RELGST 0500 - WHAT IS RELIGION?

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Whether we are religious or not, religion affects us. It shapes the ways we understand our identities, our bodies, and our relationship with nature; it reinforces or undermines the hierarchies that organize our society; it is referenced by the music we listen to and the shows we watch; it saturates the rhetoric of the politicians who govern us. Public conversations on religion are often dominated by people with a particular religious or theological agenda. This course will introduce you to a different way of talking about what religion is-a way that treats it as a kind of human social activity. It provides a survey of a wide variety of theories about what religion is that you can use to understand the place of religion in our world. It also provides an introduction to methods that you can use to gather information about religion both as a part of human history and as a lived part of contemporary human culture. By learning these theories and methods, you will be better equipped to talk about the role of religion in our world in a way that is well-informed and balances critical thinking with cultural sensitivity.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade

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