The Gospel of Prothero
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439043/site/newsweek/
A Boston University professor argues that Americans, though
'spiritual,' are woefully ignorant about religion.
By Lisa Miller
Newsweek
March 12, 2007 issue - Steve Prothero is the kind of professor who
makes you want to go back to college. During an hour lecture of his
Boston University course "Death and Immortality," 200 students sat
rapt last week as his train of thought led him from the Docetics
(early Christians who believed that Jesus was all-God, not flesh), to
reincarnation, to Disney World, to Hindu cremation rituals, to Plato's
account of Socrates' trial (the day's assigned reading), to "Beauty
and the Beast," to a hypothetical suicidal bunny, to a discussion of
the merits of exile versus death for a man such as Socrates. To
describe Prothero as "quick-witted" or his interests as
"interdisciplinary" wouldn't quite do him justice. Prothero is a world-
religions scholar with the soul of a late-night television comic.
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