While I'm sharing end-of-semester reflections with you, here's the skeleton of what I told my Theorizing Religion students I hoped they had got from the class:
We’ve covered:
A history of an idea ("religion")
A history of a conversation (texts refer to each other, and we can intervene in their dialogue)
A history of a discipline (religious studies)
But also:
A history of other concepts and their interrelation (what religion is contrasted with: superstition, magic, science, morality, politics, art, etc.)
A history of disciplines (religious studies was in the vicinity at the birth of many others - and the disciplinary landscape is changing still)
A history of modernity (and our ways of understanding it/ourselves)
By understanding how we got here - why we think as we do about religion - you're able to think beyond the prejudices of the age, and well-prepped to recognize and respond to the challenges of a new world that is post-modern, post-colonial, post-secular, and globalized
In your responses and discussion you’ve found language for your own views of religion, whether you think it or its varieties true or false, good or bad. Keep testing it out on new experiences and traditions!
My tip is to keep an eye especially on:
Religion and politics, which are being renegotiated as we speak
Religion, privatization and gender; each of these affects the others, don't think you can understand any with all of them!
