Winter Bible Institute 2020 - Dr. Randall Miller, February 9

"Sacred Crossings, Shaped Identities, and Cosmopolitan Hopes" Dr. Randall Miller, Faculty Associate in United Methodist Studies, Ethics, and Leadership, Pacific School of Religion Religious spaces are often contested and ‘crossed’ realities in which conflicting understandings of the Bible, theology, and morality stand side by side. Many Jewish and Christian theologians, for example, emphasize the importance of biblical admonitions to welcome and protect the ‘stranger’ or ‘alien’ (e.g. Lev. 19:34) without paying much attention to conflicting biblical texts that use religious and cultural purity laws to maintain strict social and political differences. This week’s lecture draws on Julia Kristeva’s famous essay, “The Powers Horror,” to unmask the ways individual and communal identities are defined and shaped by creating imagined ‘walls’ and rigid boundaries between one group of human beings and another. Similarly, Toni Morrison’s Sites of Memory: Proceedings too Terrible to Relate” will provide significant clues for drawing collective, salvific memories to break down walls, resist dehumanization and shape us into beloved community.