Featured series 
Tag: Religion
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Nation & World
The Holy Land comes to Florida as a theme park
Little did a Harvard scholar who studies sacred spaces imagine that she would find the Holy Land in Florida. Several years ago, while chatting with her niece, a resident of the Sunshine State, Joan Branham, visiting associate professor of women’s studies and early Christianity and Judaism and acting director of the Women’s Studies in Religion…
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Nation & World
Wisse explores mutations of Jewish power
If the Jewish rebellion led to a diaspora that lasted millennia, it also prompted a sea change in the nature of Judaism, said Ruth R. Wisse, Harvard College Professor and Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature. An energetic commentator on Jewish culture, Wisse delivered a Humanities Center lecture this week (March 17) summarizing her new…
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Health
Sobering look at ‘mind-body connection’
Mind-body medicine goes by many names today — including holistic, complementary, or alternative medicine. Regardless of what it’s called, many people embrace the ideas behind the mind-body connection and its effect on health, sometimes despite a lack of supporting scientific evidence. In her recently published book, “The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine” (W.W.…
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Nation & World
Armstrong: God is hard to get to know
Man’s practical understanding of God, said one religious scholar speaking at Harvard, is “like a goldfish trying to understand a computer. … It will always be beyond us.”
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Campus & Community
Somber, joyful service marks 75th birthday
Over a thousand people crowded into the Memorial Church Sunday (Nov. 11) for a special birthday. Seventy-five years earlier, almost to the minute, the Colonial-style structure was dedicated on Armistice Day 1932.
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Nation & World
Buddhism and the art of negotiation
Would the Buddha be an effective arbiter in a complicated and contentious land trust dispute or a messy divorce? For many experts, the answer is a resounding yes.
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Campus & Community
Karen Armstrong will make the ‘Case for God’ in Noble Lectures
Acclaimed author and religious historian Karen Armstrong will present “The Case for God” during the three-day William Belden Noble Lectures at the Memorial Church Nov. 13-15 at 8 p.m. Armstrong, the author of some 20 books, including the best-selling “A History of God” and “The Battle for God,” is renowned for her ideas about the…
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Nation & World
Researcher finds roots of fundamentalism in 16th century Bible translations
The English Reformation — heyday of religious change — spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.
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Nation & World
Islam in the contemporary world: Questions of interpretation
“Interpreting the Islamic Tradition in the Contemporary World” was the title of the gathering, the first annual Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program Conference.
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Campus & Community
Glendon named U.S. ambassador to the Holy See
President Bush has appointed Harvard Law School (HLS) Professor Mary Ann Glendon as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. The president announced his intention to nominate Glendon on Nov. 5.
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Nation & World
Phyllis Schlafly speaks out on judicial activism
The woman credited with defeating the Equal Rights Amendment was on the Radcliffe campus last week to discuss the current target in her crosshairs: judicial activism.
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Nation & World
‘Who is the human in human rights?’
What does it mean to be human? Are all people the same, and if so, entitled to an identical set of rights and treatment? Or, in the age of globalization, do wide-ranging cultural, moral, religious, and political beliefs and behaviors make the definition of humans — and therefore human rights — contingent, that is dependent…
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Campus & Community
Kennedy School launches Initiative on Religion with Luce Foundation grant
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has announced a new academic research program, the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs. The interdisciplinary initiative, based at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, will be directed by Monica Duffy Toft, associate professor of public policy, and J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of…
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Campus & Community
Weatherhead Center names 2007-08 associates
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is supporting 24 doctoral candidates as Graduate Student Associates for 2007-08. The associates represent a multidisciplinary group of advanced-degree candidates from Harvard’s departments of Anthropology, Government, History, Religion, and Sociology; the Kennedy School’s Public Policy Program; and the Law School’s S.J.D. program. All of the students are working on…
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Campus & Community
Faust offers Morning Prayers
On Monday (Sept. 17), in tiny Appleton Chapel, Drew Faust made her first address at Morning Prayers as president of Harvard University.
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Campus & Community
Ethics Center’s 2007-08 fellows, senior scholar
The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics announced its Faculty Fellows in Ethics for 2007-08. Under the direction of Arthur Applbaum, professor of ethics and public policy, the fellows will spend the year participating in the center seminar and other activities, as well as pursuing their own research. Edward Hundert, senior lecturer on medical…
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Arts & Culture
El Saadawi explores notion of creativity
Activist, author, psychiatrist, and playwright Nawal El Saadawi delivered the Harvard Committee on African Studies’ annual Distinguished African Studies Lecture on Oct. 9 in the Tsai Auditorium at the Center for Government and International Studies.
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Nation & World
Africans is U.S. practice range of religions
In Nigeria, where Jacob Olupona was born, there are more Anglicans than there are in England. There is also a growing Pentecostal movement as well as a large Roman Catholic presence. In 2005 when the College of Cardinals met in Rome to choose a new pope, one of the leading contenders was a Nigerian, Cardinal…
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Nation & World
Stem cells, through a religious lens
Representatives of three of the world’s major religions tangled over the beginnings of human life, the disposal of surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics, and the conduct of embryonic stem cell research Wednesday (March 14) at Harvard Divinity School. Panelists at the event, representing Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, each briefly presented their faith’s teachings…
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Nation & World
French PM: Cooperation is the key
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the world now stands at a major crossroads, but that acting together the United States and Europe could lead the way in solving economic imbalances, ethnic and religious tensions, and the threat to the planet’s natural resources.
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Nation & World
Can science, religion coexist in peace?
Almost 14 billion years after the big bang, and 3.5 billion years since the first bacteria appeared on Earth, humans occupy just one branch of the tree of life. We share an evolutionary limb with other eukaryotes, creatures whose membrane-bound cells carry genetic material. Our biological neighbors developed over time just as we did, by…
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Campus & Community
Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Memorial Minute
On October 12, 1997, when Isadore Twersky died, Jewish studies lost one of its giants, and a remarkable chapter in the history of the field came to a close.
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Nation & World
Three Republican campaign strategists say the battle’s just begun
Iraq, Mormonism, and health care topped the agenda Monday night (March 5) in a 2008 presidential campaign preview featuring top aides to three Republican hopefuls in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Campaign strategists for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, U.S. Sen. John McCain, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that the Iraq…
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Nation & World
Rethinking Islam from Pakistan to Texas
Two Harvard professors are spearheading a new initiative aimed at defeating “a clash of ignorances,” a clash, they affirm, that perpetuates misunderstanding, prejudice, and fear between Muslim and Western societies.
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Health
Study: Heed spiritual needs of cancer patients
People with advanced cancer felt they received little or no spiritual support from religious communities and the medical system, according to a new survey. However, those who did receive such support reported a better quality of life.
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Health
Wilson urges alliance to save species
Edward O. Wilson sees a future in which science and religion join forces to save the natural world. Without such an alliance, said the legendary Harvard biologist and author, an alternative future is in store for the human race: one of accelerating environmental cataclysm fueled by overpopulation, deforestation, declining fisheries, and climate change.