Syllabus
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[Use the links at the left to see how this course was set up for Winter, 2005.  Some of it may be changed depending on the size of the enrollment, but the syllabus and calendar from 2005 will give you some idea of what the 2006 offering will be like.  The 2006 will not require daily 4/6 card responses;  if the enrollment is large, the paper may be changed to a review of a book relevant to the course.  Email me if you have questions.]

Instructor: Michael Barnes. [barnes@udayton.edu     /     http://homepages.udayton.edu/~barnes]

Brief Pre-registration Overview:

Every successful religious movement has found support in social resources but has also faced skepticism in greater or lesser degrees. Most often the skeptics were from a different religious tradition or offered philosophical objections. In the last few centuries in Western culture a great deal of the criticism of religion has come from that collection of perspectives which are now called the social sciences. Theology has learned to respond to these critiques. This course will investigate this interplay, including ways in which the social sciences make positive contributions to religious understanding.

The social sciences include a number of approaches to the study of religion. Anthropologists study the impact of religion on cultural forms and vice versa. Historians apply their techniques to the analysis of religious communities and sacred texts. As sociology took form it was often as a critic of religion; Marx is an evident example. The same is true of psychology, in which Freud exemplifies a strongly skeptical approach. Yet sociologists and psychologists have also thrown light on positive functions of religion in life. Theologians respond to much of this by reminding the skeptical of transcendent questions which reach beyond the limits of the social and psychological. In recent decades economic theory has made some contributions to understanding the growth of religions. Evolutionary psychology has explored the roots of aspects of religiousness in the human genetic heritage.

These fields of study contribute also to understanding current events, including specific apocalyptic movements such as the Branch Davidians who died near Waco, Texas, the general phenomenon of fundamentalism and its extremist forms, as well as more prosaic but significant aspects of life such as the developmental journey each person takes through life.

This course will not be able to cover all of these topics. Two common text books will be used in the first half of the course; but the content of the second half of the course will depend on the number of students who sign up for it. It is easier to copy materials as needed for a smaller number, and a paper-with-presentation can substitute for an exam if there are not too many enrolled in the course.

The two required texts are 1) Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion (Oxford, 2005), and 2)  Gregory Baum, ed., The Twentieth Century: A Theological Overview (Orbis Books,1999). There will be a number of handouts also, especially excerpts from primary sources.

[This course is eligible for General Education credits but is not in a cluster. Some students may want to use it as a starting point for a self-defined cluster.]

This page was last changed on October 20, 2005.