Program Overview

Religion

What is religion from an academic perspective? Religions are ways of building and maintaining worlds of meaning; therefore, religion scholars examine how human beings have attempted to understand the meaning of human life and its relationship to the world and universe. Religions are historical expressions of various ways of creating and maintaining ideas and practices that are both passionately believed in as well as relied upon as roadmaps for life.

As scholars we seek to understand and explain from historical, social, political, and psychological perspectives how religious meanings are created through stories, practices, beliefs, and experiences.

As an academic field, religion studies is multi-disciplinary and secular in its approach. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasising systematic, historically-based, and cross-cultural perspectives. Religion plays a key role in the daily lives of people and has become a major factor in global affairs. Its study has thus become indispensible for those seeking to understand contemporary geo-politics and world affairs.

Religion at UTSC provides students with a basic understanding of the major religious traditions of the world and the opportunity to critically analyze and compare various religions within their social, cultural, historical and political contexts.