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    Why Study Religion

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    Prof. Jacob Neusner argues that religion is a powerful force that shapes society and culture globally. He asserts that without understanding religion, one cannot make sense of current events or civilization's heritage. Religions powerfully influence people's political and cultural decisions. Therefore, studying religion is essential to comprehending the contemporary world and humanity.

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    Why Study Religion

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    Prof. Jacob Neusner argues that religion is a powerful force that shapes society and culture globally. He asserts that without understanding religion, one cannot make sense of current events or civilization's heritage. Religions powerfully influence people's political and cultural decisions. Therefore, studying religion is essential to comprehending the contemporary world and humanity.

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    Prof. Jacob Neusner argues that religion is a powerful force that shapes society and culture globally. He asserts that without understanding religion, one cannot make sense of current events or civilization's heritage. Religions powerfully influence people's political and cultural decisions. Therefore, studying religion is essential to comprehending the contemporary world and humanity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    51 views2 pages

    Why Study Religion

    Uploaded by

    Network
    Prof. Jacob Neusner argues that religion is a powerful force that shapes society and culture globally. He asserts that without understanding religion, one cannot make sense of current events or civilization's heritage. Religions powerfully influence people's political and cultural decisions. Therefore, studying religion is essential to comprehending the contemporary world and humanity.

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    Why Study Religion?

    by Prof. Jacob Neusner, Brown University

    "Religion is so powerful a force in the contemporary world that without knowledge of


    religion we scarcely can understand the daily newspapers. A fair example of what
    happens when people do not know how to make sense of the power of religions in
    contempoary life is our country's difficulty in understanding the Islamic revolution in Iran,
    not to mention the Judaic revolution in the State of Israel, the Protestant army of
    Northern Ireland, the Roman Catholic revolutions in Poland and in Latin America, the
    Christian army of Lebanon, the tragedy at Jamestown and many continuing evidences
    of the vitality of religious belief--sometimes healthy, sometimes perverse.

    "There is a bias against religion as a force in culture and psychology. Intellectuals in


    general, and the political left in particular, assume that religion is dead and that God
    never was. This is surely one possible way of thinking about the character and meaning
    of society and of life. According to this viewpoint, religion is dying; as we know it, it is a
    holdover from another age. People who hold this view therefore claim that religion does
    not require study. Those of us who find religion an exceptionally interesting
    phenomenon of society and culture, imagination and the heart, can do little to overcome
    this bias. But it is a bias, for it rests upon the will to wish religion away, not upon the
    perception that religion has gone away.

    "In fact, much of the world as we know it is shaped by the formation of society and
    culture around religious beliefs, by the way in which people refer to religions to make
    their choices about how they will live. These beliefs and choices invoke particular
    modes of supernaturalism, call upon distinctive expressions of revelation, and reflect
    different ways of looking at and finding God. A nation like ours, in which institutions of
    religion exercise vast influence over citizens' political and cultural decisions, is wise not
    to deny that religion is a formative force in contemporary life. Whether or not people
    want religions to exercise that power, they do. In fact, religions not only speak about
    supernatural powers, they also constitute powerful forces in this world. So it is a matter
    of fact that if people do not understand the character of religions, they cannot make
    sense of much that happens in the world today.

    "Nor need we dwell on a more obvious fact. To understand where humankind has been,
    to make sense of the heritage of world civilization, the transcendent side of the human
    imagination and of society and culture constitutes a definitive dimension. There is no
    understanding of humanity without the confrontation with the religious heritage and
    hope, whatever may be our judgment of the value of the heritage and the hope. So far
    as universitites propose to teach how to interpret the world in which we live, organizing
    courses and departments of religious studies is a perfectly natural way of teaching what
    must be taught.
    "When we study religion, we study the subject that unifies all the other subjects of the
    humanities. Until our own time and in many places in our own time, religion is the center
    of human life. If we do not study religion, we are not studying what is important about
    ourselves in the world."

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