, if clarified, would help me gain much greater insight into the service I witnessed last Saturday. 

                I was at my old roommate’s house today with a few of our friends.  Our friend Allie remarked at how the house looked very “fall-y,” and then said that “autumnal” would be a better word for it.  At this, our other friend Lauren mentioned that her old high school (or some school, at any rate) doesn’t call Halloween “Halloween” anymore.  Rather, they now call it something like “Autumn Holiday.” I jokingly asked if “Halloween” has too many (or is ‘much’ the word?) religious overtones, and she replied that really thinks that was the issue.

                Initially I rolled my eyes at what appeared to be a paranoid level of political correctness.  But if discussions from my Sociology of Religion class are any indication, paganism, when taken as a whole, is a growing group on the world religions scene.  Coupled with Nathan once having mentioned people “taking [religions] seriously enough to be offended by them,” and apply that to people wanting to banish the word “Halloween” from a school’s calendar, then perhaps that’s evidence that it’s really happening.  If that really is the case, then, it begs the question: is replacing the word “Halloween” with “Autumn Holiday” a cut against paganism by trying to remove allusions to it from the public (school) sphere, or is it actually showing respect by taking it seriously enough to hold it to the same levels of restriction as major world religions?  Hmm.

                Just a thought.  Back to independent study.   

  I was thinking about our upcoming trip to a synagogue tomorrow, and I was reminded of something a professor told me in one of my other classes: that she is a member of a group of secular Jews, who still gather for celebration of Jewish holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur despite their lack of religious belief. 

  She stated that the point of these celebrations was to maintain a Jewish identity, if I remember correctly.  But when I thought it over again (and hopefully I don’t sound like a blockhead for phrasing it like this), it seems strange to celebrate a religious holiday if one doesn’t believe in it.  To me, it seems as if a religious celebration has cultural value because it has religious value.  How can one get cultural identity or value out of a ritual if one doesn’t believe in the ritual?  Isn’t one’s belief behind it what gives the ritual any legitimacy to begin with? 

  Well, hold on, self.  Halloween being right around the corner makes me think of the day’s pagan roots that were supposed to have started in Ireland, Germany, or some other locations…seems to depend on who you ask.  But nevertheless, paganism gave religious significance to the day.  I’m not pagan, but I still consider celebrating Halloween as a holiday has cultural overtones, at least in terms of being part of an American culture.  So maybe my professor meant something along those lines.

  Then again I could be completely wrong, and the Halloween analogy seems like a weak one at best.  If anyone has a better idea about what my professor meant when she talked about preserving the cultural value to Jewish ceremonies without religious belief, and would be willing to explain, I would greatly appreciate any input; I’m really intrigued by the attitude, but I’m just unsure about how it “works.”

  Originally, I had forgotten to blog about this.  But I found myself on someecards.com again tonight, and looking around, I found this one, which jogged my memory.  Unlike the previous ecard I blogged about, I only related this one to my professor’s Judaism because it was on my mind earlier—but I thought it was applicable nonetheless.  Just so everyone knows, though, I’m all for the doing of cultural things, religiously or non-religiously backed.