Welcome to REL2000  Review Course News

Course Objectives: Introduction to Religion is an independent, self-study course which requires a great deal of self-motivation and discipline from each student. This course is designed as an alternative to the traditional classroom course. This course is a semester length exploration into the nature and function of belief structures or "worldviews." These worldviews exist in formal organized entities such as traditional religions or as political or personal ideologies, such as feminism or environmentalism. Worldviews do not exist in a vacuum. The dynamic, living relationship between a religious organization and its immediate cultural environment provides a "living laboratory" for the study of beliefs and believers. In this course, representatives from a wide variety of religious and secular perspectives will help students develop an understanding of what they believe and why they believe it. Students will gain some initial exposure to major world religions-- Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--as well as systems of beliefs which are outside the scope of what are deemed to be mainstream religious institutions, such as new age religions, neo-paganism, and "civil religion." The objective of the course is to create a religiously literate student--to engage the subject of religious diversity in a non-threatening, but thought-provoking manner, so that students will be better informed about the place of religion and the need for religious tolerance in a pluralistic society.

Texts:  Beliefs and Believers:A Teleclass Study Guide, 2nd ed. by John K. Simmons
             Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, 3rd ed. by Ninian Smart

Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by the average of the following: the  highest of the first two major exams, the term paper, and the final exam. The grading scale will be A (90-100), B (80-89), C (70-79), D (60-69), F (59 and below).

Office Hours:  MWF 8:00-9:00 AM; M-F 2:00-3:00 PM; M&W 10:00-11:00 AM, M 4:00-6:30 PM.

Summer B hours:  M 4:00-6:00 PM.

Phone: 769-1551, x6005.

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