Introduction to the Department
Introduction to the Department
- Cultivating understanding of religions or religious experience as one category of primary and enduring human responses to and expressions of the human condition;
- Encountering many of the intellectual, practical, and theoretical issues and questions that attend the appearance of religions and spiritualities in human life and communities;
- Acquiring knowledge of diverse historical and contemporary religious and spiritual communities, traditions, ideas, and phenomena, as well as knowledge of academic methods for studies of religions and spiritualities;
- Examining some of the classic texts in both human religious history and academic studies of religious phenomena;
- Developing descriptive, analytical, hermeneutical, critical, and constructive skills for the study of religious and spiritual phenomena;
- Sharpening abilities to communicate critically, yet constructively, through engagement with the religious and/or spiritual practices and ideas of other people and their communities; and
- Enhancing appreciation for the complexities and possibilities in academic studies of religions and spiritualities.