Browsing: Institute for Studies of Religion

I recently had the opportunity to hear a lecture by Dr. Marvin Olasky entitled “Rafting the Political Rapids,” hosted by the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.
Olasky is editor-in-chief of the World News Group, the Distinguished Chair in Journalism and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College, and Dean of the World Journalism Institute. He has written over 3,000 articles and 18 books and is credited with a substantial influence on the policies of George W. Bush, later known as “compassionate conservatism.”

Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion has been given a $1.3 million grant by Premier Foto, a subsidiary of Premier Designs, to study the effects of seminary programs in prisons.

The study, which is the first of its kind, will follow anecdotal reports stemming from the Louisiana State Penitentiary commonly known as Angola. Over the past 17 years, Angola, regarded as one of the toughest maximum-security prisons in the nation, has reportedly seen dramatic decreases in the violence that once defined the prison. The reformation of the Angola prison is said to be the result of the Angola Bible College, a seminary program established by former warden Burl Cain in 1995.

Baylor Researchers have found members of the Boy Scouts of America who achieve the highest rank, Eagle Scout, have a positive, long-lasting effect on American society in a recent study titled “Merit Beyond the Badge.”

Killing entire races of people, slaughtering men, women and children and showing no mercy: such topics don’t often make their way into the typical Bible bedtime story, but according to Dr. Philip Jenkins, these darker and often bloodier passages cannot be ignored.

A Baylor professor has been awarded a $210,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to translate the poem “Ovide moralisé” from Old French into English, for the first time.