Religious Studies

专业详情

Our Department is dedicated to the academic study of religion, offering courses in the fields of American religious history, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, as well as introductory courses, comparative courses, and courses on methods and theories in the study of religion.  

Religion is a major aspect of every human culture. In all civilizations in the world, religion helps shape the institutions of law and government, influences family and parenting practices, plays a major role in attitudes toward medicine and science, and resonates in the creative work of artists and writers. At an individual and collective level, it helps provide answers to some of the biggest questions and dilemmas of human existence. The study of religion is a diversified and multi-faceted discipline focusing on the study of specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life, including the cultures around the world and ancient as well as modern, in an inquiry that involves a variety of textual, historical, phenomenological, social scientific, theological, philosophical and artistic methodologies.

Religion is, of course, a major source of controversy and inspiration in politics, art, economics, literature, and history. One cannot hope to understand on-going events in Middle-East politics, the Sri Lankan Civil War, recent insurgencies in Thailand, Indonesia, the genocide in Sudan, or even the electoral politics in America without knowledge of religion. Of course, the controversies over science and religion, as well as religion and law are often front-page news. Moreover, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers throughout history like T.S. Eliot, Dante, Toni Morrison, Tagore, Tupac Shakur, Euripides, Rumi, William Blake, Margaret Mead, John Updike, Yukio Mishima, Tolstoy, Leonard Bernstein, John Coltrane, George Lucas, Einstein, Gandhi — among thousands of others — have been troubled and inspired by their study of religion.

Simply put, it is impossible to be a well-informed student of the humanities and social sciences without a study of religion, and students would be well-served in their academic and later life by a systematic study of the role religion and its study plays in history, society and politics.