Olympus, Athens, and Jerusalem

The religion of the Greeks was an integral part of ancient Greek civilization. Nearly all of the activities of Greek life were carried out in the shadow of Mt. Olympus. Yet, despite the many legacies of Greece to later Western culture, Greek religion did not survive beyond the first few centuries of the Common Era(C.E.). Traditional Greek religion was weakened by the Greeks themselves, when the philosophers forced the gods out of the sanctuary of Homeric poetry and into the arena of abstract rational discourse. The final blow was inflicted by Christianity, which eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. But the Greeks managed to have their say despite all of this, for the same Greek philosophy that undermined the gods had a profound impact on the Judeo-Christian tradition, which has formed the religious sensibilities of the West. Thus, our exploration of the role of the Greeks in the history of Western religion will take us from Olympus, to the Athens of Plato\u27s Academy, and then to Jerusalem: we shall begin with the Greeks\u27 own religion, then move to a brief analysis of how Greek philosophy affected that religion, and conclude with a look at the impact of Greek philosophy on Judeo-Christian notions of the divine and the human. This article is based on a lecture delivered at the The Greeks Institute, a series of lectures presented to secondary school teachers in the Bridgeport Public Schools during the spring of 1989. Co-sponsored by the Connecticut Humanities Council, Sacred Heart University, and the Bridgeport Public Schools, the purpose of the institute has been to provide teachers with an interdisciplinary exploration of classical Greece for the purposes of professional enrichment and curriculum development

Enacting the Divine: Feminist Theology and the Being of God

This essay\u27s central claim is that there is an implicit motif in much of current feminist theology according to which God is a relation that human beings choose to enact. Discusses the concepts of feminist theology. God as a relation that human beings choose to enact; Feminist commitment to divine immanence; Centrality of relationship in human existence; Feminist enactment model of deity

Vanquishing Evil Without the Help of God: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and a World Come of Age

One of the most distinctive religious features of the 1960s was the death of God theology. It is useful to look back at the death of God movement from the perspective of communication studies. After all, the movement received unprecedented coverage in the popular media. More intriguing, however is the specific fashion in which death of God theologian William Hamilton, one of the most influential figures in the discussion of the death of God, referred to particular aspects of the modern communication environment. According to Hamilton, the communication technologies of the 1960s helped make it a world come of age. In such a world, Hamilton averred, society no longer needed to depend upon God. More specifically, Hamilton singled out a particular television series of the 1960s, the spy drama The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as displaying characteristics of a world come of age. In an attempt to provide a careful analysis of just how U.N.C.L.E. accomplished this, this essay explores the show\u27s consistent modernism, its explicit treatment of religion and spirituality, its approach to trans-national evil, its depiction of individual action, and how it treated the private domain. The sort of worldview analysis employed in the essay is relevant to looking at the role of belief in God, or lack of such belief, in other enacted fictional narratives