Tag results for: religion

Politics and Religion

A Crash Course on Politics & Religion

Category: Season 2

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Jeffrey W. Robbins, Ph.D.

Lebanon Valley College

In the late 1960s Jerry Falwell promoted that preachers had no business in political affairs. By the 1980s, he was a political proponent for the Evangelical Right. In 1960, John F. Kennedy said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” During the 2012 Presidential Campaign, candidates spoke of the necessary interrelationship between religion and politics. Dr. Robbins discusses how the idea of the post-secular helps to make sense of current struggles for power throughout the world.

Dr. Robbins is a co-editor of the Columbia University Press book series “Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture,” Chair of Religion & Philosophy; Professor of Religion; and Director of American Studies at Lebanon Valley College.

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Faith and Freedom in the Civil War

Category: Season 1 | Season 3

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Barbara Franco

Seminary Ridge Museum

During the 19th century, the slavery debate was influenced significantly by biblical passages to support one side or the other. Both sides came to interpret scripture in ways that would support their views. Ms. Franco will explain how those interpretive principles still have great influence on today’s society.

Ms. Franco is the founding Director of the Seminary Ridge Museum in Gettysburg and also served as Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. She is a noted scholar on the history of faith in America.

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The Bishop and the Synagogue of Rome

Category: Season 3

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L. Scott Lerner

Franklin & Marshall College

L. Scott Lerner has been on the faculty of Franklin & Marshall since 1995 and has served as Chair of the Department of French and Italian, the Program in Comparative Literary Studies, and the Program in Judaic Studies. Before coming to Franklin & Marshall, he served as a lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and taught briefly at the Université de Paris VII and Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in Paris. He also taught in the Literature Concentration, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Core Program at Harvard. At Franklin & Marshall he teaches courses in the Italian, French, Comparative Literature, Judaic Studies, and Connections programs

Despite recent talk about a “Judeo-Christian” tradition, the historical divide between Judaism and Christianity is ancient and deep. Nowhere has this separation been more starkly visible than in Rome, seat of the Catholic Church and home to an even older if far smaller Jewish community.

Lerner guides the audience through the visible signs of a radically evolving relationship between Christians and Jews in the modern era. In particular, he interprets the unprecedented visit in 1986 by a Bishop of Rome—Pope John Paul II—to the Great Synagogue built on the site of the former ghetto. This real and symbolic encounter set in motion a major realignment of two pillars of western civilization, enabling each to remain faithful to itself while making space within itself for the other.

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