Religious Studies

In the Religious Studies Department, students are expected to grow in familiarity with their own tradition, to understand other religious traditions, and to appreciate the discipline of Religious Studies in general through the conducting and the directing of the inquiry regarding the subject of religion. Informed by the understanding that religion is coterminous with human life, students are ultimately encouraged to appropriate the questions raised in their search for meaning. The Religious Studies Department seeks to develop in students an ability to reflect ethically, to exercise leadership in action, and to foster a curiosity about the more significant questions of human life beyond the classroom.

World Religions

This course is an introduction to Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. It considers each with respect to individual tenets, traditions, and practices and in relation to one another by elucidating common elements of the doctrine of God (Ultimate Reality) and common conceptions of the human person. The course focuses on the religious understandings of conversion, enlightenment, salvation, and transformation in the personal and social dimensions of those concepts.

Peace and Justice

This course is a reading seminar that draws themes from different religious traditions to interpret and discuss the lives of extraordinary people and movements. Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are among those whose teachings have inspired many people to work for a more peaceful world where freedom and equality are available to all. The class emphasizes the importance of moral decision-making and individual responsibility to help break the cycle of poverty, discrimination, environmental destruction, and violence in our world.

Scripture

Religion, Film, and Literature

This course examines issues of faith, religious beliefs, and human moral development through the careful interpretation of film and literature. Through selected films, literature, intercultural myths, and spiritual teachings from Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist narratives, the course explores stages of life, rites of passage, and coming of age stories. The course materials reveal common threads of experience and explain how humans are united by a common yearning to experience meaning, purpose, and dignity. In addition, drawing on methods of literary criticism, archetypal psychology, and the wisdom traditions of various religious faiths, the course encourages students to utilize their capacity of reason and faith to question cultural conditioning, think critically, pursue their potential, and derive meaning and moral purpose in life.

Advanced Topics: Philosophy

This course is designed to introduce students to a number of significant philosophical questions such as the nature of reality, the question of truth and meaning, the ethical demand upon the individual, and the relationship between faith and reason. This is done by means of a close reading of the writings of a number of prominent thinkers in the history of philosophy, including the works of Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus, and Simone Weil.