ReligionDispatches.org

The blockbuster movie Avatar has garnered critical and commercial success, netting $760,000,000 in two weeks. The 3-D effects have mesmerized many critics, as viewers were transported to the hanging mountains and dreamscape of flora and fauna of planet Pandora. Others, such as Annalee Newitz, have criticized this sci-fi movie as rehashing white fantasy about race, since the white man eventually became the leader of the natives.

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On June 8, 1989, four days after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, I attended the Commencement at Harvard to receive my doctoral degree. Clad in my crimson academic gown, I walked pass the Graduate School of Education on my way to Harvard Yard. Outside the school, many graduates had gathered, getting reading to process toward the Yard. A few graduates handed out strips of white cloth, and asked other graduates to tie them around their arms to remember those Chinese students who died on June 4.

A number of students wore armbands with the Chinese characters minzhu (democracy) on them. Some of them clearly did not understand Chinese, for the Chinese characters on their armbands were upside down. I was deeply moved by the gestures of these graduates, who might not have thought much about China or the Chinese students before these students stunned the world with their peaceful demonstration at the world’s largest public square.

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President Barack Obama has been called commander-in-chief and baller-in-chief, but with his speech at Cairo University the former law professor has acquired the unlikely credential of religious-educator-in-chief. This task is a daunting one since our hopes for world peace depend largely on it. His speech gave religious educators a demo of how to teach religion in our globalized world.

First, you have to establish rapport and disarm suspicion. By greeting his audience with the simple Arabic, as-salam alaykum (peace be upon you), the president demonstrated that he knew the audience and the cultural rubric, and that he was not simply speaking of religion in the abstract.

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