Taking the Purple Pill: On the Paradoxical Pedagogy of Mysticism

Jeffrey J. Kripal

Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation that I can receive from another soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address, July 15, 1838

Scene one. Part fiction, part fact. I am teaching a course for which I have assigned a standard collection of essays on the study of sexuality and Christian mysticism. In one of these essays, there is a single footnote abstractly referencing the literature on some homoerotic readings of Jesus and Paul. I never mentioned these matters in this particular class period. We were talking about something else. I forget what. A female student approaches me after class, obviously quite distraught by this single footnote, which she had stumbled upon the night before.

The Philosophy of Religion in an Age of Terror: What Is To Be Done?

Beverley Clack
Brian R. Clack

Philosophy of religion as a discipline seems peculiarly resistant to change. A glance through the plethora of textbooks in the field gives one the impression of a subject largely cocooned from events within the world, a subject, the focus of which, is on timeless otherworldly realities and problems. As Oxford philosopher Tim Mawson argues in a recent introduction to the subject, philosophers of religion are (and should be) “loath to engage with…empirical facts” (Mawson p. 176).

How to Study Religion

Robert A. Segal 

In memory of Harold Shipman

The most common metaphor for the study of religion is that of conversation. The scholar learns from the believer. Conversation does not mean interrogation. Conversation means clarification. The scholar can ask questions of any kind. The questions can be tough and critical. The believer can be asked to say not only what the believer’s religion asserts and does but also why. The believer can be asked to defend controversial beliefs and practices–for example, why the religion claims that miracles happen or why it refuses to ordain females. The believer may not have all the answers and may have to appeal to “This is just what we believe and do.” Asked the same question, two believers may disagree on the answer. Differences among believers may reach, or have reached, the point of factionalism.