Speakers Bureau Speaker
Richard E. Wentz, Flagstaff
Richard Wentz is founder of the Religious Studies Department at Arizona State University, which today is one of the leading departments of its kind in American public universities. He holds a Ph.D. in the history of religion in America from George Washington University. Currently he is a Professor Emeritus, teaching occasional seminars and residing in Flagstaff. Long an advocate of narrative (story) as a means of religious, cultural, and self-understanding, Dr. Wentz has been a storyteller, lecturer, and leader of workshops in the facilitation of storytelling. He has been active in Valley theatre and is the author of numerous articles and books, including Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion, The Culture of Religious Pluralism, and Religion in the New World (currently being revised under the title American Religious Traditions).
Religion, Politics, and American Public Life
At the heart of much contemporary cultural misunderstanding is the American tendency to espouse a rhetoric that defines religiousness as a private affair, while the historical and sociological evidence windows the public dimensions of religious life. American history demonstrates the continuing vitality of this unusual dialectic, which will play a significant role as traditions like Islam, with an avowed public platform, gain prominence in the American setting. What patterns are discernible in the rhetoric and actual historical manifestations of religion in relation to government, education, and law in the American story? May these patterns be helpful guides as we contemplate the role of religion in public life in the new religious America?
Tony Hillerman, Yataalii of the Navajo Way
Tony Hillerman, the well-known mystery writer, has devoted much of a lifetime weaving stories of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. Hillerman is a master at moving us inside the geographical and spiritual worlds of the Hopi and Diné (Navajo). Avid readers of Hillerman find themselves at home with the mesas, canyons, and reservation lands of Northern Arizona and New Mexico. Hillerman introduces us to the ceremonial ways of the Navajo, and in doing so, he himself performs a ceremonial role, inviting us into the mysteries of what may be called the Navajo Way.
Who Are the Pennsylvania Dutch?
Among the first unregistered immigrants into what became the original United States of America were refugees and religious pioneers from the German Rhineland and Switzerland. They settled in eastern Pennsylvania, Western Maryland, and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. They became known as the Dutch, as English-speaking people lumped them all together and pronounced Deutsch so that it became Dutch. These people were plain Dutch and Church Dutch. Their heritage continues to this day and is found in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Ontario (Canada), and parts of the Midwest. From them we may learn something of what it means to fashion a unique culture in a pluralistic society.
You Can’t Understand Your Culture Without Studying Religion
The academic study of religion has emerged as an important new enterprise in cultural and self-understanding. It cannot be thought of as a pious exercise in religious advocacy, although the study of religion may open up vistas of human aspiration and meaning. To a great extent, what is called "religious studies" is cultural studies and the exploration of patterns of values, ethics, and the expressions of meaningful existence. The study of religion today is also set in a context of global resurgence of religious identity and traditional practice. This renaissance is denied or overlooked to the detriment of any attempt to understand the future of the human odyssey or the conflicts and struggles between secular and traditional religiosity that may well assume apocalyptic proportions.
