This course examines the meaning of the word “religion” in the singular and problematizes the diverse historical and cultural means of appropriating this singularity. The course seeks to come to terms with the singularity of the God that sets monotheisms apart from other religious traditions, and His call to Abraham, the prophet who founds each of the three monotheisms under study. From this common heritage, the course seeks to understand the beliefs and practices that differentiate Christianity, Islam, and Judaism from each other while also questioning the meaning of the conflicts that have marked monotheistic interrelations. Edward Said’s “orientalism” is discussed, in which he critiques the study of religion as a discipline flawed by a cristo-centric bias. The course concludes with an appraisal of the relationship between monotheistic faiths and violence - from the Crusades to September 11, 2001 - referring to and engaging contemporary readings that attempt to locate the source of this association and to disclose possibilities for its resolution.
Prerequisites:
One previous course in Religious Studies.
Additional requirements:
TERM PAPER
Guidelines:
The assignment will not be accepted late.
Your introduction must include a thesis statement, underlined with a colored pen. This thesis statement should summarize what you consider to be the main point of your manifesto. The rest of your essay should support your thesis statement.
Your conclusion should do two things: it should summarize the main issues of your paper, but it should also move beyond them, opening up to broader consequences and questions raised in the body of your paper.
Be sure to re-read your essay, as spelling and grammar mistakes will count towards your grade.
In a succinct essay of six to eight pages, students will write a paper on one of the following topics in which they demonstrate that they have critically engaged the readings and the themes discussed in the classroom; that they have understood the interdisciplinary aspects of the subject; that they can express their beliefs in light of critical inquiry; that they can address contemporary questions and diverse ethical positions.
First essay Subject:
Abraham, as described in Genesis, is considered the father of the monotheistic faiths, and the ‘akedah’ or binding of Isaac was appropriated by both Christianity and Islam as a founding event. In a succinct essay of 6-8 pages, students must describe the original story and the transformations that it underwent in Qur’an sura 37 (including authorized commentary) and the Letter to the Hebrews and Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Students should explain the role sacrifice plays in each tradition. Finally, students must comment on Kierkegaard’s claim in “Fear and Trembling” that Abraham’s act is a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Is this equally true of the Islamic and Christian versions? Why or why not? What are some of the implications of this teleological suspension for an understanding of religious violence in the world today?
Second Essay Subject:
“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior – yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior… [and] stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. This position cannot be mediated for all mediation takes place only by virtue of the universal, it is and remains for all eternity: a paradox impervious to thought and yet faith is this paradox…”
This quote from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling elucidates the opposition in his thought between the universal and the individual, the ethical and faith. In a first paragraph, explain Kierkegaard’s conception.
Knowing that Kierkegaard was a Lutheran Christian, how can his message be understood as an interpretation of Luther’s discussion of faith and the Law? In a second paragraph, compare Luther and Kierkegaard’s understanding, being sure to take into account Luther’s interpretation of mediation in relation to the Church.
Knowing, furthermore, that Luther was himself interpreting Paul’s discussion of the faith of Abraham versus the Law of Moses, explain, in a third paragraph, Paul’s interpretation and how these three interpretations interact and reinterpret the Hebrew Bible.
Luther’s emphasis on a self-certain individual subject who has a direct and interiorized relation to truth has been seen by certain scholars as founding the modern age. What are some of the consequences of this conception of subjectivity, both positive and negative?
Finally, explain the Islamic understanding of the individual and his or her relation to ethics and the Law. In what ways is the Islamic vision radically different regarding the separation of faith and the Law, and how might this different conception inform an interpretation regarding the difficulty of the Islamic world to modernize in the sense understood by the (Christian) West?
Third Essay Subject:
Write the manifesto of a new religion. Be sure to include in your manifesto ten new commandments, a new credo, and five new pillars of faith.
In addition address some or all of the following issues:
1. Discuss the historical and thematic relevance of the three monotheistic religions we have discussed in class, explaining why or why not they remain relevant today. What would you change? What aspects might you retain from each of the three?
2. The three Children of Abraham are all founded upon the prophet Abraham and his sacrifice for God, whether that sacrifice be interpreted as Isaac, Ishmael or Christ. Will you retain sacrifice as foundational in your religion? Does your religion have a founding prophet?
3. Does your religion depend upon a God or gods? Why or why not?
4. Is it a political religion like Marxism?
5. What differentiates your religion from a philosophy, and from an ethics?
6. Is your religion teleological, and if so, what is the goal?
7. Is your religion a spirituality (like mysticism, or New Age) or a religion proper? Why, and what differentiates the two?
8. How will you institute belief in your religion?
9. What kinds of practices will accompany your credo (rituals, sacraments, communal prayer, interdictions, pilgrimages, etc.)?
10. How will your religion avoid the violence intrinsic in boundary formations and truth statements?
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Understand the three monotheistic traditions in the founding scriptures of each tradition as well as the ways these scriptures have influenced Western culture to the present day;
Assess the common roots of the monotheistic traditions as well as differentiate each tradition in terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxy;
Gain an awareness of religious violence, at work both within each tradition toward those members who interpreted their own tradition differently (heresies), as well as inter-religiously among the three monotheistic faiths;
Apply the knowledge gained of the three traditions to understand, analyze and interpret the manifestations of religious violence that mark our own times.
Analyze complex and diverse religious phenomena (such as architecture and art, music, ritual, scriptures, theological systems, and other cultural expressions of religious belief.)
Integrate and compare several different disciplinary approaches to a coherent set of religious phenomena.
Clarify and express beliefs in light of their critical inquiry into the religious dimensions of human existence.
Identify diverse perspectives and evaluate ethical positions on contemporary questions.
Evaluate and apply insights from the study of religion to open-ended questions facing contemporary society.
Method of presentation:
Class lectures and discussions based on assigned readings.
Required work and form of assessment:
Class participation (20%)
Term paper (30%)
Midterm exam (20%)
Final exam (30%)
*Details of required work: In addition to the study of the monotheistic traditions, this course will seek to cultivate student’s skills in reading and analyzing primary texts, and expressing this analysis in both active class discussion and strong writing. The course encourages students to approach their education as a process that both requires and rewards their cooperation and active engagement.
Each student must buy the reader and bring it to each class. Preparation for, attendance at, and participation in lectures are all required and will count toward the student’s final grade.
Students will complete a mid-term examination in which they demonstrate their ability to communicate and analyze their knowledge of the course material in a limited amount of time. The final examination will also assess the students capacity to respond to a contemporary text they have never seen before, demonstrating their ability to critically apply their knowledge to interpret and gain perspective on the world around them.
content:
Introduction
John Hinnells, “Why Study Religions?”; Russell McCutcheon, “What is the Academic Study of Religion?”
J.Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious”
Regina Schwartz: Selection from The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
The Children of Abraham:
Genesis 16-22; Qur’an Sura 37, section 3
“The Letter of Paul to the Galatians”; “Letter to the Hebrews”
Qu’ran Documents: “Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls”
Midterm exam
Christianity:
Placher: “The Hope of Israel”; “The Mission to the Gentiles”; “The Historical Development of Christianity”
“The Gospel of John”; Elaine Pagels: “The Controversy Over Christ’s Resurrection”
Paul: “Letter to the Romans”
Luther: Commentary on the Letter of Paul to the Romans
Islam:
Armstrong: “Muhammad the Enemy”; “The Prophet”; Denny: “The Rise and Historical Development of Islam”; “The Structures of Muslim Life”
Selections from the Qur’an
Averroes: The Legal Doctrine of Jihad
The Crusades: “The Cannibals of Ma’arra”; “The Tears of Saladin”
Religion and Violence:
Mark Juergensmeyer: Selection from Terror in the Mind of God
Mark Juergensmeyer: Selection from Terror in the Mind of God
Bruce Lincoln: Selection from Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion After 9/11
Bruce Lincoln: Selection from Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion After 9/11
Final exam
Required readings:
Selections from the following books will be compiled into a reading packet that each student must buy and bring to each class.
Armstrong, Karen. Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. New York, HarperCollins: 1992.
The Holy Qur’an. Trans. Ayatullah A. H.M.M.P. Yazdi & S.V.M. Ahmed Ali.
Coogan, M.D., Marc Zvi Brettler, et al (eds). The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Oxford, Oxford University
Press: 2001.
Denny, Frederick. An Introduction to Islam (3rd ed). Prentice Hall: 2005.
Gellner, Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. New York, Routledge: 1992.
Hamerton-Kelly, Robert (ed.). Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Stanford, CA,
Stanford University Press: 1988.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (3rd ed).
University of California Press: 2003.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. Wilder, Radford, VA: 2008.
Lincoln, Bruce. Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after 9/11. University of Chicago Press, Chicago:
2003.
Neusner, Jacob. Judaism: An Introduction. Westminister John Knox Press: 1992.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage, New York: 1989.
Placher, William C. A History of Christian Theology. Westminister John Knox Press: 1983.
Schwartz, Regina. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago: 1998.
Shenks, Hershel (ed.). Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Vintage, New York: 1993.
Taylor, Mark C. Critical Terms for Religious Studies. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1998.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Dover: 2003.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Christopher R. Altieri defended his PhD dissertation, The Soul of a Nation: America as a tradition of inquiry and nationhood, in May, 2010 (magna cum laude). He is currently continuing his exploration of a number of themes, including the role of tradition in intellectual inquiry; the relationship of competing cosmologies/anthropologies to the constitution of society and within a given society; the relationship of (civil or political) society to the state; the role of religion in public life and the tension between religious and political liberty; the possibility of (inter)cultural dialogue.
This course examines the meaning of the word “religion” in the singular and problematizes the diverse historical and cultural means of appropriating this singularity. The course seeks to come to terms with the singularity of the God that sets monotheisms apart from other religious traditions, and His call to Abraham, the prophet who founds each of the three monotheisms under study. From this common heritage, the course seeks to understand the beliefs and practices that differentiate Christianity, Islam, and Judaism from each other while also questioning the meaning of the conflicts that have marked monotheistic interrelations. Edward Said’s “orientalism” is discussed, in which he critiques the study of religion as a discipline flawed by a cristo-centric bias. The course concludes with an appraisal of the relationship between monotheistic faiths and violence - from the Crusades to September 11, 2001 - referring to and engaging contemporary readings that attempt to locate the source of this association and to disclose possibilities for its resolution.
One previous course in Religious Studies.
TERM PAPER
Guidelines:
The assignment will not be accepted late.
Your introduction must include a thesis statement, underlined with a colored pen. This thesis statement should summarize what you consider to be the main point of your manifesto. The rest of your essay should support your thesis statement.
Your conclusion should do two things: it should summarize the main issues of your paper, but it should also move beyond them, opening up to broader consequences and questions raised in the body of your paper.
Be sure to re-read your essay, as spelling and grammar mistakes will count towards your grade.
In a succinct essay of six to eight pages, students will write a paper on one of the following topics in which they demonstrate that they have critically engaged the readings and the themes discussed in the classroom; that they have understood the interdisciplinary aspects of the subject; that they can express their beliefs in light of critical inquiry; that they can address contemporary questions and diverse ethical positions.
First essay Subject:
Abraham, as described in Genesis, is considered the father of the monotheistic faiths, and the ‘akedah’ or binding of Isaac was appropriated by both Christianity and Islam as a founding event. In a succinct essay of 6-8 pages, students must describe the original story and the transformations that it underwent in Qur’an sura 37 (including authorized commentary) and the Letter to the Hebrews and Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Students should explain the role sacrifice plays in each tradition. Finally, students must comment on Kierkegaard’s claim in “Fear and Trembling” that Abraham’s act is a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Is this equally true of the Islamic and Christian versions? Why or why not? What are some of the implications of this teleological suspension for an understanding of religious violence in the world today?
Second Essay Subject:
“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior – yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior… [and] stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. This position cannot be mediated for all mediation takes place only by virtue of the universal, it is and remains for all eternity: a paradox impervious to thought and yet faith is this paradox…”
This quote from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling elucidates the opposition in his thought between the universal and the individual, the ethical and faith. In a first paragraph, explain Kierkegaard’s conception.
Knowing that Kierkegaard was a Lutheran Christian, how can his message be understood as an interpretation of Luther’s discussion of faith and the Law? In a second paragraph, compare Luther and Kierkegaard’s understanding, being sure to take into account Luther’s interpretation of mediation in relation to the Church.
Knowing, furthermore, that Luther was himself interpreting Paul’s discussion of the faith of Abraham versus the Law of Moses, explain, in a third paragraph, Paul’s interpretation and how these three interpretations interact and reinterpret the Hebrew Bible.
Luther’s emphasis on a self-certain individual subject who has a direct and interiorized relation to truth has been seen by certain scholars as founding the modern age. What are some of the consequences of this conception of subjectivity, both positive and negative?
Finally, explain the Islamic understanding of the individual and his or her relation to ethics and the Law. In what ways is the Islamic vision radically different regarding the separation of faith and the Law, and how might this different conception inform an interpretation regarding the difficulty of the Islamic world to modernize in the sense understood by the (Christian) West?
Third Essay Subject:
Write the manifesto of a new religion. Be sure to include in your manifesto ten new commandments, a new credo, and five new pillars of faith.
In addition address some or all of the following issues:
1. Discuss the historical and thematic relevance of the three monotheistic religions we have discussed in class, explaining why or why not they remain relevant today. What would you change? What aspects might you retain from each of the three?
2. The three Children of Abraham are all founded upon the prophet Abraham and his sacrifice for God, whether that sacrifice be interpreted as Isaac, Ishmael or Christ. Will you retain sacrifice as foundational in your religion? Does your religion have a founding prophet?
3. Does your religion depend upon a God or gods? Why or why not?
4. Is it a political religion like Marxism?
5. What differentiates your religion from a philosophy, and from an ethics?
6. Is your religion teleological, and if so, what is the goal?
7. Is your religion a spirituality (like mysticism, or New Age) or a religion proper? Why, and what differentiates the two?
8. How will you institute belief in your religion?
9. What kinds of practices will accompany your credo (rituals, sacraments, communal prayer, interdictions, pilgrimages, etc.)?
10. How will your religion avoid the violence intrinsic in boundary formations and truth statements?
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Class lectures and discussions based on assigned readings.
Class participation (20%)
Term paper (30%)
Midterm exam (20%)
Final exam (30%)
*Details of required work: In addition to the study of the monotheistic traditions, this course will seek to cultivate student’s skills in reading and analyzing primary texts, and expressing this analysis in both active class discussion and strong writing. The course encourages students to approach their education as a process that both requires and rewards their cooperation and active engagement.
Each student must buy the reader and bring it to each class. Preparation for, attendance at, and participation in lectures are all required and will count toward the student’s final grade.
Students will complete a mid-term examination in which they demonstrate their ability to communicate and analyze their knowledge of the course material in a limited amount of time. The final examination will also assess the students capacity to respond to a contemporary text they have never seen before, demonstrating their ability to critically apply their knowledge to interpret and gain perspective on the world around them.
The Children of Abraham:
Judaism:
Christianity:
Islam:
Religion and Violence:
Selections from the following books will be compiled into a reading packet that each student must buy and bring to each class.
Armstrong, Karen. Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. New York, HarperCollins: 1992.
The Holy Qur’an. Trans. Ayatullah A. H.M.M.P. Yazdi & S.V.M. Ahmed Ali.
Coogan, M.D., Marc Zvi Brettler, et al (eds). The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Oxford, Oxford University
Press: 2001.
Denny, Frederick. An Introduction to Islam (3rd ed). Prentice Hall: 2005.
Gellner, Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. New York, Routledge: 1992.
Hamerton-Kelly, Robert (ed.). Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Stanford, CA,
Stanford University Press: 1988.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (3rd ed).
University of California Press: 2003.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. Wilder, Radford, VA: 2008.
Lincoln, Bruce. Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after 9/11. University of Chicago Press, Chicago:
2003.
Neusner, Jacob. Judaism: An Introduction. Westminister John Knox Press: 1992.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage, New York: 1989.
Placher, William C. A History of Christian Theology. Westminister John Knox Press: 1983.
Schwartz, Regina. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago: 1998.
Shenks, Hershel (ed.). Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Vintage, New York: 1993.
Taylor, Mark C. Critical Terms for Religious Studies. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1998.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Dover: 2003.
Christopher R. Altieri defended his PhD dissertation, The Soul of a Nation: America as a tradition of inquiry and nationhood, in May, 2010 (magna cum laude). He is currently continuing his exploration of a number of themes, including the role of tradition in intellectual inquiry; the relationship of competing cosmologies/anthropologies to the constitution of society and within a given society; the relationship of (civil or political) society to the state; the role of religion in public life and the tension between religious and political liberty; the possibility of (inter)cultural dialogue.