Religious Studies is an academic discipline that encourages students to think critically about the major religious traditions of our world, as well as their scriptures, stories, rituals, practices, beliefs, and aesthetic expressions.
The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Doane College does not seek to advocate a specific religious practice or belief. Instead, we ask students to engage religious beliefs and practices in an empathetic fashion in order to understand not just other belief systems, but also their own. As Timothy K. Beal says,
The study of religion is fundamentally about making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. It's about encountering religious ideas, practices, traditions, and institutions that initially appear to us as "other," disturbingly foreign, and coming to a point where we understand how they can make sense given a certain set of circumstances. Such work requires not only critical rigor and tenacity in order to elaborate those circumstances; it also requires imagination in order to put oneself in another's situation. Indeed, understanding is always in some sense about coming to see how something could make sense, could be true and meaningful, within a certain context, according to certain conditions, according to a certain story (Roadside Religion, 12).
Please click on the links below to find out more about our Program and Major, and feel free to contact Dr. Dan Clanton (dan.clanton@doane.edu) if you have any questions.
To find out more information about the Religous Studies major at Doane College, request information here.