I’ve lived in various parts of the US (Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee and South Carolina) and traveled more widely across the States than that. There’s something about being a tourist or visitor and encountering the various ways a community tries to market itself to attract visitors that I find interesting. Take Atlanta for example. There are a few vestiges of Old Atlanta that might attract a tourist’s attention, but having visited it dozens of times over more than twenty years, there’s nothing that really sets Atlanta apart from any other southern city. Charlotte, for example, is hardly distinguishable, although it has no street, or boulevard, or avenue, named Peachtree, while Atlanta has dozens. Atlanta, since 1996, has the Olympic venues and a couple of good museums, some really fine restaurants, but very little that sets it apart from any other city in America, or the world.

Corrie and I went to Milwaukee today. It’s an interesting place. We went to an Italian deli, to Will Allen’s “Growing Power,” to the Public Market, where we had a pretty good fish fry, and drove along the lake front. Along the way, we stopped in what’s left of the German section–Usinger’s and a couple of tacky-looking German restaurants.

None of it seemed authentic: not the Italian deli, although Corrie felt reminded of Boston’s North End, and certainly not the German block. Yet I wonder how much more authentic a German city, or Italian city would feel in 2010. Neither of us has spent time in Europe in the last decade. We had a week in Frankfurt in 2008 and then it seemed more authentic than my memories of it from 1980. But of course the US Army was no longer ubiquitous.

On another level, there was in our visit, deep authenticity. When Corrie said she felt like she was back in the North End, she was attesting to the authenticity of Italian-Americans creating space and a new culture for themselves in America. They succeeded in Boston, and in Milwaukee.

The article in the Wisconsin State Journal prompted me to think about this question. I’ve been doing it since 2007, but I’ve been much more active as a blogger since moving to Madison than ever before. One reason for my increased presence as a blogger is that I have more time. But it’s also about communication. There are various ways in which pastors can communicate with their congregation. The most obvious is the sermon. There are also newsletters, items in the service bulletin, announcements and the like.

A blog is another way of communicating. There are things that come up in the course of a day, or a week, that don’t merit a great deal of attention–items of curiosity, interest, or confusion–that seem worth a hundred words or so, but don’t deserve a sermon. There are also things that don’t need “official” sanction or items that need immediate attention or ongoing reflection–certainly developments in the Anglican Communion belong to this category–for which parishioners might like some informal input to help understand.

There are also things that I simply want to make a quick, or more reflective, comment on. I blog for all of these reasons and sometimes, simply because I’ve got something I want to say, and I don’t really care whether there’s anyone who will read it.

In an article in Newsweek, Lisa Miller attempts to discuss the place of Religion as an academic discipline at Harvard University. Apparently the article is in response to the new general education curriculum that was introduced and the firestorm during its development over the proposed requirement in “Faith and Reason.” Religion’s place in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is complicated. As she points out, there is no Department of Religion; rather undergraduate courses in Religious Studies and the graduate programs are administered by the Committee on the Study of Religion. She observes that students can also take courses at the Divinity School.

When I was a student at the Divinity School, and as a ThD candidate, my graduate program was administered by the Committee on the Study of Religion. Most Divinity School faculty preferred the Harvard structure over that at other universities with Divinity Schools. It allowed them to teach ministerial students, graduate students, and undergraduates, and it allowed rather different academic foci on the doctoral level. Her article suggests that there is relative institutional separation between the Divinity School and the Committee on the Study of Religion. In fact, one of her sources, Diana Eck, holds a joint appointment on the Faculty of Divinity and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and William Graham, Dean of the Divinity School, was chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion when I was a student.

But creating a department of Religion does not clarify Religion’s place as an academic discipline. I taught for fourteen years at two liberal arts colleges, where debates between Religion Departments and other academic disciplines, and within the departments themselves were quite lively, and often heated.

Too, students often assume that Religion courses will lack rigor. It was quite clear to me that Freshmen taking the required Intro to Biblical Literature course at Furman were expecting it to be a breeze. They were often disappointed.

I stopped by one of the blogs on my blogroll today, the Anglican Centrist. It was my first visit in some time. I had come to appreciate its perspective on things Anglican–theologically insightful with thoughtful commentary on developments in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. I read an entry that referenced someone’s attempt to visit an Episcopal Church on Christmas Eve. The blogger bemoaned that the priest’s response to this person was to discourage them from attending. This provided the jumping-off point for  screed against liberals, Obama (blaming the attacks at Ft. Hood on progressive politics) and much more. I couldn’t finish the article because of the vitriol.

The blogger at Anglican Centrist wanted to use this as an example of how not to evangelize. Now, I’m all for leaving party identity outside the church, where it belongs. But I wonder whether the priest who responded negatively sensed the anger in the person. I will welcome anyone who seeks God, and desires to love God and their neighbor–whoever that neighbor might be. You can follow the exchange here.

I’ve been a big fan of Sojourners bumper sticker: “God is not a Republican… Or a Democrat.”

After reading that, I went over to Madison.com, where there’s an article about a very different expression of religion:

The group, a branch of the Madison Church of Religious Science, is reinventing the idea of church, with “stand you up” live music, meditation, singing, chanting and “an inclusive message of self-empowerment.”

The article is here.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about my move to Madison is that I have escaped the overwhelming presence of the religious right. The author in the article cited by Anglican Centrist was highly critical of progressive Christianity’s embrace of Obama, with nary a mention of the close connection between the Republican party and the religious right and the vilification in many circles of Obama, to the extent of viewing him as the Antichrist, and advocating praying for his death.

But in a town where the guy who came to work on the boiler at Grace last week had to go next to the Freedom from Religion foundation to work, and new religious movements like the one described in the State Journal, negotiating a path as a religious leader can be tricky.