Approaches to the Academic Study of Religion

3 credits · Divinity School

Religious beliefs are beliefs about the sacred, and our ways of approaching and relating to the sacred. The conflicts of the contemporary world have proved that the sacred, whether as absence or as presence, still has a powerful hold on our imaginations, and on our ways of being and acting in a world which was previously seen as becoming rapidly and dominantly secular. But what is the sacred? And where is the sacred found? Is it transcendent, beyond and outside this world, or immanent, present within it? What are the consequences of believing in the sacred to be one or the other? Is the sacred unchanging, or shaped by history? What is the relation of the sacred to human behavior – to rituals, to ethics, to everyday life? What is the relation of the sacred to nature, a question of utmost importance in an era of increasing global warming and ever-diminishing natural resources. What is the relation of the sacred to the political ideologies and practices of secularism? What is the relation of the sacred to the “disenchanted” secular worldview? In this course, we will explore the above questions by studying a range of theoretical approaches to secularism and the secular, and various classic and recent ethnographies about the sacred and its relation to materiality, history and to everyday life in many parts of the world. [3] Mr. Taneja