This four-part seminar series brings scholars, religious leaders and other experts from across the nation and around the world to Butler for discussions about the intersection of religion and major issues of our time. The seminar meets throughout the academic year for evening presentations and question-and-answer sessions. All sessions are 7-9 p.m. Most sessions are in [...]

by Patrick Allitt | February 1, 2012 Is it true that the Bible teaches peace and the Koran war? Only if you approach the books selectively, taking the gentlest of Jesus’ teachings and setting them against the harshest of Muhammad’s. Philip Jenkins’ challenging new book Laying Down the Sword shows that the Bible contains incitements [...]

February 15, 2012BY PHILIP JENKINS Although I have never claimed to be very statistically oriented, one number in particular fascinates me as a way of understanding the world, and that is: 2.1. Specifically, that is the crucial figure when looking at a society’s fertility rate, the average number of children that a typical woman will [...]

The Baylor University History department welcomes you to a lecture by Catherine Brekus Thursday, March 1, 2012 3:30 p.m. Morrison Hall, Room 120 Dr Brekus is Associate Professor of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School; Associate Faculty in the Department of History teaches American religious history. She is the author of Strangers and [...]

Philip Jenkins Every few weeks, it seems, Islam makes headlines in the U.S., whether the topic is a television show like All-American Muslim, a state prohibiting Sharia law, or just a grandstanding platform statement in a primary. No less predictable are the basic arguments: Islam is evil, violent and repressive in its basic nature, and [...]

By Grace Gaddy Reporter Killing entire races of people, slaughtering men, women and children and showing no mercy: such topics don’t often make their way into the typical Bible bedtime story, but according to Dr. Philip Jenkins, these darker and often bloodier passages cannot be ignored. Jenkins, a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for [...]

by Qasim Rashid, Muslim Writers Guild of America Posted February 7, 2012 CLICK HERE TO GO TO HUFFINGTON POST A man whom The Economist calls “one of America’s best scholars on religion” has just released his latest book, “Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses.” Author Philip Jenkins presents a [...]

Feb. 3, 2012 The Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion will host a lecture by Philip Jenkins, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of History and co-director for the Program on Historical Studies of Religion, who will speak on “Laying Down the Sword: Coming to Terms with Violent Scriptures” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, in Kayser [...]

2/2/2012 Misquotations of famous people have always been with us, but social media websites have created a vast twilight zone of historical misinformation. Take patriot leader Patrick Henry, for example. Of course, one can find legitimate Henry quotations on social media sites, such as “give me liberty or give me death,” the Henry saying that [...]

In this common space we share that is our newly flattened world, all Christians everywhere are obliged to listen again for what we have yet to hear. By Frederick Schmidt, January 16, 2012 I teach a class called “Making Sense of the American Spiritual Landscape”—which my colleagues have described as a neat trick if you [...]