at the age of eighty-four. The company whogathered that day came from near and far,and included colleagues, students, friends, andeven a few people who had never met Langdonbut had admired his books. In reminding usof Langdon, the event also reminded us ofwhat Swift Hall must always be.

Langdon was a teacher’s teacher. He oncesaid that teaching was nothing less thanstewardship of conversation. Langdon lovedconversation—real conversation, aboutideas and arguments and the world—andhe worked hard to cultivate it. He could andwould lecture exceptionally, but he clearlylived for the moment, perhaps some twentyminutes before the scheduled conclusion of a class, when he would close his notebookand invite questions. (His classes neverended on time.) And he did not think conversation was just for the classroom.Throughout the quarter century of histenure at the Divinity School, Langdon reg-ularly began his day in the Swift Kick CoffeeShop, with the New York Times spread onthe table and the expectation, indeed inslow times the solicitation, that passersbyjoin him for conversation about the eventsof the day and their religious significance.His interlocutors in these early morning bullsessions were as often University mainte-nance workers and staff as they were stu-dents and faculty. Office appointments were similarly extended and collegial; yourappointment was likely to evolve into a debate including three or four other students whose appointments yours hadimpinged upon. In all these venues, Lang-don cultivated excellence of exchange. Helistened, he queried, and perhaps most of allhe made questions better. He had the knackfor figuring out, with great sympathy andscrupulousness, precisely what someone wasasking. And he insisted that everyone try hisor her hand at an answer. Throughout theconversation, he would comment on itsdirection, making of it something greaterthan the sum of its parts—and thus truer tothe world it attempted to be about and that it might influence.

history and providence is to confront inbrilliant outline the power of hope and thelimits of our certitude.

Langdon was also a public figure. Shan-tung Compound, his account of his intern-ment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war campduring World War II, introduced him to a very wide public. It remains in print andengages new generations of readers. His participation as an expert witness in theArkansas creationism trial, recounted inCreationism on Trial: Evolution and God atLittle Rock, embroiled him as an avowedtheological liberal in a confrontation withfundamentalist Christianity that is perhapsmore pertinent today than it was in theearly s. Rooted in the Protestant tradi-tion, he was an adventurous dialogue part-ner, engaging Buddhists and Hindus andbecoming a deeply appreciative, if critical,expositor of the Roman Catholic tradition.

If the Divinity School is the place where theteachers of teachers of religion—our facultyand our students—congregate, it seems clearthat Langdon Gilkey understood that suchteaching must always be based in conversation,must be as wide ranging in membership aspossible, and must be ruthlessly insistent onthe complementarity of rigorous scholarshipand public engagement. Langdon’s exampleunderscores the power of scholarship to reachacross multiple publics and to do justiceboth to the range of humanity that religionengages and the depth of expression thatreligion represents.

At its best, the Divinity School embodiesprecisely those values. And it recognizes thatit promulgates them as much through theefforts of its alumni, in their work in academyand church and their offshoots, as it doesthrough the denizens of Swift Hall. ❑

Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean

(The testimonials from the memorial servicefor Langdon Gilkey will be published in anupcoming issue of Criterion.)

Langdon was a great scholar. Without peeras expositor of the thought of his teachersPaul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, he mademajor contributions to our understanding of the challenge of naming God and ofmaking sense of God’s role in history. Hewrote technically complex books, but inreading him one does not have to work hardto grasp the deeply felt humanity that drivesthe inquiry. To endeavor to name God is tograpple with human speech’s powers both toarticulate and to deceive; to contemplate

CIRCANews from the University of Chicago Divinity School

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | N U M B E R 2 3

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IS CELEBRATED AS “THE TEACHER OF TEACHERS,”

in recognition of the disproportionately large number of its graduates who have pursued careers in higher

education. The Divinity School’s contribution to this reputation in the field of religion was beautifully limned

by an event that concluded just as I began to compose this letter: the memorial service held at Bond Chapel on

February , , in honor of Langdon Gilkey, Shailer Mathewes Professor Emeritus, who died last November

Letter

from the

Dean

Langdon’s example underscores

the power of scholarship to

reach across multiple publics . . .

The Board of Trustees of the Baptist Theological Union has

named Catherine M. Bell the Divinity School’s Alumna of

the Year for . Bell is Bernard J. Hanley Professor and

chair of the Religious Studies Department at Santa Clara University,

where she has taught since .

Born and raised in New York City, Bellattended Manhattanville College, where shedouble-majored in philosophy and religion,earning her B.A. in . She went on toearn her M.A. and Ph.D. in the History ofReligions from the Divinity School in

and , respectively. Before joining thefaculty at Santa Clara, Bell taught at SeishinJoshi Gakuin in Tokyo from to ,and the International University of Japan inNigata in .

Bell’s research interests include history ofreligions methodology, ritual studies, Asianreligions, and Chinese religions, includingpopular religion, religious tracts (shanshu),and printing and ritual.

Her published work looks at the role oftext and rite in Chinese religion and, morebroadly, the efficacy of ritual in religion in

general. Her first book, Ritual Theory, RitualPractice (New York: Oxford University Press,) won the American Academy of Religion’saward for best first book in the history ofreligions in , and is considered a seminaltext in the study of ritual.

A celebrated teacher, Bell has offered avariety of courses in her home institution.These have addressed: ways of understandingreligion; Asian traditions; Buddhism; Chinesereligions; Japanese religions; magic, science,and religion; comparing fundamentalisms;gender and religion in Asian religions; ethicalissues in Asian religions; and religion andviolence, among other topics. In , she wasawarded the Brutocao Award for excellence incurriculum innovation, Santa Clara’s highestaward for teaching, designed to recognizethose teachers who have had a deep andlasting impact on the lives of students.

In addition to being a great scholar and teacher, Bell is a skilled administrator,which she has demonstrated by chairingSanta Clara’s Religious Studies Departmentsince .

Bell will deliver her Alumna of the Yearaddress, “Theory, Palm Trees, and MereBeing,” at : p.m. on Thursday, April ,, in Swift Lecture Hall. ❑

Faculty News

2 C I R C A

Catherine Bell Named Alumna of the Year

Ricoeur and Pelikan AwardedKluge Prize

Paul Ricoeur and Jaroslav Pelikan wereawarded the Library of Congress’s John W.Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in theHuman Sciences in December . Ricoeuris the John NuveenProfessor Emeritusin the DivinitySchool and one ofthe world’s leadingphilosophers, andPelikan is a formerDivinity Schoolprofessor and reli-gious historian who also earned his doctorateat Chicago. The two share this prestigious

international award of $ million, whichrecognizes work inanthropology, philosophy,history, and the studyof religion, areas forwhich there are noNobel prizes.

Zeghal Appointed to Faculty

Malika Zeghal was appointed associate professor of the anthropology and sociologyof religion in the Divinity School at thebeginning of the winter quarter. (See page for an interview with Zeghal.)

Richards to Deliver Ryerson Lecture

Robert J. Richards, Morris FishbeinProfessor of Science and Medicine and associated faculty in the Divinity School,delivered the Nora and Edward RyersonLecture on Tuesday, April , , in the Max Palevsky Cinema. The title of his lecture was “The Narrative Structure of Moral Judgments in History: Evolutionand Nazi Biology.” The Ryserson Lectureship,established by the Trustees of the Universityof Chicago in , is awarded each year to anoutstanding member of the University’s faculty.The only other Divinity School professor tohave been bestowed this honor is WendyDoniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished ServiceProfessor of the History of Religions, in .

Hopkins Lectures in India and Brazil

This fall , Dwight Hopkins, professorof theology in the Divinity School, delivereda series of lectures throughout India on blackAmericans, African American religion, blacktheology, and culture.

In January , he lectured on the stateof theology both in the U.S. and at the

World Forum on LiberationTheology in PortoAlegre, Brazil.

Hopkins hasreceived a grantfrom the LouisvilleInstitute to host

a national conference entitled “Black Theologyand Womanist Theology: Which WayForward for the Academy and the Church?”coorganized by Dr. Linda E. Thomas, to be held in fall at the Divinity School.

Klauck to Deliver Bellarmine Lecture

Hans-Josef Klauck, professor of NewTestament and early Christian literature in the Divinity School, has been invited to deliver the prestigious Robert CardinalBellarmine Lecture at Saint Louis Universityin .

E R R A T U M : Circa regrets that in issue (autumn ), page , it misrepresented Anthony C. Yu’sofficial academic title by suggesting that, in addition to being the Carl Darling Buck DistinguishedService Professor in the Humanities and professor of religion and literature in the Divinity School, heholds “associated appointments” in the Departments of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languagesand Civilizations, and English Language and Literature, as well as in the Committee on Social Thought.Professor Yu is not an associated member of these departments but a tenured and voting member.

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | 3

All M.Div. students are required to com-plete two segments of field education: anine-month, fifteen- to twenty-hour-per-week immersion in a teaching congregationunder the supervision of one of the DivinitySchool’s teaching pastors, and a secondplacement—often Clinical Pastoral Education,an internship in a campus chaplaincy or inan ecumenical, interfaith, or social serviceagency for a comparable number of hours.Accompanying the congregational place-ment are intentional supervisory meetingsbetween the student and a lay committeeand between the student and the teachingpastor; a Divinity School course sequenceon the arts of ministry—worship, preaching,and pastoral care; and a weekly practicumin which students reflect theologically ontheir parish experiences.

The teaching, learning, formation, andgrowth that transpire in the congregationalplacement are powerful and reciprocal.Students who were once ambivalent about

parish ministry are often prompted to thinkmore seriously about congregational leader-ship as they live, work, and worship alongsidethoughtful pastors and committed, dynamiccongregations. Pastors are energized by theweekly discipline of theological reflectionwith students. Congregations are pleased toparticipate in the education and formation ofnew religious leadership. And when studentsbring their insights and observations fromcongregational practice back into the SwiftHall classroom, religious practice andthought engage one another in mutuallybeneficial conversation.

Shane Isaac is a Colorado College graduatewho, with his second-year M.Div. cohort, iscurrently in the midst of his congregationalplacement year. Shane’s teaching parish is

LaSalle Street Church, located on the north-west edge of downtown Chicago, just blocksfrom the Cabrini Green neighborhood. Thecommunity church is well known for itsthoughtful and innovative worship and itspowerful commitment to serving its urbanneighborhood: the mid-size church operatesan entire building filled with communityorganizations, from day care and alternativehigh school to clothing and feeding pro-grams, and is a local leader in supportingaffordable housing.

Students are responsible for locating andsecuring their congregational placements inconsultation with the Divinity School’s fieldeducation director, Santiago Piñón. Shanechose LaSalle Street Church for its commit-ment to the concerns and challenges of peopleliving in the city, its “hands-on, authentic,and intimate community in the face ofurban alienation,” and its unique theologicaloutlook: “it has an evangelical flavor but is open to ambiguity,” Shane comments.Teaching Pastor Laura Truax has been agenerous and dynamic mentor for Shane.She and the congregation have invited himto observe, ask questions, participate, andlearn by trying his hand at religious leader-ship “in ways that one can’t learn fromreading and reflection alone.” Shane haspreached and been involved in worshipleadership; taught children, youth, andadults; participated in planning and imple-menting various social ministries; andlearned valuable lessons about organization,administration, and funding in this uniquesetting. Most importantly, Shane and hiscohort have had the opportunity to explorethe many dimensions of pastoral identity, andto try on the role for themselves. The teachingparish experience, Shane reflects, “challengesus to be intentional and constructive aboutour theological endeavors. We learn in classto be analytical and critical, and the parishexperience teaches us also to be faithful, andencourages us to develop the personalintegrity to hold these together.”

The ministry program staff are alwaysinterested in learning about healthy congre-gations with thoughtful, seasoned pastorswho would like to partner with us as teachingparishes. Contact Cynthia Lindner, directorof ministry studies (clindner@uchicago.edu),or Santiago Piñón, director of field education(spinon@uchicago.edu), to learn more. ❑

Ministry Program Update

Prospective students shopping for master of divinity programs—and the pastors and religious studies professors who advisethem—often articulate the assumption that the Divinity School’semphasis on intellectual rigor sacrifices meaningful practice in the ministerial arts. Those who take a closer look, however, are

impressed by the M.Div. program’s dedication to providing deep experience inreligious leadership in the curriculum’s field education sequence.

“. . . We learn in class to

be analytical and critical,

and the parish experience

teaches us also to be faithful,

and encourages us to develop

the personal integrity to

hold these together.”

. . . when students bring their

insights and observations from

congregational practice back

into the Swift Hall classroom,

religious practice and thought

engage one another in mutually

beneficial conversation.

M.Div. student Shane Isaac with Teaching Pastor Laura Truax

Left: LaSalle Street Church

Spring Events

4 C I R C A

For calendar updates, check the Divinity School’s Web site at http://divinity.uchicago.edu/news/events.shtml. To subscribe to At the Divinity School, theSchool’s weekly electronic events calendar, please go tohttps://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/atds.

A Conference to Honor Anthony C. Yu

Tuesday, April –Wednesday, April

Swift Hall

A conference entitled “Religion, Literature,and the Comparative Perspective” will beheld to honor Anthony C. Yu, the CarlDarling Buck Distinguished Service Professorin the Humanities and professor of religionand literature in the Divinity School, also inthe Departments of Comparative Literature,East Asian Languages and Civilizations, andEnglish Language and Literature, and theCommittee on Social Thought. Yu will retirefrom teaching on June , , after thirty-seven years of dedicated service on theUniversity of Chicago’s faculty. Details canbe found on the Divinity School’s Web site, athttp://divinity.uchicago.edu/news/spring_/yu.shtml.

Ethics Club Lecture Series

Thursday, April

: p.m., Swift Lecture Hall

Eric Gregory, assistant professor of religionat Princeton University and junior fellow at the Erasmus Institute of Notre DameUniversity, will inaugurate the Ethics Club’sspring lecture series, “Politics, Virtue,and Theology: Limits and Horizons.” Studentswill present papers in subsequent weeks, onthe afternoons of April , April , April ,and May , in Swift Lecture Hall. Checkdetails closer to the date at http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/conferences/ethics/index.shtml.

Religion and the DemocraticProspect Conference

Thursday, May –Friday, May

Swift Common Room

The spring conference of the Martin MartyCenter’s Project on Religion and theDemocratic Prospect. (See page for details.)

The Shohet Conference on Roman,Jewish, and Christian Burials

Sunday, May –Tuesday, May

Swift Hall

“Commemorating the Dead: Texts andArtifacts in Context”—The ShohetConference on Roman, Jewish, andChristian burials. (See page for details.)

Maimonides and Hebrew Prayer

Wednesday, April

: p.m., Swift Lecture Hall

Dr. Stefan Reif will deliver a lecture entitled“Maimonides and Hebrew Prayer” andexhibit manuscript fragments authored byMaimonides from the Genizah, the storageplace of a thousand-year-old synagogue inCairo containing the world’s most preciouscollection of Hebrew and Jewish documents.The documents are no less important than

A Conversation in Divinity with Amy Hollywood

Thursday, April

: p.m., Chicago Cultural Center, East Washington Street, Southwest Meeting Room

See page for details.

Ministry Conference: ContemporaryReflections on the Body

Friday, April

: a.m.–: p.m., Swift Hall

“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Contem-porary Reflections on the Body,” a conferenceorganized by the Divinity School’s ministryprogram and sponsored by the MartinMarty Center. (See page for details.)

the Dead Sea Scrolls, and shed light on theeveryday life, religion, and culture of commu-nities around the Mediterranean from thetenth to the thirteenth centuries. Dr. Reif is director of the Genizah Research Unitand head of the Oriental Division in theUniversity Library, professor of medievalHebrew studies in the Faculty of OrientalStudies, and fellow of St. John’s College, allat the University of Cambridge. His majorfields of research are the Hebrew prayerbook and the Cairo Genizah, and he is theauthor/editor of nine books and over

scholarly articles. His most recent publica-tions are: A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo(Curzon, ); Why Medieval HebrewStudies? (Cambridge University Press, );and The Cambridge Genizah Collections:Their Contents and Significance (CambridgeUniversity Press, ).

Alumna of the Year Address

Thursday, April

: p.m., Swift Lecture Hall

“Theory, Palm Trees, and MereBeing,” the Alumna of theYear Address, will be delivered byCatherine M. Bell, Bernard J.Hanley Professor and chair of theReligious Studies Department atSanta Clara University. (See page for details.)

Moses Maimonides

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | 5

An Interview with Amy Hollywood

CIRCA: Your first book, The Soul as VirginWife, which won the International Congressof Medieval Studies’ Otto Grundler Prize forthe best book in medieval studies, examinesthe body and gender in late medieval Christianmysticism, while your most recent book,Sensible Ecstasy, examines the fascinationamong certain thinkers with affective formsof mysticism. What are you focusing on inyour current research?

AH: There was a real continuity betweenthose two projects, and I always knew I wasgoing to move from the first to the second.Now I am in the curious position of havingtoo many ideas and not yet being able todecide where to focus my energies. I’verecently written a number of essays dealingwith questions of bodily practice, ritual, andbelief. Some of this work focuses on contem-porary theoretical materials, some brings thatmaterial into conversation with medievalpractices as they can be reconstructed throughtexts and surviving material artifacts. I amvery interested in the ways in which medievalChristian men and women understood therelationship between their religious practicesand extraordinary experiences of the divine.There is an entire psychological and theo-logical vocabulary with regard to these issueswithin medieval texts that might, I think,contribute in very interesting ways to someparticularly vexing questions in the contem-porary study of religion. So that’s one possiblelarge-scale project, but there are others.

CIRCA: Describe your approach to workingin the History of Christianity.

AH: As a historian of Christianity whoseprimary training is in theology, I want tounderstand the ways ideas are embedded in,shaped by, but also often alter, the materialconditions in which they emerge. Most vari-eties of medieval Christianity are as muchabout materiality as about transcendence—transcendence occurs in and through mate-riality, which is difficult for many of us now

to apprehend. I see my work as fundamentallyin continuity with the traditions of JeanLeclercq, Marie-Dominique Chenu, andmy own teacher at Chicago, BernardMcGinn, for all of whom theology wasinextricable from religious practice, and reli-gious practice inexplicable outside of itstheological contexts. What I bring that isperhaps new to this tradition is an explicitinterest in issues of gender, sexuality, and thebody as they are articulated within medievalsources and contemporary theory. I try toallow these seemingly divergent sets of textsto speak to each other in my work.

CIRCA: You left the Divinity School withan M.A. and Ph.D. in to teach atDartmouth College, and returned in

as a professor. What has this experiencebeen like for you?

AH: I was away long enough for it to bemore exhilarating than daunting—althoughit is still daunting enough. It’s nice to comeback to a place one knows and to see how ithas altered and grown. That basic familiaritymakes some of the other difficulties ofchanging jobs a bit easier. The biggest chal-lenge has been to move from undergraduateto primarily graduate teaching. I had excel-lent undergraduates at Dartmouth, but thereis something different about graduate-levelteaching that I can’t yet fully articulate. You’llhave to check back with me on that one! ❑

Amy Hollywood is professor of theology and the history

of Christianity in the Divinity School. A graduate of the

Divinity School, Hollywood taught Christian thought

at Dartmouth College before returning to Chicago in

fall .

Thursday, April

: p.m., Chicago Cultural Center, East Washington Street, Southwest Meeting Room

“Traumatic Devotion: Mysticism andMourning in Late Medieval Mysticism”by Amy Hollywood, professor of theologyand the history of Christianity in theDivinity School.

Mel Gibson’s film The Passionof the Christ has provoked impassionedresponses, both positive and negative,largely because of its emphasis on theextremity of Christ’s physical suffering.Gibson here follows traditions firstestablished in the late Middle Ages—traditions that call on the believer to

visualize, meditate on,and feel compassion for Christ’s intense bodily pain.

In this Conversation inDivinity, Amy Hollywoodwill look at the Revelationof the German DominicanMargaret Ebner, a virtuosaof meditation on Christ’sPassion, whose own bodyphysically conforms tothat of Christ on thecross. The real question,of course, will be, Why?What religious value didEbner find in her compassion for andidentification with Christ’s suffering?

Do the values andmeanings visible inEbner’s practice find a parallel in Gibson’stwenty-first-centuryfilmic representation?

Conversations inDivinity, a quarterlyseries, is free and opento the public. To regis-ter or for more infor-mation, please contactMolly Bartlett at -- or mbartlet@

uchicago.edu.

I am very interested in the ways in which medieval

Christian men and womenunderstood the relationship

between their religious practices and extraordinaryexperiences of the divine.

A Conversation in Divinity with Amy Hollywood

Film Still from Mel Gibson’s film The Passionof the Christ © Icon Distribution Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A Newmarket Films release. Photo: Philippe Antonello.

6 C I R C A

CIRCA: You were trained as a political sci-entist and study religion through the lens of Islam and power. How did you becomeinterested in this subject and what are yourcurrent research goals?

MZ: My interest in the subject of Islam andpower stems from a phenomenon that I findpuzzling: religious revival. Why do certaingroups and even whole societies occasionallyrediscover their religion? What kinds ofpolitical forms can this rediscovery and itsattendant redefinitions take? How is therediscovery embedded in social structures?

Before I began studying it, I directlyobserved the Islamic revival of the s in Tunisia, where I spent some formativeyears. While studying at the Ecole NormaleSupérieure in Paris, I became interested insociological fieldwork and theory. I was dis-satisfied at the time with the way in whichthe sociological literature was dealing withpolitical Islam and the Muslim revival. Fora very long time, the “Orientalist” style wasprevalent. It is extremely erudite but lackssociological perspective, defining Islam asthe main basis of an essentialized “politicalculture.” It is only recently that, in France,the study of Islam has been tackled by soci-ologists and political scientists. I wanted tolink the study of Islam with a rigorous soci-ological approach.

My first experience in the field was inEgypt. The work I did there provided theground for my Ph.D. thesis, which laterbecame my first book, Gardiens de l’Islam(). It is a sociopolitical study of al-Azhar(the most important Islamic institution anduniversity in the Sunni Muslim world) in thesecond part of the twentieth century. I justpublished a book on contemporary Morocco,Les islamistes marocains: le défi à la monarchie(), where I examine the changing religiousand political status of the “Commander ofthe Faithful” (the king) as the monarchy isfaced with serious religious competition.This, in turn, will provide part of the basisfor a theoretical book on public Islam in themodern world, a long-term project where I will examine theories of secularization inlight of the recent history of Islam.

In the meantime, I will continue mywork on an ongoing project involving field-work on Islam and Muslims in the UnitedStates. My aim is to develop a sociology ofreligious experience in a diaspora situationin relation to larger sociological topics: theprocess of building religious authorities andorganizations, and the “import” and “export”of religious ideas between the American

Divinity School. How do you think yourpresence here will change that?

MZ: It is important that Islam be taughttoday in the Divinity School. I look forwardto teaching modern Islam here and partici-pating in the construction of a program inthe Anthropology and Sociology of Religionas well as in the study of Islam. Today, Islamis not just the majority’s religion in what wecall the “Muslim world”; it has also becomepart of the religious landscape of the West,which is one of the reasons why Islam—in its very diverse manifestations—shouldinterest scholars of religion today.

I want to acquaint students with the textualaspects of Islam in relationship with the socialand political manifestations of Islam in moderntimes. This spring, for instance, one of myclasses will treat the topic “Reform andRevival in Modern Islam (Eighteenth toTwentieth Centuries).” We will examine thecomplex historical mutation of the originalreligious nineteenth-century reform intopoliticized and fundamentalist versions ofIslam. I will also look at the very recentreform movements toward a more liberalapprehension and practice of Islam. I intendto teach courses in fieldwork methodologyand analysis, too.

CIRCA: As you mentioned, you spent timein Tunisia, where you received your primaryand secondary education, before moving toParis, where you studied at the prestigiousEcole Normale Supérieure and Institutd’Etudes Politiques. How has this back-ground prepared you for teaching religion?

MZ: I studied in the sociology departmentat the Ecole Normale Supérieure, where theinfluence of Durkheim, but also scholarslike Pierre Bourdieu and Foucault, is impor-tant. I can now develop my own perspectiveon the relationship between religion andpower by focusing on religious institutions,which I broadly define as structures of

mediation betweenbelievers and religiousideas. For instance, Ithink that it is relevant to compare the “clergy”in the West with religiousclerics in the SunniMiddle East, even if in Islam there is no defi-nition of a clergy orchurch. I am also inter-ested in recent sociolo-gists of religion who dealwith religious pluralismin secular societies, andthe consequences of glob-alization on religion. Iam particularly intriguedby a process that I noticeoften in my fieldwork on

Islam and Muslims in the United States:that of the standardization of religious ideasthat circulate and get transmitted widelyand rapidly through new media as well asreligious organizations and authorities. ❑

Muslim diaspora andthe rest of the world.Also, I am currentlyediting, with FarhadKhosrokhavar, a volumeentitled “NewIntellectuals in Islam.”We look at new trendsin liberal and reformistIslam in eleven countries,from the United Statesand several Europeancountries to Iran, SaudiArabia, Indonesia. . . .The most vibrant intel-lectual discussionsamong intellectuals andtheologians are takingplace today outside ofthe Arab Middle East, particularly in theUnited States and Iran.

CIRCA: To date, there hasn’t been a sus-tained program in the study of Islam at the

An Interview with Malika Zeghal

I want to acquaint students

with the textual aspects

of Islam in relationship

with the social and political

manifestations of Islam

in modern times.

Malika Zeghal was appointed associate professor of the

anthropology and sociology of religion in the Divinity

School on January , . She taught at Ecole des

Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris before

coming to Chicago as a visiting associate professor in spring .

Mosques and sunset in Cairo, Egypt

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | 7

prehends nearly all of Goethe’s learning overa lifetime, from classical mythology, philos-ophy, and literature to the latest develop-ments in science, politics, and the economy.It has confounded its interpreters ever sinceits publication after Goethe’s death in ,and as the drama becomes increasinglyobscure, encyclopedic, allegorical, abstract,hermetic, and heterogeneous, my studentsare finding fewer and fewer secure footholdsin the text that would support a coherentinterpretation of it. I have discovered thatmore lecture and less discussion is requiredfor Goethe’s frustratingly opaque moments.

In this way, however, teaching in theCollege has already proven invaluable: inthe chance to revise a ridiculously demandingsyllabus, to discover and possibly transcendthe limits of one’s abilities in the classroom,to test a variety of teaching techniques, andto work with a group of intelligent, dedicated,and energetic college students. It may be atruism, but the students are most important.Faust demands not just to be taught, but tobe taught well, and it is my students who areteaching me to do this, whether in their vocalobjections to the reading load, the questionsthey ask that send me back to my books, orsimply in their silence in the face of an unan-swerable Socratic question. For all of thesereasons, it has been a privilege to serve asthe Wilson Teaching Fellow this year. ❑

David L. Simmons

Marty Center Fellowship Programs

The Martin Marty Center builds on a long-standing conviction of

the Divinity School that the best and most innovative scholarship

in religion emerges from sustained dialogue with the world outside

the academy. In all of its projects, the Center aims to serve as a

robust circulatory system that strengthens, deepens, and extends

scholarly inquiry by moving it through the deliberating bodies of

the students, faculty, and public.

—Wendy Doniger, Director of the Marty Center

The opportunity to teach a course onGoethe’s Faust as a Wilson Teaching Fellowhas been thrilling in both senses of theword, since the experiencehas been more fun and moreterrifying than I had antici-pated. Originally designed for the University’s GrahamSchool of General Studies,the course was primarilyintended as an opportunityfor students to read Goethe’smasterpiece in its entirety,given that the extremely diffi-cult, five-act second part ofthe epic dramatic poem israrely taught. In revampingthe syllabus for the religiousstudies program in the College, I saw anopportunity to teach Faust as a thoroughlymodern literary response to ancient reli-gious questions about God, the nature ofevil, the place of humanity in the cosmos,and the possibility of salvation, among others. This perspective also seeks to under-stand Goethe, who once proclaimed that allof his works were “fragments of a great con-fession,” as a profound religious thinker.

The wildly ambitious scope of the coursebecame increasingly apparent during the firstthree weeks of the quarter, when my studentsmade it clear that the graduate-level readingload of Goethe, background material, andinterpretive essays was not merely onerous,but impossible. I had not thought pragmati-cally enough about the reading assignments,so I reduced the secondary reading to what I considered the bare minimum required tounderstand the Faust myth and Goethe’s

development of it in a religious studies context:Luther and the Reformation, philosophy ofreligion in the Enlightenment, and German

Romanticism.Although these readings

already suggest that teachingFaust is tantamount to teachinga course in Western civilization(one of the terrifying aspects of my experience), the sixteenstudents who stuck with it provedto be ready for the challengeand contributed eagerly andinsightfully to the seminar-stylediscussions about the text.Moreover, their first essaysexceeded my expectations inthe intensity of their engage-

ment with all the assigned reading and thediversity of their interests. The other aspect of the thrill of teaching is being able to witness a student becoming passionateabout a work you love.

Nevertheless, each day in the classroompresents new and unexpected challenges, as well as the chance to improvise ways ofdealing with them. Part Two of Faust com-

The Alma Wilson Teaching Fellow

Each year, the Alma Wilson Teaching Fellowship, made possible by

a generous endowment gift, provides one advanced graduate student

in the Divinity School an opportunity for supervised teaching experience

in the University of Chicago’s undergraduate college. David L. Simmons,

a Ph.D. candidate in Religion and Literature, was awarded the fellow-

ship for –. He offered the following report on his experience:

MartyCenterNews andEvents

. . . each day in the classroom

presents new and unexpected

challenges, as well as

the chance to improvise

ways of dealing with them.

Sightings

8 C I R C A

Marty Center Publications

Special Issue onPedagogy and theStudy of Religion

In January , the Chicago Forum onPedagogy and the Study of Religion,sponsored by the Wabash Center forTeaching and Learning in Theologyand Religion, published an overview

of its three-year program in volume of theMartin Marty Center’s occasional papers series.The publication, which bears the same nameas the forum, contains an introduction byDean Rosengarten and Forum Director LucyK. Pick; the three Wabash Center lectures—by Jonathan Z. Smith, John Stratton Hawley,and Paul J. Griffiths—each of which con-siders the theme for that year; as well as essaysby three of our graduate student fellows—Caroline Tolton, David Clairmont, and DavidSimmons—which reflect on questions raisedduring the three years of the forum. Toreceive a complimentary copy of the issue,please contact jquijano@uchicago.edu.

On January , , ElizabethHayes Alvarez retired fromher position as Sightings’smanaging editor to tend to two small children and

her Ph.D. dissertation. Ably stepping intoAlvarez’s shoes is Jeremy Biles, who receivedhis Ph.D. from the Divinity School inReligion and Literature last winter and whohas since served as an occasional teacher andwriter for the University. “I’ve long beeninterested in publishing projects, particularlyin the area of religion,” commented Biles,“so Sightings is a greatopportunity for me inthat regard. And as anoccasional contributor, I have some familiaritywith the venue—itsparameters and the over-all editorial vision. Doingthis job allows me to continue and expandupon this experience. In particular, I hope toincorporate more columnsaddressing the relationsbetween religion and literature, visual arts,and popular culture.”

Biles is off to a promising start. In addition topenning his own column on the proliferationof BibleZines—Bibles designed to resemblefashion magazines—he has delved into thedifficult task of broadening the editorial’scontributor base. New columnists haveoffered insightful analyses of the rhetoricemployed by conservatives in combating thealleged “war against Christmas,” religion

and the inauguralprayer, mythand the waron terror, andthe religiousdimensions of the Super Bowl. MartinMarty’s regular Monday columns have beensimilarly wide-ranging and penetrating,addressing matters such as the dubious ethicsof the Iraq war, the presence of exclusivistevangelical clubs in colleges and universities,community-building in Europe and the

U.S., the decline of dominantfigures in theology, and themomentous disaster of theAsian tsunami.

“One column that eliciteda great deal of response,”reports Biles, “was MichaelKessler’s ‘A Place for Prayer?’”(January ), which examinedthe role of religion in theinaugural prayer. “It appealsdirectly to the mission ofSightings, which is to reporton the role of religion in public

life.” Circa is pleased to reprint Kessler’s columnbelow, and hopes that it will serve both toacquaint new readers with the publicationand perhaps inspire further contributions.Those interested in submitting to Sightingsmay do so by e-mailing Jeremy Biles atsightings-admin@listhost.uchicago.edu. ❑

iatory: “There are factions of society todaythat hate God. . . . In America, where ourcurrency declares ‘In God We Trust,’ it stillsurprises me that when a Christian ministerdoes what he is ordained to do—read andquote from the Bible, share the truth of theGospel, pray in the Name of Jesus—somepeople view those acts as borderline subver-sive!” (The Name).

And God’s word, for Caldwell, is Jesus. But this year, in newfound deference toAmerica’s melting pot of faiths, Caldwellmodified his closing: “Respecting persons of all faiths, I humbly submit this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Franklin Graham, who also appealed toJesus in his invocation, was less concil-

SIGHTINGS

To access the Sightings archive, go tohttp://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/index.shtml.

Indeed, a minister ordained to leadprayers and preach the Word ought to dojust that. And after all, Christian or not,everyone understands that the key event of the inauguration is the chief justice’s administration of the oath to defend theConstitution. So what is the harm in a president’s spiritual advisors giving it up for Jesus in a public, political event?

Michael Newdow, California activist forseparation of God from government, feltharmed by the prayer, but his lawsuit to

Sightings Column: A Place for Prayer? By Michael Kessler

So what is the harm

in a president’s spiritual

advisors giving it up

for Jesus in a public,

political event?

At the presidential inauguration, the Reverend Kirbyjon

Caldwell’s benediction concluded on a controversial note:

“We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name

that’s above all other names, Jesus, the Christ. Let all who agree say,

‘Amen.’” Caldwell explained prior to delivering the inaugural

benediction, “I expect to speak God’s word over the world . . . and

pronounce God’s blessing on the people.”

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | 9

the president’s inaugural committee submittedthat, “in Newdow’s previous attempt [tostop the prayers], the Ninth Circuit heldthat ‘Newdow lacks standing to bring actionbecause he does not allege a sufficientlyconcrete and specific injury.’” It seems the

remove the prayer from the inaugurationwas predictably dismissed at each level ofthe federal courts. He argued that beingexposed to a religious observance at a publicevent constituted an injury to his publicfreedom. In its motion to dismiss the charges,

November

Susanna Morrill, visiting assistant professorat Lewis & Clark College, examines theimportance of two female figures in earlyMormon theology and culture: the Motherin Heaven and Eve.

December

Wendy Doniger, director of the MartinMarty Center and Mircea EliadeDistinguished Service Professor of theHistory of Religions in the Divinity School,examines the layers of meaning in cases of

The Religion and Culture Web Forum

The Religion and Culture Web Forum, the Marty Center’s online

forum for thought-provoking discussion on the relationship of schol-

arship in religion and culture to public life, invites you to read recent

and upcoming essays and discuss them online at http://marty-center.uchicago

.edu/webforum/index.shtml.

individuals who, while passing as somethingthey do not believe themselves to be, pretendto be what they in fact are.

January

Jeremy Biles, managing editor of Sightingsand instructor in the University of Chicago’sCollege, considers the social and sacredmeaning of monster-truck mayhem.

February

Kristin C. Bloomer, Ph.D. candidate inTheology and the History of Religions in theDivinity School, reflects on her experiencesin southeast India in the wake of theDecember , , tsunami.

March

Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor of modernJewish thought in the Divinity School, con-siders Martin Buber’s vision of a shared land

for the Jewish and Arab populations ofPalestine, and how Buber would have inter-preted the wall currently being constructedby the State of Israel to separate it from itsPalestinian neighbors.

April

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, assistant professorof political science at the University ofChicago, discusses how religion mediatesthe relationship between black Americansand the U.S. president.

May

Farr Curlin, M.D., instructor of medicine in the Section of General Internal Medicineat the University of Chicago, discusses therelationship between Christianity and modernmedicine.

Newdow . . . argued that

being exposed to a religious

observance at a public event

constituted an injury

to his public freedom.

Those interested in submitting to the Web Forum are welcome to do so by contacting Seth Perry, theforum’s managing editor, at perrysa@

uchicago.edu. Submissions should notexceed ten to fifteen double-spacedpages in Word, and should be on topicsaccessible to non-specialists.

Continued on page

court applied “sticks-and-stones” jurispru-dence here; it is action, and not mere words,that causes harm. Many Christian commen-tators took this approach: Newdow and anyothers “offended” by the grace of Christproclaimed could simply tune out. It is afree country, after all.

Supporters of the prayer note that it issteeped in American tradition, which is true.Others assert that having a Christian ministerdeliver an invocation and benediction reflectsthe Judeo-Christian heritage of the Americannation. Those who make this claim will saythat the inaugural prayer is a nonsectarian

10 C I R C A

Contemporary Reflections on the Body

April ,

For some, embodiment is humanity’s greatest gift, for others its greatest curse.Our bodies connect us to the world of finitude, yet also yearn to transcend thatworld. The body has been and remains a source of paradox, anxiety, and hope.

On April , from : a.m. to :

p.m. in Swift Hall, the ministry programwill host a conference entitled “Fearfullyand Wonderfully Made: ContemporaryReflections on the Body.” Details can be found on the Marty Center’s Web site, at http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/conferences/body/index.shtml.

Religion and the Democratic Prospect

May –,

The Marty Center’s Project on Religion andthe Democratic Prospect will host its annualspring conference on May and in SwiftCommon Room to discuss papers by recentDivinity School Ph.D. graduates JeromeCopulsky (Virginia Tech) and MichaelKessler (Georgetown University), as well asby Divinity School Professors Richard A.Rosengarten and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan.Papers will be posted on the project’s Website a week in advance, at http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/research/religion.shtml.

Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials

May –,

Did Christians practice inhumation in imi-tation of the Jews or was this an expressionof an early Christian theology of resurrection?What Greco-Roman funerary images weretaken over and “baptized” as Christian ones?

Marty Center ConferencesDo the material remains from Jewish burialsevidence an adherence to or disregard ofMishnaic regulations? Is the developmentfrom columbaria to catacombs the result ofevolving religious identities or simply a matterof a change in burial fashions?

These questions and others will beaddressed at “Commemorating the Dead:Texts and Artifacts in Context”—TheShohet Conference on Roman, Jewish, andChristian Burials. The conference is part ofa two-year interdisciplinary endeavor toinvestigate, read, and interpret inscriptionalremains and catacombs in light of Roman,Jewish, and early Christian texts. It will fea-ture the work of scholars of Roman history,archaeology, Jewish studies, Christian history,and the New Testament who engaged in twoweeks of field research in Rome and Tunisia,bringing their different methodologies tobear on the catacombs, necropolis, andmuseum artifacts. Responses will be givenby doctoral students in complementary fieldsof study. For a conference schedule, speakerbios, and to register, go to http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/conferences/thedead.

. . . if believers like Caldwell

take “their” Jesus seriously—

more seriously than political

power—perhaps they should

consider keeping Jesus out

of political events.

reflection of our link to a moral and religiouspast that permeates our laws.

President Bush expressed a similar sentimentin his speech: “In America’s ideal of freedom,the public interest depends on private char-acter. . . . That edifice of character is built infamilies, supported by communities withstandards, and sustained in our national lifeby the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on theMount, the words of the Koran, and thevaried faiths of our people . . . ideals of justice

and conduct that are the same yesterday,today, and forever.”

If this were true, of course, the prayercould have been offered in Allah’s name ordelivered by a rabbi or cleric of any religionthat expresses the fundamentalprinciples of “good will” pro-claimed by Bush. These vari-ous religions, Bush seems tosuggest, are all really saying thesame thing: respect the idealsof liberty, justice, and equalityembedded in the Constitution.Anyone who hears “In Jesus’name” should merely remindhimself that the Sermon on theMount offers a set of moral ide-als roughly consistent with theMosaic Code or the Koran, oreven John Locke for that matter.

But this construal poses a double bindfor those religious persons who want to proclaim their version of Jesus from therooftops—or the presidentially appointed

pulpit. Those who invoke the name of Jesuswould likely resist equating “their” Jesus toa set of common moral principles, for if onemakes the case for the inclusion of Jesusalong these lines, the name becomes a mere

“passive symbol” with a“secular purpose” (as ChiefJustice Warren Burger put it in reference to the place-ment of crèches on publicland).

Thus, if believers likeCaldwell take “their” Jesusseriously—more seriouslythan political power—perhaps they should considerkeeping Jesus out of politicalevents.

Michael Kessler (M.A. , P.h.D. )is assistant dean for strategic planningand faculty development and teachesreligion and political theory in the Collegeat Georgetown University.

Sightings: A Place for Prayer? Continued from page

Top: Cillium Tomb, Tunisia Bottom, Left: Vatican Auto Park Necropolis

S P R I N G 2 0 0 5 | 11

An Interview with Christian Wedemeyer

CIRCA: You work primarily on Indian andTibetan Buddhisms, with a focus on theesoteric Buddhist traditions of the MahayogaTantras. What are your current researchinterests and how are these reflected in yourclasses at the Divinity School?

CW: I have devoted most of my attentionin recent years to text-critical and interpre-tive work relative to the literary corpus ofesoteric Buddhist scriptures and commen-taries. I am finishing the long and difficultproject of editing (in Sanskrit and Tibetan),translating into English, and commentingupon an influential late-first-millenniumIndian work that argues for, and details, agradual path to enlightenment in an esotericmode. My next book will attempt a synopticview of the larger traditions of which thiswork is representative—that is, the schoolsof the Esoteric Communion Scripture(Guhyasamaja Tantra) in India and Tibet. I am interested primarily in Buddhism, somost of my teaching is also in this area—from introductory classes on Indian andTibetan Buddhism to more advanced seminarson topics such as Indian Esoteric Buddhismor the popular genre of sacred autobiographyin Tibet. The approach I take to scholarshipentails a critical perspective with regard bothto the constructed object of its study andthe constructing subject, its discourses andits practices. I therefore devote a part of myteaching to methodological courses, such as“Representation and Ideology in the Studyof South Asian Religions” and “Studies inBuddhism,” which explore a range of epis-temological issues endemic to these areasand seek to locate their discourses in theirproper historical contexts, tracing strategies of legitimation, sources of funding andinstitutional foundations, and the directionsof research that have characterized these studiesin the modern academy from its formativeperiod to the present.

CIRCA: How does your work fit into the History of Religions paradigm at theDivinity School?

CW: That is a tricky question, for the answerdepends largely on how one defines the“History of Religions paradigm.” Shall werefer to the paradigm(s) of the current facultyor adopt a longer historical perspective onthe “Chicago School”? In many ways, theHistory of Religions has, since its inception,been a signifier in search of a signified. A tremendous amount of writing in theHistory of Religions has been dedicated to

Christian Wedemeyer was appointed assistant professor

of the history of religions in the Divinity School in fall

. After receiving his doctorate from Columbia

University in religion and Buddhist studies in , he

taught at the University of Copenhagen before coming to Chicago.

My work in the Marty Center

has been a wonderful

experience in all respects.

It has given me, a new faculty

member, insight into the

intellectual life of the

Divinity School across

all nine of its areas of study.

defining a “paradigm” without yet reachinga consensus. HR has largely defined itself incontradistinction to constructive studies ingeneral, and theology in particular. It holdsreligions to be purely human phenomena,and brackets claims that are in principleunverifiable; it is content to describe, analyze,and interrogate religions’ histories and ideo-logical dynamics, rather than to engage theirdiscourses and practices on their own terms.I think this approach characterizes the methodsof the current HR faculty, and in that regard,my own work fits squarely into the paradigm.

Others have noted that in the famousChicago School—with its concern for cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparison—there was actually not much “history” in theHistory of Religions. My own work is in somesense defined in contradistinction to thisparadigm, seeking instead to be relentlesslyhistorical. A comparative approach does notfigure largely in my intellectual makeup,nor does any great confidence in the categoryof “religion” as in itself a useful focus ofscholarly inquiry. I am trained in and applyhistorical, philological, and literary modesof analysis, focusing on delimited archivesof historical (largely literary) data, with aneye to understanding their dynamics andtheir significance for the study of humancultural forms. I thus consider comparisona result, not a method.

CIRCA: This is your second year coleadingone of the Marty Center’s dissertation semi-nars, at which advanced graduate students andsenior fellows from a variety of disciplineswithin the study of religion meet regularlyto discuss their works in progress. How haveyou found this experience and do you thinkit has influenced your own work?

CW: My work in the Marty Center has beena wonderful experience in all respects. It hasgiven me, a new faculty member, insight intothe intellectual life of the Divinity Schoolacross all nine of its areas of study. I have beenable to learn about and engage argumentsand evidence in a wide range of periods, areas,and approaches that are not otherwise partof my scholarly “daily bread.”

The mandate of the Marty Seminar—to encourage reflection on the contributionone’s specialized research makes to scholar-ship and society at large—is of relevance notonly for advanced doctoral candidates butalso for scholars at all stages of develop-ment. The challenge to think in this way—beyond the boundaries of one’s specializedsubdiscipline—has been salutary and isbeginning to move my thinking in newdirections. Finally, I have greatly appreciatedthe opportunity to get to know many of thecurrent doctoral students and their research,and to be able to work in close collaborationwith such outstanding colleagues as ClarkGilpin, Winni Sullivan, Bill Schweiker, CathyBrekus, and Wendy Doniger. In all regards,this has been a valuable experience, and I hopeto continue contributing to the life of theMarty Center throughout my time here. ❑Rock painting of Buddha in Tibet

April

Dean’s Forum on Politics as a ChristianVocation (Cambridge University Press, )by Franklin I. Gamwell, Shailer MathewsProfessor of Religious Ethics, the Philosophyof Religion, and Theology, with formalresponses by Divinity School colleagues W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. BurtonProfessor of the History of Christianity andTheology, and Martin Riesebrodt, professorof the sociology of religion.

April

Tributes to Anthony C. Yu on the occasionof his retirement from teaching. This lunchwill take place in the context of the conferencebeing held in Yu’s honor on April and .(See page for details.)

April

Live music by the University of Chicago’spremier undergraduate a cappella groups,Voices in Your Head and Soul Umoja.

April

Bernard McGinn,Naomi ShenstoneDonnelley ProfessorEmeritus ofHistorical Theologyand the History ofChristianity in theDivinity School, willreflect on his intel-lectual heritage.

May

The Reverend Davidson Loehr, seniorminister of the First Unitarian UniversalistChurch of Austin, Texas, will discuss “TheLegitimate Heir to God.”

Wednesday Community Luncheons

For calendar updates, please consult the Divinity School’s Web site at http://divinity.uchicago.edu/news/wednesdays.shtml.

Spring Quarter

Wednesday community luncheons areheld at : noon in Swift CommonRoom. They cost $ at the door andmust be reserved in advance by e-mailingjquijano@uchicago.edu or calling --.

March

Arthur Callaham,a second-yearM.Div. student,will deliver theannual FranzBibfeldt Lecture,commemoratingthe life and schol-arship of eminenttheologian and proteanist extraordinaireFranz Bibfeldt, mentor to Martin E. Marty,Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished ServiceProfessor Emeritus of the History ofModern Christianity in the DivinitySchool. Beer will be served.

May

Bromleigh McCleneghan, a master of divinity/master of public policy dualdegree program student, will present hersenior ministry project, “Ticking TimeBombs? Thinking Theologically aboutAdolescent Sexuality.”

May

Dean’s Forum on The Impossibility ofReligious Freedom byWinnifred FallersSullivan, dean of students and seniorlecturer of the anthro-pology and sociologyof religion in the Divinity School, with formal responses by James Robinson, assistant professor of the history of Judaismin the Divinity School, and Omar McRoberts,assistant professor in the Department ofSociology and associated faculty in theDivinity School.

May

Robert Fefferman,Max MasonDistinguished ServiceProfessor in theDepartment ofMathematics anddean of the PhysicalSciences Division,will discuss some of the weird and

interesting problems posed by our efforts to understand infinity in a talk entitled“Infinity and Beyond.”

June

Cookout and live music in Swift Courtyard.

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