Lalibela Rock-Hewn Churches In Ethiopia

Did you know that Lalibela, a small town in northern Ethiopia, is known as the Jerusalem of Ethiopia and that it's home to 11 amazing rock-hewn churches?

Fikru Woldegiorgis, a guide who has lived there most of his life, tells CNN that "it is one of the very important places for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church people." He notes that "there is a belief that Lalibela pilgrims share the same blessing as pilgrims to Jerusalem. They have to come at least once in a lifetime."

According to this excellent CNN article, the churches were commissioned by King Lalibela in the 12th century. The churches are "carved out of volcanic tuff rock ...in a variety of styles. Some of them were chiseled into the face of the rock, where others stand as isolated blocks, like the iconic church of Saint George, constructed in the shape of the cross."

UNESCO considers the churches to be world heritage sites and has an excellent article about them with more terrific photographs.

Reza Aslan's Top Five Villains of the Bible

Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, lists what he thinks are the top five villains of the Bible. As Fusion notes, Satan is not one of them but Paul of Tarsus is.

Harvard Educated Monk Introduces Zen Buddhism

Mediation is about much more than healing. Above all, it's about enlightenment, according to Hwansan Sunim, a Harvard educated Korean-American Buddhist monk.

Sunim is a Zen Buddhist and studied under the preeminent Korean master, Ven. Songdam.

In the first 10 minutes in the the video above, Sunim explains how he came from Korea to Harvard and back to Korea to study Zen Buddhism and back to the US to share the teachings of Seon Buddhism. It's a fascinating story that students and others would enjoy.

According to the Post, "Sunim has one foot in the world of ancient Buddhist wisdom and another in the world of 21st century digital media, sharing his insights with a global audience via his podcast series and YouTube channel, "Hwansan Sunim: Son Meditation for the Modern World."

You can read more about this fascinating monk in this Huffington Post story.

Malala's Father on Ted Talk

Here, in this excellent Ted Talk, Ziauddin Yousafzaithe, Malala's father, discusses the limited role of women in Pakistan. It is, in many ways, an impassioned plea for women's rights. He says that he has five sisters and that none of them have an education and decided that he had to change that with his daughter. He begins his talk noting that he is one of few fathers known by his daughter and says that he is proud of it.

Religious Police in 17 Coutnries

Wow! According to Pew Research, almost one in ten countries have police that "enforce religious norms." That's 17 countries!

In Saudi Arabia, for example, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, now called the Muttawa, "impose a government-approved moral code on residents of the country." They enforce gender segregation, control alcohol distribution, and ban women from driving.

The Story of Jews: PBS Series

Here Simon Schama, author of the new book, The Story of the Jews, talks with Religion and Ethics Newsweekly about the new PBS series that's based on the book. It's a great overview.

Here's the link to the PBS Series. It has some great links worth exploring if you're studying Judaism. There's a clip on the New York diaspora and another about Jews under Islam.

The PBS Series begins on March 25.

Church Membership Down: Churches Sell Property

Wow! We've heard  for a while now that church membership is way down.  But this story in the New York Times offers more proof that churches are in trouble.

Here the Rev. Peter Morales of the Unitarian Universalist Association walks down the grand staircase of the church's Beacon Hill property in Boston. Like church properties elsewhere, Unitarians are selling this property and moving to a less  glitzy part of Boston. Denominations like the Unitarians are selling valuable properties and downsizing for a number of reasons, according to the New York Times.

Those reasons include poor finances and the need for more contemporary office space.  But The Times suggests that the real reason for the sales has to do with the increasing secularization of the United States.

Unitarians are not alone. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are selling 34 properties in Brooklyn. The United Methodists are selling thier publishing house and other properties in Nashville. The American Baptist Churches in King of Prussia, Pa are renting part of their space. The Reform Jewish movement are sellling one of their floors in Manhattan.

A Kaleidoscope Mosque

This is the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran, and must be one of the most striking mosques because of it's amazing color, or what the Huffington Post calls, its "riotous wonderland of color." The Post has more amazing photographs that you should see.

Islamic art shies away from figural representation. In fact, religious leaders forbid the depiction of human and animal figures. Consequently, calligraphy and geometric patterns became popular.  You can see the geometric patterns in the features of the mosque above.

Jewish Symbols and Meaning

Teaching Judaism?  Do your students know the important Jewish symbols like the Tefillin above?  If not, here's a great site that has excellent pictures of the important symbols along with good explanations. Some of the other symbols reviewed include the Yarmulke, the Shofar, the Chai, the Tanakh, to name just a few.

Islamic Art & Science Exhibition in Dallas

The blue and white 13th century bowl above, which is from Iran, is just one of many highlights of a new exhibit at the Dallas Museum called  "Nur: Light in Art and Science from the Islamic World." 

That exhibit will open on March 31 and will explore "the use and meaning of light in Islamic art and science, and demonstrate how light is a unifying motif in Islamic civilizations worldwide," according to a review from Art Dubai. 

The New York Times, in an excellent review, notes that "visitors will first see five bowls and plates, each very different, with rays conveying visual light, including a 13th-century blue-and-white Persian bowl borrowed from the Brooklyn Museum... Next come lamps, from simple to sophisticated, signifying the presence of light around the world."

The Dallas Museum is also the home of over 2000 Islamic art objects that were collected by a private Hungarian collector. The museum gets to keep the collection, as long as it makes it available to the public and to scholars, for the next 15 years.  

That agreement, according to the New York Times, instantly makes Dallas "perhaps the third most important Islamic collection in the country, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington."

Jewish Prayer Shawls: Tallits

Studying Judaism? Do you know what a tallit is?

This Religion and Ethics Newsweekly clip explains that a tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl and the fringes, called the tzitzit,"represent God’s 613 commandments to the Jews." 

Hola Mahalla: Sikh Festival

What's Hola Mahalla?  It's a Sikh festival that usually occurs in March after the Hindu festival of color, Holi. 

According to BBC Religion, it started as "a day for Sikhs to practise their military exercises and hold mock battles." 

But today, "Sikhs celebrate by watching and partaking in martial arts parades, led by the nishan sahibs of the Gurdwaras. These are followed by poetry readings and music."

The Huffington Post has some great photos, (the top photograph came from the Post). You can read more about the festival here.

NYC Houses of Worship

How secular is New York City?  Not very, according to a small group called "A Journey Through NYC Religions." They are attempting to document every religious institution in the city and in the process are discovering the city's pluralism and "the vibrancy of religious life." And they help tell the remarkable story of immigration.

The group's website is called" NYC Houses of Worship," which you can visit here.

Kumbh Mela Documentaries

Here's a trailer for a new documentary about the world's largest gathering of humanity which occurred in India last year in a religious festival called Kumbh Mela. The festival happens every twelve years at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Hindus believe that bathing in the water will wash away their sins and help bring salvation. As I wrote last year, over 100,000,000 Hindus gathered there last year.

The documentary is called Faith Connections and was written and directed by Pan Nalin. It premiered in Toronto last fall and the BBC gives it a good review here.  But it's two hours and way too long for a class.

The 30 minute documentary below, called "The Holy Dip,"  might be better and does a good job of reviewing the  festival and giving you an idea of its magnitude. 

A third documentary with the same title, "The Holy Dip" will debut on Sunday, March 23, on ABC TV Compass in Australia.

Making a Mandala: Five Monks, Five Days

Ever wonder how Buddhist monks make those elegant and intricate mandalas?  Last month, a group of monks agreed to construct a mandala for the Arthur Ross Gallery at Asia Society Museum in New York.

You can watch as the monks trace the outline of a cosmic chart. Next, according to the Asia Society , the monks begin a "drawing process,"which utilizes metal funnels known as chak-pur. Colored sand is scooped into these funnels and, using scrapers, monks add the sand to the design by means of a back-and-forth scraping motion over the ridges of the funnels."

It's a pretty cool process.

Color & Songs of Holi

Holi is the Hindu festival that marks the beginning of Spring, usually in March. And, as you can see in the photograph above, Holi is a colorful festival with lots of powder paint and colored water. Indeed,  Holi is known as the festival of colors.  According to the BBC, Holi also commemorates Krishna and the legend of Holika and Prahlad.

Here are some Holi songs from Bollywood movies.

Jerusalem: Google Street View

Studying Judaism? Google Gallery Street View for Israel is very good and includes the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jaffa's Clock Tower, and the Knesset, to name just few of the sites.

Taoism in Popular Film

Here's an interesting clip in which the host tries to analyze the meaning of the Dao through popular film.

Don't Freak, I'm Sikh

Here a young British Sikh man reminds us that Sikhs are people of love, equality and peace, and that their turban is their crown.

According to the Huffington Post where I found the clip, Pardeep Singh Bahra, a young British author, produced the clip in an attempt to confront popular misconceptions about Sikhs and their turbans.

Sikh Turbans

Ever wonder how a Sikh wraps his turban or just what the meaning of the turban might be?

The clip above from the Religion and Ethics Weekly answers those questions. The occasion  was a  “Turban Showdown” for children  at a gurdwara in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the Sikh Foundation of Northern Virginia.

The Book of Purim?

This is not the Book of Mormon, but rather The Book of Purim, a cute parody of the Book of Mormon

Purim is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from extermination. You can read  a summary of the story, which comes from the Old Testament Book of Esther, at the Chabad site. The JewishVirtual Library also has a good summary.

Purim falls on the 14th day of Adar, which is usually March. Adar, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, "is the day that Haman chose for the extermination of the Jews." Haman is the egotistical and arrogant king of Persia and the villain of the story.

This year Purim falls on the same day as St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, so maybe as Haaretz (a website with news about Israel and the Middle East) says, we should call it St. Purim's Day.

The Qur'an: Decoding the Secrets of the Past

Studying Islam?  Here's an interesting History Channel documentary about the history of the Qur'ran.

Yoga Poses in Israel

No, the women above (and the women below) are not being tortured. They are actually practicing a form of mediation called Iyengar that "encourages the  use of props to assist with poses."

According to the New York Times, a Jewish couple in Tel Aviv introduced this form of yoga to their fellow orthodox Jews. They say that "their students, taught in single-sex classes, are encouraged to come as they are, even in day clothes or long skirts, if necessary."

You can see an interesting slide show of the different poses here at the New York Times.

How to Make Ganesha Statues

Here the British Museum shows us how craftsmen make a statute of the popular Hindu god, Ganesha. And toward the end of the clip, we see how Hindus worship the statues.

You can also visit the British Museum online exhibition about Ganesha called "From Temple to Home: Celebrating Ganesha."

Women & Religion in World History

For Women's World History Month, you might consider some of the great lessons about women and religion from George Mason's  Center for History and New Media.  You'll find teaching materials with primary sources on topics like the Hindu practice of Sati,  Bhakti poets, and the Islamic empire.

You can also explore the Internet Sacred Texts  Archives which has a page relating "specifically to women and religion from a female perspective." You'll find historic feminist texts, goddess-oriented texts, and texts from "otherwise" male-dominated religions.

Here are some of the texts you might find; a page about the lives of Greek heroines, another with the poems of Sappho, a Hopi origin myth, and a Hindu chant extolling the thousand names of the Goddess.

Lent 101

It's Lent and Faith Street has a great primer with everything you ever wanted to know about the origin and practice of Lent.

Did you know, for example, that in the early days of the Christian Church, Lent "was a two-day fast beginning on Good Friday and intended for those preparing for baptism."  In addition,  you had to avoid dairy products and eggs.  All that, of course, changed over time, according to Carrie Mitchell, the graduate intern at Faith Street who wrote the essay.

Mitchell notes that many in the Protestant faith spoke out against Lent. John Calvin called it a "superstitious observance," and "Ulrich Zwingli, a Swiss reformer, led one of the initial protests against Lenten traditions in 1522, arguing that its rules were centered on obeying Rome rather than the gospel."

The pillars of Lent, Mitchell says, are fasting, praying, and almsgiving.  She says that "for all Christians who observe it, Lent is intended to deepen one’s appreciation of Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice. It’s a period of penitence in preparation for the celebration of Easter."

Concentrate: Zen Buddhism Simulation

Teaching Zen Buddhism?  Concentrate your mind like this practitioner and if a tiny fly like the one on his forehead bothers you, follow the path of this interesting simulation.

Growing Role for Mormon Women

Young Mormon women can now become missionaries when they turn 19. Until October 2012, they had to be 21. According to this fascinating story in the New York Times, this is one of the biggest changes in the Church of Latter Day Saints in many years.

The change in age has tripled the number of young Mormon women who have signed up to become missionaries. According to the New York Times, "these women are expected to fundamentally alter this most American of churches, whose ruling patriarchs not long ago excommunicated feminist scholars and warned women not to hold jobs while raising children."

Like their male counterparts, these young missionaries must comport themselves conservatively with knee length skirts and modest make-up, patterned in styles along guidelines like this.

The Times story includes graphs showing the number of male and female missionaries, photographs and video clips and offers a great glimpse in the Mormon church today. Did you know, for example, that there are two unmarried Mormon men for every ten unmarried Mormon women.

Mahayana Buddhism: Great Prezi

Studying Buddhism. Here's a great Prezi from a college professor about the development of Mayahayana Buddhism in China. It's long and includes several video clips but you could certainly adapt parts of it.

I particularly enjoyed the early part of the Prezi about the role of trade routes like the Silk Road in the cross cultural transmission of Buddhism. In another section, the author reviews the significance of the Dunhuang manuscripts, religious documents from the 5th to 11th century.