Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, staff, and guests what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does Dr. Solimar Otero of Indiana University’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology think it’s important to study religion? Watch the video below to find out!

Transcript: “That’s an excellent question! I’m actually a folklorist, and my work deals with everyday expressive culture. And religion is so much more than what people usually think of in terms of, say, formal rituals or formal texts. Religion is something that involves our everyday lives and our everyday expressions. Religions influence the way we eat, the way we think, the way we dream, the way that we understand ourselves, the way that we relate to other people. So religion’s embedded in cultural practices that many people don’t consider to be part of, say, official religious life. And so I think that we should study religions because it will allow us to learn more, not only about ourselves, but about other cultures and other people.”

Interested in sharing with us what brought you to the academic study of religion? Send us an email at religion@osu.edu!

Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, and staff what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does Dr. Hannibal Hamlin, Interim Director of the Center and Professor of English, think it’s important to study religion? Watch the video below to find out!

Transcript: “I’m Hannibal Hamlin. I’m the Director for the Center for the Study of Religion and a Professor in the English Department specializing in literature of the English Renaissance–Shakespeare’s time. And I’m particularly interested in literature and religion and in the influence of the English Bible on English literature.

“Why study religion? Well, in my particular period, in the English Renaissance, everybody was required to attend church by law. And there was only one Church–the Church of England. After the Reformation, there was a minority Catholic population, but religious belief and practice was virtually universal. And religion gets at the heart of what people think and believe, what they hold to be most important. It’s not just a sort-of ‘weekend thing;’ it touches every aspect of life in the period I study. And you’d be hard-pressed to find any work of literature that doesn’t, in some way or another, connect with religious questions, religious ideas. Salvation, sin, and death. More broadly speaking, religion is still a central part of so many aspects of people’s lives across the world. The majority of Americans are believers, are practitioners in one religion or another, and that percentage increases as you go across the world. And centers like Pew [Research Center], or people who keep that sort of data, tell us that over the next decades, that percentage is even going to increase. Religion simply gets at the heart of what is most important to people. Life; death; life after death, if you hold that sort of belief; sin; salvation; love; grief; forgiveness: all of these things connect to religion, and so, why not study religion?”

Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, and staff what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does Dr. David Brakke of OSU’s Department of History think it’s important to study religion? Watch the video below to find out!

Transcript: “You should study religion, not just because it’s a ubiquitous and important phenomenon of human culture and history–that is, that it really motivates and explains, if we can use that word, a lot of what has happened in our world. And so, it’s a basic motivation for why people do what they do. But the other reason you should study religion is because it is the quintessential interdisciplinary topic; that is, you do a little history, you do some anthropology, you do literary criticism. We look at religion in a variety of different ways, and it really introduces an undergraduate student to the different ways the Humanities are studied, rather than to just one single approach. And, of course, you should study religion because, in the end, we really don’t know what it is. And that‘s what makes studying it so fun and interesting. Because the whole time you’re doing it, you’re like, ‘what is this thing we call religion?’ and ‘does it really exist?’ and so forth, so there are just many great reasons to study religion.”

Interested in sharing with us what brought you to the academic study of religion? Send us an email at religion@osu.edu!