Why study religion?

In my view, the study of religion provides students with resources they can draw on in later life, regardless of their future career. Classes that require careful reading and effective communication allow students to develop practices of creativity, collaboration, and attention that are broadly useful and profoundly enriching.

The courses I have taught reflect my interest in secularization and contemporary theory, with a particular focus on the way religious and political concepts influence each other. For instance:

The Politics of Hope

Hope is a key site of intersection between religion and politics: despite Karl Marx's complaint that religion pacifies the masses, modern revolutionaries have often drawn upon religious motifs. We will begin by examining political reflection upon the figure of the messiah, which leads from the Hebrew Scriptures through medieval Judaism to the secularized messianism of Immanuel Kant, Marx, and Jacques Derrida. Second, we will reflect upon important expressions of Christian reflection on the future, from the apocalyptic eschatology of Joachim of Fiore and the Apostle Paul to the ethic of hope described by Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. Finally, in relation to these diverse sources, we will consider the meaning of hope and its effect on politics, and we will analyze the relation between religion and the politics of hope.

Religion and Culture

For thousands of years, the Bible has been a source of inspiration for Jews, Christians, atheists, and others. People of faith have drawn on the Bible in order to reflect on how to think, how to pray, and how to live, but the book has also influenced artists, philosophers, and musicians who don't identify as religious at all. The dizzying variety of biblical interpretation offers a kaleidoscopic lens on the ways that religion and culture influence each other. More broadly, because the Bible has been interpreted in such diverse times and places, its unpredictable history raises fundamental questions about the nature and importance of interpretation.

Spirituality and Power

It can be difficult for resistance to find a foothold at a time in which rebellion has become a way to sell cars and clothing. It is for this reason, some say, that spirituality is so important, for it inspires imagination of radically changed ways of being. This course begins with readings from Michel Foucault that characterize the dominant modern forms of power and describe their relation to a spirituality of self-care. Against this background, we compare the diverse ways in which thinkers from Martin Luther King to Latin American liberation movements articulate a spirituality of resistance, and we analyze the relationship between spirituality and commodification in contemporary political movements.