An area of great interest to me has always been world religions. I would like to be able one day to teach classes on religion, especially comparative religion. So this article was of particular interest to me. Also, one of the things I do during the summer (usually) in my church is do a preaching or teaching series. This summer I have planned a series on Christianity and world religions, and have been gathering resources to help me with this. Now this is another resource added.
I like the approach the writers/teachers take. They introduce religion and then present various topics like creation, end of time, sacrifice, prayer, etc and then lead the students in an interactive interpretation of the actual texts and/or teachings of various religions. They focus on Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity. This is a very neat and effective way, I think, to cover a great deal of information from a wide variety of religions. I mean, you could teach a whole course or more on any of these religions alone. But being able to give a significant introduction and comparison to all of these is quite a challenge. But I think their approach works. Students not only come to see similarities and differences, they also are encouraged to set forth and explore new questions and topics based on their comparisons. This class also requires students to do on-site visits with these religious traditions, something that I think is very important. One of the things that I didn’t see them cover is something I would do – have someone from each of the traditions come in and make a presentation and then having the students engage in a question and answer and discussion session. This whole course excites me because I think that, whether we like it or not, religion has been here a long time and influences our world in many ways. The more we can know and about understand all religions, perhaps the better we can learn to respect and get along with one another, and work together to address the very serious challenges we face as human beings.
ABSTRACT: In this article we argue for an introductory course in the study of religion that proceeds through interactive interpretation as a responsible form of comparison. Interactive interpretation proceeds provisionally, and encourages students to formulate new questions of the materials instead of making final categories about the materials. We use examples from a typical classroom to show how we work with three pedagogical principles: (1) critical reading; (2) pluralism within religious traditions as well as between religious traditions; and (3) the use of the working hypothesis as a tool in analyzing religious texts. We also make an argument for textual reading as a form of living intellectual practice, which can work alongside of, and not in opposition to, other approaches to the study of religion, such as ethnographic or historical approaches.
If you would like to read the article, it’s in Teaching Theology and Religion, at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.mutex.gmu.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2008.00479.x/full
