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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
The 19th century was a period of enormous ferment and originality in religious thought-and anti-religious thought. This course will cover the chief thinkers in the birth and growth of modern theology and atheism from the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I. Primary emphasis will be on the movement leading from Kant and Schleiermacher to Troeltsch and the dialectical theology, and the counter-currents of Feuerbach and Nietzsche. The growing interaction of European thought with world cultures in this period will also be engaged, and students will have the option to study religious thought in any world culture, from Europe to America, Asia, and elsewhere. Prerequisite: one course in religion or philosophy. HIPHI, WRITD, Fall semester, even years.
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1.00 Credits
An examination, using primary texts, of theological issues emerging at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, with particular attention to theologies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as feminist, womanist, and African American theologies in North America. The course will account for the ways in which theologians working today draw on and/or depart from earlier 20th-century theologians, including Barth, Tillich, Bonheoffer, and others. Prerequisite: one course in religion. HIPHI, Spring semester, odd years.
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1.00 Credits
The communal and social nature of earliest Christianity will be considered from a variety of perspectives. Special concern will be devoted to the earliest Christian communities, major centers of early Christianity, and the origins of Christianity within early Judaism. Students will also explore early Christian attitudes toward worship, spirituality, politics, race, gender, and sexuality. The course will explore these topics with direct reference to New Testament writings and other early Christian literature. Evaluation will be based upon presentations and the writing of a research topic. Prerequisite: one course in Biblical Studies. HIPHI, WRITD, Fall semester, odd years.
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1.00 Credits
An overview of medieval painting, sculpture, and architecture from the early Christian period through the Gothic age (CE 330-1300). Emphasis will be placed on the relation between medieval art, the growth of the Christian church, and the development of the feudal state. ARTS, WRITD, Spring semester.
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1.00 Credits
This course offers an intensive analysis of the many connections between religion and the American political system. Students will first consider religion's historical role in shaping American political culture. Other topics to be covered include the constitutional relationship between church and state, the religious dimensions of American political behavior, religious influences on political institutions and decision makers, religious interest group activity and its impact on public policy, and the salience of religious factors in contemporary politics. Prerequisite: junior or senior status. SOSCI, Spring semester, odd years.
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1.00 Credits
This course reviews comparative anthropological approaches to the study of magic, witchcraft, and religion, primarily in non-Western societies. Focus is on the nature, roles, and varieties of belief and myth; ritual and symbolization; religious experience, including drug and non-drug induced trance states and their psycho-cultural dimensions; and magico-religious social organization. The course will emphasize shamanic and spirit possession religions and radical religious movements, such as nativistic and messianic cults. In relation to all of these, anthropological theories of the origins and functions of magic, witchcraft, and religion in social life and personal experience will be critically examined. NWEST, Spring semester.
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1.00 Credits
This course surveys and analyzes the interaction between religion, particularly Christianity, and American culture from the 16th to the 21st centuries. The study emphasizes the influence of church/state debates, immigration, slavery, wars, science, civil rights, and late 20th- and early 21st-century political realignments upon the religious life and attitudes of the American people. Particular attention will be given to the various ways Americans have negotiated the reality of religious diversity and the desire for cultural unity. THEOL, Offered annually.
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1.00 Credits
An introduction to the major non-Christian world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam. The course will focus on the formative periods and historical developments of the great religions, and on the differing ways in which they answer the fundamental religious questions. A combination of lectures, discussions, slides, films, and religious biographies will be used to enrich an understanding of these living traditions. HIPHI, NWEST, Fall and Spring semesters.
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1.00 Credits
What is faith What is religion Are they optional or necessary in human existence Who, or what, is God, and what does it mean to have a god How does religion interact with culture This course addresses these and other basic issues in theology and religion, with primary emphasis on the Christian tradition in the past, present, and future, and with special attention to the role of symbol, myth, scripture, and ritual in religious teachings and institutions. THEOL. Offered annually.
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1.00 Credits
In this course students will learn to read and write the Devanagari script (the most common script of Indian literature) and study the grammar of the classical Sanskrit language. Simple readings from Sanskrit literature will be introduced gradually into the lessons to develop in students the ability to analyze closely and to read simple texts in classical Sanskrit. The overall aim is to expose students to the literary and religious culture of India. Offered occasionally.
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