Difference – Studying Religion in Culture

Sesame Street, Bears, The Mahabharata, and Ideology

March 11, 2019 by Morgan Frick

Kyle Ashley is a junior from Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Majoring in Religious Studies, his main interests include music, games, sports, and their respective subcultures. Ever wonder why there are so many different versions of the same story? For example, in the version of Goldilocks and The Three Bears that was told to me by my grandmother, Goldilocks is, for all intents and purposes, a home invader, a home invader that steals Baby Bear’s porridge, breaks Baby Bear’s chair, and sleeps […]

“Yes, but…”

January 21, 2018 by Russell McCutcheon

If you’re paying attention to US news then you may have been seeing the recent stories leading up to the Senate vote that failed to pass the necessary financial deals to finance the federal government — which resulted in the shutdown that we’re now in. While some parts of the federal government are still open, other parts aren’t. At present, the political drama continues. […]

“Both Sides”

August 20, 2017 by Russell McCutcheon

I saw the above pic on a friend’s Facebook wall a few days ago — clearly lampooning President Trump’s recent comments following the violence a week ago at Charlottesville, VA, in which self-described white supremacists marched, protestors organized against them (one of whom, Heather Heyer, was killed when a car, driven by James Alex Fields, rammed into other cars and protestors). For as he said in two different statements, one on Saturday (the day of Heyer’s death) and the other […]

A Lesson in Comparison

April 14, 2017 by Russell McCutcheon

Yes, that’s the reaction Symone Sanders had to her fellow CNN commentator’s comments favorably comparing Donald Trump to Martin Luther King. Didn’t catch this yesterday, or the fall out for much of the rest of the day? […]

“And must it leave when you have gone away?”

December 5, 2016 by Andie Alexander

By Andie Alexander Andie Alexander earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and History in 2012. She is currently working on her M.A. in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Andie also works as the online Curator for the Culture on the Edge blog. As I’m sitting here working and prepping for finals season, I have my Christmas music playlist on in the background. Eventually Trans-Siberian Orchestra‘s “This Christmas Day” started playing. Have a listen (if you aren’t familiar with TSO, I […]

Too Hard, Too Soft, Just Right

April 14, 2016 by Russell McCutcheon

I’ve seen some comments on social media about this recent court decision — click the image to read about it. (If you don’t know much about Pastafarianism then go here.) As a scholar of religion interested not so much in studying religion but, rather, in studying those who use the term to accomplish practical social work (by classifying this or that as religion [or not!]), I admit that I can be a little disappointed when I see other scholars of […]

Are you American American?

December 18, 2015 by admin

By Mary Read-Wahidi Dr. Read-Wahidi has been an instructor for REL 100 online course since 2013. She received her PhD in Biocultural Medical Anthropology from the University of Alabama in December 2014, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University. She works extensively with Mexican immigrants in rural Mississippi on projects related to devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe and health-related disparities. Currently, she is involved in a USAID-funded research project aimed at empowering women smallholder farmers and improving household […]

Points of Contact

June 8, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

Do you know that painting? It’s detail from Norman Rockwell’s 1951, “Saying Grace,” which sold for $46 million a couple years ago. It came to mind after an exchange that I had over on Twitter the other day, in which I wrote the following: The painting nicely illustrates the point — that classification is the trace of a social situation in which difference and similarity are being worked out. For, to break it down to it’s simplest, I’d argue that […]

Classifying Classification in the Study of Religion

February 17, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

So ends the late Charles J. Adams‘s classic entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the topic of “Classification of Religions.” Or consider the Encyclopedia of Religion‘s own entry on the same topic (not updated in the second edition), this time written by the late Harry B. Partin — which concludes as follows: […]

Like Mice in a Maze

September 4, 2014 by Russell McCutcheon

I’ve written on the parable of the blind men and the elephant before, as far back as Manufacturing Religion (1997), where I argued: The problem with the story of the blind men … is that the level of the narrative open to the listener is characterized by privileged access to the fact that there is indeed an elephant beyond the individual perceptions of the blind men…. [T]he story works only because, from the outset, we as listeners see the big […]

Studying Religion in Culture

Ongoing Discussions at the University of Alabama

Tag: Difference