REL1050 An Introduction to World Religions (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students to four major families of the world's religions: Primal Faith; Semitic Religions; South Asian Religions; and East Asian Religions. It looks in depth at one representative way of faith from within each major family group. It explores these issues through an examination of art and music and individual thinkers, as well as an examination of beliefs and practices.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL1100 The Christian Bible (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students to the history and theology of ancient Israel and of the New Testament church, through the medium of the Christian Bible. It examines how and why the church chose the books that form the Christian Bible, and illustrates how the Bible has been used, and continues to be used, to define and reform Christian faith.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL1400 Spirituality for Today's World (4 semester hours)
This course looks at spiritual alternatives to established religions in the contemporary world: New Ages Movements; New Religious Movements; and re-formations of earth, feminist and primal spiritualities. It also asks whether these alternatives are friends or foes of religions, replacements for religions or ways of renewing them.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL2160 Exploring Religion (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students to the study of religion, and distinguishes religion from the religions. While it acknowledges the importance to religion of the older social sciences (specifically: anthropology, sociology and psychology), it stresses the importance to religious studies of cultural studies. It also looks at the claims by religion to transcendent, revelatory truth, and inquires how the truth of such claims might be established. In the process, it explores whether religious studies is a discrete field of study, or a multi-disciplinary area of inquiry, or even a vague and nebulous "subject" that has no place in a respectable university.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL2200 The Shaping of Christian Identity (4 semester hours )
This course examines various momentous occasions which have contributed to the cultural and doctrinal identity of contemporary Christianity. These would include, among other events: the Council ofJerusalem, which incorporated Gentiles as well as Jews into Christian faith; the Council of Chalcedon, which interpreted the meaning of Christ for Christians; the iconoclastic controversy in the 8th and 9th century Byzantine Empire, which foreshadowed the splitting of the Eastern and Western churches, and focused the issue of the place of the appropriateness and importance of artistic representations of God for Christians; the consequences of Martin Luther's "Here I stand; I can do no other," and the founding of Protestant religion; the first great awakening, and its effect upon North American Christian identity; the modern ecumenical movement, and its development within an increasingly interlinked world. Students will study Christianity's impact upon civilizations and upon culture, as well as its claims to religious truth.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL2310 The Faiths of Abraham (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students to the study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their interaction. It examines their core beliefs and practices, partly through sacred texts. Students are encouraged to take seriously the cultural and aesthetic achievements and interaction of these religions. Special attention is given to the interaction of these religions in the contemporary world. Students will and must visit local places of worship if they take this course.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL2320 The Faiths of India (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students primarily to the study of Hinduism and Buddhism, but also examines Jainism and Sikhism. It studies their origins in the South Asian subcontinent. It explores some of their seminal texts and divergent beliefs and practices. Students are encouraged to take seriously the cultural and aesthetic achievements and interaction of these religions. It introduces students to diaspora communities ("dispersion" into other countries, including the USA) and to modern reconstructions of faith. Students will and must visit a local Hindu or Buddhist place of worship if they take this course.
No prerequisites.
Meets General Education: "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL/HIS2750 Topics in Religious History (4 semester hours)
Regular courses reflecting faculty interests. Courses are designed to provide students with an introduction to significant religious figures, events, and movements and the history of religion in specific regions or eras. Students will gain skills in analyzing both historical and scholarly sources and learn the foundational principles needed for taking more advanced courses found at the 3000-level.
No prerequisites. This course designation is repeatable for credit.
REL/HIS2760 Religion in America (4 semester hours)
This course will survey the history of religion in America from the period immediately prior to European contact with its indigenous peoples to the present, examining the religious institutions, beliefs, practices, and experiences that have been formative in the shaping of American culture. Topics may include: Native American religious traditions prior to European contact; Christian implication in and critiques of the European colonization of the "new world"; Christian enslavement of native peoples; religious aspects of the early colonial experience; the Puritan commonwealth; the experience of religious minorities in the colonies (e.g. Catholics, Jews); the Great Awakening; religion in the American Revolution; the Second Great Awakening; the abolition movement; religion and the civil War; challenges to traditional religious belief in the nineteenth century (e.g., Darwin, Marx, Freud); religion and the rights of women; the global missions movement; industrialization and the social gospel; fundamentalism and liberalism as responses to modernity; religion and war in the 20th century; the rise of religious pluralism and the "post-secular' state; and Islam in America.
No prerequisites.
PHL/REL3100 Philosophy of Religion (3 semester hours)
This course is a study of the philosophical issues in religion: the nature of religion, the relation between philosophy and religion, the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God, the problem of evil, the nature of religious knowledge and language.
Prerequisite: An introductory philosophy or religion course.
Meets General Education "Aesthetic and Philosophical Expression" Group A requirement.
REL3350 Jesus (4 semester hours)
This course introduces students to different portrayals ofJesus, mostly within, but occasionally outside, the Christian religion. This course: describes a number of New Testament understandings of Jesus; explores understandings of Jesus con¬veyed by music, art and architecture; describes understandings ofJesus in at least one religion other than Christianity; and explores contemporary Western under¬standings of Jesus, influenced by secularism.
No prerequisites.
REL3360 Jewish and Christian Responses to the Holocaust (4 semester hours)
This course examines the radical reshaping of Christian (especially Roman Catholic and Protestant) beliefs and practices toward Jews in the wake of the impact of Christian teaching upon the Nazis' justification for the destruction of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s. This reshaping has particularly affected Christian liturgy (including hymns and set orders of worship), approaches toward mission and evangelism, core teachings about the meaning and purpose ofJesus as God's messenger to humankind, and attitudes toward the meaning of the State of Israel for both Christians and Jews. Students will also examine recent Jewish reflections upon how Jews now regard Christianity as an instrument of the divine purpose.
No prerequisites.
REL3400 Love the Stranger: The History and Significance of Interfaith Dialogue (4 semester hours)
This course argues that interfaith dialogue is an exciting and vibrant part of contemporary religious studies, and must be taken seriously as a faithful alternative to fundamentalist and other exclusive claims to truth. It explores the origin of a dialogical approach to other faiths from its roots in seminal religious texts, and its growing importance since the first Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893. It also introduces students to the views of important contemporary and near con¬temporary intellectuals, mostly but not all Christians, who have examined this issue. These may include, among others: Geoffrey Parrinder, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Seyyed Hossain Nasr, Kenneth Cracknell and Diana Eck.
No prerequisites.
REL/HIS3800 Reformation Europe (4 semester hours)
This course will examine the fragmentation of Western Christendom in the 16th century, a constellation of events with epoch-making consequences for the religious, political, social and economic history of Western civilization. Topics may include: the late medieval backdrop to the Reformation movements; competing theories of papal authority and secular sovereignty in the later middle ages; the rise of print technology; renaissance humanism; the life and career of Martin Luther; the “princes’ reformation” in the Holy Roman Empire; the “urban reformation” in the upper Germany and the Swiss cantons; the Peasants’ War; the life and career of John Calvin; the Huguenot movement and the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre; the French wars of Religion; the Dutch Revolt; reform of the church under Tudor monarch; the Anabaptist movement and the “Radical Reformation”; the Counter-Reformation, Catholic reform, and Council of Trent; the life and career of Ignatius of Loyola and the formation of the Jesuit order; the confessionalization of church and state; the effects of the Reformation on art, architecture and music; and modern interpretations of the Reformation era (e.g., Engels, Weber).
Prerequisite: One prior college-level history or religion course.
REL4990 Seminar in Religious Studies (4 semester hours)
This is the senior capstone for the Religion major and it is conducted in seminar fashion A topic, which may change from year to year, is chosen from the major areas of contemporary religious studies for an in-depth study and presentation. Students will engage in individual research specific aspects related to the topic. Course content will vary according to contemporary issues and research interests. Prerequisites: REL2060 and additional coursework in Religion.
Academic information on departmental websites reflects the university's most current curriculum. The print version of the catalog, which is also posted online, may differ from this information.
