Plans for religious studies program rolling forward
A possible religious studies program at Utah State University is not meant to offend or convert students to a particular religion, but offer an academic means to study the subject, a USU professor says.
Norm Jones, department head of the of history department, led a discussion Tuesday about the potential religious studies program being implemented on campus.
“When you do religion, you have to always be reminding yourself what you’re doing,” Jones said. “You’re not there to convert anybody to anything and you’re not there to offend anyone. You’re there to think about things in a scholarly manner with understanding why they believe what they believe and what the implications of those beliefs are without saying, ‘oh that’s stupid.'”
There are no religious studies programs in all of Utah’s universities, Jones said, to the classroom of 12 attending students. Because of the politics of religion in Utah, Jones said, higher education has “pretended that religion isn’t arguably the most important issue in Utah, because it wasn’t politically safe to do it.”
“If you start teaching about religion in a place where religion is so politically important, somebody certainly in the Legislature is going to accuse you of doing some terrible things and cut your money, and that has been the fear for years and years and years,” Jones said.
After teaching about the history of Christianity for 25 years, Jones said he and a team of faculty members realized the growing student interest in religious subjects. Jones said if students and individuals are going to discuss religion, they need to know how to discuss it.
“Quit pretending it is not out there,” Jones said about the issue of religion in Utah. “It is the 500-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to Utah politics.”
Jones said he began speaking to deans and administrators about the strange phenomena of no Utah schools offering courses about the religious institution, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“If you’ve got 70 percent of your population that practices a particular faith, and you take a course about medieval religion, but nobody wants to teach a course on Mormonism, why is this?” Jones said. “Again, you’re back to the political issue.”
Jones said a set of leaders in the university agreed that religion needed to be offered in an academic way. However, the first rule when teaching religion is never taking sides on which religion is right, Jones said.
“You never ask in a religious studies program ‘is it true?'” Jones said, “because the test of truth in religion are not things academics can perform.”
The courses that will be offered will focus on what impact religious beliefs have on people’s behavior, Jones said, and how religion changes the response to culture. The concept of “truth” is mediated through society, Jones said, and can be embodied in various means.
“When it comes right down to it, you’re making moral choices, and moral choices have social affects,” Jones said. “If you put together enough people who are making similar moral choices based upon the same value system, then you begin see a shape of society that is a product of certain religious values.”
Jones drew a diagram connecting the concepts of authority, truth, scripture and believers to illustrate his point of the various dynamics religion can be studied from. Religion affects views about the scientific world, Jones said, while he gave an example about genetic engineering and DNA research of the Shroud of Turin.
“Modern science has been really mucking with religion in the 20th century and will continue this way,” Jones said. “You can take something completely out of left field and go ‘Bam’ to the believer, and then the believer has to go back and say, ‘Well, how do I take this on board?'”
Religious studies can be viewed from a historical, philosophical, anthropological, sociological and various art perspectives. There is a format that incorporates various mediums called religious studies, Jones said, and USU will combine various faculty members from different departments and use their courses to institute this program.
There will be two tracks of courses students can choose from, Jones said. One will incorporate psychology, sociology and anthropology, the other will include history, philosophy, music and literature. However, the second track would require students to incorporate a language as well.
Jones said eventually there will be a master’s degree in religious studies, which would aid in the entryway in a certain number of jobs, especially in the chaplain field.
There are several problems the program has encountered, Jones said – the most important being funding.
“The state of Utah is broke – check your tuition bill,” Jones said. “We have holes in the curriculum we need to fill … We can’t fill the holes in the curriculum by taking something else away from the curriculum.”
The first chair in religious studies will be announced in May, Jones said, and the funding for this position has been received from an undisclosed source. The program could begin as soon as Fall 2005, Jones said. The second chair, the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture, is important for USU, Jones said.
However, the program is still attempting to fill positions for classical Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, Jones said.
“What we need is to fill in those gaps and when we’ve got those gaps filled in, then we’ll be ready to have a first rate program,” Jones said. “It’s been a great adventure in doing this.”
Matt Liston, a sophomore majoring in history who attended the meeting, said, “I think it is a great program. It gives us a new way to think about religion. The program will allow you to know more about cultures and issues around the world.”
-kcashton@cc.usu.edu