Why do people grieve a faith they have chosen to leave? If they no longer believe, what exactly have they lost? Ultimately, leaving a religion is rarely the simple loss of a world. Recent philosophical work has argued that deconversion can be an occasion for grief, comparable to bereavement in its power to unsettle one’s...

Are idols real? Do gods or demons dwell in them or around them? Or are they empty, devoid of existence except in the mind of the idolater? Ancient Christians and Jews gave very different answers to these questions. RSVP for this in-person event. Sonja Anderson (UCLA, B.A.; University of Notre Dame, M.T.S.; Yale University, M.A.,...

Among the Sumerian texts attributed to the priestess Enheduana—who lived and presumably wrote over four thousand years ago and is often called history’s first named author—two are dedicated to the glory of the goddess Inana. As the most prominent female deity in Mesopotamia, Inana was powerful and marvelously complicated. The goddess of love and war,...