Religious Studies News

A useful starting point for teaching Christianity at the undergraduate level is PBS documentaries, especially for the Generation Y or Millennial students who are visual learners. While many of these documentaries remain restricted to the DVD/VHS format, two very useful PBS documentaries for theological and religious education — From Jesus to Christ and God in America — are also available online as unabridged streaming videos, which I use extensively in my introductory courses in Christianity. Student feedback indicates that they appreciate the ability to view the streaming videos for these two documentaries at their own pace in conjunction with the transcript and other resources; e.g., interviews, historical timelines, etc., which are available at the companion websites. The companion websites also have lesson plans and video transcripts that are very useful for instructors.

To address students’ limited perspectives on Christianity and expose them to the diversity and pluralism of American Christianity, I often encourage them to visit the New York Times’s “Christians and Christianity” topic section. For students who are exploring the intersections of Christianity, politics, society, culture, and identity issues in the United States, the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section and Huffington Post’s religion section are often relevant. I also recommend that they visit the Sojourners website for progressive Evangelical perspectives on these issues. The Sojourners’ website focuses on the intersections of United States Christianity, politics, society, and social justice from a progressive Evangelical perspective. Students are often surprised to discover that American Evangelicals are not monolithic and there are Evangelicals who are socially progressive and care about social justice issues.

When it comes to resources for all things Catholic, nothing beats Jesuit Fr. Felix Just’s Catholic Resources for Bible, Liturgy, Art, and Theology, which contains a dizzying array of Catholic resources in North America and beyond that are useful starting points for student research. Fr. Just has created a fascinating site for students to visit and explore Catholicism in all its rich diversity. Students who are doing research on the history of the United States Catholic Church or issues of migration and transnationalism in the history of the United States Catholic Church would find the full-text historical documents at the Catholic University of America Libraries’ American Catholic History Classroom very useful for their research. Here, students come face to face with United States Catholicism as it intersects with immigration, ethnic pride, cultural and transnational diversity, racism, growth, and social and political challenges in the digitized full-text documents. As for statistics and dates on Catholics in the United States, Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate regularly reports on studies and analyses of its research studies and surveys on American Catholics on its blog Nineteen Sixty-Four, which provides free summaries and synopses of its paid reports and publications. The Paulist Fathers’ Busted Halo site is another useful link for anyone who wants to keep abreast of American Catholic teen and young adult culture within the complex mix of faith, culture, society, and identity.

Instructors and students who are interested in Latino/a Catholicism would find the online resources of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) very valuable. Specifically, ACHTUS sponsors two important online resources on the study of Latino/a Christianity: the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology and Latino/a Bibliography, both of which are filled with articles and resources that deal with the intersections (en conjuncto) of religion and intercultural and transnational identities of Latino/as as they struggle with issues of migration, citizenship, politics, religion, and institutional faith. One comprehensive site for research on Hispanic Latino/a peoples, cultures, and religiosity is the Hispanic Latino/a Online Resources site that is maintained by Martín de Jesús Martínez at the Mexican American Catholic College, San Antonio, for his online classroom use. It offers teachers and students a broad range of interdisciplinary resources on the study of Hispanic communities and their history, identity movements, cultures, societies, and religiosity. Students who are more interested in theological issues should visit Orlando Espin’s En Conjuncto: A Site on U.S. Latino/a (“Catholic”) Theology, which provides a useful introduction to the state of Latino/a Catholic theology today.

Asian Americans represent another group that has to grapple with issues of intercultural and transnational identities and faith. The untimely demise of the PANA Institute has left a gaping hole in the study of Asian-American mainline Protestant Christians. To fill the gap, I often direct students who are looking for detailed statistical and other data on Asian-American religions to visit Asian Nation’s Asian-American religion, spirituality, and faith section. As for in-depth discussion on and by Asian-American Christian women, I would encourage them to visit the Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry for resources on mainline Protestantism and Catholicism and the Asian American Women on Leadership for Evangelical traditions. Students looking for materials on Asian-American Evangelicalism could also visit the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity, as well as Inheritance Magazine, which has articles, news analysis, and news features by and on Asian-American Evangelical teens and young adults.

Students who are researching Asia-Pacific Christianity should be encouraged to begin with the official websites of the Christian Conference of Asia and the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, which are replete with position statements, policy documents, and reports. The Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) represents seventeen national councils with more than one hundred Protestant Churches in twenty-one countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) comprises fifteen Asian Catholic Bishops’ Conferences and ten associate members. Unfortunately, the FABC’s archival records are maintained separately from its current papers; archival materials of FABC papers, plenary workshop discussion guides, and plenary statements continue to be hosted on the UCA news site, which is no longer updated. More recent and updated FABC papers and plenary statements are now available directly on the FABC’s website. Other useful sites with important documentation and studies on Asian Christianity include the websites of Ecclesia of Women in Asia for interesting discussions on Asian Catholic women; UCA News for current news reports and analyses pertaining to Asian Catholics; and the East Asian Pastoral Review — the official publication of the East Asian Pastoral Institute, which has full texts of more recent articles and book reviews on its website, thereby making it easy for anyone to search and download articles.