Newsletter 2003
Church of St.Mary Zion with treasury of the Arc of the Covenant in the background, Axum, Ethiopia - photograph courtesy of
www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray
Fall, 2003
Contents
 Why Religious Studies? by Carl Evans, Chair
 Jan Love in Religious Studies
 "The Cistern Contains, The Fountain Overflows"
Projects of Jim Cutsinger
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2003 Solomon-Tennenbaum Lectureship & Symposium
Department News In Brief
Alumni News: Department News in Brief
Editor's Note
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Newsletter: Why Religious Studies?
By Carl Evans, Chair
I am continually surprised that many people, even colleagues in other disciplines, do not
know what we do in religious studies - or even why we should study religion at a state
university.
USC President, Andrew
Sorensen and Carl Evans,
Chair
The comparative, historical, and cultural study of religion is
an integral part of the liberal arts curriculum at most
flagship universities in the United States. Religion needs to
be studied, if for no other reason than its enormous
influence in events that capture the headlines almost every
day. In today's world an educated person cannot be
ignorant of religion!
Neither can an educated person be ignorant of the basic
facts of the world's religions, their similarities and
differences, and of the diverse ways that religious people believe and practice - doing
good and, regrettably, sometimes doing harm. Where better to study religion than in the
academic setting of a state university?
In the department of religious studies, we teach students about the different religions
and endeavor to guide students to a critical understanding of their own - for those who
identify with a particular religion. The critical component is especially important, as we
want students to be able to assess the good and the bad in the expressions of religion
that flood our lives every day.
To ask whether a state university should have a department of religious studies, is to
ask whether a university should study an important aspect of individual, social, cultural,
and political life. The answer is an unequivocal "yes!"
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Newsletter: Jan Love in Religious Studies
By Katie Hubert
Experience in Africa immersed the much travelled Jan Love
in the rhythm of drums and stirring dance. She was
captivated there also by "beautiful, local expressions of a
more universal faith commitment." A similar, adventuring
love of challenge brought Love to the department of
religious studies in fall 2001, transferring her appointment
from the department then known as government and
international studies (now political science). Love, now the
only female professor in the department, reports being
"completely at home and welcome here."
Jan Love
Inspired by the Southern African region from early on in
career, she continues to explore in her research and writing the "sheer resilience" of the
people there facing upheavals and opportunities. She recently completed work on a
book, Southern Africa and World Politics: Global, Regional, and Local Dynamics,
describing "how these people affect the world and how the world affects them through
history." These themes resonate in her popular course, RELG 364: God and
Globalization. The course examines the interaction of religion and politics, touching on
United States involvement and offering a worldwide perspective on religious
fundamentalism and pluralism.
Outside the classroom, Love continues to use the wealth of knowledge and experience
she has acquired through volunteer work with the World Council of Churches. Love has
served the WCC since 1975, promoting the work of that fellowship of 340
denominations to negotiate Christian unity and influence out of sometimes divisive
differences. Having traveled to all the continents and cultivated friendships widely, she
has represented the United Methodist Church on the Council in valued leadership roles
through several organizational changes.
In her teaching Love reports being "always impressed with the religious studies student,
who is fun and eager to learn more about the academic side of religion." She holds a
deep respect for the faith commitment of others as she works, with documented
success, to deepen and widen understanding of that commitment.
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Newsletter:
“The Cistern Contains, The Fountain Overflows”
By Katie Harbert
Professor James Cutsinger, the department's resident
theologian-perennialist, has completed editing the first
volume of Essential Works of Frithjof Schuon, The Fullness
of God, set to come out in the spring of 2004. In a
thoroughly revised translation from the original French. the
volume features selections from Schuon's letters,
autobiographical memoirs, and spiritual writings.
Cutsinger has long been drawn to the perennialist
perspective enunciated early in the last century by Rene
Guenon and Ananda Coomarasawamy. The religio
perennis holds that every religion has besides its literal
meaning an esoteric dimension, which is essential,
Jim Cutsinger
primordial and universal. This intellectual universality is one
of the hallmarks of Schuon's works, giving rise to fascinating insights into history,
science, and art, as well as the spiritual traditions.
In addition to his work on the Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon, Cutsinger has also
edited Not of This World, A Treasury of Christian Mysticism (World Wisdom, 2003). He
describes the anthology as "a basis of ecumenical dialogue through methods of
contemplation and prayer." Louis Dupre of Yale University adds that it is a "well-chosen
collection of excerpts from spiritual writings in the Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and
Orthodox traditions…This imaginative chrestomathy must be highly recommended for
its successful attempt to render Christian piety of past ages a living source of
contemporary inspiration."
Cutsinger's has edited Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (World
Wisdom, 2002) which includes his article "Hesychia: An Orthodox Opening to Esoteric
Ecumenism" (also appearing in Serbo-Croatian in Bosnia Franciscana[2002]).
On the teaching front, Cutsinger remains actively involved in the Great Books honors
courses that he devised. An adept in the Socratic method of dialoguing, he creates a
classroom in which students can and do talk "passionately about enduring issues" in the
works, for example, of Plato, Aristotle and Dante.
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Newsletter: Solomon-Tennenbaum Lecture
Thomas Friedman Headlines 2003
Lectureship and Symposium
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas
Friedman filled the 2003 Solomon-Tenenbaum Lectureship
for Jewish Studies on September 30. His lecture in the
evening, "The Middle East: AN Update on Changing
Events," was preceded by an afternoon symposium,
featuring Friedman, moderated by Charles Bierbauer, Dean
of the College of Mass Communications and Information
Studies. Both events were held in the Koger Center.
The lectureship was generously supported by the Ben
Arnold - Sunbelt Beverage Co., Blue Cross/Blue Shield of
Thomas Friedman
SC, the Hearst Foundation, Kahn Development, SMI Steel
South Carolina, and the Solomon-Tenenbaum Endowment.
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Newsletter: Shorts 2003
Departmental News in Brief
Carl Evans
Carl Evans' previously published essay, "The Church's False Witness Against the
Jews," has been published in Voices from the Religious Left, ed. Rebecca Alpert
(Temple Univ. Press, 2000) and selected for inclusion on religion-online.org. He
presented a paper, "Why Were Divine Images Proscribed in Ancient Israel? Population
Movements and the Social Origins of Aniconism," at the international meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature in Cambridge, England. In November he will present a twoday workshop for Atlantische Akademie in Boppard, Germany, on the theme, "Religious
Diversity in the United States and South Carolina." As primary organizer of the interfaith
discussion project in South Carolina, Partners in Dialogue, he has met with several
delegations from abroad sponsored by the US Department of State and the Columbia
Council for International Visitors to explain this work.
Anne Blackburn
Anne Blackburn has left the department to take an appointment in the department of
Asian Studies at Cornell University.
Hal French
Hal French and Board of
Trustees member Michael
Mungo, sponsor of Mungo
Scholarship aid for students
planning to attend seminary.
Hal French's essay, "Religion and Football: The Cult of the
Fighting Gamecock," was published in a collection of
selected papers presented over a twenty-year period at
conferences on "Implicit Religion" in England (The Secular
Quest for meaning in Life, Mellen, 2002). He gave a
plenary lecture at a conference on "The Continuing
Relevance of Swami Vivekananda for the Modern World"
at UMass/Dartmouth, and led a day workshop, "Gandhi,
King, and the legacy of Non-Violence," at the Ammerdown
Retreat center outside Bath, England, in 2003. He is
serving a three-year term as Program Chair for the North
American Interfaith Network.
Donald Jones
Donald Jones continues to chair the Hall Lectureship in New Testament and Early
Christianity: filled by Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University, Spring 2003, and to be filled in
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Spring 2004 by John Dominic Crossan of DePaul
University. He taught a four-week
series on the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas at
Trenholm Road Methodist Church in October, 2003.
Donald Jones with Preston
College students, Marianne
Parrish and Josh Watson.
Jim Cutsinger
In addition to the publications mentioned in the article on Jim Cutsinger, he has
published "Colorless Light and Pure Air: The Virgin in the Thought of Frithjof Schuon"
(Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies, 2002), "The Mystery of the Two Natures" (Every
Branch in Me: Essays on the Meaning of Man, ed. Barry McDonald [World Wisdom,
2002]), "The Ladder of Divine Ascent: The Yoga of Hesychasm" (Merton and
Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart in the Eastern Church, ed. Bernadette Dieker and
Jonathan Montaldo [Fons Vitae, 2003]), and "On Earth as It Is in Heaven" (Science and
the Myth of Progress, ed. Mehrdad M. Zarandi [World Wisdom, 2003]). He has been
promoted to full professor.
Kevin Lewis
Kevin Lewis published two more entries, "Kosinski, Jerzy" and "Sexton, Anne," in the
new 4th edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He presented papers at the
Tenth Annual Holocaust Conference in Jerusalem ("Remorseless Entertainment"), the
2001 meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference ("American Lonesomeness
in Hopper"), the 2003 meeting of the southeast section of the American Academy of
Religion ("The Weightless Magic of Amazing Grace"), and the 2003 meeting of the
South Carolina Academy of Religion ("Liberal Calvinism Meets Religious Pluralism: A
High-Wire Act"). He has been elected to the governing board of the Nineteenth-Century
Studies Association and served as moderator of panels on "Islam in the South" and
"Gay People and Organized Religion" at two spring forum events sponsored by the
Center on Religion in the South at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.
Jon Michael Spencer
Jon Michael Spencer presented three invited lectures in
Yugoslavia in the fall of 2002: "What is Black Music: The
Perspective of Theomusicology" in the Academy of Arts at the
University of Novi Sad and at the Music Information Centre in
Belgrade; "The Blues Nature of African American Culture" at the
Culture Centre of Novi Sad and at the Museum of African Art in
Belgrade; and "The Experience of Learning" in the Faculty of
Music at the University of the Arts in Belgrade.
Jon Michael Spencer
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Jan Love
Jan Love published "At What Price Unity? The Politics of Prayer" in Zion's Herald (June
2003), "Can We All Agree? Governing the WCC by Consensus" in Christian Century
(November 6-19, 2002), a longer version of which appeared subsequently in The
Ecumenical Review (January 2003) and in Okumenische Rundschau (Spring 2003);
and "The Decade to Overcome Violence: Harvest from an Ecumenical Journey" in The
Ecumenical Review (April 2001). She published "Issues Affecting Christian Women"
and "Women and Ethnic, Racial and Religious Differences" in Women and International
Human Rights Law, Vol. 3, eds. Kelly Askin and Dorean Koenig (Transnational, 2001).
Randy Akers
Randy Akers, Executive Director of the Humanities Council of SC,
is again this fall teaching RELG E111: Biblical History and
Literature as an adjunct professor.
"Randy Akers,
Mystagogue"
Lecturship Speakers
Fr. Donald Cozzens, professor of pastoral theology at John
Carroll University, filled the Joseph Cardinal Bernadin Lectureship
in the fall of 2002, taking part in a panel discussion and speaking
on "Dying and Rising: The Priesthood in Peril." Jossi Klein
Halevi, Israel correspondent for The New Republic, widely
published columnist, and author of At the Entrance to the Garden
of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in
Fr. Donald Cozzens
the Holy Land (William Morrow, 2001), presented the SolomonTenenbaum Lecture in 2002 on "After the Collapse of the Left and
the Right: Toward a new Israeli Consensus on Territories and Peace."
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Newsletter: Alumni News 2003
This fall Carrie Betts ('02) began doctoral studies in World Christianity at the Center for
the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World in the Divinity School, University of
Edinburgh. Earth religions is her topic. Keep up with her at www.bemused.biz/heretic/.
Emily Aleshire, MA ('02), is enrolled in the PhD program in Comparative Literature at
USC and teaching Women's Studies courses.
Ron Gilmer, MA ('95), is serving a 700-member Presbyterian Church (USA)
congregation as the Associate in Ministry in Brevard, NC.
Jammie Gillespie ('98), MA ('01) is gainfully employed as administrative assistant to
the director of graduate studies in the USC School of Music. In May 2003 she married
Jack Turner ('02), presently enrolled in the MA program, becoming Jammie Turner.
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Newsletter: Editor's Note 2003
This correspondent has too long guarded his
light under a bushel: two and a half years of
slumber on the path to value centered
management. Awake! O sleepers of the land
of contraction, wake, expand!
Bending o'er the vale of Horseshoe, this
department rises to the compass points.
Note Jim Cutsinger at his bellows and
furnace-in a zone-his recent works recorded in heaven. Note the coming of Jan Love,
bright emanation, herald of global reconciliations. Jon Michael Spencer in Africa and
Belgrade. Carl Evans in Boppard. The works of this department turning the cogs of the
adverse wheel.
Kevin Lewis on the Mount of Olives, the Old
City below, West Jerusalem beyond.
The department's website lists numerous academic resources, special events,
partnerships, services, and links to programs of intensive language and other advanced
study. We have Mardi McCabe to thank for this constructive pursuit. (And Katie Harbert,
from SCHC, for genial labor on this newsletter.)
The view from the Temple Mount/ Haram al-Sharif is heartening and disheartening:
Jerusalem in every man and woman, lost tent and tabernacle of mutual forgiveness,
called liberty among her children. Return.
Kevin Lewis