BLOG
Religious Literacy
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The lesson of Yom Kippur is that all of us—no exceptions, no excuses—can change for the better.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
A friend of mine who is not a Scientologist recently asked me to explain the Scientology symbol. It reminded me of my childhood growing up as a Christian in the Methodist church and everything the Christian cross represented to me and so many others—a symbol of God’s love and the personal sacrifice of Jesus for all mankind, the suffering that is a part of the human experience, but also the redemption that is possible for every individual.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The Islamic calendar is called the “Hijri.” Like most calendars that serve a religious community, the Hijri is based on a fundamental sacred event. Whereas the Gregorian calendar denotes year one as the year of Jesus’ birth, the Hijri counts year one as the year the Prophet Muhammad escaped from persecution by migrating from Makkah (Mecca) to Medina.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The sounding of the shofar is a call to awaken from complacency, and to simply look and see.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
A one-of-a-kind study encompassing the increasing numbers of Jews of color—African Americans, Asians, mixed races and others of non-white descent—has turned conventional wisdom as to the definition of a Jew on its head, and has revived echoes of the age-old legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
On the morning of June 24, safe in my studio in rural upstate New York, I tuned into my usual morning mix of email and news blurbs, casually rendering mental opinions on the latest political tempests-in-their-teapots.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
It was about time a show of this nature made its debut on the center stage. According to the Annual Population Survey spanning from April 2017 to March 2018, the second largest religion in the UK is Islam (representing 5%+ of the total population). This compares to the figure of about 1.4% in the U.S., in 2015.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
It was the late 1860s. The plan was for a colossal neoclassical sculpture on the scale of the Colossus of Rhodes: 86 feet high on a 48-foot pedestal. It was to be called “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia.” It was to depict a woman holding a torch and would serve as a a symbol of Egypt’s technological progress.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Each one of them has a different set of religious beliefs but they are all working together toward a common goal of healing a society that seems to be splitting apart. They all admire each other. They all respect each other. And they are all in communication.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Because of their common ancestry, the three Abrahamic religions share a deeper bond than many acknowledge. Islam’s earliest conflicts were with the idolaters. On this issue, the other monotheistic religions of the day—Judaism and Christianity—were its allies.
