On Thursday afternoon, The Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA hosted a debate between Sunsara Taylor and Scott Bartchy, my doctoral advisor. I was not able to make it to the debate, but was happy to find this tidbit giving what appears to be a fair report of the debate. The report is done by the Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists. Even giving their leanings, they seem to indicate that Bartchy had a much stronger point than Taylor.

Taylor’s argument was that all religion is bad. Bartchy’s point was that there is bad religion and good religion. I think Bartchy had an easier job to do because, well, he’s right. Both terrible things and great things have been done in the name of religion. Apparently Taylor shot herself in the foot when she defending communism by saying that there are good things and bad things in communism: “When Sunsara said that some things in Communist societies were good, some bad, Bartchy immediately compared it to his own point about good and bad religion.”

Of course there were people of faith who were dissatisfied with Bartchy as their representative in this debate. Apparently one woman refused to believe that Bartchy actually believes in God:

I didn’t catch the whole thing, but I heard her say, “So you don’t really believe in God”.  Bartchy insisted that she didn’t know that.  But she kept on saying “He doesn’t really believe in God”, walking away satisfied.

Bartchy often mentions that when people ask him about this, he often tries to ask them what they mean by “God.” Too often people have no idea how to articulate an understanding of what “God” means to them. For Bartchy, at least as he explains early Judaism and Christianity, their God is the God of “community forming power”: the God who gathers a people who are committed to following God’s way of social justice. When people talk about “God” in America, it is often something quite different.

Incidentally, it seems that Bartchy had the correct approach by responding in a reasoned and logical manner, in contrast to Bill O’Reilly who interviewed Sunsara Taylor and simply called her a “lunatic.”

Sounds like it was a stimulating event. Sorry I couldn’t make it.

Yesterday, the incoming graduate students in UCLA’s Department of History were officially welcomed with an orientation and reception. The experience actually made me feel like I’m quite ahead of the game. During the 90 minutes or so of orientation presentations, I actually didn’t learn all that much. I have been eager to learn about the sorts of classes I need to take and have been pushing forward with that. I have a readership lined up with Bartchy. I’m enrolled for classes. I know the basics pretty well.

When they brought in the experienced folks to help get the newbies acquianted and acclimated, I already knew the two guys there from my field. There are only five people in my field, including myself, and I’ve met all of them. It’s an amazing team.

When I went off with Kevin (fourth year, ABD, teaching fellow) and James (second year) to chat it up, we hit the ground running with all the ins and outs: what I have to know about language exams, what’s expected for grading, how to go about juggling classes. I had already discussed some of this stuff with them, but we went even deeper. And we just laughed and had a good time.

Later, when we were partaking of the treats laid out for us and chatting with Bartchy (our faculty advisor), Kevin mentioned how surprised he has been with this program. We all hear PhD horror stories about abusive bipolar advisors, uber-competitive grad students who hide library books, etc. Kevin has been amazed at how gracious and warm the people have been: Bartchy himself, the grad students, even the department staff. Kevin himself, along with the three others in my program, is a model of that graciousness.

I joked that Kevin was getting my hopes up high, but Bartchy told me to let my hopes remain high and soar on them. On that note, I am ready to start soaring this Thursday when class sessions commence!

I am pleased to report that I have been offered admission into the Ph.D. program in UCLA’s Department of History, to work under Scott Bartchy, and I have accepted the offer! The specialty is technically called “History of Religions,” but I will mostly be concentrating on Christian origins (especially the New Testament, but also beyond). I understand there was only one spot and I am tremendously honored to have been chosen.

Why UCLA? Several reasons, let’s go for bullet points (in no particular order):

• I am excited to work with Scott Bartchy, who is a member of the Context Group and has significant experience in social concerns (e.g., slavery, gender roles, community formation) with the New Testament, using sociological and anthropological methods of historical research. I have become more and more drawn to social concerns in Christian origins and Bartchy will help me dive in with both feet. More on Bartchy below.
• I also have a burgeoning interest in apocalypticism and Christian origins (as if anyone could define apocalypticism). I am especially interested in comparing and contrasting Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. A fairly recent addition to UCLA’s Departments of History and NELC, Ra’anan Boustan, has worked in Jewish apocalyptic issues and in Jewish-Christian relations, which is a great resource for my interests.
• I have the freedom to piece together my own program, taking a combination of graduate seminars, directed readings, and even upper division undergrad courses not only in the History Department, but also in world-class departments like NELC and Classics.
• Even though, I’m interested primarily in the New Testament and Christian origins, I can’t shake my interest in the history of Israel, subsequently of Judaism, and their literature. NELC faculty members such as Bill Schniedewind, especially with his interest in sociolinguistics of Hebrew and the social/cultural history of ancient Palestine, will provide deep wells of knowledge for my research.
• In this program, I will get a well-rounded education, with some training in the history of western civilization generally and world religions.
• The opportunity to do adjunct teaching in New Testament studies during my dissertation at several excellent Christian schools in the area. I think this will help prepare me by exposing me to various types of settings engaging students in biblical studies.
• UCLA’s Department of History, according to US News and World Report, is one of the top ten history programs in the country. We all know that such rankings are tenuous, but it’s still nice. Check out the response to the rankings several years back by the American Historical Association.
• I’ve met some of the graduate students who are studying in the history department and become friends with one of Bartchy’s grad students, Kevin Scull. They are happy and seem like tons of fun. That makes a world of difference!
• Also, it doesn’t hurt that Fuller has plans to finish construction of their new snazzy library, which will apparently be the largest theological library on the Pacific Rim, in early 2009. I will certainly be frequenting Fuller’s campus while I’m in the program at UCLA.

Some more on Bartchy: He’s down to earth and has a balanced perspective. He’s a jazz pianist and marathon runner. Professor Bartchy is pretty progressive (see a couple articles on his earth-friendly home; and an online interview on his views of Christianity). He cares about his students, even the undergrads! (At a big research university like UCLA, that’s saying a lot.) Bartchy is involved in campus life, participating in panel discussions on religion. He founded and directs the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA, which brings together disciplines that work on religion from various angles and which also offers an undergraduate major in religion. As I understand it, UCLA has been slow to consider religion as a valid field at a state sponsored university (with perhaps understandable skepticism), but Bartchy has been leading the way to establish the study of religion on campus. His dream would be the creation of a department of religious studies, where “we would have a budget, and we could call in scholars and very distinguished people who might not fit into the agenda of any particular department” except for a religion department. Bartchy is sensitive to various religious experiences in his teaching. In fact, he offers a helpful metaphor for dealing with difficult research issues: the moving around and adjustment of ideological buckets (maybe I’ll say more about that some other time). All of this to say that Scott Bartchy not only offers academic expertise that is quite relevant to my research interests, but he also models a kind of actively involved educator and mentor to students that I would like to become.

In one sense, my decision to study the New Testament within a history department is a statement about my modern sensibilities. While many are declaring the death of the historical method of interpreting the Bible, here I am signing up for historical scholarship on the Bible and the foundational period of Christianity and Judaism. I believe that postmodern-ish methods of interpreting the Bible from various minority perspectives and social locations are enormously helpful in both keeping the practice of the historical-critical method in check, while also offering unique points of view on how to apply our historical findings to the contemporary global situation. But, for myself, I would like to be firmly planted in the historical foundation of research before jumping too deeply into postmodern or postcritical approaches. What better way to do that than study the Bible and its historical context at one of the best history departments in the country?