Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner?
Like many teenagers in burgeoning evangelical-emergent Christian churches at the end of the nineties, I loved Christian contemporary music (CCM, as it goes). Jars of Clay, Third Day, Newsboys, The Benjamin Gate, Bleach, dc Talk: hearing their familiar melodies never fails to bring a mixture of nostalgia and… well, embarrassment. My current pretentious music-snob self [...]
Religious Ethics After Abu Ghraib
Last December, I had the opportunity to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. The Parliament seeks to promote harmony, reconciliation, and understanding in the world through both intra-religious and interreligious dialogue. In short, it sustains a collective hope that religion will truly be a purveyor of peace and not a conduit [...]
The Way Out is Through
It’s a weekend morning in late November and I’m sitting in a cozy living room with other graduate students, sipping away at my hazelnut coffee and picking at a cold cinnamon bun. All of us are furiously typing on our computers, trying to get a little more work done before we scatter for Thanksgiving break. [...]
Rachel A. Heath
Rachel Heath is currently completing her graduate studies at Yale Divinity School. While living in New Haven, she has been both a community organizer for public housing residents and an interfaith chaplain at a local hospital. In between cups of hazelnut coffee she works as an intern for the Yale Chaplain's Office and focuses on the positive convergence of interfaith dialogue and community service.
Subscribe to this author
Contributing Scholars
Stephanie Louise FisherStephanie (Steph) is from Napier, New Zealand. She has never not lived by the sea - within spitting distance of a beach, at least - until she won a scholarship from Nottingham University and came to the UK to complete her PhD. She studied music, psychology, education and other things at Massey University down under, then after a few years mainly working in theatres, she studied World Religions at Victoria University in Wellington, NZ.
Tiffany BuchananTiffany is a Master of Divinity student at McCormick Theological Seminary. She has a Master of Arts degree in Sociology specializing in Organizations and Institutions and Social Psychology. She founded and is the Executive Director of a non-profit Education Outreach firm, Love Learning Empowerment. She is an aspiring author and poet. You can follow her @ twitter.com/Radiant_Blossom
Michael RambergRabbi Michael Ramberg graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College this June. Much to his surprise, as the son of intermarried (but mainly secular) parents active in the Civil Rights movement, Michael has found in the rabbinate his own way to carry on his parents’ important legacy. For him the most compelling venue in which to pursue this work of repairing the world is through interfaith coalitions, not only because Jews need partners in order to bring about real changes, but also because interfaith relationships are so nourishing for him.
Michael’s focus is standing up for the rights of immigrants, which he does primarily as a volunteer with the New Sanctuary Movement and with his synagogue, Mishkan Shalom, in Philadelphia, PA. In addition to his rabbinic role as community organizer and activist, Michael relishes his responsibilities working with people to sanctify life transitions.
In his Jewish practice Michael is invigorated both by reconstructing the Jewish tradition to fit the evolving needs of people today and by immersing himself in prayer and the study of sacred texts.
Michael’s partner just completed her PhD in Education and they have committed to equally sharing the care of their two year old daughter. Michael sometimes thinks that the profound love his daughter has inspired in him gives him at least a glimmer of understanding of the love the divine has for humanity.