(October 22, 2014)

"Religion Matters" series welcomes journalist Sarah Posner

SHREVEPORT, LA — Centenary College of Louisiana's Religion Matters speaker series, in collaboration with the Middle Eastern Studies working group on campus, are hosting journalist Sarah Posner for a presentation on Monday, October 27, in Anderson Auditorium at 7 p.m.

Posner is an investigative journalist, author, and expert on the intersection of religion and politics. She is a regular contributor on religion to Al Jazeera America and Religion Dispatches. Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, Politico, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, The American Prospect, The Nation, and Salon among other publications. Posner is the author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPoint Press, 2008) and the regular host of a weekly program at Bloggingheads.tv. She has also appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Current, NPR, PRI, and other radio outlets.

Who: Sarah Posner, American journalist and author
What: Public talk, "Polarization in the American Jewish Community: Evolving Views on Israel and the Impact on Interfaith Relations"
Where: Anderson Auditorium, Centenary campus
When: Monday, October 27, at 7 p.m.

"Posner has done extensive work on the decline of liberal Zionism in America and increasing tension within the American Jewish community over Israeli politics and the occupation of Palestine," said Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Spencer Dew. "Her talk at Centenary will also explore the role of 'Israel,' as both real nation-state and religious idea, in American religion and politics, engaging with some of the same concerns as Dr. Steven Salaita's talk on 'Palestine' in the American imagination. Support for Israel, Posner will argue, is often predicated on theological and eschatological concerns (on Israel as the Christian Holy Land, and Jewish control of that land as essential for the Second Coming of Christ). Posner will parse out how religious commitments in America have ramifications across the globe in everyday life."

Religion Matters is a year-old collaborative venture between Dew and the Christian Leadership Center (CLC). Both Dew and the CLC hope for the Religion Matters series to generate wide-ranging conversations across the larger Shreveport-Bossier community.

This is event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Dew at sdew@centenary.edu.