The Quizbowl Resource Center

I am pleased to announce an all-religion side event to be played sometime over summer 2018! RAPTURE [the Really Academic Procedure To Understand Religious Experience] is slated to be a tossups-only side event of somewhere between five and ten packets, or however much I manage to finish before I get sick of it. (Edit: six packets.) Just kidding. Five packets, but they're good ones.

Each packet produced for RAPTURE will include twenty tossups and zero bonuses of approximately six or seven lines in length (10-pt Times New Roman font). The distribution for this event will be as follows:

11 Abrahamic Religion
2 Old Testament
2 New Testament
1 Old + New Testament
1 Christianity, History + Practice
1 Islam, Scripture
1 Islam, History + Practice
1 Judaism, History + Practice
2 Misc. Abrahamic

3 Non-Abrahamic Religion
1 Dharmic
1 Asian, Non-Dharmic
1 Misc. Non-Abrahamic

6 Misc. / Other
1 Literature
1 Fine Arts
1 Religious Thought
1 Current Events
1 Misc. Religion
1 Popular Culture

This question set will be (hopefully) completed in time for a 2018 Summer Open or Side Event Weekend, whichever materializes. I would like most mirrors to be hosted during that timeslot; however, RAPTURE will also be fully available for use in intramurals, exhibition games, and miscellaneous events for a certain amount of time into the fall semester.

There are no special guidelines on preferred format for individual mirror hosts -- singles, doubles, whatever works. I will not be collecting mirror fees for this event; I ask that, if mirror sites charge an entrance fee, for 100% of revenue to be donated to the most efficient regional hunger relief charity (as chosen by the local host). Soup kitchens, food banks, gurdwaras, I have no preference in this matter so long as people are fed.

Difficulty of this event will be “regular-plus.” The vast majority of answerlines would not be out of place at events generally considered college regular. That being said, this event intends to plumb the depths of the canon and determine who’s the best at quizbowl religion knowledge, so there will be some answerlines that are comparatively rare and quite a few which have never come up before. Where practical, questions will favor common links and in-depth treatment of familiar topics, with a minor leavening of eccentric content as suits my whimsy.

The name “RAPTURE” should not be taken as an indicator of my personal spiritual or eschatological beliefs. I will now answer some questions that you might have.

How come there’s so much Abrahamic religion?
Historical happenstance and the current demographics of the quizbowl community.

Will this be available to run earlier, e.g. at HSNCT or NSC?
Not unless I get really, really motivated.

I object to your division of religious traditions into Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic, as this is not considered best practice among modern scholars!
That’s not a question.

How do we know this event will be fun to play?
You don’t, but I hope that it’ll be fun to write.

Further inquiries may be directed to me through this thread or other channels.

Mirrors
July 29 - VCU Side Event Weekend
August 5 - Boston Summer Open
August 12 - Illinois Side Event Open
August 25 - RAPTURE Online
August 26 - Carleton Side Event Weekend

I'm really glad this is happening. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to play it at some point!

Maybe the 5 years of Sunday School, 4 years of high school religion, and year of college theology will finally pay off.

This religious studies major is very excited for this event, I'll finally be able to put my knowledge to good use (though it won't help convince my parents that I'm not wasting my time).

I'm looking forward to this a lot.

Probably won't be able to play, but this looks like a great idea and tons o' fun, 'specially if there's questions on specific Catholic hymns written post Vatican 2. I got that "Be Not Afraid" and "One Bread, One Body" knowledge on lock.

Good luck! I might crawl out of retirement to play this if there's a site near me.

Fun!

Really excited about this! I'll do my best to play this somewhere, somehow.

This sounds like a tournament that would be of interest to the Liberty University teams.

Just as an update, since I've been a bit busy lately, this question set is still on track to be finished by August. Please reach out to me if you're looking to organize a mirror (presumably, once your local Side Event Weekend schedule coalesces) or if you have any questions!

Another update just to prove that this project is still active. The original post now has links to those upcoming events which have indicated that they'll be running RAPTURE. I will not schedule any events earlier than the VCU site, where RAPTURE will be played for the first time.

I've heard whispers of interest from other regions! It would be wonderful to run this across the country, so be sure to contact me if you'd like to host an event using these questions.

RexSueciae wrote:Another update just to prove that this project is still active. The original post now has links to those upcoming events which have indicated that they'll be running RAPTURE. I will not schedule any events earlier than the VCU site, where RAPTURE will be played for the first time.

I've heard whispers of interest from other regions! It would be wonderful to run this across the country, so be sure to contact me if you'd like to host an event using these questions.

Would it be possible for this to get mirrored online sometime that's not July 29-August 12?

An Economic Ignoramus wrote:

RexSueciae wrote:Another update just to prove that this project is still active. The original post now has links to those upcoming events which have indicated that they'll be running RAPTURE. I will not schedule any events earlier than the VCU site, where RAPTURE will be played for the first time.

I've heard whispers of interest from other regions! It would be wonderful to run this across the country, so be sure to contact me if you'd like to host an event using these questions.

Would it be possible for this to get mirrored online sometime that's not July 29-August 12?

I'll start up a thread tomorrow to gauge interest in an online mirror, probably to be held on Discord, probably on the weekend of the 18th or maybe the 25th (beyond that and I'll have to get someone else to read the questions).

Another update to the original post -- this side event has solidified at six packets of 20 tossups plus maybe some extras for tiebreakers. Also, an online mirror! August 25 (probably?) run by me (I guess?) on Discord, and I'll add a spreadsheet for signups once I finish all the business of actually pulling this question set together.

I look forward to seeing people at VCU this weekend for the first mirror of RAPTURE!

VCU's mirror happened, Boston and Illinois and the online mirror are left (I swear I'll update the thread for the latter tomorrow afternoon).

Once you've heard this tournament, there's a private forum created to discuss it! Go to your Usergroups and apply to join if you are a person who is clear to discuss the questions et cetera et cetera and good luck to everybody who has yet to play them.

This was very fun and well written, but not overly hard - it's suitable for people that are very knowledgeable in religious matters and amateurs alike. Anyone who has any interest in religion should play this set.

We played this at practice. Scores:

Alex van de Poel (5 rounds): 2/26/10 - 240
Alejandro Lopez-Lago (4 rounds): 2/19/6 - 190
Mike Bentley (4 rounds): 2/15/12 - 120
Kevin Wang (3 rounds): 0/12/12 - 60
Chris Grubb (1.5 rounds): 0/4/1 - 35
Jefferson Van Wagenen (2 rounds): 0/1/0 - 10

This was fun, thanks for writing it.

This was pretty fun, if indeed very biased towards Abrahamic religions (which explains my stat line).

This weekend marks the last mirrors of this question set. If you would like to host an event using these questions, let me know within the week because otherwise I'll be uploading them to the archive when September comes. Meanwhile, the private discussion forum is around, so if you'd like to leave a comment there please feel free to give your feedback.

This set is great!

Hey all,

As nobody has officially contacted me requesting use of RAPTURE for a future mirror, I am going to officially declare this question set to be clear for public discussion. I am actually typing up more extensive comments on the process of writing religion in quizbowl, which I will make available shortly. The forums upgrade yesterday delayed things (also I am easily distracted) so I have not yet uploaded the questions to the database, but I will make that happen before the end of the day, and I assume they'll appear shortly thereafter.

Thank you to the people who played, read, scorekept, commented on, and otherwise enjoyed RAPTURE, the first (?) religion side event in quizbowl history! I couldn't have done it without all of you.