Sacred & Profane

In 2014, Virginia’s Dominion Energy announced it would be building a new pipeline intended to carry fracked methane from West Virginia to a storage facility in North Carolina. The planned route brought the pipeline right through Virginia’s rural Buckingham County, with a compressor station proposed near a historic Black church and cemetery in the small community of Union Hill. Despite Dominion’s assurances that the pipeline and compressor station would be safe, a group of locals grew concerned — and began to fight back. Opposition to the pipeline forged a new group called Friends of Buckingham, built on the backbone of two very different local faith communities: Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a Black congregation with roots stretching back to Reconstruction, and the Satchidananda Ashram, an interfaith yoga community founded by the Swami Satchidananda Saraswati in 1986. Although they have fundamental doctrinal differences, the communities were united in their conviction that the pipeline would bring environmental harm to their county, and therefore must be stopped. This episode was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Erin Burke, Rebecca Bultman, and Devin Zuckerman for their help on this episode. This piece was reported for us by Molly Born, a journalist and producer who’s reported extensively on the legacy of fossil fuels in Appalachia. She previously reported a piece for the show on a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia wrestling with their decision to allow fracking on their land.

Millions of Americans are traveling hundreds of miles for a chance to witness 2024’s total solar eclipse. As many eyes turn towards this rare event, we’re turning our attention to another wonder, one we sometimes take for granted: the night sky. Humans have a relationship with the moon and stars stretching back for millennia. Observing the night sky has given us practical things, like calendars and ways to navigate; but they also give us a sense of awe and wonder that can't be replicated. We’re joined once more by our colleague Kelsey Johnson to talk about how the night sky links us to the wider universe, and how pollution coming from land and space is threatening that ancient link.

As the climate crisis on Earth worsens, some Americans — including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — have begun to think about a plan (and planet) B. They dream of escaping an increasing polluted Earth in favor of creating an advanced society on our nearest neighbor, Mars. To investigate the roots of our fascination with Mars, we headed to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona with our colleague Kelsey Johnson. Lowell has been the site of all sorts of important discoveries about our universe, but it was originally built by another very wealthy American to observe Mars and the advanced civilization he believed could thrive there. These observations kicked off many, many imagined versions of the Red Planet and the possible futures humans might have there. And our hosts speak with author Mary-Jane Rubenstein about how religious ideas still color the way we see the universe and Mars itself. Humans may leave Earth in numbers some day, but whatever happens, we won’t be leaving religion behind us.

There are hundreds of Confederate memorials across the U.S. With our colleague Jalane Schmidt, we explore an often overlooked part of their history: religion. Not only are these monuments often steeped in religious symbolism, white Christian communities also helped to build and maintain them. And we hear from a group of Christians here in Charlottesville wrestling with that legacy today.

Across the country, protestors are putting their bodies at risk from police violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, with the hope of creating radical change. We spoke with our colleague Larycia Hawkins about the power—and the price—of embodied solidarity.

Graduate student Kevin Stewart Rose brings us the story of a Christian community dedicated to creating a more environmentally sustainable future, but unable to extract itself from our unsustainable present. Part of "Field Notes," our ongoing series dedicated to highlighting documentary work from students at UVA.

Last season. we explored the impact of an ancient artifact with Biblical connections: the Cyrus cylinder. Cyrus's proclamation may be ancient, but it has a lot of resonance in modern discussions of religious freedom, immigration, and national identity. Perhaps then it shouldn't come as a surprise that Cyrus himself has become a political symbol, as well. We're looking at two very different leaders who have become closely associated with Cyrus: the last Shah of Iran, and President Donald Trump.

We're returning to our ongoing series Field Notes, featuring documentary pieces from students here at UVA. Jason Evans explores how black women—leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement since the beginning—are shaped by their faith, even as they question many aspects of the traditional black church.

Santa Muerte. Holy Death. To outsiders, she's become a symbol of cartel driven violence in Mexico—a "narco-saint," worshiped only by traffickers, and venerated at crime scenes. To her followers, she's a protector with roots stretching back to the pre-Hispanic past. Dr. Jessie Marroquín joins us to explore the complex history of the saint, now one of the fastest growing religious movements in Mexico and the Southwestern U.S.

In 1902, a young American headed to the Vatican to record a voice unlike any other. His subject was Alessandro Moreschi—the last known castrato. That is to say, a man castrated in childhood in order to preserve a high singing voice. Castrati's high, yet powerful, voices were in constant demand in both sacred and secular spaces across Europe for centuries. We talk to UVA's Bonnie Gordon about how the interpretation of a single biblical passage helped launch that demand, and how their otherworldly voices became a tool for conversion—and the center of a debate about the nature of human bodies and souls.

"He was a time-traveler and a translator. Or more precisely, the act of translating enabled Mira ji to time-travel." As we work to get our remote studio up and running, we're dipping into our archives to bring you some excellent short audio documentaries by students here at the University of Virginia—including this piece on the Urdu poet Mira ji, whose poetry refused to be confined by religion, gender, or time.

In 1905, a young Zen priest named Nyogen Senzaki arrived in San Francisco from Japan. He was convinced that America, with its long tradition of religious freedom, was fertile ground for the spread of Buddhism. And he slowly built a diverse new community of Buddhist practitioners in California. But everything changed when the U.S. entered World War II. Beginning in 1942, the United States government incarcerated roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent—including Senzaki—in remote camps across the American interior. Many were American citizens. They were held without charges, and without appeal. Duncan Ryūken Williams, scholar and author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War joins us to discuss how this mass incarceration shaped American Buddhism—and American conceptions of religious freedom.

In 1872, an act of Congress transformed newly acquired territory in the American west into Yellowstone National Park. The act declared that the land was "hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States...and set aside as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."And while it was our first national park, Yellowstone draws on much older thinking about sanctuaries. We often use the word sanctuary to talk about places like Yellowstone that have been protected from human development and industry. But it's a word with deep religious roots. Traditionally, a sanctuary is a place that is set apart from daily human life and reserved for the divine.Last winter, we traveled to Yellowstone to explore what happens when a religious idea like sanctuary is transformed into a secular and bureaucratic one. How has "setting aside" this land affected the people and animals who have historically lived within its borders? And can any man-made border keep out the effects of climate change?

Over 2,500 years ago, a victorious army marched through the open gates of the mighty city of Babylon. Soon after came a decree: that all the conquered peoples who had been brought to the city — the people who helped build its magnificent temples, gardens, and palaces — could return to their homelands, to worship their own gods as they saw fit.In the many years since it was written, the edict has been interpreted in many ways: as a sign from God; as the first declaration of human rights; as a savvy piece of political propaganda.How much do the intentions of the person who wrote it matter, over two millennia later?

When Americans think about Austria, it’s easy to fall back on quaint stereotypes — the home of Mozart and The Sound of Music, where people climb and ski the snow-capped alps and still wear lederhosen and dirndls. But Austria, like everywhere else, is much bigger and more complicated than its postcard version. Like many of its neighbors in the European Union, Austria is home to a large number of new refugees from across the Middle East. The new arrivals — and questions of whether they can blend in, and become Austrian — are a near constant topic of debate.How do these questions about who belongs in Austria actually shape someone’s life?Consider Hassan’s story.

West Virginia has been shaped by resource extraction for hundreds of years. First came timber, then coal. These days, it’s hydraulic fracking. And it’s often difficult to hold out when extraction companies come to your area. When a drilling company showed up on their doorstep, a group of Hare Krishna devotees had to make the choice about whether to allow fracking on their land.

2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, when close to a million people were killed in one hundred days.UVA’s Larycia Hawkins sits down with Christophe Mbonyingabo, who’s been working to repair the rifts caused by the violence in his home country for over twenty years. He worried that after the genocide, Rwandans would learn to tolerate each other, but not truly forgive or trust one another. And so, he set out to see if it was possible to rebuild that trust — if perpetrators could look survivors in the eye and acknowledge what they had done, and if survivors could find a way to forgive.

In the 3rd century BCE, Ashoka Maurya ruled an empire stretching from the Kandahar valley of Afghanistan across most of the Indian subcontinent. It was an incredibly diverse place. His subjects spoke dozens of languages. And their faiths and philosophies were almost as varied: they were Hindus, Buddhists, Stoics, Zoroastrians, and Jains.Eventually, Ashoka began an audacious project: a code of ethics that drew from traditions across the empire, designed to minimize the suffering of both humans and animals. It was a code he said anyone could follow, no matter their religious tradition or station in life.Hosts Martien Halvorson-Taylor and Kurtis Schaeffer sat down with UVA’s Sonam Kachru to discuss Ashoka and his edicts. Plus, we explore how an ancient text became a best-selling comic book — and how these edicts might be applied to our daily lives and current politics.