Introductions

• On sheet of paper write your name

• Write down:

  • What you would like to learn in this class
  • What is something that interests you but you don't know very much about (not necessarily religious in nature)
  • if there is anything the instructor should know about you with regard to this class
  • Your earliest memory of either witnessing or experiencing a religious experience

Significant Experience

• Write down the most significant experience you have had, one you would not classify religious
• Write down a significant religious experience
• Share with someone your experiences and discuss the question, “What makes one religious and the other not?”

Religious Experience covers a vast range

• Breadth of Religious Experience
• Religion touches on almost all human experience and culture
• Religion is incredibly diverse, varied, plural
• Religion affects the depths of human heart, motivation, direction, purpose in life.

Two Fundamental Approaches to the Study of Religion

• Humanistic. Approach: broad historical and cultural understanding of religion
• Theological. Approach: understanding and developing a particular religious tradition and its faith
• We will be following the first approach

Reading Journals

An important part of the process of this class

1. What ideas did you learn from the reading?
2. What connections with your own experience and learning can you make?
3. What surprised you about the reading?
4. Or, what can you add to your knowledge from the reading?
5. What new issue or question is raised by the reading?
6. What would you like to pursue next?

an opportunity to share in your classmates reflections

n.b. that any copying of others' work falls under the rubric of academic dishonesty and will not receive credit.