USC Dornsife College Of Letters Arts and Sciences

University of Southern California

Archive

Archive

Arab News: Miller on Remembering the Armenian Genocide

April 24, 1915 marked the beginning of the brutal Armenian Genocide where up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire. Now over a century later, the Turkish government continues …

Countering Pessimism and Despair: An Encounter with Two Spiritual Exemplars

As we enter 2019, two emotions seem to be dominant: political pessimism and personal anxiety. These feelings are rooted in the dysfunctions of government and economic instability, both of which are legitimate …

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Denis Mukwege Keeps the Faith in the Face of Violence

I had the privilege of interviewing 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Doctor Denis Mukwege in 2017 in the small country of Armenia, where he was a finalist for the Aurora Prize—a $1 …

500 Years After the Reformation, Religion Is Undergoing Creative Destruction

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He aimed to protest the Catholic Church’s practice of issuing indulgences and other abuses of …

Embodied Religion: Reassessing the Role of the “Senses” in Religious Research

We often make the mistake of identifying religious vitality with assent to particular beliefs. In this process, we forget that intellectual assent to beliefs is merely one element of religious experience. I …

A New Post-Election Religious Alignment

This post originally appeared at On Faith. After a long election season in which it seemed that religion, for once, wasn’t the big story, we found out that eight out of 10 …

Making Evangelical America Great Again: Trump and “Wall” Christians

Along with many other observers, I have been struggling to understand how nearly 80 percent of white evangelical Protestant voters can support Donald Trump, someone who has a dubious church-going record and …

A Time for Moral Reflection – The Silver Lining After the Orlando Shooting

In the horror of the Orlando massacre, there may be a silver lining. This event, as well as the killings at Emanuel Church in Charleston one year ago and other national atrocities, …

Women Deacons or Not, Future of Religious Life Lies in Global Sisterhood

Pope Francis’ openness to having a Vatican commission study the possibility of ordaining women deacons has created a great deal of discussion in recent weeks. It’s significant that he made this statement …

101 Years After the Armenian Genocide: Pass These 3 Lessons on to your Children

Donald Miller gave this speech at the Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument in Montebello, CA on April 23. As we look back on the Armenian genocide from the perspective of 101 years, it is useful to …

It’s Time to Invent Rituals for Retirement

This post originally appeared on Next Avenue and Forbes. Every day, as you may have heard, 10,000 people in the United States turn 65. The financial industry advertises to this retirement cohort …

The Economist: Charismatic Christianity Thrives Among People on the Move

The Economist featured Donald Miller’s work on Pentecostalism in a series of stories in the January 23, 2016 issue. Miller has studied Pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements around the world, and through …

Celebrating Christmas in an Age of Religious Extremism

This article was originally published on The Conversation. From the recent attack on Planned Parenthood to the shooting in San Bernardino, extremists of all stripes are revealing the ugly side of religion. …

VOA: Hong Kong Protest Leaders Recall Spiritual Motivation At SSSR

CRCC Executive Director Donald Miller moderated a discussion with two of the founders of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, a pro-democracy protest movement that came into being in 2014, at the 2015 Society …

A Pragmatist’s View of Religion

It is reasonably easy to be an armchair critic of religion. There are ample examples of religious leaders who compromise the values of their tradition, and the fundamentalists of every religion are …

Where the Spirit Leads: Pentecostalism and Freedom

Don Miller, CRCC’s executive director, delivered a paper titled “Where the Spirit Leads: Pentecostalism and Freedom” in Rome at a conference co-sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University’s Berkeley Center …

Rwanda Rising

(Photo: Lorna Miller with family friends in Kigali) The slogan “Never Again” rings false to me, since a more appropriate refrain seems to be “Once Again,” especially given what happened in Darfur …

Forward

In 2008 the John Templeton Foundation gave a grant to the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC to study Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, one of the fastest-growing religious movements in …

Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism

Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism Donald E. Miller, Kimon Sargeant, and Richard Flory, editors (Oxford University Press: 2013)       From the publisher’s description: Pentecostalism is …

The Dream Center: Spirit-Infused and Socially Engaged Urban Ministry

This article appeared in PentecoStudies: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Research on the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Vol 11, No 1). Abstract: In this article we investigate the Dream Center, a large-scale Pentecostal …