It’s taken me over a year to watch and reflect on this 24-episode series that explores the meaning of Religion, researched and presented in a way that only Crash Course seems to be able to do. As I’ve noted many times before, my own introduction to Religion as an academic study was courtesy the Jesuit scholars at Loyola Marymount University beginning in 1976 and I found that the world and religious scholarship was so much bigger than I could even imagine, such that, despite my own personal faith undergoing tremendous shifts and dilemmas, I never tired of exploring all of the different ways that humans across the centuries have tried to understand themselves and their relationship to the universe using the language of Religion. The introduction and 24 episodes are listed below in reverse chronological order. Please click on each episode, read my commentary and the embedded Crash Course Religions video and feel free to Like, Subscribe to the blog and leave a comment. Enjoy. JBB
Crash Course Religions #24: Religions and Pop Culture: Fandom, Fiction & Truth
This series, Crash Course Religions, began by asking what makes a religion a religion, noting the difficulty previous generations of Western scholars had a hard time understanding religions that did not adhere to Western traditions and often promoted an artificial...
Crash Course Religions #23: What Does Religious Freedom Mean? A Problem When Multiple Bubbles Collide
I love how Crash Course Religions just jumps right in on the deep end of a question and doesn’t look away or try to present some weak chicken-shit answer. Thinking about religion in an academic manner is a difficult thing to do, especially for those who only think...
Crash Course Religions #22: Visions of the End of the World & One Personal Expiration Date
I think I just wrote on this subject a couple weeks ago (Click HERE for previous article). The Jesus Movement, of which I was a part of, in the 1970s was very much caught up in the notion that Jesus was coming back very soon and that was central to the urgency...
Crash Course Religions #21: What Does Race have to Do with Religion? And You Can’t Learn from a Past That You Deny Exists
While the idea of “race” can be understood as a human invention, the need to be able to identify individuals and groups of individuals who are part of ones tribe would seem to be a fundamental survival trait. Even before we understand the idea of individuals, it would...
Crash Course Religions #20: What Do Sex and Gender Have to Do with Religion? It’s Complicated
Non-western cultures recognized more than two genders... not surprising. That the Talmud, Jewish Rabbinic texts, would describe genders beyond the two is new to me (4:39 in the video). It’s interesting that the “problem” of gender is set against the background of...
Crash Course Religions #19: Are Science and Religion Compatible? Is It a Worldview Thing?
Yes... Would that that response to this question were so simple. Thinking about this problem between religion and science, I’m reminded of a 20-page paper that I wrote for and possibly with my high-school girlfriend titled: Creation vs. Evolution: The Truth. I used...
Crash Course Religions #18: Religion, Spirituality and The Supernatural – Smorgasbord Anyone?
Most important question to answer related to this video is, yes, they are still making “Christmas“ movies such as the action/adventure/comedy film, Red One (2024), featuring a very buff J.K. Simmons as a no-nonsense St. Nick, Duane “The Rock” Johnson as his security...
Crash Course Religions #17: Death and Afterlife Across Religions And What Isn’t In the Bible
I’m taking a course at the Biblical Studies Academy called Demons and Ghosts in the Bible, and a couple of interesting take-aways from this course is how little is really spelled out in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament about the “After Life” and its creatures, like...
Crash Course Religions #16: Who Speaks for a Religion & Your Religious Journey
I love Crash Course Religions because they do not shy away from topics that are very important to religious folks. The idea of where “authority” comes from in a religious setting was huge for me as a young Christian, just having been prayed over at a home Bible study...
Crash Course Religions #15: What Does Ritual Have To Do With Religion… Again?
Ritual. Funny that John Green begins this video by remembering a specific behavior that he used to do as part of his daily ministerial duties, an action that he eventually gave superstitious power to in the hopes that doing this behavior would stave off the...
Crash Course Religions #14: How do Religious Texts Work? And Not Being Stuck with just the Old Ways
That’s such a great way to begin this conversation: the sacred texts didn’t change, but the church/religious practice did... What’s up with that? Is that allowed? So, traditional Christianity looks at the text of the Bible as being inspired and directed by God but...
Crash Course Religions #12: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism: Chinese Popular Religion
There’s a joke that I heard one time about when the Dalai Lama when to order pizza and the person behind the counter asked, “What would you like?” And the Dalai Lama said, “Make me one with everything.” It can be a difficult thing for westerners to grasp, especially...
Crash Course Religions #11: Religions of the African Diaspora & Diversity
After getting my B.A. in Biblical Studies at Biola University and abandoning my Masters in Theology at Fuller Seminary, I decided to enroll at Cal State Fullerton as an Anthropology major in part because I recognize that I had been learning and crossing religious and...
Crash Course Religions #10: The History and Practice of Islam on Earth and Beyond: The Many from the One
When I moved to Las Vegas in 2016 I was happy to find a thriving humanist community that has strong connections with the local interfaith community. I understood since living in Orlando that non-Christian groups often banded together to be able to stand against...
Crash Course Religions #9: Sacrifice, Redemption & Miracles: The Story of Christianity or One Idea: Many Interpretations
For the past ten-months I’ve been attending a weekly in-person Meetup group wordily called “A safe place to ask dangerous questions about the Bible.” I jokingly call it my weekly Bible study group, that I greatly look forward to attending every week. It’s a small...
TAGS: Academic Religious Studies, Crash Course Religions, in bad faith, meditations on, religious studies
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