Religion

Religion courses immerse students in this comparative study.

A Religion major prepares you well for graduate work in a number of liberal arts fields (in addition to religion) and, for those seeking to pursue two majors, it is also an excellent complementary major to the range of liberal arts majors available at Southwestern. In addition, a Religion major is good for those seeking to pursue an education in the seminary, though a number of other liberal arts majors serve this goal as well.

As an academic discipline, religious studies prepares students to better understand, compare, interpret, and analyze the diverse array of human expression known as "religious." A guiding assumption in religious studies is that religion can and should be subjected to the types of critical analyses that are aplpied to other areas of the human social world. Religious studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field that utilizes the critical theories and tools from many other academic fields, such as: philosophy, art, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, language studies, literature, politics, economics, cultural studies, gender studies and ethnic studies.

Scholars and students of religious studies avoid privileging or promoting the perspectives of a particular community of believers or practitioners.At Southwestern, the faculty of the Religion Department attends to the interplay of religious, social, political and economic systems. We challenge students to analyze the connections between religious systems and other systems of power in order to prepare students to critically and creatively promote economic justice, social equality and ecological integrity.

 

Religion Majors at 2010 Commencement Ceremony: