On a Serious Note...

After dinner the other night at a Thai restaurant down the street, I was on the phone with a Pastor from Alabama who brought it to my attention that I was an American eating Thai food in Chinatown in Paris, France. Add to that that I am a Christian from Virginia who just finished seminary in Georgia studying the Middle East and Islam at the American University of Paris and you may be struck by the question “What am I doing here” that I will attempt to answer below (as a welcome(?) break from the self-deprecating humor characteristic of my previous posts).

In studying Islam and the Middle East, I hope to learn about and from those whose religious, political, geographical perspectives differ from my own and, in doing so, reflect on the process by which our perceptions of reality are shaped by the different facets of our identity that we have forcibly thrust upon us/were born into/willingly accept. As stated earlier I am a seminary graduate, so I hope to keep a particularly close eye on religious identity as a motivating factor for action as well as whether or not our religious identity is something we have thrust upon us (by some sort of divine agent/ultimate concern? Society? Culture?)/were born into/willingly accept. A further theological complication arises when one considers the role of a sacred text or texts. This/these text(s), to whatever extent, end up shaping one’s religious identity which, in turn is somehow involved in the complicated interactions between the individual and her culture. It seems that beliefs regarding every facet of the interactions between self, ‘god,’ text, and selves have ramifications for the way life is lived and other people are treated.

Devoting the next year to the study of a long trajectory of interactions between Christianity and Islam, the ‘west’ and the ‘east,’ the belief structure of the Muslim faith, as well as the myriad issues – both historical and contemporary – in a part of the world that I am currently admittedly unfamiliar with will be a challenge. In addition to studying an unfamiliar culture, I find myself immersed in multi-lingual, multi-cultural environment in which I feel a strange sense of comfort in our collective differences. I begin classes tomorrow (my non-credit-bearing, tuition-free beginner French class this morning doesn’t count) and so begins this year grappling with the aforementioned questions both inside and outside the classroom. My hope is that this year will be a time of preliminary explorations of these themes which I will hopefully have the opportunity to continue exploring in a PhD program beginning Fall 2010 or 2011, depending on what works out.

Thanks for reading.