2012-2013 Religious Responses to Suffering – Page 2

2013-02-022025-02-21

A Guide to the Supplementary Resources for 2012-2013

Below you will find supplementary resources pertinent to The Comparison Project’s 2012-2013 theme of Religious Responses to Suffering. These resources come from students in Prof. Knepper’s Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course and Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion course. They are ordered from most recent (top) to least recent (bottom).

The Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course first examined then compared religious responses to suffering in Sikhism, Lakota traditions, and Islam. Below you will find some of their analytic and comparative papers as well as a few of their encyclopedic entries.

The Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion first examined religious responses to suffering in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, then compared and evaluated religious responses to suffering in all six of the religions considered in 2012-2013. Below you will find some of their comparative-evaluative papers.

2013-01-23

02/14/2013: Who Ended Slavery? Secularization in Context

Hector Avalos, Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University

Response by Jennifer Harvey, Associate Professor of Religion, Drake University

Thursday, February 14 6:30 p.m., Olin 101

A number of prominent writers have claimed that Christian and biblical ethics were ultimately responsible for the abolition of slavery in Africa and the New World. Dr. Hector Avalos, in contrast, argues that biblical arguments against slavery began to be abandoned by abolitionists themselves because the pro-slavery side actually had an advantage in biblical support for slavery. Thus, more secularized forms of argumentation, which rested on universalized humanitarian and legal premises, became more attractive in abolitionist movements.

Dr. Hector Avalos is Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, where he was named Professor of the Year in 1996, and a 2003-04 Master Teacher. Born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Dr. Avalos received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 1985, and Ph.D. in biblical and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard in 1991. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (2005), and The End of Biblical Studies (2007).

Download Prof. Avalos’s presentation

Listen to audio of Avalos’s lecture:

2013-01-23

11/29/2012: Religious Responses to Suffering: An Interfaith Dialogue

Thursday, November 29 at 7:00 p.m., Tifereth Israel Synagogue, 924 Polk Blvd.

The dialogue features five representatives of Des Moines area religious communities: Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank, rabbi of the Tifereth Israel Synagogue; Howard Croweagle, American Indian advisor to the governor of Iowa and president of Central Iowa Circle of First Nations; Shuji Valdene Mintzmyer, an ordained Soto priest at the Des Moines Zen Center; Baljit Navroop, an executive member of Iowa Sikh Association; and Ako Abdul-Samad, the Iowa State Representative from the 66th District.

The topic of the dialogue, religious responses to suffering, provides for an exploration of how the religions of the world both explain and empower responses to suffering.

Listen to audio of the dialogue:

2013-01-23

11/14/2012: Loss and Suffering with Dignity: Abd el-Kader’s Jihad with France

John Kiser, author The Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader and The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria

Wednesday, November 14 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

John W. Kiser is the author of numerous books, most notably The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria, which won the 2006 French Siloe Prize for best book on a humanistic topic, and which was the basis for the 2010 Cannes award-winning film, “Of Gods and Men;” and Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader, which is the inspiration behind the Abdelkader Education Project and its annual Abdelkader essay contest in Elkader, Iowa. A former international technology broker, Kiser has an M.A. from Columbia University in European History and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Kiser’s talk will review the highlights of el-Kader’s life during war, peace, imprisonment, and exile, exploring how faith and higher knowledge strengthened him as he suffered defeat, betrayal and loss. In so doing, Kiser will show how the emir’s exemplary life of faith-based moral leadership not only brought him worldwide acclaim from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Pope Pius the IX, Queen Victoria, and Emir Shamil, but also motivated a town in northeast Iowa to adopt his name.

Kiser, Abdelkader’s Legacy talk

Listen to audio of Kiser’s lecture:

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