REL-405 World Religions: Exploring Diversity
This course examines the complexity of religion as a multidimensional phenomenon characterized by heightened experience, ritual practice, powerful myths, ethical teaching, social organization, and theological doctrine. The course explores religious traditions that are alive today and that involve the lives of the majority of people worldwide from the indigenous religions of Africa and North America to the major world religions of the East such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto as well as the western religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course is interdisciplinary in that it includes material from historical and social studies, literary and artistic expressions, and philosophical and theological insights into the world's religions. In a world increasingly aware of its cultural diversity and richness, exploring the religious life and consciousness of a people is one way of gaining access to that diversity.
Advisory: This is an upper-level religious studies course. Students should have knowledge equivalent to an introductory course in religious studies.