In a week dedicated to “America’s Spiritual Songbook,” one of the most potent messages is this: The history of American music is largely the history of black music. From religious camp meetings on the western
Some Americans like to show their patriotism by wearing a flag pin on their lapel or hanging the stars and stripes outside their window. Baptist Elder John Leland had other, more pungent, ways. In 1802,
Before jazz became “high art,” before it was played in Carnegie Hall and the world’s finest concert venues — before it could be heard at the Amphitheater on Saturday evenings — it was renegade music.
If one traveled back to the Selma marches of 1965, one would not hear silence, or even the continuous thud of marching feet. Instead the dominant sound would have been the hum of African-American spirituals
In 1878, Floyd Hatfield may or may not have stolen Randolph McCoy’s hog. There was a trial and Hatfield was acquitted on the testimony of Bill Staton, a McCoy married to a Hatfield. Two years
David Gluck had fallen out of religion. Raised Catholic, he was living the “rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle” as a musician in New York City in 2001, smoking pot and drinking until 7 a.m. Then his
Veteran Shareda Hosein was sitting in her first class to become a Muslim chaplain when she learned terrorists had flown two planes into the Twin Towers. After two decades of service, she said knew immediately
Pamela Lightsey demonstrated a fist-bump on the Interfaith Lecture platform at the Hall of Philosophy Wednesday afternoon. It was not some casual gesture, but rather “giving dap,” a greeting that once spoke to a
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced the suicide rate for young veterans had rocketed to about 44 percent. Almost two dozen ex-military men and women ages 18–24 took their own lives
They called them “shell-shocked,” the men who came back from World War I amnesiac, bipolar or worse. After World War II, officials called it “battle fatigue” or “operational exhaustion” after the Korean War. They
Welcome to the cyborg age, and if you count yourself among the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, the cyborg religion. Reading glasses? Cyborg-eyes. Spacesuits with oxygen packs? Cyborg-enabled exploration. Pacemakers and heart transplants? Cyborg medicine. A
Larry Terkel rode Jewish mysticism to an Olympic medal. Now he’s returning to Chautauqua. Granted, it was in the 2013 National Senior Games, and Terkel was swimming against only Americans in an event that does
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson is fed up with this week’s afternoon lecturers. She’s not anti-science. To the contrary, she has studied science and its intersections with religion and other fields for decades. But, as she told the
The Pokémon Rattata appeared at the Hall of Philosophy Wednesday afternoon and Robert Geraci called it revelation. The Rattata, of course, was part of Pokémon Go, the augmented reality app that makes Pokémon appear in
One major religious sect is already embracing the next era of human evolution. Since 2006, the Mormon Transhumanist Association has brought hundreds of Mormons together to discuss how technology can catapult man into an
Eleven years ago, a microbiologist at a Danish food company spotted several peculiar strands of DNA in the bacteria used to make yogurt. Now those strands look like a possible cure to HIV, and that’s