My study of religion has centered around the religious community. In my work, I have striven to understand where religious beliefs come from and how they are brought about in members of the same faith. I’m fascinated about how these people enact them, and what happens when they encounter members of a different tradition– how they bring the other into their space, how they dialogue and how they go about creating a more just world. In this day and age we hear so much about religious conflict; I am interested in religious compassion. This major gives me a base of understanding on which I can not only personally build a more comprehensive and inclusive world view, but a base which I can use as a ground for a broader socio-cultural understanding of our world, its differences and how to navigate them.
Michael Enich ’14
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I am a Religion major because I am unable to happily cast off underlying murmurs and concentrate on incidental questions. Logic and rationale are not confined only to those disciplines yielding verifiable results: Religious Studies’ coursework demands logic and a supply of vastly diverse academic knowledge to work with the most perplexing and universal quandaries of humanity. Nothing like erred perceptions, the study of Religion encourages dismissal of unnecessary barriers to encounter a world of impossibly challenging thought.
Olivia Smoldt-Hall ’15