Gardener divine

A friend asked how my trees were doing. It's been a busy schedule of teaching and other duties, I reported, but I do have snippets of time for my book project. I looked at the courtyard maples, ready to pop. Share something fun you found, she asked? 

Ok, said I. Someone's recently published a book debunking the received explanation for how the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden came to be identified as an apple (after centuries as a fig, grape or pomegranate). As part of his research he compiled a website of images of the fateful scene, one of which delights me to no end. 

It's from a 9th century French illustrated Bible known for where it now resides as the Bamberg Bible, although in Bamberg it's referred to as the Alkuin-Bibel. Anyway, the illustrations facing the Book of Genesis are out of this world. The depiction of the eating of the forbidden fruit in the second row clearly shows a fig tree - and it's leaves from that same tree that Adam and Eve use to cover their nakedness. But beyond the exquisite beauty of the whole thing, something else caught my eye. 

It's in the first row, which shows the creation of Adam and then, in a gorgeous explosion, of other animals. This is the sequence of the second creation account, where the man is clearly created to take care of the garden (2:15), indeed even before the Garden of Eden is planted. 

But look at the trees in that top row. They've all been pruned! That's how, I'm suggesting, everyone used to know that well-tended trees looks like. Trees in this world don't take care of themselves. If Adam is made in God's image (1:27), it's in the image of a gardener!

Not religious but finally recognized as spiritual

Broke the news in "After Religion" today that Pew has released a new Religious Landscape Study of the US, the third! (The first and second appeared in 2007 and 2014.) They also do annual smaller surveys, which allowed for a new headline based on reports from the last four years. Instead of the past studies' fear-mongering headlines about the decline of Christianity or the rise of the "Nones," they now report that Decline of Christianity in the U. S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off. I'm not sure what to make of it - it's based on how many people "identify as Christian," and since 2020 we know that a new kind of person has been doing so, for nationalist rather than religious reasons. But perhaps the headline will make the Christian nationalists behave a little less ferocious in their attempts to deny the reality of a pluralist society?

But scratch the surface and the trends Pew has been tracing continue - each generation is less likely to do the things Pew defines as religious, from affiliation to regular church attendance to daily prayer. Indeed, each seems to do less over time, too. But Pew's finally started asking (or publishing) other questions, which allow those whose spiritual lives don't manifest in affiliation, "prayer" or community participation to be seen as more than undead "nones." And when you ask those questions, there's a startling lack of generational change. There are still more subtle generational differences and it would be great to have data on these questions going farther back, but even without it, this points in intriguing new directions for understanding American religious culture today. I'll have to study their findings more closely!

To all the world

Having a ball!

My college is coming up on a big anniversary - forty years this fall! Having been here for more than half of that, I'm excited to see how it's celebrated, and am looking forward to working with a student researcher constructing a timeline to support things.