Religion Degrees Online

This programme, wholly taught within our department, combines the study of religion with work in ethics and philosophy. We aim to provide you with detailed knowledge of at least two strands of religion (with emphasis on their conceptual/theoretical content); knowledge of key problems in the philosophical analysis of religious concepts; and knowledge of problems in theoretical and applied ethics. You will deal with the conceptual content of selected major world faiths. You take modules in the philosophy of religion designed to teach relevant philosophical skills such as the ability to think in a rigorous and critical way. Modules in moral philosophy (theoretical and applied) supplement the study of Christian ethics.

Students who wish to enhance their knowledge of the world’s major religions and faiths will be drawn to MSU’s religious studies program. Ours is an interdisciplinary, intellectual, secular study of religious traditions and beliefs that will allow you to research and examine your own personal views and spiritual questions. The religious studies degree program has an ecumenical focus and uses a comparative approach when considering spiritual issues in other major world faiths.

Why choose MSU?
Mountain State University is demographically located among several hundred churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues throughout southern West Virginia. Religious studies majors are encouraged to complete a semester or summer internship with a local charitable organization or church of their choice. Our religious studies students hail from diverse backgrounds, various cultures, and a host of faiths, but all come seeking answers for life and principles upon which to base their futures.

Major Requirements
The Religious Studies major integrates religion courses with a broad spectrum of other courses from the history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, American studies, classics, and medieval studies departments. From the start, students have a chance to design their own focus. At the lower division level, students take several courses that introduce them to the major world religions. At the upper division level, students move on to more specialized courses which deal with the more complex issues surrounding religion. Some courses include “Myth, Ritual, and Symbolism,” “Contemporary American Religion,” “Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism” and “Religious Ethics.”

A Student Perspective
One of the strengths of the Religious Studies major is that it examines traditions and beliefs from the perspective of those practicing them, not from an observers point of view. Another strength is its excellent, knowledgeable professors.

A Faculty Perspective
An undergraduate education begins with asking big questions. In this regard, few disciplines are as ambitious as religious studies. Indeed, religion often holds that for every right answer, there’s another even better answer. In a world of scientific proofs and certainties, how can religious practitioners possibly maintain such a stance? Could this be why people are so passionate about religions today? Such questions, along with their many extraordinary answers, are what students in our program examine. What better way to explore the diversity of human interaction, culture, and history than to begin with the proposition that our accepted truths are mere props upon a much grander stage! Religious studies offers students the rare opportunity to pursue such a possibility in close coordination with faculty members who specialize in a wide variety of world faiths.

Course content

In your first year you will study a range of introductory courses. Some of the first year courses include:
Introduction to Jewish civilisation
Introduction to Islamic civilisation
The world of the Bible
How Christianity came to Europe
Introduction to the historical Jesus
Introduction to Christian thinking about God, the world and human life.

From the second year on, you may choose from a wide range of courses depending on the individual interests you have discovered in your first year. Students may choose courses on subjects such as:
the early history of Israel
Paul and the development of early Christianity
Medieval Judaism and Islam
arguments for and against the existence of God
the relation between modern science and religious belief
medical ethics, including that of human cloning
Judaism from the time of Alexander the Great to the Roman period

Students in the second year may substitute a Broad Curriculum course (see www.tcd.ie/Broad_Curriculum) for one of their half-year courses.

In addition you may decide to study Greek or Hebrew.

Students have a wide variety of subject choices in the Junior and Senior Sophister (third and fourth) years. These include:

Prophecy in Israel
Early Christianity and its literature (the Gospels)
Judaism and Islam in the medieval world
Jewish and Christian identity and interaction in the Roman world
The Reformation and the Enlightenment in Europe and Ireland
Jewish identity in the modern world
Christologies (ways of understanding Jesus)
Christianity and world religions: the challenge of the claims of Buddhism, Hinduism and other world faiths to Christianity
Ethics: philosophical and theological
Jiustice, forgiveness, and atonement

Students do not just encounter religious cultures in the lecture theatre and libraries, as central to this course are visits to museums, sacred sites and cultural destinations. For example, students have visited Israel, Berlin and Poland.

Does God exist? If God exists, what can we as humans know about God? Is the world in which we live God’s creation? If so, can we know anything of God’s will for the created order, and more especially for humanity as part of that order?

The various modules offered as part of the Theology degree programme, all in their different ways, examine and assess some of the answers given within the Christian tradition to these basic questions about God and human existence. Christians have, for example, looked for answers in the Bible – in the Hebrew scriptures, which they share with Jews and with Muslims, as well as in what they call the New Testament. Some of our modules therefore involve critical study of various parts of the Bible or Biblical texts in translation or in the original language. Again, Christians have seen God at work in the Church, even if the understanding of what is meant by Church varies from one Christian group to another. We therefore offer a number of modules that look critically at different periods of Church history or at particular aspects of Christian history.

Or again we are concerned to examine what Christians down the ages as well as contemporary Christian theologians believe, so you will find modules on aspects of doctrine looked at from a historical perspective and on modern theology. Other modules look at the interaction of Church and society or at the liturgical practices of different Christian traditions, or at Christian ethics in general as well as particular ethical issues. Students are also encouraged to explore in other modules the way theology is done from the perspective of the marginalized in our modern world, of the poor, the oppressed, the disadvantaged and of women.In addition to studying the Christian tradition, students of Theology are also encouraged to take advantage of our close association with Religious Studies to broaden their horizons and to consider the theological beliefs and practices of other world faiths.

Theology, like Religious Studies, is an academic discipline and as with any other discipline in a modern University, it is subjected to analytical and critical treatment. It can be studied by Christians of any tradition who wish to deepen their understanding of their faith or by adherent of other faiths or indeed by agnostics and atheists, who are seekers after truth or genuinely concerned to understand what Christians believe and why.The structure of this programme and the modules it offers can be found in our departmental handbooks. Printed copies of the handbooks are also available on request.

The religion program at Ripon examines the experience and the beliefs about God in major world faiths, past and present. Special emphasis is given to the Jewish and Christian traditions because of their great importance for Western culture.

Introductory courses are geared toward providing an understanding of how the founders and first followers of major religions experienced God and how to interpret the faith expressions in their scriptures – e.g. the Torah and the New Testament.

Intermediate courses focus on the evolution of theological and ethical concepts and practices of the Judeo-Christian tradition over time and how they shaped and were shaped by cultural values and structures with which they interacted.

Advanced courses provide an analysis of how religion and ethics affect contemporary society – both individuals seeking a meaningful moral framework for their personal lives, and wider political and economic forces shaping national and international society.

The study of Religion deals with the deepest and most basic questions of human existence: the meaning and purpose of life, relations with a divine presence and power, interpersonal relations and ultimate human destiny. A programme of religious studies at the university level will seek to examine the various religious traditions, taking a historical and critical approach and utilizing the insights and advances of modern scholarship. It will be concerned with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also with all the major world faiths; with the origins and history of religious traditions, but also with the live issues and contemporary concerns of religion today. The study of religion is not confined to those preparing for theological studies: it has a valid and vital place in a liberal arts programme.

Such a programme does not exist to advocate one faith rather than another, and least of all to proselytize on behalf of one denomination. It is designed to encourage students to study a most important aspect of human existence, and it may help them to focus and clarify their own thinking on these matters.

The Humanities 1600 series of half courses offered by the participating disciplines of Classics, History, Philosophy and Religious Studies are designed to acquaint beginning students with the varieties of non-fictional literature treated by this group of departments, to introduce the methodologies typical of these taken as well as the sorts of themes pursued and questions raised in treating this literature. The 1600-series half courses are designed to be similar in format and requirements; two half courses drawn from this series may be used to satisfy the introductory requirements of the co-operating Departments, as noted in their respective Calendar entries.

This programme, wholly taught within our department, combines the study of religion with work in ethics and philosophy. We aim to provide you with detailed knowledge of at least two strands of religion (with emphasis on their conceptual/theoretical content); knowledge of key problems in the philosophical analysis of religious concepts; and knowledge of problems in theoretical and applied ethics. You will deal with the conceptual content of selected major world faiths. You take modules in the philosophy of religion designed to teach relevant philosophical skills such as the ability to think in a rigorous and critical way. Modules in moral philosophy (theoretical and applied) supplement the study of Christian ethics.