by Elie Wiesel
Read the complete text of the prayer Wiesel recited during the program, which originally appeared in a diary and was included in the collection One Generation After.
Selected Readings
Selected Readings
by Omid Safi, Colgate University
Ramadan was simpler in my childhood: It was about date omelets.
We got up around 4 or 4:30 a.m. to have a suhur, also called sahari, meaning a dawn-time meal. After that, no food and no water until sunset time. For the grown-ups, it meant no smoking, and as they love to joke about it, no sex until sunset. Then we would break our fasts with a meal called iftar. Getting out of bed was always a titanic struggle, but not on Ramadan mornings. We got to have a special treat on those days: date omelets.
In this essay read during the program, Laurie Zoloth addresses the ethical dilemmas and complications that accompany progressing cloning technologies from a theological perspective. The essay is included in Cloning and the Future of Human Embryo Research, published by Oxford University Press.
by Fred Dings
You are the children of our fantasies of form,
our wish to carve a larger cave of light,
our dream to perfect the ladder of genes and climbits rungs to the height of human possibility,
to a stellar efflorescence beyond all injury
and disease, with minds as bright as newborn sunsand bodies which leave our breathless mirrors stunned.
Forgive us if we failed to imagine your loneliness
in the midst of all that ordinary excellence,
Read the scriptural text that describes the Pentecost, during which the early disciples recieved the Holy Spirit, and spoke in tongues.
by Jaroslav Pelikan
The following address was presented on the evening of December 5, 2003 at Dwight Chapel in conjunction with a performance, "Concert of Credo Settings in Honor of Jaroslav Pelikan," performed earlier that day by the Yale Schola Cantorum, the Yale Russian Chorus, and the Hellenic College Schola Cantora of Brookline, Massachusetts.
Modern wording of the original Nicene–Constantinopolitan Creed
325, 381 CE
Used in both the East and the West, the Nicene Creed is a statement of faith that provides the basis for unity among Christians, including Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist and many other Christians. The creed was established as part of the eucharistic liturgy during the 5th century. In the Eastern church, the creed is also used at baptisms.
The Maasai Creed is a creed composed in about 1960 by Western Christian missionaries for the Maasai, an indigenous African tribe of semi-nomadic people located primarily in Kenya and northern Tanzania. The creed attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture.
Omid Safi describes his reasons for using the lyrics of "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in the introduction to his book Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. Listen and read the lyrics to Bob Dylan's modern folk classic.
