The next publish is the final of the three-part collection on college students’ reflections written as a part of a last project in Prof. Vaia Touna’s REL 100 “Introduction to the Study of Religion” in Fall 2022.
Sydney Tieber is initially from Bellbrook, Ohio, a freshman majoring in Biology with a minor in Spanish.
Once I signed up for the REL100 Intro to Spiritual Research, I assumed I might study totally different beliefs, symbols, texts, and practices of world religions. Nonetheless, this course taught me a lot extra. Crucial factor I discovered on this class was that the act of classification does matter. The factors and reasoning that folks use when defining issues are vital to review as a result of they will have a long-lasting impact on society. On web page 16 of Finding out Faith,Russell McCutcheon states, “the names we give to issues might, as an alternative, inform us extra concerning the namer than they do concerning the factor being named.” It’s tough for people who do the classifying to stay neutral as a result of they’ve their very own experiences and agendas and could be influenced by others who’ve their very own opinions and pursuits. Additionally, how a lot energy somebody holds has a big affect on what and the way issues are named, from tomatoes, to mountains, to folks. Classification isn’t a impartial or harmless exercise; it’s fraught with ulterior motives, as McCutcheon explains on web page 18 of Finding out Faith. So, in the case of how one thing is outlined, you could acknowledge the potential political, social, and financial motivations somebody might use to call one thing a method or one other. On web page 204 of Faith in 5 Minutes,creator Steven Ramey discusses how vital it’s to take a look at the opinions or assumptions that somebody holds and what they goal to perform once they outline one thing. Now once I take into consideration non secular discourse, I do know that I have to inquire and establish the social, political, financial pursuits somebody has and see if there’s any bias concerned when somebody is defining faith on this or that method or what the operate of faith is. Defining faith is an advanced process, however one ought to solely try it if they’re educated and might stay unbiased.
As a normal introduction to the educational research of faith, REL 100 focuses intimately on the issue of defining faith, the insider/outsider downside, theories of faith, and the implications of classification. The course has 90 college students enrolled and as a last writing project college students needed to reply three questions. Every reply needed to be between 250-300 phrases the place college students needed to critically synthesize issues that they discovered within the class by making reference to the category’s studying materials. One of many questions that college students needed to reply was to mirror on one factor they discovered that has modified the best way they perceive non secular discourses. Lots of the college students’ responses mirrored on what their assumptions have been about faith, that’s, previous to taking the category, every of those chosen for this collection properly exemplify what they now perceive to be the research of faith. The course makes use of Russell McCutcheon’s Finding out Faith and his co-edited quantity with Aaron Hughes Faith in 5 Minutes.
