Preachers and Prophets: Using Film to Teach American Religious History

Abstract. Can students learn religious history from movies? While using film as text is likely to attract students’ interest, will such a course be able to negotiate the complex intertwining of film with religion and history to provide students with more than mere entertainment? Will students respond to a challenge to move beyond a movie's surface visual experience to address the core lessons history posits: it's not always been this way, we are the product of what has come before us, I/we are being called to change? This article discusses one attempt to answer these questions and examines both the opportunities and difficulties of using movies to teach religious history.     

All Life Is a Circle: Poetry and the Search for My Native American Roots

In this personal essay, which includes five poems, the author uses poetry as a vehicle to recover, connect with, and explore her Native American ancestry. Her mother, who was one-quarter Wampanoag, was raised from age seven by a couple who taught her that Native American ancestry was something to hide. The poems are interwoven with the account of the author's struggle to retrieve a family story that has been intentionally suppressed. In the first poem, the author's connection to her Native American roots is reflected purely through her interest in and reverence for the earth and its creatures, but throughout the article, the connection becomes a progressively more specific bond with a particular ancestor and his tribe. As the author draws closer to identifying her Wampanoag great-grandfather through genealogical research and reaching out to Wampanoag tribes in Massachusetts, she also draws closer to his spirit, and she writes the final poem, “Wampanoag Clambake,” in his voice.     

In Honor of My Father and My Son

The author advises survivors on the four tasks of grief and reflects on the suicide of her college-age son in 1977 and the recent death of her father, a suicidologist, from age-related causes. She describes current collaborative efforts by organizations dedicated to the prevention and aftermath of suicide.