Religion and the Human Experience: Week 8 - The Beginnings of Religious Literacy

This afternoon we will open with discussion (sample) from Mid Terms. Follwoing this will be a prayer reflection based on "The Logical Son" and followed by a selection from St. Agustine's "Late Have I come to Thee" from his Confessions. I hope to demonstrate and summarize the I- Thou relationship, "It" versus, "Though" faith , Transcendence v. Immanence, Faith and Reason and the Conjunctive- Mystical Faith that leads to a Unitive faith using Augustine's text. It is quite powerful! This information will be distributed in class along with notes on the Nature of Religion and Catherine Albanese's the 4Cs.
After this we will launch into defining more religious literacy and and its importance. The videos below hopefully will help in this process.

The Logical Song (lyrics provided)

Link - St. Augustine (handout)

Jay Leno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAZevVS-oKU

"The Bible" series by - Mark Burnett and Roma Downey

The following are clips featuring Mark Burnett, famous producer of such series as Survivor, Shark Tank and The Apprentice on his series The Bible which aired this past Sunday night on the History Channel. The series is to run five consecutive Sunday up until Easter Sunday. Check it out. Check also his comments on biblical literacy (from EW.com posted on CNN Weekly) Both Mark and his wife, Roma, felt "called" to tell the story of the Bible. Their hope is to reach a whole new generation of people"who have never gone to Church."

"The Bible" is a 10-hour live-action miniseries executive produced by "Survivor" and "Celebrity Apprentice" executive producer Mark Burnett along with his wife Roma Downey ("Touched by an Angel"). Burnett has said he made the special effects-filled project to help tackle "Bible illiteracy" among young people. "In school, you have to know a certain amount of Shakespeare, but no Bible," Burnett told the Christian Science Monitor. "So there's got to be a way to look at it from a pure literature point of view. If it wasn't for the Bible, arguably Shakespeare wouldn't have written those stories."

Now whether you agree with Burnett's and Downey's very Christian telling of The Bible as a complete "love story" whose central or main character is God revealed in the person of Jesus ("Jesus is the main character" according to Burnett), the question still remains, Does this series help with biblical literacy? religious literacy?