Author: SJ Kessler

As we enter the second week of August, with thunder and rain and the return of humidity, here’s our third entry, from Dr. Casey Elledge. I have started reading the Mahabharata, one of the great Hindu epics. I also am finishing D. Saraswati’s Satyartha Prakasha (“Light of Truth”), a work of Hindu philosophy. I read the Beowulf Epic, as well…

Rounding out our first week in August, here’s our second entry, from Dr. Sarah Ruble. This summer, I’m reading some U.S. religious history and some theology. I’ve just finished Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (a great read if you want to understand why so many white evangelicals support…

As August begins and the semester looms, here’s our first entry, from Dr. Thia Cooper. I’m working on a book introducing people to Marcella Althaus-Reid, an Argentinian sexual theologian, so I’ve been reading a lot of her work. I particularly enjoyed her book From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology (SCM 2004) I also just read and reviewed Lauren…

What a beautiful and strange summer this has been! For those of us who stayed in Minnesota, our state has been gorgeous and hot, with lots of sunshine, long humid days, ten thousand mosquitoes per square foot, and big thunderstorms that roll down from Canada and make the leaves shimmer in the late morning light.…

The Religion Department – spearheaded by Dr. Marcia Bunge and Dr. John Cha – is launching a new minor in Fall 2020 focused on Interfaith Leadership. As Drs. Bunge and Cha write, “Religion is a fact and factor worldwide, and over 80% of human beings on the planet self-affiliate with a religious tradition. Given the…

In November 2017, Dr. Cooper published her second book, A Christian Guide to Liberating Desire, Sex, Partnership, Work, and Reproduction (Palgrave Pivot). It began in response to the numerous conversations Dr. Cooper was having students about sexual ethics. The predominant assumption among these students, she found, was that Christianity had nothing to say about sex, and…

Dr. Ruble is currently developing a curriculum on the history of Christianity and race in the United States, designed specifically for Christian groups such as adult Sunday schools. She has built the curriculum around eight videos and supplemented it with study guides, finding that many people really don’t know much about race and Christianity beyond,…

This past summer, Dr. Casey Elledge published Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE – CE 200. Appearing with Oxford University Press, the book offers an interpretation of some of the earliest literature within Judaism that exhibits a confident hope in resurrection. The book not only aids in the study of early Jewish…

Dr. Blake Couey and his colleague Dr. Elaine T. James of Princeton Theological Seminary published an edited volume entitled Biblical Poetry and the Art of Close Reading. Appearing in August 2018 with Cambridge University Press, the volume explores the aesthetic dimensions of biblical poetry, offering close readings of poems across the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Composed…

This past June, Dr. Samuel J Kessler presented a paper at a conference in Heidelberg, Germany. The gathering, “Grey Areas: Two Centuries of Wissenschaft des Judentums,” celebrated the bicentennial of the academic study of Judaism, and featured a keynote address by the Mr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany.   Dr. Kessler…