Welcome to NumeNews, the Carleton Religion Department’s newsletter! We have initiated this newsletter as a way to keep in touch with our alumni, and hope you will find these issues informative. We hope to publish one issue each term and to include in each issue some combination of news about current faculty and students, events on campus, and changes taking place within the Department. We also hope to include a section of news from alumni. So, if you have information that you’d like to share with us – professional accomplishments, personal news, or just greetings – please send them to Sandy Saari, Administrative Assistant for the Religion Department (email: ssaari@carleton.edu). If you have ideas about articles or other features you’d like to see in the newsletter, we hope you’ll let us know.

A word about the title: “Numen,” based on the ancient Greek and Latin roots, refers to a divine being and is the root of the word “numinous,” made famous in Rudolf Otto’s classic work on religious experience, The Idea of the Holy. Credit for coming up with the idea for this title goes to Cori Sparks who graduated in 2004.

Enjoy the most current as well as past issues of NumeNews and, as native Minnesotan Garrison Keillor says, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Louis Newman