Because of the vagaries of holidays, courses in this endless-seeming semester have been wrapping up for over a week. My Wednesday class finished last week. My Tuesday-Thursday class finished Tuesday of this week. And "Theorizing Religion," which meets Fridays, ended today. I thought students might be ready to let it go and at last week's meeting offered to move the final class on zoom (or even cancel it), but they wanted to gather one more time - and for it to be in person. And so we were, on an otherwise empty campus. In fact, because of unseasonal weather, we spent our final hour sitting outdoors! Not everyone came but there were eight stalwarts (the mandala impresario was on my laptop) and it felt positively countercultural.
We started with two final presentations of student research - on the dodgy "Tiger Temple" Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Yanasampanno in Thailand, and on the flirty fishing Christian "sex cult" the Children of God. Typically tabloidy topics but I've long since learned how to spin discussion in edifying directions. Things turned really festive once we moved outside to share final reflections. Almost all who made it today are from art, design or theater, and we ended up talking about how the community of artists is like the ideal of religious pluralism - respecting and even celebrating each other's difference in a spirit of collaboration rather than competition - except that they don't know how to talk or think about religion. Some do now! Indeed it emerged that these students have been forwarding and discussing texts from our class to friends and family all semester. Not bad for a Friday class!
