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:

Religion & Democracy

Religious traditions helped shape modern democracy, but some people have come to seem them as a threat. According to one influential view, religion claims sacred authority, which precludes the compromise required for politics in a pluralist society. This class will consider whether this is correct: Does religion represent a challenge for democracy, or it is a resource that can help us live well together?

To address this question, we will review a range of influential theorists – focusing on modern authors, with occasional reference to earlier material. Although we will touch on historical questions, our primary concern will be theory. We will trace the debate over whether religion is a private matter – a question of individual conscience separate from the public sphere – and we will examine the difficulty of describing the sacred in legal definitions. In the process, we will seek to clarify whether religion and democracy are allies or enemies.

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.

The Christian Tradition

Christianity is like a kaleidoscope. Christian communities are connected by devoted to a holy person (Jesus of Nazareth) and a set of holy writings (“the books,” ta biblia in Greek). However, Christians have held a range of views regarding who Jesus was, which books belong in the Bible, and what both of them mean. Across seven continents and two thousand years, Christian practice has been enormously, vividly diverse.

In this course, students learn to analyze and synthesize a wide range of material – poetry, philosophy, music, and art – from first-century Palestine to medieval Germany and modern Ethiopia. By exploring the complexity of Christian tradition, they will gain new insight into the world Christianity has shaped, and they will find tools that anyone can use to live a more thoughtful and creative life.