What is Religion?

Religion plays a significant role in diverse cultural, social and political contexts. Religious world-views, values and symbols play a critical role in shaping cultural norms, traditions and practices. This is the case both in religiously plural contexts, as well as those dominated by particular traditions. The contours of religion are evident not only in the artefacts that transmit a culture’s heritage (such as architecture, visual arts, illuminated manuscripts, and literature), but also in contemporary debates about the evolving identities of societies in a world characterised by religious pluralism.

 

Students on this course will be engaged with contemporary debates about, for example, the nature and impact of political religion, religion and modernity, religion and gender, religion and violence, religion and human rights, and ethics in politics.

 

Do you enjoy:

• Encountering the otherness of religions through their sacred writings, histories and traditions?
• Entering into critical debate in the field of ethics – concerning, for example, sport, media, environment, gender or politics?
• Exploring the ways in which truth claims are advanced, debated and embodied in arguments, doctrines and institutions?

 

Religion: The course for you?

This course offers you a broad-based study of Religion and Theology. Within the cultural study of religion, you have the opportunity to explore the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the religions of Asia and Africa, as well new atheistic and religious movements. With Theological Studies, you can investigate the development of Christian self-understanding in a number of different modes, from historical movements to contemporary theological projects engaged with liberation, postcoloniality, justice, gender, interreligious conversation, and the environment.

 

Religion at Trinity

In combining theological study with the study of religion, this degree is unique in Ireland. Trinity’s School of Religion is internationally recognised for its strengths in biblical studies, philosophical and theological ethics, peace studies, theological studies and religious studies. These strengths ensure that student experience combines in-depth analysis with breadth of subject matter that presents religious traditions in their historical, intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, political and ethical dimensions, as well as examining how religious traditions have interacted, and continue to interact, with the context of their origins and development.