This course will trace the global spread of Christianity from the first century forward, with emphasis on modern and contemporary developments. ![]() ![]() This overlooks, however, much of the early history of Eastern Christianity and, more importantly, the present reality that Christianity is increasingly a religion of “non-Western” peoples, both in their ancestral homelands and abroad. Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2010, Spring 2011 16 Christianity as a Global ReligionĬhristianity is often thought of as a European or “Western” religion. Texts address a variety of traditions and perspectives, including but not limited to: modern monastic Roman Catholicism, mainline and fundamentalist Protestantisms, modern Hindu India, Pakistani Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, Biblical and contemporary Judaism, Japanese folk religion, and American neopaganism. traditionalism the fate of the earth and of course the meaning of life and death. This course examines how a range of contemporary novelists speak to and through religion to engage the deep and incendiary matters of our times: cross-cultural tensions science and health sex and gender relations global and local politics war and the weapons of war modernity vs. As both religion and culture evolve, story remains fertile ground for setting and contesting their foundations. As myth, as folktale, as allegory, as parable, as speculation, the story form allows writer and reader to draw persuasive connections-and distinctions-between internal experience, the social world, the natural world, and a moral or cosmic order. Religion has always been grounded in storytelling. Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2015 15 Religion in Contemporary Fiction Topics for study include: ancient Israelite traditions concerning the dead early Jewish omen texts televangelist movements modern apocalyptic groups such as Heaven’s Gate and recent films, television programs, and role-playing games rich in the occult or the overtly religious. In this course we will explore examples from ancient and modern times, seeking to redefine our understanding of popular religion by looking at some of the most interesting ways human beings pursue and share religious experience within popular cultural contexts. In the modern era, mass media have provided additional means of religious expression, communication, and community, raising new questions about popular religion. People often express and experience their religiosity in ways related to but not strictly determined by their traditions’ sacred officials, texts, and scholars. Yet we have come to realize that “popular” religion is frequently the religion of the majority, and that popular and classical threads tend to intertwine in religions as lived by actual adherents. The latter is sometimes branded as superstitious, idolatrous, syncretistic, heretical, or cultish. Religions, ancient or modern, are sometimes described as having two modalities or manifestations: the one institutional, of the establishment, the other, popular. One class meeting each week will be dedicated to discussion of the assigned material.įall semester. Through a range of classical and modern sources we will explore autobiographical narratives of spiritual journeys in both traditions differing conceptions of the nature and purpose of scriptural study practices of formulating law and ethical precepts on the basis of tradition and attitudes towards the place and content of primary and higher education. In 2009-10, the major traditions will be Islam and Christianity, and the theme will be the contested and sometimes conflictual relationship between religious belief and intellectual reflection. Traditions and topics will vary from year to year. This course introduces students to the comparative study of religion by focusing on a major theme within two or more religious traditions.
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