In the Canadian UFO Report (now defunct) Vol. 3 No. 3 you will find an article with the title "A Church that Tells of Other Worlds." We believe that Joseph Smith displayed the same phenomena that experiencers do during their contacts with extraterrestrials with one exception; they have not started a new religion. We have been warned over and over again not to let our contact experiences lead to a religion....
"On a visit to Salt Lake City, Utah, before Canadian UFO Report was even contemplated we were fascinated by the almost magic quality of what we learned in a short time about the Mormon Church. There was the story of the strange gold plates and the miraculous experience of Joseph Smith. There were references that seemed to include North America in Biblical events. Perhaps above all there were the magnificent graphic paintings, so unlike those of usual church windows, by which Mormons illustrate the history of their beliefs.
All of it might have remained just a mental note, however, had it not become apparent after we started the magazine that besides being the seat of the Mormon faith, Utah was also a center of UFO activity. These two circumstances somehow seemed to come together when we read of a good sighting by a senior member of the church, Garth Batty. On a hunch we wrote Mr. Batty asking if there was anything in Mormon literature that even hinted at a connection between his Church and space visitors.
Incredibly that wild guess was right on target. In his reply Mr. Batty quoted the Mormons' late president Joseph Fielding Smith, as saying: "The Lord is not restricted in giving invitations to other creations to visit this earth so you need not be surprised if some visitors from other worlds do visit this one."
Mr. Batty then introduced us to a wealth of additional material that added up to compelling reason for writing about the Latter Day Saints Church in a magazine devoted to study of UFOs.
While the material was excellent, our real luck probably lay in the fact that Mr. Batty had an accurate feeling for just what we were after. He wrote: "True religion, unblemished by the doctrines of men, founded upon revelation directly from God, would of course have to give information which is both reasonable and which gives knowledge that God truly has created innumerable worlds which are inhabited."
Answering our request for a few details about himself, he said: "I was born March 4, 1928, in Vernal, Utah and was baptized and confirmed a member of the Latter Day Saints Church (commonly called Mormon) in March, 1934. I hold the office of High Priest in the Melchezedek Priesthood and have held various offices in the Church, among them being: Sunday school teacher, Scoutmaster, Counselor to a Bishop, Bishop of two different wards, a member of the Stake High Council, and First Counselor in the Presidency of The Stake.
"I have firm conviction and bear testimony that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a prophet of God, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly called Mormon) is true."
* * * *
"So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I WAS SEIZED UPON BY SOME POWER WHICH ENTIRELY OVERCAME ME, and had such an astonishing influence over me AS TO BIND MY TONGUE so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
"But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction -- not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being -- just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. WHEN THE LIGHT RESTED UPON ME I SAW TWO PERSONAGES, WHOSE BRIGHTNESS AND GLORY DEFY ALL DESCRIPTION, STANDING ABOVE ME IN THE AIR. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other -- 'This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!'"
Joseph Smith was 14 at the time of his experience. Born in Vermont and moving with his family to rural York a few years later, he was a thoughtful sensitive youth almost painfully affected by the swirl of religious conflicts of that period and place. When he set out to pray, he was looking for answers to settle his inner confusion. Who of all these parties is right, he had asked himself, or are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it and how shall I know it?
Without studying his story more closely, we might conclude that this experience was entirely the result of his spiritual anxieties. Like others before him whose cases are recorded in religious history, he may have had a vision without substance yet so overwhelming that it led to great accomplishment.
But in Joseph Smith's case there were to be other events of such substantial and extraordinary nature that he became revered as a prophet in his own time and founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, which today is the place of worship for the vast congregation of Mormon faith.
His next experience occurred three years later (when he was 17 years old) after he had gone to his room for the night. FORBIDDEN NOW TO JOIN ANY RELIGIOUS SECT BECAUSE OF THE VISION HE SPOKE ABOUT, and troubled by his own frailties, he had resorted again to prayer for help.
"While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor.
"He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond description, and his countenance truly like lightning. The room was exceedingly light, but not so very bright as immediately around his person."
The visitor said his name was Moroni and told Joseph Smith he had been divinely chosen for important work.
"He said there as a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fullness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants."
As Moroni spoke, Joseph Smith received a vision showing him where the plates were buried in a stone box on a hill nearby. There, Moroni said, he would also find a breastplate to which were fastened two stones called the Urim and Thummin known in ancient times as "seers." It would be the young man's duty to take the plates into safekeeping and, with the help of the two stones, translate what was written on them.
Although Joseph Smith was able to go directly to the stone box the next day, four years passed before Moroni who made continuing appearances, allowed him to remove the contents and start translation. Moroni's part in all this became clearer when it was learned he was the resurrected son of Mormon, the ancient historian whose writings comprised much of the book to be translated. When the work was finished, the plates were delivered up to Moroni.
That, with the signed testimony of witnesses who saw and handled the plates, is the story of Joseph Smith as devoutly believed by the multitude of followers that form the great Mormon church. Remarkable though he was, however, he would not be a subject for study in the context of outer space were it not for a singular fact: in terms far more specific than any other western religious teachings, the Mormon scripture refers to other worlds. For example, in "Pearl of Great Price" these passages appear:
"AND WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER HAVE I CREATED; AND I ALSO CREATED THEM FOR MINE OWN PURPOSE; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.
"And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many. FOR BEHOLD, THERE ARE MANY WORLDS THAT HAVE PASSED AWAY BY THE WORD OF MY POWER And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man, but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them." Moses: 2:33, 34, 35.
"And Enoch said unto the Lord; How is it that though can'st weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?"
"And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning of thy creations..." Moses
"And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many stars which were near unto it;
"And the Lord said unto me; These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord they God; I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.
"And the Lord said unto me, by the Urim and Thummin, that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions ther; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord's time, according to the reckoning of Kolob." Abraham 3:1, 2, 3, 4.
This account conjures an image of a world so enormous and revolving so slowly that centuries or our time would elapse between one sunrise and the next. A clock on Kolob would show that Christopher Columbus arrived in America about 12 hours ago!
A noteworthy feature of Joseph Smith's accomplishments is that without any formal education in languages; he had completed translation of the Book of Mormon by the time he was 25. Moreover his mastery of Egyptian -- as well as Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic -- was so complete even at the outset two years earlier that a distinguished professor said the young translator's work was the finest he had ever seen.
But when told that an "angel of God" had been responsible for locating the plates, this same professor tore up the certificate he had just issued vouching for the work. He said there was no such thing as "ministering of angels" and thereby dismissed the secret of Joseph Smith's undertaking.
In his testimony the young prophet refers to the help he received from the Urim and Thummin, the same stones mentioned in the Book of Abraham. Since he performed his monumental work (even the pocketbook edition of the Book of Mormon totals more than 500 pages) in an atmosphere of physical hardship and religious persecution, it would appear the two stones were virtually miraculous in the help they gave him. His critics, of course, ridiculed any idea that he was divinely inspired but even the harshest could not deny that somehow the book was produced by this reviled youth who often worked in the fields for a living.
Angered by events so far beyond their understanding and by the rapid growth of the church he founded, his enemies eventually had him and his brother jailed in Illinois where the harassed Mormons had tried to make a new start. But that was not enough. In 1844 a mob attacked and killed the two men before they came to trial.
So extraordinary were the qualities of Joseph Smith, however, that this vicious act turned out to be barely more than an interruption in what he had set out to do. He had once said the destiny of his church lay in the valley of mountains, and thus he predicted one of the great epics of the West. In 1844, the year of the prophet's death, Brigham Young and his band of Mormon followers embarked on their historic journey through the Rockies into Utah where they founded Salt Lake City, which then became the seat of the Mormon faith.
People have long sought to enrich their lives and to awaken to their full natures through spiritual practices including prayer, meditation, mind-body disciplines, service, ritual, community liturgy, holy-day and seasonal observances, and rites of passage. "Primary religious practices" are those intended, or especially likely, to bring about exceptional states of consciousness such as the direct experience of divinity or of cosmic unity.
In any community, there are some who feel called to assist others along spiritual paths, and who are known as ministers, rabbis, pastors, curanderas, shamans, priests, or other titles. We call such people 'guides': those experienced in some practice, familiar with the terrain, and who act to facilitate the spiritual practices of others. A guide need not claim exclusive or definitive knowledge of the terrain.
Spiritual practices, and especially primary religious practices, carry risks. Therefore, when an individual chooses to practice with the assistance of a guide, both take on special responsibilities. The Council on Spiritual Practices proposes the following Code of Ethics for those who serve as spiritual guides.
1.[Intention] Spiritual guides are to practice and serve in ways that cultivate awareness, empathy, and wisdom.
2.[Serving Society] Spiritual practices are to be designed and conducted in ways that respect the common good, with due regard for public safety, health, and order. Because the increased awareness gained from spiritual practices can catalyze desire for personal and social change, guides shall use special care to help direct the energies of those they serve, as well as their own, in responsible ways that reflect a loving regard for all life.
3.[Serving Individuals] Spiritual guides shall respect and seek to preserve the autonomy and dignity of each person. Participation in any primary religious practice must be voluntary and based on prior disclosure and consent given individually by each participant while in an ordinary state of consciousness. Disclosure shall include, at a minimum, discussion of any elements of the practice that could reasonably be seen as presenting physical or psychological risks. In particular, participants must be warned that primary religious
experience can be difficult and dramatically transformative.
Guides shall make reasonable preparations to protect each participant's health and safety during spiritual practices and in the vulnerable periods that may follow. Limits on the behaviors of participants and facilitators are to be made clear and agreed upon in advance of any session. Appropriate customs of confidentiality are to be established and honored.
4.[Competence] Spiritual guides shall assist with only those practices for which they are qualified by personal experience and by training or education.
5.[Integrity] Spiritual guides shall strive to be aware of how their own belief systems, values, needs, and limitations affect their work. During primary religious practices, participants may be especially vulnerable to suggestion, manipulation, and exploitation; therefore, guides pledge to protect participants and not to allow anyone to use that vulnerability in ways that harm participants or others.
6.[Quiet Presence] To help safeguard against the harmful consequences of personal and organizational ambition, spiritual communities are usually better allowed to grow through attraction rather than active promotion.
7.[Not for Profit] Spiritual practices are to be conducted in the spirit of service. Spiritual guides shall strive to accommodate participants without regard to their ability to pay or make donations.
8.[Tolerance] Spiritual guides shall practice openness and respect towards people whose beliefs are in apparent contradiction to their own.
9.[Peer Review] Each guide shall seek the counsel of other guides to help ensure the wholesomeness of his or her practices and shall offer counsel when there is need.
Suggested free e-books to read:Allen Putnam - Witchcraft Of New England Explained By Modern Spiritualism
Raymond Buckland - Bucklands Book For Spirit Communications
Ashe - Journal Of Experimental Spirituality
Aleister Crowley - Songs Of The Spirit
Origin: asatru-religion.blogspot.com
Swami Vivekananda often used to preach that tolerance for other religions was not enough; that the duty of anyone believing in the brotherhood and sisterhood of all beings was positively to bow down before the faiths of others.
True enough, the Latins are a very passionate people. However, I don't see a categorical difference between their en masse protests of "Je suis Charlie [Hebdo]" and those of other nationals in Islamic countries marching under banners of "Death to America" and the like. In the case of both Western and Islamic nationals, more moderate and wiser voices are buried by the tumult of the masses when tempers flare.
To keep this Opening Post short, let me sum up:
MY HERITAGE is not worth two cents if it does not respect the vital values of other peoples. As the Prayer Book sayeth in the Collect for Quinquagesima: ALL OUR DOINGS WITHOUT CHARITY ARE NOTHING WORTH.
Source: wiccalessons.blogspot.com
"Get up weekend 2,000 cohorts of the English Defence Association (EDL) invaded Leicester. They claimed to stand up for Englishness v Islamic intolerance, but in truth they came for in tears. All but as candidly as they featuring in they began case with order, putting four in rest home, and in the grip throwing air force pencil case smoke grenades, fire crackers and slug bearings at order stash and dogsOver one charge, which resulted in a order certified personality repeatedly pressed on, others in the huddle against chanted "LET HIM DIE". As the get-together reach the summit of hundreds of EDL cohorts rampaged depressed chummy streets arbitrarily disgusting chummy Asians. These were not acts of xenophobia but the downbeat hard work of racist thugs and football hooligans.On October 24 the EDL coordinate to root to the spot a joint effort nervousness uninvolved the Israeli deputation to which they have the benefit of invited a little-known American rabbi, in a debatable dodge invented at cultivating hatred in the company of Jews and Muslims.Nevertheless numerous in the Jewish community have the benefit of comprehensible concerns about the in detail of Islamic fundamentalism, it is remarkable to revive that the EDL are not our friends. Searchlight has been honest chummy campaigns v the EDL, in the same way that we work to hit the politics of hatred espoused by the BNP. We feed to mobilise communities to stand together forcibly usual main beliefs which cling to us. In Leicester this said glossed 6,000 chummy populace standing together v the hatred of the EDL. One Leicester, Associated Unruffled. Flanking week it is the turn of the Jewish community to stand dual v this hatred.Extremism is intolerance, anything form it comes in, and the EDL is a firm menace to extroverted commonality and quiet communities. And intolerance impartial breeds intolerance. The EDL set out to thrash up in tears and tensions, on tenterhooks to ultimatum a burdensome sensitivity from organic Muslims. In the fleeting label this divides communities, in the longer label it impartial pushes people to supervisor unbalanced groups.But with the menace comes an leg up and we essential use the heed glossed the EDL to bring people together. One of the upper limit moving aerobics of our pact vigil in Leicester arise weekend was in the past the chief officer of the Muslim community read out a tone of deposit from the chummy Jewish community. "A SUPPORT PERPLEXED AT A MOSQUE IS A SUPPORT PERPLEXED AT A SYNAGOGUE," the tone read. This created a colossal jollity and things to see what is voluntary in the past we stand together v hatred.Cut down Lowles is editor of Searchlight magazineJewish Release
Reference: new-generation-witch.blogspot.com
Heka: The Practices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual and Magic by David Rankine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Heka
Heka by Ceremonial Magician David Rankine is a very special book. Slender yet packed with information that will enlighten you of the Egyptian world view and magick. It is scholarly yet easy to read for the common lay man. In the Babylonian Talmud it is stated that God gave 10 measures of magic to the world 9 of those went to Egypt.
Heka is the magical power that is inherent in every being, human, animal and plant. There are some being that have more Heka then others. It is said the dead have a very powerful Heka even more of it then the living. Gods have the most. In the earthly physical realm it is said that dwarves and people with red hair have very strong heka.
The magical power of Heka is executed through the power of the spoken word. Incantations and spells had as their most powerful component the spoken word. Words that were spoken had the power top shape reality. Heka was also the name of the God of Magic. Magic was Heka's main thing.
Heka was not the only magical God. Thoth who was also a god of learning and wisdom as well as a lunar god was a god of magic. Isis, who learned Re's name stole magic from Re and thus had the power of creation. Having someone's name meant that you had power over them. There were three of four gods that are supposedly creator Gods depending on which part of Egypt you are talking about. Some parts say it was Re, others Amun and yet others say it was Ptah. It was said that Ptah created the world and universe with the utterances of his mouth.
The God Heka is considered to be the soul or Ka or Ra. Heka is sometime said to be the BA or Re as well. Heka thus uis the seeming magical and creative soul aspect of Re. Another possible sould or Re was the Goddess Maat. Pharoahs, priests and common citizens had a vested interest in maitianing the concept of Maat. Maat is then seen as the goddess of truth and the universal order over chaos. In may depictions she is called the Daughter of Re and stands directly behind him. As the religion evolved she too becamke part of his soul.
The book give a thorough over view of the creation story. Nuit was the sky and Geb was the earth. The creator god was jealous and so he command the sky called Shu to separate them. Thoth then a moon god somehjow created a five day gap where in they were able to birth out 5 children. One of them was Horus the Elder, Isis, Osiris and Set. The earth was also a primeval sea called Nun. From it came the Ben Ben or ann island. The five gods including Re was on a Solar Baque and ended up fighting Apohis the serpent.
Kheper is the beetle god who pushes Re across the sky in his sun chariot. He is also a guardian for the dead and is considered a protective god along with Sekhmet, Bes and Bastet. Scarabs were worn by the dead to protect them. In this life people wore then as well. In order to accom[pany Re the worshipper can light Frenakinscence in the morning, Myrrh in the afternoon and Kyphi at night.
The book is loaded. It has incense recipes that are simple and easy to make. There are table for all the god and day that are good for doing magic. The God table inform the reader what the God did and what things are associated with the god. There is a table of hours holy to the deities based on a twelve hour rotation and a chapter on the meaning of the colors. I can and will say that this book has all that and more.
Once you read this you will see how Egyptian Magic gave birth to Ceremonial Magic and Witch craft. Ideas like dietary restraction, cleanliness and circumcision were mentioned first in Egyptian scripture. Religions like Islam, Judaism and Christianity learned a lot from the Egyptians.
My one criticism is that the book could have been bit longer and delved into some of the numerous holidays the Egyptians had for their deities. But then perhaps that is a subject for another book..
View all my reviewsEnjoy the blog
Credit: pagan-wiccan.blogspot.com
The hardest thing for most psychics to understand is that they are not the center of their paranormal research team. When they do a read, it's not about them being on stage and the center of attention and the one who sees all and knows all.
"ONCE EGOS ARE SET ASIDE, THE ROLE OF A PSYCHIC ON A TEAM CAN BE VERY BENEFICIAL, BUT IT IS ALSO VERY HUMBLING."
"PREFERABLY, DO NOT TELL CLIENTS YOU ARE A PSYCHIC." Knowing you are psychic creates all sorts of issues including them probing you about what the content of their home is and if it's threatening. There also develops a dependence on you for advice on just about everything. They will want to know from you if the home is haunted or not rather than the team's collective conclusion. During the interview process, they might also be self conscious of your ability to read them and take them totally out of the emotional mileu in their home that supports the haunting experience. You want to observe them as joe schmo off the street and not someone with deeper insight into motives and honesty, background and insight.
"YOU SHOULD BE A SILENT WITNESS". Walk the property. Take notes of everything you encounter. Do not pull others into your reading, do not point to a place and say someone is there, or any other dramatics. Simply note the reads. Keep this in a notebook. When the team is done with the investigation, they may review your reads to see if it verifies what they got. The problem with telling them what is happening, is that you are now creating belief in these people and they will act on those beliefs. You are coloring their choices and affecting their assumption that, if a door just closed and you said there was a spirit in the hallway, it must be the spirit.
"BEING A PSYCHIC IS A BEING A BLOODHOUND, NOT A LEADER." The power a psychic has on a team can be heady stuff for people who need attention, validation, or a feeling of being needed. Check the ego at the door. Be stealthy. Be observant. Take notes. And, if your team asks, should we set up audio in this room? Be available to answer that, yes or no, without elaboration. If your team relies too much on your interpretations, guide them back to the study of the building and let them probe their own intuition. The team I'm on, keeps notes. They all walk the property without foreknowledge and write down everything they sense, feel, or don't like about the feel of the place. They seal it in an envelope and it's held until the end of the investigation when we pull them out and see how close we were to intuitively knowing the hot spots.
"MEDIUMS NEED TO REMEMBER NOT EVERYONE IS PSYCHIC". To the average homeowner, a psychic holds all the secrets in their home. They know what's there. They can talk to it. They cast it off. The entire process, when witnessed by homeowners can seem a bit ritualistic, magical, and even dark. That a medium is seeing the invisible souls in their private home is very unsettling. Those images do not leave the homeowner and they are left afterwards with imagery, fears, and wondering what else they don't know or see. Their home is no longer full of good memories, but filled with banishings and entities they have no ability to see, control, or know about. So, I would advise psychics to keep any of their methods and descriptions to themselves and banish as you see fit, but there is no need to drag the homeowners through the process. In other words, no theatrics.
A psychic ultimately is a depth of intuition that can truly benefit a paranormal team, but at the same time, they can completely misguide the team. Tears, freaking out, and dramatics are not proper use of skills and also shows a psychic who has not yet learned to observe a history of a site without becoming the history. If it is overwhelming for the psychic emotionally, then it is time to work the skills to a more professional level before going public with the talents.
I believe a psychic can be a sensitive counselor, a wonderful bloodhound, but should never be the focus tool for the team. They are a member, like any other member with a skill set that, along with others, helps come to valid conclusions.
Origin: magick-keys.blogspot.com
"What have you been doing since graduation?"
Since graduation, I have been on the faculty at Kalamazoo College as an Assistant Professor of Religion.
"What are your plans?"
Well, in terms of my scholarship, first I have to do the last minute indexing and editing of my book on yoga in the U.S. Beyond that I am working on a short chapter on Ram Dev and Ayurveda, as well as a short article of on a mainline Protestant Church on one of the main streets in Kalamazoo, which is handing over it's property to a prominent African-American Church on the other side of town. I've also got a couple chapters on yoga in the U.S. and yoga and capitalism that are in the works for various anthologies.
However, I'm ready to leave the world of yoga, and actually have quite an exciting fellowship opportunity in the works. At Kalamazoo College, we have the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL), and they give two-year fellowships for faculty to teach half-time and hire a full time replacement to work on a project involving social justice. My project is on the city of Detroit and civic engagement. The project is in its early stages, but basically, I'm attempting to excavate the religious roots of government failure. Beyond spending time in Detroit and getting a field for what and is not working, this will involved a genealogy of civil society's religious roots. I hope for this to be a project that adds to the discourse on U.S. American notions of agency and secularism.
In terms of teaching, I'm would like to really to rethink how I teach my classes and move from U.S. based models to hemispheric models. Hilit Surowitz and I have been working on this together for a while now, and this past AAR we were able to convene a panel with David Hackett and Manuel Vasquez on the Americas in the study of religion. It was really thought provoking. I'm not sure how I'm going to move forward with this project in terms of scholarship, but I'm trying to think through that. This is not a short-term project, but rather one that, I hope, will span a lifetime. Even my upcoming project on Detroit will employ the methodologies I learned as an Americas student - that there are levels to understanding the processes of society and modernity, and that at times one has to work at the local level, but always keeping in mind, the state, regional, national, hemispheric and even global movements that effect these processes.
Beyond that, I'm pretty active in the American Academy of Religion. I'm co-chair of the North American Hinduism Group, and recently, I was elected to the Program Committee.
"What challenges have you faced, and what do you consider to be the most significant challenges facing the academic study of religion?"
I think like many academic fields, the study of religion has a race/ethnicity problem and a canon problem, and in my mind those two are heavily intertwined and entangled. In some ways we are forging ahead in wonderful and innovative and more inclusive directions, and in other ways we are still married to notions of content, rather than questioning why particular contents are important. I think being in the Americas track really prepared me for challenging the knowledge that is deemed most important. When looking at the subjects that scholars anoint as most important or canonical, we have to also examine the person or group of people making these decisions. The more the discipline diversifies, the more opportunities will arise to challenge the canon, but until then there will only be pockets of this - one of these pockets is the University of Florida Religious Studies Department. And it's pockets, small movements of academics that can wield enough influence to create ripples and institute real change in the academy.
Right now, as a member of the AAR Program Committee, one thing that is of concern and that I plan to address is the disparity of representation between the different groups. The North American Religions Section has six or seven panels that they get to put on the AAR Program each year, whereas Religions of Latin America and the Caribbean has one panel that they put on the program with co-sponsorship. Having benefited from being trained in both North and Latin American Religious History (because UF is an Americas program), I've come to value the two fields as equally important. And I've also come to realize how the very structure of our larger field of religious studies favors one over the other, which results in more scholars of North American religion, than scholars of Latin American Religion. In reality, the two fields and more importantly, the lives of all Americans intersect in many ways, so this structure is not reflective of the way people lead their religious lives, but rather reflective of the power dynamics that operate within the larger discipline of religious studies, which is still Euro- U.S.- and Christo- centric. What we have to do is challenge these centers and start having more of a nodal outlook towards sub-fields. This will be a life-long struggle, but one that started while I was at UF and that I plan to continue through scholarship, service to the field and teaching.
"How has studying at UF prepared you for dealing with these challenges; in the job market, in the classroom, and in academia?"
Well, I think just being at UF, among scholars doing cutting edge work who are really pushing the boundaries, both geographically and metaphorically, of religion in the U.S. into the Americas, has made me a better scholar. More than that, however, I've had wonderful mentors at UF - David Hackett and Vasudha Narayanan have been indispensible as mentors and people I look up to, and they still go to bat for me even now. I had so many memorable classes and conversations with them, along with Manuel Vasquez, Gwen Kessler, Anna Peterson and Whitney Sanford - I learned so many things, and all of them, in their own ways, challenged me and forced me to think about approaching religion in creative ways. I really struggled while I was at UF - I was young and really unsure of myself, but nobody gave up on me. Now I'm less young, with a lot more to learn but a lot more sure of myself, and because of my time at UF, I'm able to stand a bit taller and I have slowly begun to assert my own voice as an academic, which has made me a better teacher.
I'm currently teaching a senior seminar on secularity, and I'm teaching Dr. Vasquez's book, Beyond Belief, but I also find myself referring to independent studies I did with Dr. Hackett and bringing up tidbits from various seminars I took with Dr. Narayanan and Dr. Peterson. In this same seminar, the students are required to write intellectual genealogies, and we mapped them out as a class. My genealogy goes right through Anderson Hall, and it's funny how at different times we refer back to or remember different moments as we go forward... I'm sure in another ten years, I'll come to understand something else about my time at UF and probably while lecturing or in a seminar!
I would not have been successful in the job market without these mentors/teachers/gurus. But I also think, I would not have been successful as a member of the AAR without them either, which is an important part of networking and collaborating with others. I still remember Dr. Hackett making me go to the AAR, and then telling me to sit in the North American Religions Section Business Meeting. During the entire meeting, he gave me all the gossip and showed me how to observe the various dynamics among the various players. I'm still inspired by Dr. Narayanan's (and Robert Orsi's) fight to free the AAR from the SBL, and every year I go to the Program Chair's Breakfast, and my co-chair and I anger someone with a little rant when the Program Committee Chair encourages us to partner with groups from the SBL. My rant usually is along the lines of how is the North American Hinduism group supposed to partner with the SBL when the word "Hindu" does not even appear anywhere in their CFPs. This year I angered the co-chairs of the Wesleyan Studies Group (this group has three panels every year on the AAR program). More importantly, however, this goes back to the inclusivity/race/ethnicity problem that our field has - we are still married to a certain way of doing things. Divorce has been taken of the table (for now), and this particular alliance/academic orientation leaves out many voices in implicit and explicit ways. This is the terrain we have to navigate, but in order to change the environment of our field, we have to get to know it and understand why it is the way it is. This is not always an obvious part of getting a PhD, and a lot of my peers from other institutions are not as engaged with the AAR, often to their detriment. But at UF, it was a requirement, and over time, I've come to realize that one's scholarship and teaching are braided/enhanced with this engagement.
Being successful in this current job market does not mean just being a successful scholar, or just a great teacher or just a savvy networker - it require a combination of all three. I think the Religious Studies department at UF is very good a preparing students to engage all these parts of academia. And I'm so thankful they took a chance on me 11 years ago.
