COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Religion alive confronts the individual with the most momentous option life can present. It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit. The call to confront reality, to master the self. Those who dare to hear and follow that secret call soon learn the dangers and difficulties of its lonely journey. ___Huston Smith
This course explores world views on religion but the motives that impel us toward world understanding are always varied. We will focus on identity and race through religion. We will look at a series of theoretical, scriptural, and contemporary texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. We will explore a few sacred writings to give a broader understanding of the various religious traditions in the “eastern” and “western”[i] experience. In such a short time, we will only be able to understand the basic precepts of each religion, however, our readings and discussions will give us ways to interpret and add significant meaning to the religious experience as a whole.
We will look at how scripture is interpreted and appropriated to give meaning to individual lives and how scripture organizes the race. A large part of the course will consist of discussing stereotypes of religions and understanding how to dismantle these through knowledge, and experience. We will use media, live experience, and text to explore the diverse dimensions of religion and existential experience. Religion is an experience and a profound aspect of our lives as we ask the real and important questions of life and meaning.
This study of religion will have five major goals. First, we will try to understand how to study religion: What are the methods? Whose perspective is being presented? What is the dominant perspective and why? Second, this study will present a few of the major issues that define each of the religious traditions reviewed. Specifically, our review will focus on discerning their views of the sacred, their views of human nature, their views of salvation, and their views of how to live a moral/ethical life. In other words, we will try to develop some insight into the worldview of each religious tradition. Third, our review of these religions will allow us to see how religion and culture are intertwined. Fourth, we will look at how religion is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that includes among other things, scripture, theology, ethics, ritual, art, community, history, and story. Finally, we will explore how religions are not static entities; each religion changes over time.
This is a class that invites all of you to take a journey in meaning, definition, and enlightenment. I look forward to a class of exciting journeys and discussions.
- Teacher: Afridi Mehnaz