Friday, November 09, 2007

Religion kills

This teeshirt is sold at Revolution Church, a Pentecostal group with a Brooklyn branch (led by the son of the disgraced Jim and Tammy Faye Baker). I'm teaching my "Cultures of the Religious Right" course again this coming Spring, and am starting to look around for new material. Anthropologist Susan Harding, whose The Book of Jerry Falwell was an important part of the last iteration of the course, gave a talk here this week. It wasn't very good, but reassuring the way a not very good article on a subject you're researching can be reassuring: I'm on the right track, and am going farther than this person! Sorry if that sounds smug, but I came out of her talk and the ensuing discussion convinced all over again that religious studies is a necessary discipline - especially in these times!