Religion Major Shares Thoughts on Blog
Shari Rabin (CAS’09) discusses her faith and religion on a Washington Post blog site.
Shari Rabin (CAS’09) works for the Washington Post, but she’s no gopher. She is one of six bloggers for the Post’s new faith and religion initiative, Faithbook.
Although its name is a lighthearted spin on the collegiate social-networking Web site Facebook, Faithbook is a place where college students can discuss a serious topic: their experiences with faith and religion. It is an expansion of On Faith, a similar blog site for adults.
Stephen Prothero, a College of Arts and Sciences professor and chair of religion, is among the regular contributors to On Faith, weighing in on weekly questions on religious topics. He heard about the college version and immediately contacted Rabin. “I had had her in a class, and she had performed brilliantly, asking wonderful questions and making sharp observations throughout,” Prothero says. “And I had read some of her work as a journalist, so I knew she could write.”
Rabin writes two entries each week for her blog on the site, The Chutzpah Chronicles. “Religion is something that takes up a lot of my mental energy,” she says, “and I thought it would be a good opportunity to share my observations and thoughts in a public sphere.”
In her first entry, on September 12, Rabin recounts her parents’ reaction when she decided to learn more about Christianity: her father feared she would become a “traitor” to her own religion of Judaism. “As far as the content of the blog, it’s going to be a mix of my life as an American Jew and my observations as a student of religion,” she says.
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.