PUBLIC HUMANITIES
Bible Odyssey
The Religion, Race & Democracy Lab
The Religion, Race & Democracy Lab supports teaching, facilitates research, and produces stories in many forms on religion, race, and democracy. We are committed to the idea that learning more about how religion and race work with democratic societies can help us to live together in today’s pluralistic and increasingly global societies.
In addition to featuring the exciting work of our faculty and student partners, the Lab hosts a podcast, Sacred & Profane, which is available on the website and on iTunes.
Sacred & Profane
A podcast from the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab.
Season One (Fall 2019):
“A Common Thread,” edicts of Emperor Ashoka, August 1
“A New Life, Together,” forgiveness and Rwanda’s genocide, August 12
“What Would Krishna Do?,” fracking on a West Virginia commune, August 19
“Consider Hassan,” immigration and Muslim identity in Austria, August 26
“I Sent The Gods Back,” immigration and the Cyrus Cylinder, September 2
“Set Apart,” Yellowstone as a religious, secular, bureaucratic sanctuary, September 16
Season Two (Spring 2020):
“A Lotus Blossoms Above Muddy Waters,” Buddhism in WW2 internment camps, April 6
“To Move the Passions,” the last known castrato and “who has a soul?,” April 20
“La Santa,” the complex history of Santa Muerte and her fast-growing movement, May 4
“What’s So Great About Cyrus?,” Cyrus, the Shah of Iran, and President Trump, May 18.
“The Breath of Our Neighbor,” 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Larycia Hawkins’ embodied solidarity, June 8
“American Idols,” Christianity and Confederate monuments, July 20
“Render Under Q,” QAnon and the January 6 storming of the Capitol, January 28, 2021.
Season Three (Spring & Fall 2021):
“A Dictionary of All Religions,” the study of world religions in early America, May 25
“Black and Beautiful,” how biblical translations reveal our views of race and gender, June 1
“The Devil’s Advocates,” how American Satanists are challenging ideas of religion, pluralism, and the separation of church and state, June 8
“We Hold These Truths,” the challenges of regarding the Constitution as “sacred,” July 1
“On a Robot and Prayer,” how the use of robots in religious spaces challenges what it means to “be religious,” October 19.
“Sites of Memory,” how the memory of slavery in Charlottesville is reshaping its public spaces and giving rise to new rituals, October 27
God $ Green
The story of how potent forces came together to mount an army of climate change skeptics in the name of God, country, and capitalism. A video from the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab.
Sanctuaries
How are sacred landscapes being affected by planetary stresses? What do responses to those stresses illuminate about religious futures? With researchers from the arts, sciences, and humanities, we are studying a series of globally recognized sacred sites to better understand how cultural processes are interacting with Anthropocene relations. We’ve travelled to Yellowstone National Park and to Bhutan and are preparing for our next much-deferred trip: Alaska. For more on “Sanctuaries,” look here.