RELG 221 - Religion and Ethics

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200
Domain (Anchored): ALV
Domain (Reaching Out): CSI

This is an introductory level, lecture-based, yet interactive, course that explores the complex, everyday intersections between religious beliefs and ideas on the one hand and ethical reasoning and behavior on the other, across a variety of religious traditions. The course examines ethical issues cross-culturally and from a variety of disciplinary approaches including philosophical, theological, anthropological, psychological, philological and others. While this is not a comparative religions class, we will try our best, given constraints of time, to familiarize ourselves with some of the core beliefs, practices and ethical foundations of some of the major (most widely followed) religious traditions of the world.

Throughout the course, we will examine texts, interpretations, arguments and cultural practices of various religious communities and reflect about what they offer us as resources, and challenges, for thinking about the best way to live a happy and meaningful human life. The ethical teachings of religious traditions will invite and challenge us to carefully, critically and emphatically examine the different ways in which religious traditions have shaped everyday human life across the globe in the past and continue to do so today. We shall also attend to the ways in which religious and ethical beliefs and practices compare with each other.