Study On Religion

[Antionette Eastin]

Maybethis is a little biased, but I believe when it comes down to it religion is a fascinating area of study! For ages, people have depended on religion, and it is constantly evolving with the times. The academic study of religion is an ideal way to explore religious ideas from a variety of perspectives. Religion is one of the primary means for people wanting to explore the human condition of existence. Researching religion means having the chance to learn how others understand existence and our purpose.

While the study of religion as an academic enterprise has roots that extend back several centuries, its modern configuration and institutional embodiment are a 20th century phenomenon. This field of study has emerged with the recognition that religion is a cultural phenomenon that is marked by both diversity and transformation. The pervasiveness and power of religions throughout human history and their continuing role in shaping individuals and societies make their study within an academic context essential.

A primary objective of the study of religion is to clarify the concept and define the category. The rigorous interrogation of a basic cultural category is a central act of a critical education. On the other hand, human beings do not live through general categories, but through concrete, historical traditions embedded in particular times and places. The study of particular traditions, leaders, doctrines, rituals and artifacts draws students into complex, enduring and compelling systems of meaning that have affected millions of lives.

To study religion is to study responses, both behavioral and intellectual, to the great riddles and questions that face human beings, including death, suffering, tragedy and the nature of the self, society and universe. Religious Studies incorporates cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches and utilizes historical, ethnographic, theological/philosophical and sociological tools to interpret and explain the multifaceted complexes that are religions.

Religion is a basic element in western understanding. In the United States, in particular, religion is a foundational taxonomic concept that American culture uses to sort out and organize the complexity of human experience. The First Amendment guarantees that the United States may have more than one religion and affirms that religion is a legitimate legally protected form of difference in American society. Thus, our national ability not merely to abide, but to affirm difference - to value difference as a social benefit and a cultural good - is grounded in our constitutional commitment to religious freedom.

In the past decade, we have become increasingly aware of how religion intersects with ethnicity and nationalism to shape the identities of individuals and societies around the world. Far from being simply a private phenomenon, religion is integrally involved in configuring the world-view and ethos of major civilizations of our day. It plays a central role in determining the shape and tenor of political and cultural conflicts within and between nations. To understand, the diversity of peoples and societies around the world, as well as the conflicts within and between them, it is essential that Americans come to recognize and to understand the diverse religious roots of individual and communal identity.

Course work in Religious Studies is designed to help students enhance their skills in analytical thought and effective communication. Such training can lay the foundation for successful graduate studies or augment professional careers in fields like communications, journalism, international relations, business, justice studies or public administration.

Students with background degrees in Religious Studies have been admitted to graduate programs in the study of religion at first-rate institutions of higher learning. Others have successfully pursued advanced studies in fields, such as medicine and law.

The Department of Religious Studies offers an extensive range of courses that introduce undergraduates to a variety of religious traditions, texts, rituals, symbols and cultures. In consultation with a faculty advisor, students design a course of study that combines a core curriculum with individual interests in order to understand better the ways in which religious values, ethics and beliefs influence human thought and action in societies around the world and throughout history.

The Department of Religious Studies provides a supportive learning environment that invites undergraduates to interact socially and intellectually with a community of peers and faculty. Undergraduates are encouraged to attend departmental colloquia and become acquainted with leading scholars visiting the campus.

A major in Religious Studies is an appropriate choice for students wishing to focus on specific religious traditions. Others combine their interest in religion with area-centered or multidisciplinary studies. Students may also explore the role of religion in relation to topics such as the arts, politics or gender.

Whether you consider yourself a religious person or not, or whether you think religion has played a positive or negative role in history, it is an incontrovertible fact that from the beginning of time, humans have engaged in activities that we now call religion, such as worship, prayer, and rituals marking important life passages. Moreover, religions have always asked fundamental questions, such as: What is the true meaning of life? What happens to us after death? How do we explain human suffering and injustices?

The answers different religious traditions give to these important questions are many and varied and often contradictory. But the questions themselves are ones with which humans throughout time have grappled, and probably will continue to grapple with into the indefinite future. Thus, one of the first reasons to study religion is simply to deepen our understanding of others and ourselves, even as we pursue other realms of knowledge.

Finally, the academic study of religion is inherently multidisciplinary. This is reflected in our program here at Washington University, which draws faculty from different disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, such as history, anthropology, literature, art history, and political science. Studying religion thus provides you an opportunity to learn about a range of disciplinary approaches, and, even more importantly, the connections and linkages among them. In this way studying religion invites us all to think in a more interdisciplinary and integral way about the world and our place in it.

We can easily recognize that religion has begun in recent years to receive ever more attention in public media and governmental-policy circles around the globe; the post-Enlightenment certainty that reason would replace religion proved wildly off the mark. Yet still, religion remains one of the least well understood sectors of life for the majority of persons in any and every society. Of course, we all may think we understand religion, or at least our own variety of it, but there is much evidence to suggest rather strongly that this is not actually so.

In the end, at times it is understanding and acceptance and at other times it is, at the very least, tolerance or toleration that we are teaching by helping to develop knowledge and critical understanding. This is crucial, because we live in a world where, by and large, you are not going to change the religious demographics except at the margins. One tradition may gain ground for a century, then lose for a century, and so on. But I do not foresee a future when one religious tradition is going to conquer the world. It is simply stupid of any one group to think it is going to do that, for it is contrary to all historical experience for over five thousand years now. The fact is, we need to learn to live with other, different human beings, whatever their religious practices and beliefs are. We cannot afford to focus on persons as part of a religious monolith that we type in a certain way, rather than as human beings who happen to have a religious allegiance that we could understand better if we listened to them. We cannot afford to do that, especially in a shrinking world. I believe, frankly, that the kind of education we are trying to offer in our small way at Harvard Divinity School needs to be propagated more widely in coming days, not only in divinity schools, but also in liberal arts contexts. I certainly hope that it will be.

Perhaps this is a pious, nave hope, but it is not an unworthy one. It is perhaps the ultimate reason at any time for studying religion, in all its forms, with all its failures, faults, and glories, over all its history, good and bad. Why study religion in the twenty-first century? Because it matters.

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The Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture seeks to elevate the understanding of the influence of religion in the lives of people and society at large. As a research and public teaching institute, we support scholarly discussion of the connection between religion and various aspects of American culture.

THE JOURNAL

This semiannual publication explores the interplay between religion and other spheres of American culture. The journal embraces a diversity of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives.

The Wake Forest Department for the Study of Religions is a community of scholars and students devoted to the exploration and analysis of religion as a central aspect of human culture and history. When you study religion, you engage with the deepest motivations and values of individuals and institutions, both in the past and in the present. As a Department that values cultural and other forms of diversity, religious pluralism, social justice, and inclusion, we stand committed to facilitating learning environments that make space for and respect all persons. Together, professors and students wrestle with ethical questions, reconstruct religious histories, examine interdisciplinary intersections, and develop their own set of analytical skills.

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