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Comparing comparative religion

LibraryLady

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LibraryLady
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I recently had a lovely visit with a good friend, Stephanie, who among other things has introduced me to a hilarious BBC radio show, Cabin Pressure. But that’s not important right now. Stephanie is a teacher working on a Ph.D. and has decided to write her dissertation on the teaching of World Religions in public schools in the United States. As we know on this forum, this is a touchy subject here in the USofA. She feels, and I agree, that information about other beliefs will aid in better interaction amongst students and once out of school will lead to better citizenship. In other words, less barking at each other and fewer Michelle Bachmans.

Her difficulty is how to approach it. Thematically? Chronologically? Geographically? She is anxious to hear the opinions of the skeptical community, as she is aware that we have a wide ranging knowledge of religion and is herself an Episcopagan. She has taught such a course in a private prep school and has included non-belief.

So I throw it open, any ideas or opinions? Okay, stupid question….
 
LibraryLady said:
I recently had a lovely visit with a good friend, Stephanie, who among other things has introduced me to a hilarious BBC radio show, Cabin Pressure. But that’s not important right now. Stephanie is a teacher working on a Ph.D. and has decided to write her dissertation on the teaching of World Religions in public schools in the United States. As we know on this forum, this is a touchy subject here in the USofA. She feels, and I agree, that information about other beliefs will aid in better interaction amongst students and once out of school will lead to better citizenship. In other words, less barking at each other and fewer Michelle Bachmans.

Her difficulty is how to approach it. Thematically? Chronologically? Geographically? She is anxious to hear the opinions of the skeptical community, as she is aware that we have a wide ranging knowledge of religion and is herself an Episcopagan. She has taught such a course in a private prep school and has included non-belief.

So I throw it open, any ideas or opinions? Okay, stupid question….
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I don't think it's a stupid question so much as an odd question... wouldn't her first step be to research the current state of the art and see if there's prior work on this?
 
blutoski said:
I don't think it's a stupid question so much as an odd question... wouldn't her first step be to research the current state of the art and see if there's prior work on this?
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Most of it's done by theists.

As for how to approach it, you're not going to be able to do so chronologically--not without specifying a geography first. For example, you can do "Religion in the Middle East through the ages". The issue is that different areas had different belief systems at any given time. Areas of the Roman Empire believed in the Roman gods, while some towns were Christian, while China was a completely different theological paradigm, while the Native Americans each had their own, and so on, all on the same day. And that's not getting into the nuances (early Christianity had a lot of differing views, for example).

Regardless of when, you have to specify where. So we can rule out chronological order.

Geography is equally tricky. The theological history of each geography would be insanely difficult to undertake--each lesson would be a mini-Ph.D. disseration, essentially.

The best way, in my opinion, would be to focus on modern religions, and go by order of importance. Obviously Christianity and Islam will need to be discussed. Hindu as well. The Jewish religion is another big one. (I don't intend this to be an exhaustive list, just an illustration of what I'm talking about.) Once you've covered the big ones, you can look at the up-and-comers--Wicca, for example. Mormonism. Atheism. (Sorry, guys, but for the purposes of this exercise atheism should be discussed as one religious option--for the same reason that in any environmental analysis "No Actoin" is discussed as a remediation alternative.) In each case, a discussion of the major beliefs, history, major groups within the religion, and key figures would be a necessity. It's impossible to go into any real depth and get this done in a reasonable timeframe (I'm assuming a year?), but you can touch the highlights enough that people don't make egregiously stupid statements and have a general sense of where the other person's coming from.

Time permitting, a discussion of some ancient beliefs that no longer are widely held (or which are completely defunct) would be useful. The Roman/Egyptian thing was in interesting theological dispute, for example, and the role the Roman religion played in shaping Catholicism is fairly significant. But that's extra stuff, to be added only if one has the time and the class is amenable to such extra information.
 
Dinwar said:
Most of it's done by theists.
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Possibly. Would that be a problem?

I'm just trying to figure out why a PhD candidate would be reaching out to friends for ideas instead of her thesis advisor and peers. It seems like a way to get sent in the wrong direction.
 
blutoski said:
Possibly. Would that be a problem?
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For some peolpe, no. For folks on this forum? It'd likely be a deal breaker. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm just trying to figure out why a PhD candidate would be reaching out to friends for ideas instead of her thesis advisor and peers. It seems like a way to get sent in the wrong direction.
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Possibly. That said, every grad student I've ever met has sat down with random folks in their office, at the bar, or on job sites (I've had some work under me as subcontractors) and talk about their work. It's a way to generate ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Lots of chaif to sort through, but sometimes it's worth it.

Also, bear in mind that the comparitive religion classes I'm familiar with are long-term things--they're programs, not classes. And they're quite obviously biased. No seminary is going to present Christianity in the same light as Taoism or animism. So there's good reason to ask people outside the system what they think--the system is borked rather badly in many ways.
 
Dinwar said:
For some peolpe, no. For folks on this forum? It'd likely be a deal breaker. But that's neither here nor there.
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It's a shame, though, if you think a skeptic board is so vulnerable to genetic fallacy.



Dinwar said:
Possibly. That said, every grad student I've ever met has sat down with random folks in their office, at the bar, or on job sites (I've had some work under me as subcontractors) and talk about their work. It's a way to generate ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Lots of chaif to sort through, but sometimes it's worth it.
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And yet, none I've ever met have. That's why it surprised me.

Maybe I'm from a different sector of research? Perhaps it's different outside of the natural sciences and psychiatry. I don't think my nonspecialist peers would even understand what I'm asking them to comment on. ie: "I'm trying to determine the foldspace of common CCR12 alleles for predicting ART resilience in order to establish experimental dosage ranges prior to clinical trials... how do you think I should establish my controls to reduce the workload of multiple regression analysis?"



Dinwar said:
Also, bear in mind that the comparitive religion classes I'm familiar with are long-term things--they're programs, not classes. And they're quite obviously biased. No seminary is going to present Christianity in the same light as Taoism or animism. So there's good reason to ask people outside the system what they think--the system is borked rather badly in many ways.
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I think the OP was solicting input for a public school program, though. My expectation is that there should be quite a bit of secular analysis of their stated purposes and effectiveness.

To give my opinion, that would be the first thing I'd research even as an outsider, but it would take me a few weeks to get caught up, probably. I'd be worried that anything else would be wilful Dunning Kruger.
 
Dinwar said:
For some peolpe, no. For folks on this forum? It'd likely be a deal breaker. But that's neither here nor there.
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One problem I can see with it, though, is that most of these comparative religion works produced by theists are polemics, with the comparisons being made essentially consisting of "here's a big list of what's good about my religion, and a big list of what's bad about this other religion, so therefore you know my religion is True and Correct and all those other religions are Wrong and False".
 
I think any choice of curriculum is going to be either biased or accused of being biased, in which case your friend will have to expect criticism of some kind.

My off-the-top-of-my-head idea would be to make it anthropological, beginning with early evidence of religions among ancient and extinct civilizations and then move on to contemporary tribal beliefs which may have interesting or similar definitions.

Then probably I would go on to how Zoroastrianism evolved from one of these ancient beliefs before going on to compare the three major Abrahamic religions. From there, a comparison within each one, such as Reform and Orthodox Judaism, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity, and then Sunni and Shia Islam.

From there perhaps Hinduism and Buddhism etc...

I would make it broadly historical although where more appropriate such as with the grouping of particular religions I would switch to thematic; for example The Animistic Religions; The Monotheistic Religions; The Polytheistic Religions.
 
I'm confused. Why are you guys talking about what's in the classes? That's HER project. Her project is to find out what is being taught in comp religion classes.

I thought the question was more about how to carry out the analysis - NOT on what she will find.

In that respect, there are a lot of variations. She could compare, for example, college level courses vs those taught at high school. Or look at those states where there have been (unnecessary) laws created that specify courses like this vs what happens in states that don't have said laws but still have courses like this taught.

The hard part I think is going to be in finding those places that offer comparative religion courses in a systematic way. Reading about them in the newspapers means you are only going to find those that make the news.
 
The Unitarian Universalists have a lot of experience teaching comparative religion in and near your target age group. I would look at their programs, starting with their web site but if possible speaking to UU church leaders in your area.

Going alphabetically would defy expectations, and I could see benefits from doing so. (Including, being exposed to a wide variety of religions before reaching the "major" ones, and getting atheism in early on, for perspective.) It would take more than a school year just to understand and discuss ones way through this chart:
http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm

Based on my own experiences (including on this forum), I'm trying to re-invent how religion is understood, in a way that de-emphasizes "beliefs" and instead concentrates on narratives, practices, and experiences. So if I were designing a course, I'd start out with discussion of what it can mean to "believe" something, because it doesn't always (and I suspect, doesn't usually) mean what we assume it does. Before talking about any specific religion, I'd talk about symbols, about models of reality, and nuances like the difference between believing a model is useful and should be known and taught (e.g. the celestial sphere, for astronomers and navigators) and believing that the model is the reality (which is sometimes called superstition). You could show how, from an outside perspective, it would be easy to claim that present-day Americans believe in Santa Claus. Just look at all those images, stories, and rituals, the latter involving live enactors who claim that wearing the costume joins them with the "spirit" of Santa Claus, and draw the "obvious" conclusions. How easy would it be to look at another culture and get wrong ideas about what they "believe," or exactly what sense of the word "believe" applies to which narratives? Whereas if you look at Santa Claus in terms of narratives, practices, and experiences, weighted approximately equally, you'll get a much more useful and accurate understanding.
 
I can't recall a single discussion about any religion in my 13 years of public education. Was this a subject that was taught in other places in the US? I went to high school in New Jersey in the mid-80's.

My children, who are 14 and 17 and are atheists, have never mentioned anything about a comparative religion discussion in school. I'm pretty sure they would have if this were being taught to them. We live in Massachusetts.
 
There were elective comparative religion courses in both high schools I attended in the 1970s (RI & MA). Both had tiny numbers of students signing up so I would not be surprised if both schools dropped the courses at some point for lack of student interest.
 
A'isha said:
One problem I can see with it, though, is that most of these comparative religion works produced by theists are polemics, with the comparisons being made essentially consisting of "here's a big list of what's good about my religion, and a big list of what's bad about this other religion, so therefore you know my religion is True and Correct and all those other religions are Wrong and False".
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This is precisely what Stephanie is trying to correct.
 
Somewhere around I have a book I bought and read in my late teens that just dispassionately describes a bit about a whole host of religions including the major ones. Their history, beliefs and current locations of the majority of adherents are briefly give. No claim is made about the truth of anyone of them. This book played a part on my road to Atheism because I saw that they were all sincerely believed by their believers. That the beliefs were highly contradictory. And, as they could not all be right, it was reasonable to assume that maybe none of them were.

That's all it takes. :w2:
 
A'isha said:
One problem I can see with it, though, is that most of these comparative religion works produced by theists are polemics, with the comparisons being made essentially consisting of "here's a big list of what's good about my religion, and a big list of what's bad about this other religion, so therefore you know my religion is True and Correct and all those other religions are Wrong and False".
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True enough, but you can still gather useful information from it. By looking at what Religion A attacks in Religion B, you can determine what Religion A thinks is important TO attack--which is in and of itself useful information about the religion. For example, Creationists attack Darwin quite often (Darwinism, "Darwin was wrong", etc). The reason is that to them, if they disprove Darwin they disprove evolution. Complete nonsense, but it shows how their minds work.

Also, while many of them are like that, not all are. My sister once had a Jewish rabbi teach a class on the history of the Bible (both parts). He didn't believe any of it; he just knew the history of the book better than any Christian that applied for the position. You certainly can't fault the guy for bias, at least not without attending the class (and from what I saw of the readings, there wasn't any there either).

pgwenthold said:
I thought the question was more about how to carry out the analysis - NOT on what she will find.
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The reality is that the two are inseparable in science. What you believe you'll find is what determines how you look.
 
I dunno. I think I live in a pretty typical USA place. There are only two kinds of people interested in religion. One kind believes that the Bible is literally true, delivered to us by Almighty God and unquestionable. The other kind are who's left over.
 
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