A Scholarly Affair With a Side of Activism
CHICAGO — The joint meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion drew 10,700 scholars, professors, publishers and clergy members last weekend to the McCormick Place Convention Center, where for four days they established their alternate universe. It was reminiscent of the Mos Eisley cantina in “Star Wars,” filled with polyglot eccentrics. Dead languages lived (He speaks Latin! She reads Akkadian!). One saw robed Buddhist monks; priests and friars, collared or cassocked; nuns, in habit or not; imams in kufis; the occasional yarmulked Jew. And thousands more in rumpled khakis, name tag on lanyard like an officer’s medals. They clutched biblical concordances, Hebrew lexicons, Gospel commentaries.