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If you ever wonder what’s the future of freethinking and who’s leading the charge; if you are curious to know what Freethinkers of today are doing to ensure that tomorrow’s secular world is on the right path; if you want to know what’s good to (free) think about these days; or, if you simply want to read a mind-bending interview, tune in to Religion Nerd for my series, Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers.

By Michel-Camille Bordeau

Parenting works in mysterious ways. It’s a complex affair for experienced, willing parents and an intimidating undertaking for those who, like myself, never prepared themselves for it, never imagined they would be fit for the task, or be given the opportunity.

Two years ago, I became a born again parent, a step-dad to an 8 year old with an incredible (free)thinking mind and a mean high kick.  Overnight, I grew a second heart—the first one being for his mother—and with twice the volume of blood stimulating my (free)thinking brain, I discovered a whole new family of anxieties that can be summed up with: ‘Seriously, don’t fark up (this kid’s life).’

Any life is precious, but that of a kid, who is half your responsibility, is a gem with so many sharp facets, that you’re always concerned you might get cut—and that regardless of the positive encouragements you receive from loved ones, your step-kid included. Still, as a (free)thinker, I had to find additional inspiration in written words.  That’s when a freethinking friend of mine with much parenting expertise recommended Dale McGowan’s Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief, what she called the ‘bible on parenting the (free)thinking way.’

Combining the words ‘bible’ and ‘parenting’ in one sale’s pitch to yours truly is a risky approach but it paid off. After all, I had to hope that there would be a book that deserved to be considered the bible of parenting, since the Bible itself, had little to offer in matters of non-authoritarian, non- patriarchal, post-Bronze Age parenting.  Indeed, I was looking for a book that would agree with my embryonic style of parenting, one that may include the occasional reprimand, but would not (re)enact the authoritarian-abusive parenting I grew up with.

And my hopes were rewarded. Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief gave me confidence that I was approaching parenting the right way, it gave me hope that I could succeed, and, my friend was absolutely right, it is the ‘Bible’ on parenting the (free)thinking way.  I had to interview Dale McGowan on behalf of my ReligionNerd friends.  I had to share his gospel.  And here it is:  

MCB: You are advocating for a child-centered, collaborative, and responsive approach to parenting–what psychologists call authoritative parenting.  Why do you think this is the best parenting model for a family of freethinkers?  Is it as rewarding for parents as it is for their children?

 DM: Authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) parenting is centered on explanation. There are rules, and they are enforced, but they are also explained. A child is given the explicit right to question the fairness or reasonableness of a parental decision (but not to disregard it without consequence). There is also an open invitation to question authority, including the authority of the parent.

This approach helps the child develop active moral judgment rather than merely the ability to follow orders, which results in a much more powerful and effective moral sense. Best of all, it results in an independent thinker, not someone who simply parrots what authority figures (including the parent) have said.

It’s one of the most challenging parental styles, but also incredibly rewarding for the parent to watch the development of a deep, rich, complex and nuanced moral sense.

MCB: Raising Freethinkers is so user friendly that I’m tempted to claim that parenting finally comes with a manual! You conclude each chapter with an abundance of practical suggestions—reading recommendations, family activities, exercises, etc.—and it’s a gold mine for non-theist families trying to feel confident about their parenting approach.  Is it also a gold mine for theist families or do you think it is impossible to reconcile humanistic ethics and religious moral? 

DM:  Oh absolutely.  We too often put a bright line between religious and nonreligious, failing to realize that progressive religious people/parents share 90 percent of their values with us— far more than they share with the fundamentalists.  I’ve received many emails from progressive religious parents who have read Raising Freethinkers and found it entirely applicable to their parenting.

 MCB: You make it clear that ‘beyond beliefs’ does not mean ‘without a basic knowledge of belief systems.’  You even recommend that parents educate their freethinkers about religion.  What will future freethinkers gain from learning about religious practice?  And what might parents be most concerned about?

DM:  Ninety percent of those around us see the world to some degree in religious terms. If our children are to be anything but baffled by the human world around them, they must have some grasp of religion and religious ideas, period, end of sentence. They also need this exposure if they are genuinely to make their own worldview decisions.  Nothing about my own worldview means more to me than the fact that I came to it myself, fully informed but free to think and choose.  I wouldn’t deny my kids that same freedom.

Most parental concerns in this area are alleviated by a breadth of exposure to ideas and influences. There’s no greater threat to the development of a supple and capable intelligence than exclusive exposure to a single point of view—including our own.  It seems from my conversations with hundreds of parents over the years that children raised in secular homes, who are shielded from exposure to religious ideas and practices, are the most likely to end up glomming on to toxic religious expressions as the answer to a personal crisis in their teens or beyond.  The forbidden or unknown thing behind that church door suddenly becomes attractive and powerful.  Kids with knowledge of religion are far less susceptible to that emotional hijacking.  So the danger is in ignorance, not knowledge.

MCB: Parenting has gone through many positive changes in the past fifty years.  The biggest step forward has been to admit—at least in academic circles—that nothing positive comes out of authoritarian parenting.  Yet, it still prevails and, consequently, too many children continue to suffer mental and physical abuses.  What do you think will have to happen in the next fifty years, if we hope to see a cultural shift toward a more authoritative parenting model?

DM:  Authoritarianism at all levels—individual, familial, national, societal—is a response to fear.  When we are afraid, we retreat into that limbic brain.  We respond with violence, intolerance, and a whole range of other pathologies.  It’s never our finest moment.  The best thing we can do to move parents toward a more positive parenting model is to diminish fear about outcomes. It helps if parents recognize that (for example) corporal punishment produces ten different negative outcomes and that reason-based parenting tends to produce reasonable, ethical kids. The same applies above the parenting level.  We need to show that nonviolence, diplomacy, negotiation, reason, and other alternatives to aggressive problem-solving have a long history of effectiveness.

MCB: Based on the response from fans and/or critics, what changes, if any, would you consider making to Raising Freethinkers?  Also, tell us about your current projects, initiatives, etc?

DM:  Honestly, there’s not much that I would change.  We applied several lessons learned from Parenting Beyond Belief that helped Raising Freethinkers land right in the sweet spot for so many parents.  I’ve been thrilled with the reception.

My current projects include running Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist charitable foundation with 800 members.  We feature ten charities per quarter and have raised over $145,000 since January 2010, including $20,700 for Japan tsunami relief.

I’m also working on several books, including a college-level anthology of freethought historical documents, a children’s book about natural selection, a personal exploration of religious practice from an atheist’s perspective, and a collection of Judeo-Christian myths told at last as the exciting stories they can be once you drop the sacred kid-gloves. Who knows what will see the light of day!

DALE MCGOWAN left a 15-year career as a college professor in 2006 to pursue writing full-time. He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resources for nonreligious parents. Dale writes the very inspired and very helpful secular parenting blog The Meming of Life. He teaches nonreligious parenting seminars across the United States, and serves as executive director of Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist charitable and educational foundation based in Atlanta—we are neighbors. In September 2008 he was named Harvard Humanist of the Year by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. Last, but not least, he is such an approachable person, that we are on a first name basis. Dale, continue the hard work!

 *****************************

Michel-Camille Bordeau is the founder and author of The School of Seshata  (www.scriptotheism.net), a blog about Liberal Spirituality, a concept of spirituality based on compassion and reason, core principles of Humanistic Ethics. Michel is also a regular contributor to www.ReligionNerd.com.  He’s recently started “Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers,” an interview series about the past, present, and future [OF] secular scholarship.

Michel earned an M.A. in French Studies from The Ohio State University (1998) and is A.B.D., also in French Studies, from the University of Michigan (2001). Mid-life crisis oblige, he is returning to college in August 2011, to pursue an M.S.W. with a specialization in Mental Health & Drugs of Abuse. Before relocating to Atlanta, Michel was an Academic Advisor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, for nearly ten years. He has advised many students (and parents) on academic and life matters. He taught English, Public Speaking, Humanities, and French at various colleges and universities. In 2002, Michel published Poire Sucrée, Salée, Epicée, a short novel about a dance teacher forced to face the demons of her past. He is currently seeking representation for Seeing Purple, a dystopian novel set in Anaïs Abelard’s hometown, the New Orleans of tomorrow, also home to the power-hungry mega church known as the Calvinistry. Michel considers himself an amateur ‘atheologist,’ and writes and speaks primarily about religious determinism, atheist spirituality, and freethinking therapy.  

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By Michel-Camille Bordeau

If you ever wonder what’s the future of freethinking and who’s leading the charge; if you are curious to know what Freethinkers of today are doing to ensure that tomorrow’s secular world is on the right path; if you want to know what’s good to (free) think about these days; or, if you simply want to read a mind-bending interview, tune in to Religion Nerd for my series, Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers.

If, like yours truly, you’ve been closely following the new wave of freethinkers, if you’ve helped Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Bart Ehrman, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and many others become bestselling authors, you might remember Matthew Alper, author of The ‘God’ Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God. You might even recall the original cover of the 1996 self-published edition of his seminal work. 

Indeed, there were 50,000 of us who became fans long before The “God” Part of the Brain was bought by Sourcebooks and repackaged in 2008.  And, to think of it, long before the aforementioned became household names.

Although The “God” Part of the Brain continues to pad Sourcebooks’ pocketbook; although it has been adopted by about 50 college professors; and, although, fifteen years after the initial release, Matthew Alper still receives hundreds of e-mails from students and professors worldwide, I still think it should get more attention. It should get Religion Nerd’s reader’s attention. Here’s why.

First, Matthew Alper is one of the first thinkers, if not the first thinker, to successfully demonstrate that human spirituality and our longing for a transcendental being might have a bio-psychological root.  Second, he is responsible for the now fast growing field of bio-theology (aka, neuro-theology).  And, last but not least, The ‘God’ Part of the Brain is a remarkably easy read, considering the complexity of the concepts Alper introduces.  In short, below is my interview with Matthew Alper, a true pioneer.

MCB: Why is ‘God’ in quotation marks in your title? Is God always in quotation marks for Matthew Alper?

MA: I put God in quotation marks in my book’s title for the simple reason that I don’t believe in one [God]and wanted that to come through lest people think I was writing a book which suggested that the actual spirit of God somehow resides in our heads as many probably do believe.  According to Wikipedia, the use of quotation marks to denote sarcasm is referred to as irony punctuation so this was my intention.

MCB: Why did you relegate the mind-bending concepts of religious and spiritual impulses to a footnote?

MA: My book is so packed with mind-bending concepts that sometimes I ran out of room and had to cram some concepts, as they occurred to me, into footnotes to avoid shifting all of the page/chapter settings, which, frankly, would have been a pain in the ass.

MCB: And what do you say to people who argue that the spiritual/religious dichotomy is a contemporary and fallacious invention?

MA: Every culture from the dawn of our species–no matter how isolated–has believed in some form of a spiritual reality.  I therefore hypothesize that this would suggest that humans, as a species, are genetically predisposed–that is “hard-wired”–to believe in some form of a transcendental reality.  This is further supported by an accumulation of genetic, anthropological, biological, and ethno-botanical evidence.  Thus, one of the main premises of my book is that humans are genetically engineered with a dualistic perception of reality which compels the majority of our species to believe in some form of a spiritual reality.  It is neither a social or historical construct but rather a biological one.  The function of this cognitive adaptation is to enable our species to survive our unique and otherwise debilitating awareness of death.  Of course, each individual belief system, that is religion, is constructed by individual cultures, but the initial predisposition to have faith in a spiritual realm comes from the mechanics of our neurophysiology–what I informally refer to as our “God” part of the brain.

MCB: Which concepts in The “God” Part of the Brain show your greatest strength as a thinker?

MA: Without reiterating the entirety of those concepts I think are most original to my work and which highlight my strengths as a thinker, I will simply list seven of them as something of a teaser.

1. That humans are genetically predisposed to a dualistic interpretation of reality. 
2. My theory that it was the advent of self-conscious awareness, which, though it made us the most powerful species on earth, also made us the first animal to be aware of our own mortality. It was this debilitating anxiety of inevitable death that I suggest prompted the evolution of a cognitive adaptation that helped allay our fear of death by compelling us to believe in an alternate, transcendental realm through which our “souls” or “spirits” would persevere for all eternity.
3. My theory regarding the nature of our view of infinity as nothing more than a cognitive construct.
4. How in our original state–as Paleolithic nomads–the religious function was essential but then became maladaptive as we became a global animal.
5. The biologizing of our concepts of good and evil via my theories regarding the evolution of moral reasoning.
6. A biological explanation of atheism and the introduction of the new field of “Bio-Theology” and “Bio-History.”
7. A neurophysiological interpretation of near-death experiences, speaking in tongues, transcendent states and religious conversion.

MCB: The God Part is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. What do you have to say to your new readers that you didn’t have a chance to say in 1996? 

MA: I’d say to them, “Why didn’t you listen to me in 1996 when I first discussed these ideas? What the hell were you doing then that was so important? And now you want me to repeat myself?”

MCB: In the 2008 edition of The “God” Part of the Brain you first introduce the concept of bio-history and illustrate your point by discussing what has motivated people to immigrate to the US.  How can bio-history help readers better conceptualize (their) cultural heritage?  Can it help them understand why religion plays such an important role in American life?

MA: Regarding the premise of bio-history, without reiterating the entire chapter, suffice to say that, what I wanted to introduce as a concept was that just as particular physical traits can be passed along with the migration of a particular gene pool via the phenomenon known as genetic drift (as was true, for instance, of those physical traits associated with the Native Americans whose Asian ancestors crossed the Bering Strait), the same holds true for cognitive traits which can also be transferred by the migrations of certain gene pools. 

MCB: You have a fascinating chapter entitled ‘Why are there Atheists?’ I’m sure Religion Nerd readers would like to know why you think there are people like us? 

MA: In that chapter, I offer the first proactive take on an atheistic philosophy i.e., as most atheistic ideologies are based in the mere denial of God’s existence, I would like to stress that no philosophy can be justifiably upheld without possessing some underlying logic through which to substantiate its basic principles. Without such a logic, what is referred to as a philosophy is really nothing more than just another groundless belief system, founded in emotion rather than reason. As I see it, this is the essential problem faced by today’s atheist movement. Rather than possessing an inherent wisdom of its own, the atheist movement relies on the logical shortcomings of those faiths it seeks to contest. And though it’s true that no religion has ever been able to defend its precepts with reason, no legitimate philosophy can stand on gainsay alone. The contradicting of one belief system does not validate the tenets of another. Establishing that something is not white, for instance, does not necessitate its being black.  Analogously, finding fault in the convictions of every world religion does not constitute proof that there is no God.  Consequently, if we are ever to advance a viable atheism, it must possess its own rationale, its own logical foundation, something I believe this new science of Bio-theology finally provides.

When I re-read The ‘God’ Part of the Brain to prepare this interview, I was most impressed by the maturity and freshness of Matthew’s incredible effort—I like to think we are on a first name basis.  Reading The ‘God’ Part of the Brain today, reading it along the works of Harris, Dawkins, and Bennett, reminded me that I/we have a lot more to learn from it.

For more information on Matthew Alper and his book, The ‘God’ Part of the Brain, visit his website at http://www.godpart.com/

**************************

About Michel-Camille Bordeau

Michel-Camille Bordeau is the founder and author of The School of Seshata (www.scriptotheism.net), a blog about secular spirituality and the home of the Scriptopedia Project. Michel earned an M.A. in French Studies from The Ohio State University (1998).  Mid-life crisis oblige, he is returning to college in August 2011, to pursue an M.S.W. with a specialization in Mental Health & Drugs of Abuse.

Before relocating to Atlanta, Michel was an Academic Advisor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, for nearly ten years. He has advised many students (and parents) on academic and life matters. He taught English, Public Speaking, Humanities, and French at various colleges and universities. In 2002, Michel published Poire Sucrée, Salée, Epicée, a short novel about a dance teacher forced to face the demons of her past. He is currently seeking representation for Seeing Purple, a dystopian novel set in Anaïs Abelard’s hometown, the New Orleans of tomorrow, also home to the power-hungry mega church known as the Calvinistry. Michel considers himself an amateur ‘atheologist’ and he often writes under the nom de plume Anais Abelard.

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By Michel-Camille Bordeau

CJ Werleman

If you ever wonder what’s the future of freethinking and who’s leading the charge; if you are curious to know what Freethinkers of today are doing to ensure that tomorrow’s secular world is on the right path; if you want to know what’s good to (free) think about these days; or, if you simply want to read a mind-bending interview, tune in to Religion Nerd for my series, Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers.

The format is simple: I read a book, contact the author with a lengthy email, invite him/her to answer half a dozen questions, and then I wait eagerly to see if blind confidence gets rewarded.  And it does.

The first Freethinker I decided to interview for this series was the Australian born author of God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible and  Jesus Lied-He was Only Human: Debunking The New Testament, C.J. Werleman. When I initiated contact, after a brief introduction, I made sure to explain to some length how much I understood, enjoyed, and had a willingness to share with fellow Religion Nerd readers his rationalist take on the Bible.

My hopes were very soon answered. CJ sent responses to my questions in less than twenty-four hours—I like to think we are on a first name basis. I am a fan, if you haven’t notice.  And after this, I hope you will be one too.

MC:  Do you think rationalists, freethinkers, and secular scholars have to resort to in-your-throat titles in order to be heard?  How did this marketing strategy work for you? What other titles did you consider? Anything Twitter worthy? [CJ Werleman--@rationalists-- is very active on Twitter]

CJ: Interesting question.  I guess a captivating title is essential for any book these days, no matter the genre. Especially when you consider the vast number of new titles released every year, which is a result of improved self-publishing ease and accessibility.  Now days, anyone can write a novel, for example, and then self-publish on Kindle within two minutes of completing their manuscript.  Thus, with a litany of available titles on the market, an attention grabber is a must.  Unless you’re a Dan Brown, of course. Coming up with the title for God Hates You. Hate Him Back was as difficult as writing the book itself.  I wanted something that conveyed the objective of the book, that being to demonstrate the God of the Bible is arguably the most wicked character of all fiction, using the sixty-six chapters of the Holy Book to validate that claim.  For a long time, every title that either I came up with or my publisher suggested, didn’t meet the litmus test I had set.  Then, with less than four weeks to release I was watching Lethal Weapon 2, of all movies.  And there is a scene where Danny Glover’s character says, “I think God hates me!” In reply Mel Gibson says, “Do what I do, hate him back.” That was the light bulb moment, while eating nachos and enjoying a beer watching a crappy movie.

MC:  God Hates You. Hate Him Backis refreshingly humorous considering the seriousness of your project—plowing through the Bible for a non-apologetic, textual analysis. Was there a particular point in your research where you wanted to toss humor out the window and empty your lungs? Can you recall particularly frustrating passages?

CJ:  Ha. Well, yes, the Bible can be a tediously boring endeavor.  For example, reading Leviticus is like watching golf on valium.  It reads as an ancient cookbook, providing every minuscule detail for preparing bread offerings.  I’m sleepy just thinking about it. But overall I love the Bible. It remains the most significant book in all of Western civilization, but no one reads it. Christians don’t even read it. In my book I cite one study that shows 93% of American households own at least one copy of the Bible but 75% of Americans can’t name the four gospels. So I wanted to write a summary of the Bible in a manner that makes it enjoyable and entertaining, and not just for theologians, but for the man in the street. Like me.

MC:  By the end of the Old Testament, your precise count reveals that Satan is not in God’s league when it comes to genocidal mania—40 innocent victims versus 31 million is a shocking discrepancy. What social, cultural, if not economical mechanisms must be set forth for people to realize that (1) the Bible is a toxic, if not dangerous read, and that (2) their interests are better served outside the influence of Religion?

CJ:  Absolutely the Bible is a dangerous book if you do what God commands you to do.  For example, if my daughter says, “God damn it!” I’m to take her to the edge of the town and bash her brains out with large rocks.  If I wish to sell my daughter into sexual slavery, not only does the Bible not say there’s anything wrong with that, it gives commercial terms and conditions for doing such a thing.  When we look at places like tribal Pakistan, for example, there they routinely execute people for blasphemy, a victimless crime.  Now, are they barbaric, evil people?  No they’re not.  In fact, according to biblical law, of which the Koran is based, they’re more pious and pleasing to God than those who ignore that command. When people become cognizant of these kinds of issues, people realize this ancient book has no relevancy in today’s times.

MC:  You make a point of demonstrating that authors of the Bible were ‘family-challenged.’ What’s your reaction to contemporary theists who are still convinced that the Bible is a moral barometer in matters of marriage, family, parenting?  What would you like (to tell us) to tell them?

CJ:  Well, similar to my answer in the previous question, the Bible only provides moral guidance if you wish to live in a world of tribal barbarism.  If you don’t think slavery, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are good values, then the Bible is not a great reference for morality.

MC: Which argument in God Hates You. Hate Him Back shows your greatest strength as a thinker?  Is this the strength most recognized by your readers or critics?

CJ:  I’d hate to second guess or presume my reader’s thoughts, but based on the feedback I do receive, and at the risk of being a presumptuous turd, it would seem people admire the way I do go question the taboo and sacred in a no-holds barred manner.

MC:  Tell us about your new book, Jesus Lied-He was Only Human: Debunking The New Testament. You don’t beat around the (burning) bush with that one either; do you consider it a continuation of God Hates You, or an entirely new project? What should your readers be excited about?

CJ:  Jesus Lied He Was Only Human is somewhat of a sequel to my first book.  With God Hates You. Hate Him Back I examine all sixty-six chapters of the Bible, but as the Old Testament comprises more of the Bible than the New, it’s the former that gets most of the attention, and therefore a closer examination of the Jesus myth had to be its own, stand-alone book, as there was just too much to cover. Using the New Testament, and some Gnostic gospels, I break down Jesus’ life into the respective milestones of birth, baptism, childhood, ministry, arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection.  I then show readers how wildly the gospels contradict one another with their respective accounts. Bearing in mind we have no biographies of Jesus outside of the Bible. When one sees the gospels examined side-by-side, or horizontally, one sees how absurd the Jesus biography is hacked together.

MC: What’s next for CJ Werleman? 

CJ:  My next book tackles Islam, which is due for release in the Fall 2011.  I provide a biography of Muhammad, from childhood to his prophethood, while explaining the entire Koran alongside the things Muhammad did and experienced.  The ultimate objective is to provide readers with a contextual understanding of the Koran. For example, when Muhammad said, “Jews behave like apes”, people will accuse the Koran of being anti-Semitic, and it seems that way when you take that passage in isolation. But this verse is contained within an entire chapter that refers to one specific Jewish clan in the city of Medina, a clan that went behind his back to offer assistance to the people who were trying to kill him, the Quraysh.  Hence, this verse is Muhammad expressing his disappointment with that particular tribe he thought was friendly to his mission and is not directed to the entire Jewish people.

In this first installment of ‘Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers,’ I thought it fitting to start with CJ Werleman, a man who dared to plow thru the 770000 words of the Bible never lost his sense of humor, au contraire! Good (free) thinking always begins with a thorough analysis of primary texts, which is rarely something to smile about. So, it only makes sense to conclude that with God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible and Jesus Lied-He was Only Human: Debunking The New Testament, C.J. Werleman has been responsible for an incredible tour de force.  And we (free) thank for that!

Please, follow CJ Werleman on Twitter (@rationalists) and keep an eye on this busy man on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344

***************************************************

About Michel-Camille Bordeau

Michel-Camille Bordeau is the founder and author of The School of Seshata (www.scriptotheism.net), a blog about secular spirituality and the home of the Scriptopedia Project. Michel earned an M.A. in French Studies from The Ohio State University (1998).  Mid-life crisis oblige, he is returning to college in August 2011, to pursue an M.S.W. with a specialization in Mental Health & Drugs of Abuse.

Before relocating to Atlanta, Michel was an Academic Advisor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, for nearly ten years. He has advised many students (and parents) on academic and life matters. He taught English, Public Speaking, Humanities, and French at various colleges and universities. In 2002, Michel published Poire Sucrée, Salée, Epicée, a short novel about a dance teacher forced to face the demons of her past. He is currently seeking representation for Seeing Purple, a dystopian novel set in Anaïs Abelard’s hometown, the New Orleans of tomorrow, also home to the power-hungry mega church known as the Calvinistry. Michel considers himself an amateur ‘atheologist’ and he often writes under the nom de plume Anais Abelard.

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By Heather Abraham  

Religion Nerd’s In Conversation with Series continues with a feature interview with the Pope’s astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno.  A native of Detroit, Michigan, Consolmagno received a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1978, after which he lectured at Harvard College Observatory and MIT.  In 1983 Consolmagno joined the Peace Corps, serving two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. 

In 1989 Consolmagno entered the Society of Jesus, taking his vows in 1991, and was assigned to the Vatican Observatories where he conducts research on the Vatican meteorites and studies the evolution of planets. Consolmagno spends his time as astronomer and curator of the Vatican meteorite collection between the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy and the University of Arizona’s Mt. Graham International Observatory where he observes and studies asteroids and Kuiper Belt comets.  Brother Consolmagno is author (and editor) of many books and journal articles including:  God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion, The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican, and Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist.   Wecome to In Conversation with Brother Guy Consolmagno. 

HA:  When I became aware that the Vatican had an observatory, I was intrigued.  This is not something that most would associate with the Vatican.  I think it would be helpful for Religion Nerd readers if we begin this conversation with a brief historical exploration of the relationship between the Catholic Church and science.  

• Q:  What is the historical relationship between the Vatican and the study of astronomy? 
• Q:  How do you understand the Galileo affair? 
• Q:  What is the general function of a present day Vatican astronomer? 

BGC:  The history of the Vatican and Astronomy goes way back… and of course, let me plug our popular coffee table book, The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican (2009, Our Sunday Visitor Press), which goes into this in great illustrated detail. 

The reform of the calendar in 1582 is one obvious key moment. That’s when the Pope [Gregory XIII]  hired a committee of astronomers to work out a simple way to adjust the old calendar, which had allowed the seasons to slip by—by ten days since Julius Caesar had established it. The astronomers he hired also had to work out a formula for determining Easter that could be used anywhere in the world. This was the age of exploration, remember; the old rule for Easter as the “first Sunday after the first full moon of spring” wouldn’t work anymore, since for the first time people had to worry about whether a Full Moon occurred on a Sunday or a Monday in their part of the world. 

But even before then, astronomy was one of the seven subjects that everyone was expected to master before you could go on to study philosophy or theology in the medieval universities, founded by the Church.  And there are gobs of places in scripture, such as the Psalms, where the beauty and vastness of the heavens are used to proclaim the greatness of the Creator. 

The idea of a “split” between science and religion is a fairly modern one, mostly dating from the 19th century and the rise of professional scientists who were making a living independent of the Church. That’s why the Church specifically started funding an observatory, in 1891, to show the world that it supported science. Our duties at the observatory today are simply to “do good science” — we’re left to decide for ourselves what science to do — as a way of continuing to demonstrate that support. 

Before then, the Church acted as the scientific “establishment” that had to test and judge new ideas, just as scientific journals and referees do today. It was by no means opposed to new ideas; just look up Nicholas of Cusa, a 14th century Cardinal who proposed that there were countless inhabited planets in the universe. The fact that the Church was interested in Galileo in the first place is evidence that they were directly involved in nurturing and promoting science.

The Galileo affair is of course a lot more complicated than you usually hear. If you want to know more, read the documents in the case, including the transcript of the trial, gathered in English translation in Maurice Finocchiaro’s book The Galileo Affair (1989, U of California Press). The facts don’t make the church look any better, mind you, but you realize that what happened to him was almost certainly more tied up with the politics of Rome during the 30 Years War than with anything involving his science.  For most of his career, Galileo was praised by the Church and even after his trial, he was the guest of the bishop of Siena and treated well. 

HA: One of your responsibilities is as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection; could you describe the specific nature of the research in which you are involved?   

BGC:  When I got to the Vatican Observatory in 1993 I found that it had a wonderful collection of meteorites assembled in the 19th century by the French nobleman, the Marquis de Mauroy. It had a little bit of almost everything, but not a whole lot of any one meteorite. At that time, I knew that chemical studies were well advanced in many labs using the kind of expensive equipment I could never afford. But nobody was doing physical studies: density, porosity, thermal properties… the kinds of measurements that are essential for understanding the evolution of asteroids and other bodies that might be made up of meteorite-like material. 

I started doing density measurements in 1996, with a modified Archimedean technique — looking for the displacement of a fluid to find the volume of the sample — that used glass beads instead of water or other potentially contaminating fluids. I got the idea while pouring sugar into my cappuccino during one of our coffee breaks at the Observatory. We now have a student who’s just finished measuring more than 1000 meteorites around the world with this method. We also look at the magnetic susceptibility of meteorites, their thermal conductivity, and we’re launching a program to measure heat capacities. These are all measurements that surprisingly nobody had much done before. 

And they turn out to have important consequences that surprised us. For example, the density of meteorites are 30% to 50% higher than the density of the asteroids they come from. Asteroids are not rocks out in space — they’re rubble piles, with big holes and cracks… probably large enough to hide the Millennium Falcon, I bet! 

HA:  There are those that see religion and science as polar opposites—antagonistic if you will, and yet you represent a successful marriage of the two.  How do you understand the relationship between science and religion?   And, is your study of the evolution of planets an extension of your religious convictions?  In other words, do you understand your work as an opportunity to understand God? 

BGC:  I reject the idea [of] two different kinds of truth, or even two different regions of knowledge, one labeled “science” and the other labeled “religion”.  Nor can you say, such-and-such must be true in science because it says so in the Bible, or that God cannot do this or that because it violates some scientific proof. The Bible is not a science book. (Science books go out of date, very quickly; the Bible does not go out of date, anymore than Shakespeare or Plato go “out of date”.  It’s a different kind of beast.) Likewise, to use your science to prove, or disprove, the existence of God makes your science more powerful than God, which is a logical contradiction. 

So it’s not that science and religion lie side by side; but that one underpins the other. 

Instead, I have to realize that my science is only possible because I make certain assumptions ahead of time about how the universe behaves.  I have to assume that laws exist, before I can start looking for them.  I have to assume that the human brain is capable of understanding those laws, or else this is all a waste of time.  And, I have to assume that the universe is somehow worthy of me spending my life getting to know it. 

The whole idea that we live in a universe deliberately created by God, a universe He called Good, is the fundamental assumption that has allowed western society to promote — and pay for — the study of the physical world just for its own sake. Ultimately we are not astronomers just to figure out when to grow crops (or make better Teflon!) but because the stars themselves are fascinating, and worthy of study, in and of themselves. 

The soundbite answer: My religion tells me God made the universe. My science tells me how He did it. And by seeing how He creates, I come to be a little more familiar with the personality of the Creator. 

HA:  In your book, Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist, you explore the possibility of life on other planets.  The following is a quote in which you discuss the possibility of the presence of ETs in the Universe, 

Frankly, if you think about it, any creatures on any planets, subject to the same laws of chemistry and physics as us, made of the same kinds of atoms, with an awareness and will recognizably like ours, would be at the very least, our cousins in the cosmos.  They would be so similar to us in all the essentials that I don’t think you’d even have the right to call them aliens. (p152-53)  

If life, in any form, but most specifically ETs exists elsewhere in the universe, what is your understanding of our cosmic cousins in relation to Christian theology?  

BGC:  This is not in the realm of science, not yet; it’s science fiction.  And I started out as a science fiction fan long before I was a scientist or a Jesuit.  Science fiction is precisely the place where we can play with these ideas, ask the what-if questions, and see how it plays out. The point is not that we have an “answer” at the end of the day, but that we grow to appreciate what the questions really mean.  When you speculate about aliens, you’re really asking what it means to be human. When you wonder about what “salvation” would mean to another intelligent species, you’re finally coming to grips with what it actually means to us. 

So, ultimately, though I can speculate as well as anyone, at the end I have to say: I don’t know. I’d love to find out!

HA:  To borrow a question from your chapter title (which was introduced to Religion Nerd readers in Kenny Smith’s article, The Arrival of Extraterrestrials on the American Religious Landscape), Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? 

BGC:  Would I baptize an extraterrestrial? Only if they ask!    

HA:  Creationism and intelligent design—these are hot button terms in the United States.  Could you elaborate on your understanding of these terms as both a Catholic priest and Scientist?  

BGC:  These are terms that have so many different meanings to so many different people that I try to avoid even using them. 

If you use anything in science as your reason to believe — or not believe — in God, you’re on treacherous ground. Science keeps developing, and what we understand tomorrow may be substantially different from what we assume today.  Just look at how physics now is so different from the mechanical viewpoint of the 19th century. 

On the other hand, if your belief in God comes from personal experience, prayer, the experience of love and beauty in your life, the testimony of people you trust writing in Scripture or passing on tradition, then you already know God exists.  With that knowledge, you can then delight in seeing a familiar hand at work in the physical universe. 

But the faith comes first. 

HA:  In wrapping up this conversation, I would like to ask a couple questions that are lighter in nature. 

• Q:  In 2000, the International Astronomical Union honored your work by naming an asteroid after you, 4597 Consolmagno.  Is this an asteroid that you discovered?  How cool is it to have an asteroid named after you?
• Q:  I understand that you are a science fiction fan.  What are you favorite sci-fi books, movies, or television series?  

BGC:  The asteroid was discovered by a friend of mine, Bobby Bus.  It helps to have friends in the business!  For example, there are 35 craters on the Moon named for Jesuits (none for me, thanks — you have to be dead before a crater can be named for you!).  That happened in no small part because the guy who made the Moon map with the nomenclature we use today was, himself, a Jesuit priest, Giovanni Battista Riccioli. 

And, yes, I love science fiction… both space opera and fantasy. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Lois McMaster Bujold, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, P. C. Hodgell… Some of them specifically treat on religions themes, others don’t, but in every case a good SF or fantasy story has to have a moral center against which the actions of the characters can be judged.  And one of the best things of being an astronomer at the Vatican is that I have been invited to serve on panels at a number of SF conventions where I’ve gotten to meet a number of these authors!

Nerd Note:  The purpose of this interview was to introduce Religion Nerd readers to the Vatican Observatory, the Catholic Church’s relationship with the sciences, and Brother Consolmagno’s work.  I would love to do a follow up interview with Brother Consolmagno, making more in depth inquiries as to the nature of his work and vocation.  If, after reading this brief introductory interview, you have any questions you would like to ask, please contact me at Editor@ReligionNerd.com and I will add them to the list of possible questions.

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Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Nerd Contributor and visiting instructor at Georgia State University, recently spent an afternoon In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, associate professer at the University of Georgia.  Kate and Dr. Medine’s lively discussion spans many aspects of Religious Studies including the responsibilities of teaching, current projects, the importance of mentoring, and the significance of the discipline of Religious Studies.

Carolyn Medine is an associate professor of Religion and in the Institute of African American Studies; her research interests are in Arts, Literature, and particularly Literature concerning the Southern and African American women’s religious experience.   She has written extensively on the works of Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, and other notables.  Dr. Medine’s research interests also include religion and politics, theory from the classical to the postmodern, and the intersection of classical and modern literature.  She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and teaches courses on Religion and Literature, African American Religions and Literatures, Religious Theory and Thought, and Women’s Spirituality and Writings. (Source: UGA)

Welcome to In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, Part II.   

Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology 

KDB: There is one thing that has really stuck with me, and I often tell people about academia is what you wrote in an article in an article on the nature of academia…You said that in academia there seems to be a sense of the Highlander mentality… that there can be only one. And everything else must subsume under that. This was the article you wrote on Wabash. 

CJM: The Hospes piece.  (Article Hospes: the Wabash Center as a Site of Transformative Hospitality in the Journal, Teaching Theology and Religion year 2007. See Sources below.)  

KDB: Yeah and I really loved that piece because the realm of the scholar is often a solitary one, and there is a desperate need for community among scholars. You need someone just to go talk to… just to be able to walk into a peer’s office and say, “I just had the worst thing or the best thing happen in my class.”  It can be very intimidating to bear the weight of being the teacher… where students expect you to have all the answers. And you take people that are primarily perfectionists… 

CJM: Or at least competent. 

KDB: and they feel overwhelmed… 

CJM: …and they don’t feel competent.

KDB: There seems to be no amount of preparation for the actual act of teaching. This is why I think Wabash is a much needed institution for just this reason. And your paper on Wabash made me realize what type of community it provides to young scholars. 

CJM:  It is a unique thing.  It is really focused on theological education…producing good education to produce pastors.  So the focus is seminaries and divinity schools. When Lucinda Huffaker was the director, she began to work in colleges and universities. Wabash is just this odd liminal space where all these different kinds of people come together and focus on teaching.  And of course you end up focusing on a whole lot of other things… how to be a scholar… how to be a good human being… all that type of stuff.  It offers good accommodations—beautiful rooms, good food, you ask for something and if possible it is provided…and as teachers and scholars, we are just so used to being beaten up. To be in a place where there is abundance and good spiritedness and where you are the focus–or making you the best at what you do is the focus–it is just amazing. Two of my friends, Helen Rhee and Melanie Harris, and I did a grant on women of color in the classroom, and so we were putting together a mini-workshop, and we were overwhelmed by the amount of work. You just don’t realize all of the work that the people at Wabash do–and they make everything go so smoothly. They have to think about travel, make sure there is bottled water, that the vegetarians have vegetables, and the carnivores have meat and if you have someone with a disability that they are accommodated. We just sat there and thought, how do they do it? There are three of us, of course, and they have a staff but still.  When I go, they remember that I do not like salads with mayonnaise… so the chicken salad… they won’t mix it up with mayonnaise because they have it written down somewhere that I don’t like it. When I go, they always have caffeine free Diet Dr. Pepper for me. 

KDB: That is incredible… that attention to detail. They try to make you feel comfortable. 

CJM:  They try to make everybody feel comfortable. When young teachers get there, they have been beaten up, and they are saying that they can’t do it another year if they don’t get help. And most times, when they leave the workshops, they are truly rejuvenated. And what they have is that community. So that if something goes wrong in the classroom, they can send an e-mail, and then there is this rush of response from their fellow teachers, telling them ways in which to handle the problem–or just being supportive, which is sometimes all we need. And this response comes not just from the participants but from the staff too. Young scholars need that mentorship beyond their dissertation directors. They need support from other senior scholars. I always say that Wabash changes the academy 15 people at a time. And I really believe that. 

Teaching in the University System

KDB: What is your view on teaching in the university environment… I know you have done a lot of work on that. What is your stance on this? Where do you want it to go? Where do you think that it is? What do you think are the greatest challenges for teachers and students in the university system? 

CJM: Right now, the biggest challenges are financial. Most places are poor; they are not able to hire, classes are getting bigger.  Students cannot get the courses they need to graduate in four years—I think that is a crisis in and of itself. More people are doing online education. The University of Phoenix has three or four times the amount of students that the University of Georgia does.  And the problem with that is, I am learning from my friends who are administrators, that most students don’t make it through those online course programs. A lot of students sign up but they drop out at higher rates. And some of the online providers are starting to use pressure tactics. They will say that there are only two spots left in a course, and so people sign up and pay the money for these classes that they don’t get through… 

I can’t imagine an education without a classroom. I just don’t know how one can self-educate, without an initial baseline of skills.  I have friends who teach online who use discussion groups and other modes of interaction and they like it. They say that they feel that they can have a lot more honest discussion.  I trust them, because these courses have context—they are done through a university or college. 

But for me, there is something about that face-to-face time that I think is really important. I think teaching is becoming more important in the university, even at large universities like UGA. Being a good teacher counts, and I think the scholarship around teaching and learning is growing.  More people are thinking about teaching and writing about teaching in their disciplines. 

Most of the time, I love teaching. Getting into the classroom just reminds me how much I love talking about this stuff. I realized long ago that some of the assessment and tests that other teachers were using were punitive; they were meant to weed out students. That’s one model, but not for me. I’ve always figured that if everybody is failing in class, then that is my fault; that there must be something that I am doing wrong. So students make good grades in my classes, but I work them really hard for those good grades. I don’t really care about the grades. What I care about is the work. If they do the work, then they will get the grades. 

There is a teaching model that I really like. It is called the ICE method. It was actually put together by high school teachers. It stands for Ideas, Connections, and Extensions. You want your students to get a certain amount of information—that’s “I.” But the point is to go beyond that, to get students to connect information to other information and then hopefully they can apply those connections to other things. I like this method a lot, and I try to build my syllabi that way and construct my testing that way too. No student is going to remember all the information you have put on a test, but maybe if they learn some little theoretical piece–that is what they will remember and apply. People do come back years later… I’ll get an email out of the blue from a former student saying, “We did this in your class and I was just thinking about it the other day.” That is always rewarding for a teacher…or watching their students go on and become teachers themselves… like yourself… or just watching people fulfill the dreams that they have. I mean, I’ve never been an academic that thought everyone had to do a Ph.D. Some people are cut out for it and some others are not. Whatever that knowledge does to help you fulfill your dream–that is what matters. 

I am beginning to realize, this is my new realization as a teacher, and it may sound stupid, but I am beginning to realize in the independent study course papers that graduate students present at the end of each semester in the Religion Department—I am realizing how much people are internalizing stuff I say. And that really started to scare me a little bit. I feel happy with the undergraduate teaching, but I feel that I have to step it up in regards to my graduate level teaching. 

KDB: That is truly a challenge. I know from just teaching the undergraduate Theories and Methods of Religious Studies course, how even trying to prepare students for the next level of learning is a great challenge. I’ve spent many years introducing students to Religious Studies. Now I feel that the next step is preparing more veteran students for their next level of study. I’m thinking in terms of how do I get students to not just memorize information but also to make connections but hopefully, in the long run… help them to learn how to apply these methods to new material in new and inventive ways.  

CJM:  I am realizing that I have to de-camouflage. There is so much in my methodological tool box that I just teach out of my own methodological structure. I need to think about how to unmask my structure, how to show people where its pieces come from and have them intimate with those sources.  I’ve been putting together a Religion and Culture syllabus… I want every graduate student that is working with me to take the graduate Theory and Methods course, and then I want him or her to have a course that is basically an unpacking of Religion and Culture as a discipline. To have them read something on aesthetics, to read some Foucault, Derrida, and Said beyond the readings in the Theory and Methods course. I want them to read The Postmodern Condition and then to have them read some of those foundational writers in Arts, Literature and Religion, like Scott, Detweiler, David Jasper, Frank Burch Brown, Daniel Noel, Margaret Miles, and others who really created the discipline. I mean, Religion and Literature is really a young discipline. It started in the 1950s, so many of the scholars in it are just now starting to pass away. And it is a fragmented part of the discipline, and in some ways, to be honest, I see it, as Arts, Literature and Religion, dying. But the Religion and Culture element is becoming important to the rest of the study of Religion. So I think that is the area that I have to step it up a little bit. To just kind of peel the carpet off the floor and to show students the foundation and let them know what it is. Letting students know this is how we got to where we are now. 

Anyway to return to the point, I could just hear how much my students were internalizing me. I heard it in you years ago, but, now, you have developed your own voice. I just thought, after hearing those papers that I am not serving these students the way that I should. I think that being graduate coordinator, trying to build the program, teaching a lot of undergraduate students…I feel that I was helping many students…Now I feel like what I want to do is help mine more intensely, to dig back into my own discipline. And have my students read some key pieces. So I’ve been thinking about not just some of those key books but also the key articles… 

KDB: I would love to see the list… 

CJM: Well, maybe we could co-edit a volume… 

KDB: I would love that because I have had a lot of students ask me questions about Religion and Culture… sort of asking what are the so-called “canonical texts” … what do you have to read… or what should I read to understand this aspect of the discipline. There is just so much out there on Religion and Culture but it takes such a long time to figure out the texts you are really looking for… it is like using a search engine and just hoping that the right information comes out. There are so many different schools of thought and it is nice to have sort of a guided study through that. And I think that I got that but I think I could have used years and years of it. The goal being… finding out who are some of the key players in the conversation…  

CJM: What would the reader be?… that is the big question for me. What would the reader look like? And I don’t know how much this is possible… I can think of certain pieces. There would be something from Paul Tillich, Amos Wilder; there would be something from Nathan Scott…David Jasper…but what the “something” would be… that would be the hard part. I’ve thought about emailing my friend, Mark Ledbetter, and saying that we really need to do this. It is obvious when real giants in the field pass… like Robert Detwieler… Nathan Scott passed away at Christmas time… and the rest of us are in our 50s. We aren’t spring chickens anymore. Somebody has to document this thing… and make sure that it goes forward. The Womanists are so good at that. There are the foundational womanists and then there is the 2^nd wave of womanists… and now there is the “new wave” of womanists: they are really clear about where they come from. I think Religion and Culture’s connections have been sort of lost along the way. This is especially true for Arts, Literature, and Religion because the arts can encompass so much.

KDB: I think the enormity of it makes people not know exactly what to do with it. It is not something easily definable. When people ask me what do, when they ask what my emphasis is, and I say Religion and the Arts. Their next question is usually, “Well what is that?” And then the question becomes how do you explain this to people who have never heard of it before? Whereas if you say I study Hinduism, or Buddhism… even if they don’t know much about these traditions they can get a quick mental image of what exactly you do. 

CJM: It is a tradition. 

KDB: But when you do Religion AND… something else… if it is not really specific… then people have a hard time understanding your work. 

CJM: And we haven’t negotiated the Religion and Theology or rather Literature and Theology versus the Literature and Religion distinction. And I think that has caused some tensions within the sub-discipline. The only person who has really thought about this systematically is Conrad Ostwalt at Appalachian State, and his book just didn’t get the reading that it deserved. 

KDB: I think now you could make a good argument for this sub-discipine’s development because the general public is so interested in the intersection of Religion and the Arts.  

CJM: The question then becomes a question about belief. It is like Jonathan Z. Smith says you are never going to see the autograph… you are never going to see the original text… and that is part of the problem. If you are doing Theology and Literature then you are trying to get closer to the autograph, God, and if you are doing Religion and Literature you are more interested in what people say they believe and how they act that out. I’m very interested in how people hybridize religion, how people make art and religion itself. 

KDB: That reminds me of when I am teaching a specific tradition and I say for example this is the history of Christianity, these are the main tenants of Christianity, but you will always get Christians who say that is not what I do… that is not what I believe…  

CJM:  Exactly, and then do you tell those people that they are not Christians? I am more interested in what people do… and how they got there… not necessarily in orthodoxy. Americans are such hybrid-izers. 

KDB: I think also in American religion there is more pragmatism… more of a concern for what works… and I think that is what may have made America so innovative. But even in America many people think of religion as static–as confined to orthodoxy, but that is not how religions function. That is not how they live… but that is a much easier thing to record… because it is historical.

 CJM:  Most every Christian is going to say they believe in Jesus … they may not believe in God and the Holy Spirit. But I think that, in America, people are always riding boundaries. I think that is partly due to an increase in diversity and it is partly the speed of culture and how much you can know, and it is partly what people do for leisure. I mean, if you do yoga for leisure you may or may not realize that it can be part of your spiritual practice—or that it is part of someone else’s thing.  I think Americans are very interesting that way. We really are a frontier people, as Albert Murray says—the jazz man, the pioneer, and so on. Makes me think my scholarship ought to have that energy too, but with the added element of looking back.

KDB: I just wanted to thank you so much for granting me this interview. It was both informative and entertaining. Thank you such for giving us a glimpse of what you are working on and thinking about.  

Sources: 

• UGA: http://www.uga.edu/religion/medine.html
• For more information on the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion please see their website http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/home/default.aspx
• Transcripts by Kate Daley-Bailey from her May 14, 2010 conversation with Dr. Carolyn Medine

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Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Nerd Contributor and visiting instructor at Georgia State University, recently spent an afternoon In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, associate professer at the University of Georgia.  Kate and Dr. Medine’s lively discussion spans many aspects of Religious Studies including the responsibilities of teaching, current projects, the importance of mentoring, and the significance of the discipline of Religious Studies.

Carolyn Medine is an associate professor of Religion and in the Institute of African American Studies; her research interests are in Arts, Literature, and particularly Literature concerning the Southern and African American women’s religious experience.   She has written extensively on the works of Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, and other notables.  Dr. Medine’s research interests also include religion and politics, theory from the classical to the postmodern, and the intersection of classical and modern literature.  She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and teaches courses on Religion and Literature, African American Religions and Literatures, Religious Theory and Thought, and Women’s Spirituality and Writings. (Source: UGA) 

Religion Nerd is delighted to launch our In Conversation With series with this absorbing and insightful discussion.  In Conversation With will be an ongoing series that will periodically feature prominent academics in the field of Religious Studies, as well as Religious Leaders, and Religion Journalists in conversation with Religion Nerd contributors.  Welcome to In Conversation with Dr. Carolyn Medine. 

Current Projects: 

KDB: What are you working on? 

CJM: In teaching, I am beginning to read some new theory. New for me… it is probably not new for a lot of people. Giorgio Agamben… Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life… some of the latest Jonathan Z. Smith and a little bit of Said, Reflections on Exile, and that will be part of a graduate seminar. We are going to start with Foucault and Derrida and then move into these. I think it is important to go back to Derrida and Foucault and then forward. 

And in scholarship, my friend, Randy LeBlanc, and I just finished putting some essays together. The essays are on religion, politics, and literature… and so we have those out at a press. 

I am finishing up, actually I am about two-thirds of the way through my project on Southern Women and religion. I am focusing on women who are predominately not Protestant… so a Catholic woman, a Jewish woman, a Buddhist woman. I am looking at how these women in the South, are negotiating these different identities. 

KDB: That sounds exciting! Are you and Randy LeBlanc going to publish your set of essays? 

CJM: Yes- they are out at several presses right now. They are under review so let’s hope somebody wants them. They are odd in that they are so interdisciplinary. They don’t stay within boundaries so I think some presses may not know how to categorize them. 

KDB: Or know where to put them? 

CJM: Yes. We tried to pick presses that were more willing to cross boundaries like Palgrave… It is time… we have been doing this work together for years. 

KDB: Regarding your work on southern women of different religions, will this become a book?  

CJM: I hope so! I have a chapter on Jan Willis, Estella Conwill Majozo, who is a Catholic woman in Kentucky. She is very interesting because she is a poet and her brother makes sculpture, and they have joined together with an architect to create public monuments…including a Martin Luther King monument. They have done a Stations of the Cross kind of monument. With the three of them working together, it is very interdisciplinary. She is a fascinating woman… and a “cradle Catholic,” raised Catholic in Kentucky. She had left the Church and then came back. The chapter is I am struggling with is the Jewish one, and I want to use Alice Walker’s daughter’s work. She is a Jewish Buddhist. I also want to incorporate Stella Suberman’s The Jew Store. 

KDB: Is there anything in compiling this work that surprised you? Anything you didn’t expect? 

CJM:  Hmmm… that is a good question. It is probably that although they are practicing these hybrid religions they are very much embedded in community. So it is not the lonely quest. It is very feminist … womanist… and they are not just embedded in these communities of origin but also developing new communities. I think that has been the most surprising thing. And that it happens in the South…which, for most people, feels so homogenous…I think that has been the most interesting to me. But the South is far from homogenous… and if you look at a place like Atlanta, you see that. I remember growing up in North Carolina, we had restaurant run by a Lebanese family and I never thought about what religion they were, but there they were within the community. And my mother’s best friend was Roman Catholic. I wasn’t a religion scholar then… that may have been what got me being a religion scholar. It is just interesting to think about how that was all around me and yet I didn’t think about it. 

Events in the Discipline of Religious Studies  

KDB: In way do you think religious studies, in general, is going? 

CJM: That is a political and theoretical question; political because we have seen the split of the AAR [American Academy of Religion] and SBL [Society of Biblical Literature]. And that was a decision about where Biblical studies and theology “belong,” in some peoples’ thought, in the study of other religions. This has been a painful break, and I think most people don’t want to see that kind of intense separation–a lot of scholars play across boundaries. The untiring efforts of Emilie Townes, who was AAR president (she’s a dean at Yale), to address this separation and how to mend it must be mentioned, with honor.  The other part of it is that we have to deal with postmodern and postcolonial theory and the fallout after the deaths of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said. There is a sense that people are kind of taking a deep breath and thinking, “Thank God that is over”… but it is not over. It is just moving to a new stage in the voices of people like Tariq Ramadan, in Islam; Charles Hallisey in Buddhist Studies, and others.  In a way, it is a return to the thought of people like Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur—who were already constructivists.                                                                  

All in all, how we figure out that next step is going to be really challenging and exciting. We have to admit what we usually teach is elite religion–if you teach the world religions course you are teaching religion of people who wrote stuff down. This gives you a certain perspective on religion. How you get to the so-called popular religion or what the people were doing–this is what the postcolonial is about—is another, different one. We need both, though. Both tell the story.  There is also resurgence in the importance of narrative and story, and I’m glad… 

KDB: Me too! 

CJM: So I think that is going to be much more important. I wish more people knew how to deal with it, had tools from literary criticism—which includes all that theory!  All in all, however, I’m glad to see that it is part of the conversation again because I think we are really dealing with issues of representation. How we are represented in America in the Muslim mind and how we represent the Muslim, for example. We are in, at the point of, a big crisis of representation. Don’t you think so? 

KDB: Oh definitely, especially for young people. I think the questions they are asking are those that older generations get uncomfortable by. They seem to be dealing in a heightened way with what it means to be a religious person and to be a modern person… or a postmodern person.  

Challenges of Technology   

KDB:  What do you think about media, all the radical changes in media? Do you think this will change how we do what we do as scholars? 

CJM: Yes, because I think we are already dealing with technology. Sometimes, it is just as a tool in the classroom, that most of us my age don’t use very well. We are teaching a generation that is media saturated and that does two things. It makes them savvy in certain ways but, on the other hand, they have a difficult time really thinking about things. One of my students said when we were discussing some older theorists, “Wow! these people really thought about things… my generation, we just go to class and watch TV.”   I said, “Don’t tell me that.” 

KDB: That breaks my heart. 

CJM: It is as if the media takes over people’s minds… they are sort of paralyzed by it. I don’t like that… if you are going to engage in it, at least be able to critique it. 

KDB: Or at least be in conversation with it. That is where I think literature can be helpful. I feel that with literature, my students and I can come together and have something that we are talking about in the text… and I think you can use films in the same way. Actually, you can use any kind of media… as long as you come together to talk about it. The problem I think is that people usually just end up watching…and not being in conversation. 

CJM: It is changing the structure of our society as well. We are suspicious of smartness. We are suspicious of people that speak in long sentences, like academics, and we are suspicious of the intellectual life. We are so used to the sound bite. We succumb to “the loudest person wins” rule… to the lack of decorum.  That is not really conversation, just people screaming at each other. There are a couple of moderates, like Tavis Smiley and Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart is funny but there is seriousness there as well. 

KDB: You have to think… everything he says is to make you go a step further. 

CJM: Bill Moyers is retiring. My husband and I were watching TV the other night, and we saw a commercial for the Saturday night’s programming and it was cage fighting. It was going to be on CBS, and I said to Scott, “This is the network that used to do documentaries. It was a network that entertained but also educated. Now it is cage fighting.”

 KDB: We are back to the Coliseum … back to bread and circus. 

CJM: That is what bothers me, and of course that part of it is exploitative. We watch people beating each other up, accept that physical and psychic violence. And that’s not even to mention the material regarding children and pornography. 

KDB: I am not worried about the material, per say, because that has always existed. I am worried about the accessibility. The internet in general is strange because you gain the illusion of intimacy but you really don’t know who you are interacting with. 

CJM: People have the ability to create any identity–you can be anyone you want to be. You can create a whole persona to perform out of. It is an odd form of schizophrenia that I see people engaging in. Posting all those pictures… this makes me think that no one is actually living life in the present. 

KDB: They are taking pictures TO put them on facebook. 

CJM: The question is not, “Am I enjoying this?” but, rather “How am I going to show other people what I have done?” It is a performance of identity. Someone said on NPR that it is much like the age of Shakespeare. It is like the metaphor of theater like my friends Jim Hardy and Gale Carrithers wrote about:  all of this has to do with simulation and performance. The woman on NPR, I wish I could remember her name, said that the age of Shakespeare was an age when people were very aware that they were performing identity. Maybe we are [in] a neo-Elizabethan age. 

KDB: That is so interesting. I know NPR definitely helps me… in that it is how so many media outlets used to be… entertaining but also educating. 

Mentors and Mentoring 

KDB:  Who are the scholars, your mentors, who you feel have really shaped who you are as a scholar? 

CJM: Good heavens, yes! I’ve been extremely lucky. I’ve had some fine mentors and the more I work with young teachers, I realize how rare this is. One of my very first teachers was Michael Gaspeny, at Elon College. His specialty was American Literature, and there I was, at 16, a high school kid, taking his class…and he kept pushing me. I took all my survey courses with him. He would hand me back a test and it would have a note on it: “Well this is really good…try writing it in pen next time”– because I would write everything in pencil. So the next time I would write it in pen. And he would write, “This is really good… I think you need to read such and such,” and this was this constant kind of pushing that really challenged me. 

KDB: Like nudging? 

CJM: Yeah… his nudging. He was a great teacher. He still is a great teacher and a fine poet. Once I got to college, I met and studied with Ruel W. Tyson at UNC-Chapel Hill…Intellectually, as a teacher, I’m just mini-Ruel. We don’t think about the same stuff. He is anthropological, and he would read Pilgrim’s Progress every class. But I approach material like he does and present material like he does, I feel imprinted by him. Charles Long, another of my teachers, I feel very much imprinted by him. And in his way, Nathan Scott. I think I am just beginning to realize after twenty years in the profession how much I have internalized of him. I just bought a bunch of his books because I realized I only had two or three of his works. So I started ordering his books, because I want to get them before they are not available anymore. Robert Detweiller is another mentor. He just passed away recently. He set my career on a path that transformed it and me. There are so just many people that helped me. There were people at LSU—namely, Jim Hardy– that took me under their wings and showed me how to get through the tenure process and how to publish, but, more important, how to enjoy the intellectual life. 

Yes–I’ve been really lucky. I feel like I have had a guided career … it is strange to get older and be the guide. I’m still guided by senior scholars that take care of me…it is like my friend Randy says, “sometimes you just want to be taught again.” 

KDB: I think the same way. Sometimes I think how nice it would be to be the student in the classroom… but feel that the responsibility of leading the class is no longer on your shoulders.  

CJM: I got to teach with Charles Long, and it was amazing. He went over some of the things that he taught us in the first year of my MA at Carolina, and I thought, “Oh, that was what you meant.”  Of course, I am realizing this 20 years later. It is just funny to think that I had gotten just a piece of it and now listening to him again I got a bigger piece of it. And if he told me again, I would get an even bigger piece of it. It is odd to be around these great teachers and to realize how much they have instilled in you, knowledge and these patterns. I’m different and yet I am the same. 

KDB: It is very much like a lineage. You acquire your own way and own views, but you have borrowed patterns, reinterpreted patterns, and have morphed their patterns into something you can use.  

CJM: And you pass that on to your students. 

KDB: Well I have to say that you have definitely been my mentor, and I know many other young scholars see you as their mentor. I guess I never really knew how important it was to have a mentor until I met students who didn’t have one. I noticed that these mentor-less students lost their enthusiasm for their work very quickly. Having a mentor is something I am so thankful for. And I think it is true that you are shaped by your teachers.  

CJM: Every student will be different but you have to know that somebody has your back. 

KDB: It is like being a child… that you need to know that there is someone who will not let you walk off the cliff… 

CJM: And to catch you if you do. And there are some people that can’t do that. I know scholars who are terrified to publish anything that might contradict their mentor or something their mentor might get upset about. There should be no bullying in mentorship. A young scholar once told me that he would talk to his thesis director, and they would talk about his work, but after a while he could see that his director was not interested in him or his work anymore. I think I think I got this mentoring nature from the late Robert Detweiler who had the most generous spirit when it came to young scholars. He never felt diminished by helping others develop their careers. That can be a rare thing in the academic world where there is a pressure to publish, and the pressure to be a star. He was a star but he just liked young people. He liked new thought. He would set his students in places, saying “You need to be here” and “you need to be doing this.” This is stuff you don’t know as a young scholar. You need someone to look at the whole picture and send you in the right direction. 

KDB: To see the forest through the trees… 

CJM: Yes–because they have been through that forest and know the good spots and the dangers too.

Part II of In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine will be featured on Religion Nerd on July 30th, 2010.

Sources: 

• UGA: http://www.uga.edu/religion/medine.html
• Transcripts by Kate Daley-Bailey from her May 14, 2010 conversation with Dr. Carolyn Medine