Christianity Lost Control of Religious Studies
If one looks at what is taught in a Department of Religious Studies what does he/she expect to find? In previous decades I would have expected to find classes in Bible History, Denominations in Christianity, Ancient Religions of the World, etc. These remain in many Departments of Religion. But in others, there are many courses about cultural forces which gave rise to religious ideas. This enrages some like the author of this link. Courses in a religious studies department should be about religion, he writes, not about women's rights, gay rights, income distribution, sociology and class distinctions of today.
For others in the U. S. classes and topics have changed. There are courses which study cultural forces that gave us religion. The link complains there is no national standard for what is taught in a department of religion.
Enrollment in these new courses is bigger than it was in the old. In addition, conferences dealing with the cultural issues surrounding religion are large and successful. The annual combined gathering of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature attracts over 11,000 attendees. There are entire sections devoted to papers on gay and feminism topics. There are also sections on Marxism, climate change and race, all related to the practice of religion. Bart Ehrman is a featured presenter in sections of the Bible as critical literature (approaching the Bible as literature instead of worship.)
Understanding religion as a product of culture is not new. I remember a professor explaining this some 60 years ago. I recall leaning into his explanation because it explained the origin of religion which I had found to be a mystery. It took all those decades to become popular.
Opponents of this version of religious studies would have stopped this invasion of cultural into religious studies if they had had some effective argument to oppose it. Instead they have all become like the link author, harmless back benchers with nothing but complaints.
re. "religious studies".
ReplyDeleteJust a couple questions. Is "religious studies" 1. A B A or masters degree, 2. A single subject studied within the confines of another degree, such as humanities? 3. or within a multitude of other degrees?
I see "religious studies" as an eclectic montage of non specifically defined material of interest to the student.
I see nothing in the blog or link related to "comparative theology" (an entirely different subject), including cultural, linguistics, and context. In this case, as per title of subject specific to Christianity.
Just asking.
helper--Good post. I wondered about some of those things. I wished the link would have had the space or time to compare two different departments. I did look up two famous Catholic universities, Notre Dame and Holy Cross. As I understand it, Nortre Dame's origin is a traditional one of Roman Catholicism while Holy Cross is from Jesuits. I only spent a few minutes on each site and could not find lists of majors, minors or courses. I did find goals and newletters. The goals were quite different as I read them. Notre Dame was sort of about teaching the Catholic tradition. Holy Cross was about preparing students to live in a diverse and changing world. The speakers and seminars they advertised reflected these goals. Holy Cross seemed like a department like the one the link referred to. Not Notre Dame. Holy Cross had a side bar promotion for a series of courses about Harry Poter and how it fit religious tradition. It claimed to be very popular. All of academia is a moving target, disciples moving into new areas, combining, separating, etc. Electrical Engineering is now Electronics Engineering. Now there are a lot of management courses in engineering that used to be the domain of business. There is a lot of sociology taught in communications, few majors left in sociology.
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