We had a great turnout last night.  If you missed the first class, feel free to drop in another time.  We’ll be meeting Wednesday nights at 6:30pm at Lakeside Christian Church. There are a couple of nights that I will be out of town, so we won’t be having class on March 24, April 28, or May 5. Missing class for two weeks in a row is not ideal, I know, but a last minute change of schedule came up just as we were starting class. On May 5, I’ll be in Chicago auditioning for Jeopardy!

Each week, I’ll post some additional resources online, as well as the notes and slides from the class. For Christianity, here are a few good resources:

• GetReligion.org follows media coverage of all religions. It’s a great place to see critical assessments of how well the media covers various religions, as well as to learn a lot more about different religions.
• Christianity Today’s news page collects Christianity-related news from across the Internet. CT also has a Christian History page that collects articles about Christian history, as well as important events. By utter coincidence, today is the day when Alexander Campbell, one of the founders of the Restoration Movement, died in 1866.
• The official website of the Orthodox Church in America is a great place to learn more about the 2nd largest Christian communion in the world.

Are there any other resources you are looking for? Resources from last night’s class can be found by clicking “Read more.”

Resources from Class

Last night’s handout can be downloaded as a PDF.

The history of religion film from Maps of War is below. As I mentioned in class, this is a great film, with a couple of disclaimers:

• It only shows the “Big Five” religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) while ignoring many other historically important religions.
• Don’t imagine that the gray areas didn’t have religion. Religion has always been an integral part of human culture.
• It probably can’t be helped, but it would be nice to have some greater detail. For example, Christianity and Buddhism both look very, very different in different parts of the world, and major minority religions can’t be shown in this format.

http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf

Last night’s presentation:

Next week, we’ll be looking at Islam. It should be great!