Featured series 
Tag: Religion
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Nation & World
‘Water guy’ John Briscoe stays in motion
For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.
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Nation & World
‘My ministry is in the birthing rooms’
To Cemelli de Aztlan, the U.S.-Mexico border region is not just a line on a map dividing two nations and two cultures, it’s a place of its own, different from the countries whose edges define it; and it has its own culture of transition, of blending, and sometimes of violence.
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Nation & World
Jane Cheng ’09: Preserving art, making it public, passing it on
Talk about a grand entrance — on her first day of work at the Herzog August Bibliothek, the famed medieval studies library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, Jane Cheng ’09 powered up her laptop and promptly shorted out the entire reading room.
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Nation & World
HDS grad hopes to alter military culture
Lukas Filler likes a challenge. One of the 6-foot-5-inch former competitive swimmer’s favorite pastimes is surfing … in the New England winter … before dawn.
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Nation & World
Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement
Harvard University has conferred today (June 4) honorary degrees on 10 outstanding individuals: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, author Joan Didion, religious historian Wendy Doniger, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, immunologist Anthony S. Fauci, anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, engineer Robert Langer, musician Wynton Marsalis, and political scientist Sidney Verba.
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Nation & World
Eck delivers Gifford Lectures
Diana Eck, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society and member of the faculty of divinity, recently traveled to Scotland to deliver a series of Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh (April 27-May 7). The lecture series, which was established in 1888 through the endowment of Lord Gifford to four Scottish Universities…
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Nation & World
Religion key to foreign policy, says HKS speaker
As President Obama and his new administration seek to redirect U.S. foreign policy back toward more emphasis on diplomacy and less on the use of force, they should not overlook Orthodox Christianity as a resource.
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Nation & World
‘Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine’
What happens when a Buddhist monk visiting the United States is hospitalized, terminally ill with liver cancer? Does religion interfere with his medical care? What about his Buddhist brethren, unable to join him bedside? Who will provide the appropriate services and ceremonies? Well, says Wendy Cadge, that’s where hospital chaplains come in.
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Nation & World
Geneticist ‘who doesn’t believe in God’ offers new conception of divine
The Paul Tillich Lecture, offered annually at Harvard since 1990, commemorates the memory of a public intellectual who was once “the largest theological figure in our orbit,” said The Rev. Peter J. Gomes.
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Nation & World
Evolution of a sacred text made visible at Houghton
When Jane Cheng ’09 arrived at Harvard four years ago, her interest in book conservation led to a job at the Weissman Preservation Center, and it was that job that led her to the medieval text that would become the subject of both her senior thesis and a new exhibition organized by Cheng at Houghton…
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Nation & World
Divinity School student to deliver opening sermon at UUA conference
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) student Angela Herrera ‘10 has been chosen by the Rev. William G. Sinkford of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to deliver the sermon for opening worship at the denomination’s annual general convention in Salt Lake City in June.
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Nation & World
The Dalai Lama speaks at Harvard
The Dalai Lama addressed a capacity crowd at the Memorial Church on Thursday (April 30). With his trademark affable, down-to-earth style the religious leader counseled the audience about the important things in life in a talk titled “Educating the Heart.”
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Nation & World
Sing a song of praise
From Puritan psalms to spirituals to Ellington and Coltrain, a Divinity School class explores – and performs – the sacred and musical.
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Nation & World
Sing a song of praise
Every Monday a small group of students gathers in Andover Hall for a sacred musical journey.
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Nation & World
Walter Cardinal Kasper visits Harvard Catholic Chaplaincy
His Eminence Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican, will speak on March 25 at St. Paul Parish, home to the Harvard Catholic Chaplaincy.
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Nation & World
Religious diversity explored at local level
Can a diverse religious community unite and heal after a brutal murder in broad daylight, one possibly motivated by religious hatred? That profound question and others like it, questions of religious diversity and tolerance, are at the heart of the new documentary “Fremont, U.S.A.,” which was developed by Harvard’s Pluralism Project and screened last Thursday…
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Nation & World
When gentrification occurs in City of the Seven Hills
History and modernity collide in Monti, a neighborhood in Rome, and the local way of life is falling victim to the impact. Michael Herzfeld, professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explores the changing landscape of this ancient neighborhood in a new ethnography about this district within Italy’s capital city.
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Nation & World
Du Bois exhibit a first in U.S.
The images on the walls of the intimate gallery at 104 Mt. Auburn St. are hauntingly evocative. In “Black Friar,” a hooded figure stares out of the darkness, his gaze intense and unsettled. An opposing image, “Every Moment Counts,” offers a modern approach to Jesus, as a beloved disciple leans against the body of the…
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Nation & World
Religion in the vernacular
In 1215, Pope Innocent III convened the Fourth Council of the Lateran, a religious convocation that laid out to hundreds of bishops, abbots, priors, and Christian patriarchs 70 new decrees. One enjoined the clergy to stop frequenting taverns, engaging in trials by combat, hunting, and practicing what might be called noncelibate habits.
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Nation & World
Author McGowan is honored as ‘2008 Harvard Humanist of the Year’
Can parents raise moral children without religion? Greg Epstein M.T.S. ’07 thinks so. He’s the Humanist chaplain at Harvard, and has just finished writing a book due out next fall. Its title: “Good Without God.”
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Nation & World
Nigerian lawyer is a champion of women
In 2002, a young Nigerian woman by the name of Amina Lawal — pregnant and unmarried — was tried for adultery under Shariah, Islam’s traditional law. She was sentenced to be stoned to death, a fate that briefly riveted the attention of media worldwide.
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Nation & World
Marla Frederick talks about faith, God, and money
Not long ago, Harvard cultural anthropologist Marla Frederick sat on a wooden bench in a slum of Kingston, Jamaica. She was interviewing local churchgoers about the Christian “prosperity gospel” often promoted by American televangelists. It offers up a simple (and controversial) idea: The more you give, the more you receive.
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Nation & World
Stephen R. Prothero to deliver Noble Lectures
New York Times best-selling author and Boston University professor of religion Stephen R. Prothero will deliver this year’s William Belden Noble Lectures, “The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering as Practice and Play,” Nov. 18-20 at the Memorial Church.
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Nation & World
Quinn talks to students of various faiths
If she can help it, Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn prefers to avoid the phrase “spiritual journey.” Quinn, who co-moderates the blog “On Faith” with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, finds the words overused. But she is quick to acknowledge that people’s relationship to faith can change over time — and having interviewed hundreds of scholars,…
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Nation & World
Praise and preservation
Harvard University President Drew Faust used the bully pulpit of Appleton Chapel this week (Sept. 16), urging the University’s citizens to act responsibly on environmental matters.
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Nation & World
Jordan appointed first Niebuhr Professor at HDS
Mark D. Jordan has been appointed the first Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. He will take up the new post in January 2009. Jordan has been Emory University’s Asa Griggs Candler Professor since 1999.
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Nation & World
Weinberg, Phillips honored at PBK ceremony
Late this morning (June 3), Adam Goldenberg ’08 — in a fashionable bow tie and flowing academic robes — joined a long line of gowned seniors in the shade of trees outside Harvard Hall. A few months before, the Vancouver, B.C., social studies concentrator had dressed a little differently (in pink tights and a yellow…
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Nation & World
Where science and religion meet, from an Islamic perspective
Where and how science and religion intersect is a debate that dates back centuries; it’s also a regular part of contemporary discourse. The discussion took center stage at the 2007-08 Paul Tillich Lecture on Monday (May 5) in the Science Center’s lecture hall B, where a noted astrophysicist and religious scholar explored the deeper dimensions…
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Nation & World
HDS names new associates for 2008-09
The Women’s Studies in Religion Program at the Harvard Divinity School recently announced its selection of five scholars as 2008-09 research associates and visiting faculty.
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Nation & World
Scholarly journal reveals precious gems; marks major milestone
One of the oldest scholarly theological journals in the country, the HTR celebrated its 100th anniversary last Friday (April 11) at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with a day of talks by several HDS scholars.