Religious Studies Courses

This course provides a general introduction to the world's religions, including major traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with smaller indigenous traditions. The approach of the course is objective and academic; it is not designed to advocate any particular religious perspective or ideology. This is an Integrative Learning Core (ILC) course that awards general education credit; it is also one of the basic requirements for the Religious Studies major.

This course will introduce you to the history, literature, and religion of the earliest period of Christianity (from about 30 to 150 CE). We will see how Christianity arose out of the Jewish religion and how it spread in the Greco-Roman world. We will examine a variety of writings from this period, including the collection of early Christian literature known as the New Testament. You will learn the historical, critical methods by which scholars study these writings as sources for our knowledge of the origins of Christianity. This is an Integrative Learning Core (ILC) course that awards general education credit.

This course considers how religious faith is challenged or supported by various factors, such as reason, morality, organized religion, and the experience of suffering. The course uses a selection of readings from Paine, Hume, Clifford, James, Kierkegaard, Hesse, Weil, Kushner, and others to address the following questions of religious faith and skepticism: (1) Is belief in God compatible with reason? (2) Is it valid to evaluate religious faith by critical reason? (3) What are the limits, if any, of religious knowledge? (4) To what extent is religious belief validated by the existence of moral norms? (5) To what extent does an individual’s faith depend upon or come into conflict with organized religion? (6) How has traditional theistic belief and language been challenged or modified by modern religious thinkers? (7) Is religious faith compatible with the experience of suffering and evil?

Asian civilizations have a long history with far-reaching impact and influence on our global community today. One does not need to travel to Asia to be affected by Asian people, economic and political activities, cuisine, arts and entertainment, health treatment options, and religious orientations. The religious landscape of Asia is crucial to understanding Asian civilizations. This course focuses on a variety of Asian religious traditions, including fundamental teachings of the Hindu, Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, and Buddhist traditions of India, Tibet, China, and Japan. We explore how religious values influence decision-making processes in personal and public spheres. This is an Integrative Learning Core (ILC) course that awards general education credit; it is also one of the basic requirements for the Religious Studies major.

Is there an all-powerful, infinitely intelligent, loving being (i.e., God) who created the visible universe and all within it? If so, can the existence of such a being be proven rationally? And if so, is there a rational explanation for the presence of evil in the world that this being created and governs? Does human consciousness survive the death of the physical body? Is it reasonable to believe in miracles, e.g., the claim that Jesus walked on water or that some Hindu saints have brought human beings back from the dead even after they had been cremated? In approaching these, and other, religious questions philosophically, we will focus upon the reasons, evidence, arguments and counterarguments that have been advanced with respect to these questions. The goal of this class is not only to make students familiar with those theories falling under the general rubric of the philosophy of religion, but to further refine each student’s ability to reason critically through any sort of logical argument, religious or otherwise. This is an Integrative Learning Core (ILC) course that awards general education credit.

This course introduces students to the histories, teachings, beliefs and practices of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to engage with guest speakers, take field trips to synagogues, churches, and mosques, and watch a number of videos pertaining to contemporary issues (e.g., women’s roles, waging war) within these religions. This is an Integrative Learning Core (ILC) course that awards general education credit; it is also one of the basic requirements for the Religious Studies major.

 This course introduces students to Christianity as a living religious tradition with deep historical roots. We will learn about the main lines of Christian thought and practice across the world. In addition to the lives of Christian saints, leaders, prophets, mystics, and reformers, topics will include the construction of orthodoxy, the development of church leadership, the emergence of Christian artistic traditions, the rise of monasticism, the relationship(s) between Christianity and secular governments, and Christian interaction with other religious traditions. Our scope will be global: we’ll see Christianity emerge in the ancient Mediterranean basin and move to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and the Americas. There are no prerequisites for the course, and no prior knowledge is assumed.

This course examines well-known biblical stories and poems. The stories include the tales of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the tower of Babel, the binding of Isaac, Jacob and Esau, the Joseph Story, the tragedy of King Saul, and the miracle tales of the prophet Elijah. The poems include selected hymns and laments from the Book of Psalms. We will approach the literature with two main questions. (1) What literary artistry can we see in the texts? (2) What do the texts tell us about ancient Israelite religion and culture?

This course explores the role of the paranormal in the history of religions, and in the history of scholarly thought about religion. Perhaps most importantly, this course takes seriously alternate ways of understanding the nature of reality and human experiences that fall outside the norms and methods of contemporary thought and science.

 This course examines some of the numerous ways in which Jesus has been portrayed or conceived from ancient times to the present. We consider not only the question of who Jesus was, but also the question of why he has been portrayed in so many different ways. We first examine “the canonical Jesus”: the different portraits of Jesus in the four gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). We continue with “the apocryphal Jesus”: portraits of Jesus in other early Christian literature that was not included in the New Testament. We then turn to “the orthodox Jesus”: the theological view of Jesus enshrined in the orthodox Christian creeds of the fourth to eighth centuries. We consider how Jesus became a member of the Trinity and how his “nature” was defined as both fully human and fully divine. We next examine “the non-Christian Jesus”: portraits of Jesus in non-Christian religions, such as Judaism and Islam. We then consider how the modern Enlightenment cast doubt on traditional views of Jesus and inaugurated a quest to discover “the historical Jesus.” We next examine “the celluloid Jesus”: portrayals of Jesus in contemporary film. Finally we examine “the fictional Jesus”: portraits of Jesus in fictional literature.

Great literature undoubtedly presents the most exciting and imaginative explorations of the big questions of human existence. If you enjoy reading fiction and analyzing issues of meaning and value, this is the course for you! This course will reflect on select existentialist themes including, for example, moral choice, how we navigate questions of meaning and value, conceptions of the sacred, and the development of the individual self. We will read a variety of fiction from different periods of history to consider these questions, including the following possibilities: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, Goethe’s Faust, Sophocles’ Antigone, Flannery O’Conner’s short stories, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Herman Hesse’s Demian. This course depends heavily on class discussion of readings and written communication.

This course explores the religious thought of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X through a close examination of their most significant writings and speeches and dispels many myths and popular conceptions of their life and thought.

In Buddhism, we will read and discuss texts and images relating to the Buddhist tradition. The class will cover the life-story of the Buddha, the life-world of nuns and monks, the doctrines of early and later Buddhism, Buddhist deities and saints, and the development of various Buddhist traditions in different cultures. We will read primary and secondary sources in translation, supplemented by overview lectures on history and philosophy. We will look at Buddhist thought, as well as its art and architecture, its social dynamics and relationship with other traditions. A section on modern and contemporary Buddhism will discuss Buddhist reactions to modernity.