Religion Commons^™

Transubstance, Nicole Walker

On Earth As It Is

The word morph sounds so soft but there is

tugging and there is pulling. The unsticking of legs

from the threads breaks any thoughts of grace.

Secret Oxygen, Kim Thomas

On Earth As It Is

The firemen access our building invisibly. I thought they would stop coming because you summoned strength against them. I’m sure the firemen have instructions for seizures. Kept in a red tool chest. Explicitly labeled help. I’m sure others, like you, ask them to leave. I understand this fear of judgment, yet it is not enough.

The Miracle: Lullaby For Lost Children, Melanie Rae Thon

On Earth As It Is

Pink pyrola, trailing daisy—magenta flames of shooting stars, brilliant gold of glacier lilies.

Hush now, beloved.

The hummingbird comes to sip from foxglove and Sweet William, drinks from the hollyhock, opens the snapdragon.

Why are you afraid?

Three Prayers, Melissa Broder

On Earth As It Is

Pennsylvania Prayer

Bless me I was once myself and couldn't read

a thermostat. My mother's breasts were long

inside her bathrobe. Sometimes we were Polish.

I believe god knows these things about me

so I needn’t say them with heart. I'm afraid

to say anything with heart.

An Open Letter Of Prayer To The Country Of Russia, Sean Carman

On Earth As It Is

Russia!

I know you only through your

quirky and enigmatic literature,

full of ranting underground lunatics,

characters who bustle and fly,

and noses that roam St. Petersburg.

Ecclesiastes Ii: Son Of The Philosopher, Bryan Furuness

On Earth As It Is

Some days I think the clouds are your eyes. Some days I think the birds are your voice. You laugh, chide, scatter thistle all over my lawn and screw up my grass as some kind of lesson I'll never understand because I don't speak bird.

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change: The Evangelical Lutheran Church In America’S Historic Vote On Lgbt Ordination, One Year Later, Brent A. R. Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

For progressives in the ELCA, the wider Christian church and society at large, the vote was a thrilling victory after decades of struggle and setback. For conservatives, the vote signaled a decisive break with scripture and tradition and called the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the this denomination into question. Almost one year later, we can take a step back to consider what happened in Minneapolis and to map some of the trajectories of this historic vote.

The Online Theology Classroom: Strategies For Engaging A Community Of Distance Learners In A Hybrid Model Of Online Education, Brent A. R. Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The key to success in online education is the creation and sustenance of a safe and vibrant virtual community. In order to create such a community instructors must pay special attention to the relationship between technology and pedagogy, specifically in terms of issues such as course design, social presence, facilitation of sustained engagement with course material, specially tailored assignments, and learner expectations and objectives. Several strategies for accomplishing this goal are presented here based on the author’s experiences teaching second career students in hybrid introductory theology courses at a mainline denominational seminary.

Stories The Religious Left Must Tell Itself, Brent A. R. Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Reviews Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century, by Daniel Schultz. Ig Publishing (2010) $15.95

Reading The Story Of Miriai On Two Levels: Evidence From Mandaean Anti-Jewish Polemic About The Origins And Setting Of Early Mandaeism, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

New Testament scholars, drawing on Mandaean sources to shed light on the Gospel of John, may have done more harm than good to both Johannine and Mandaean studies. Nonetheless, approaches to the Gospel of John developed over the past 50 years have shed light on the Gospel’s Jewish context and the clues its polemical emphases can provide about the time and setting in which it was written. J. L. Martyn’s suggestion that the Gospel of John can be read on “two levels”, telling us about the context in which it was written while telling a story set in the time …

Review Of Contemporary Christologies: A Fortress Introduction, By Don Schweitzer., Brent Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Review of Contemporary Christologies: A Fortress Introduction, by Don Schweitzer.

The Desert Of The Real: Christianity, Buddhism & Baudrillard In The Matrix Films And Popular Culture, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The movie The Matrix and its sequels draw explicitly on imagery from a number of sources, including in particular Buddhism, Christianity, and the writings of Jean Baudrillard. A perspective is offered on the perennial philosophical question ‘What is real?’, using language and symbols drawn from three seemingly incompatible world views. In doing so, these movies provide us with an insight into the way popular culture makes eclectic use of various streams of thought to fashion a new reality that is not unrelated to, and yet is nonetheless distinct from, its religious and philosophical undercurrents and underpinnings.

Some Recent Developments In Hindu Understandings Of Jesus, Bradley Malkovsky

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Hindu reflection on the person and work of Jesus Christ, what we might call "Hindu christology," is an enterprise that has slowly evolved since the early nineteenth century and is still very much in the making. It has undergone some significant changes since the middle of the twentieth century with some surprising additional perspectives emerging in recent years.

Book Review: "Yoga Body: The Origins Of Modern Posture Practice", Harold Coward

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Table of contents for Volume 23.

Editor's Introduction, Bradley Malkovsky

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

The editor's introduction to this issue.

Suffering Savior - A Hindu Vaisnava Perspective, K.R. Sundararajan

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

My interest in inter-religious dialogue goes back tot he late sixties when I was a research student working on a doctoral dissertation on "The Doctrine of Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity" and continued when I became a lecturer in Hindu Studies at the very first department of Religious Studies in India at Punjabi University in Patiala. From there I was brought to the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions as a Fellow by Professor John Carman to take courses in Christian Studies at the Harvard Divinity School for three years from 1970 to 1973. It was a period …

"He Is Our Master": Jesus In The Thought Of Swami Prabhupada, Ravi M. Gupta

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

"Now that steam, electricity, and the printing press have brought into closer communication the different races that inhabit the earth, and have expanded the minds of men, tending to dispel the illusion that God Almighty especially favours any particular people, it is time to proclaim to the world, that if a messenger of God appeared in Judea about nineteen hundred years ago, it is no less true that a messenger from the same God appeared in the quiet town of Navadweep (popularly known as Nadia) in Bengal, some fifteen centuries later. The former is known by the name of Jesus …

Vidyaranya Swami's "Pañca Viveka" And Thomas Aquinas' "Quinque Viae" In The Light Of Today's Science, Klaus K. Klostermaier

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

In the context of recent attempts to shore up atheism with philosophical and scientific arguments the construction of rational proofs for the existence of God is receiving renewed attention. Over against the assertion of some scientists that religious belief is both unscientific and irrational, philosophers and theologians argue that the study of nature itself offers a great deal of evidence for the existence of a Creator. They are supported by numerous reputable scientists, the authors of book titles like The Language of God or The Mind of God and many others. it is noteworthy that Google has over two million …

A World Filled With Grace: Conceptualizing The Divine In Hindu Devotionalism And Karl Rahner, Ankur Barua

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

In recent decades, a substantial body of scholarly work in the field of Hindu-Christian studies has been produced, which has not only done much to dispel earlier stereotypes of Hindu life-worlds as steeped in 'pantheism', 'world-negation' and the like, but also urged Christian thinkers to reflect on their own foundational beliefs through Hindu motifs. A relatively unexplored theme remains that of whether, and in what ways, the divine reality can be conceptualized as 'gracious' in Hindu devotionalism, especially given that the Christian doctrine of 'grace is related to a constellation of other notions such as creation out of nothing, justification …

Reports And News

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A collection of reports and news relevant to the society, including information about the 2010 Annual Meeting Program.

Book Review: "Jesus As Guru: The Images Of Christ Among Hindus And Christians In India", Swasti Bhattacharyya

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Jesus as Guru: The Images of Christ Among Hindus and Christians in India by Jan Peter Schouten.

Book Review: "The Founder Of Hare Krishnas As Seen By Devotees: A Cognitive Study Of Religious Charisma", Kiyokazu Okita

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of The Founder of Hare Krishnas as Seen by Devotees: A Cognitive Study of Religious Charisma by Kimmo Ketola.

Book Review: "India And The Indianness Of Christianity: Essays On Understanding", George Pati

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of India and the Indianness of Christianity: Essays on Understanding edited by Richard Fox Young.

Book Review: "Jesus In The Lotus: The Mystical Doorway Between Christianity And Yogic Spirituality", Bradley Malkovsky

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Jesus in the Lotus: The Mystical Doorway between Christianity and Yogic Spirituality by Russill Paul.

Book Reviews Table Of Contents

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A listing of the book reviews available in this issue.

The Society For Hindu-Christian Studies

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Information about the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies, including contact information.

A Report On The "Sri Iesu Sahasranama" Of K. U. Chacko, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

In 1987 K.U. Chacko, a Professor of Sanskrit at Nirmala College in Muvattupuzha in Kerala, published in a small booklet the Sri Iesu Sahasranama, a thousand names of Jesus in Sanskrit, written down in Malyalam script; in 1995 it was reprinted in Devanagari script. The cover indicates that it was edited by Professor M H. Sastri.

Book Review: "Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders", Reid B. Locklin

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders by Francis X. Clooney.

Book Review: "Transcendent In America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements As New Religion", Eliza F. Kent

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion by Lola Williamson.