Courses in Religion (Division 457)

Winter Term, 1999 (January 6-April 29, 1999)

Take me to the Winter Term '99 Time Schedule for Religion.

The Studies in Religion Program provides students with a basic knowledge of the history, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology of religion; promotes an understanding of diverse religious traditions; and examines religious questions which arise in all cultures. The concern of the program is not to inculcate a particular doctrine or faith but rather to broaden and deepen a student's knowledge and understanding of religious traditions.

Instructor(s): Gabrielle Boccaccini (gbocca@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Ancient Civilizations and Biblical Studies 122.001.

Instructor(s): Alexander Knysh (alknysh@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and Islamic Studies 262.001.

Instructor(s): Donald Lopez (dlopez@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Buddhist Studies 231.001.

Section 001 – The Christian Tradition from the Reformation to the Present

Instructor(s): Thomas Tentler

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is the continuation of Religion/History 308, "The Christian Tradition from the New Testament to 1521." A survey of Christian teaching, institutions, and culture. Among the topics studied will be varieties of Protestant Reformations (Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Calvin and the Reformed tradition, Anglicanism); the scientific revolution; Deism and the Enlightenment; 17th and 18th-century revivals; Christianity and the modern state; Higher (Biblical) Criticism; Modernism; Christianity and modern science; Fundamentalism; the modern Papacy; the Christian churches and Nazi Germany; and contemporary theological, moral, and scholarly controversies. Students will be graded on two short essays on the assigned reading; a midterm, and a final. There are no prerequisites and students will be constantly encouraged to ask for clarification of material they do not understand. Since our orientation is academic, students need not believe "in" anything to take this course.

Sections 002-007 may be elected ECB

Instructor(s): Miles

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will provide students with a general survey of the religious experience of Afro-Americans, concentrating on developments in the religious life of Black people in America. Various religious impulses within the Black community will be studied, including traditional Christianity, Islam, Judaism, cultic Christianity (as expressed in the various Pentecostal movements which have been described as "personality cults" such as those led by Father Divine, Daddy Grace Prophet Jones, and Rev. Oke). A brief survey of the traditional African approach to religion is given in the background for a proper understanding of the ways in which the introduction of Christianity affected African people, followed by a study of the development of religion among Black people in ante-bellum America. The study of Black religion since 1900 will explore the social and political cross-currents which led to the rise of separatist religious groups in the twentieth century. The role of mainline churches and their success or failure in translating the needs and aspirations of the Black community to the larger society will be studied in relation to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and the development of new social-action oriented religious movements. The course will conclude with an exploration of Black religious moods in contemporary society.

Rel. 387. Independent Study.

Prerequisites & Distribution: Concentration in Religion. (1-3). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit. Only one course from Religion 380, 387 and 487 may be elected in the same term.

No Description Provided.

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Section 001 – Drawing Maps of the Spirit: Buddhist Debates on the Spiritual Path. (3 credits). Pre-requisite of Religion 201-202, or Buddhist Studies 230, or equivalent. Meets with Institute for the Humanities 411.001, Asian Studies 480.002, Buddhist Studies 480.002, Religion 480.002, and Philosophy 457.002

Instructor(s): Luis Gómez (lgomez@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Upper-class standing. (1-3). (Excl).

Credits: (1-3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Religion 480.002.

Section 002 – Women in Tantric Buddhism. (3 credits). Meets with Religion 480.001 and Women's Studies 483.006

Instructor(s): Janet Gyatso

Prerequisites & Distribution: Upper-class standing. (1-3). (Excl).

Credits: (1-3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Religion 480.001.

Section 003 – African American Religion Between Christianity and Islam. (3 credits). Meets with AAPTIS 491.001

Instructor(s): Sherman Jackson, Charles Long

Prerequisites & Distribution: Upper-class standing. (1-3). (Excl).

Credits: (1-3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is a special offering for the Winter, 1999 term. It will be team-taught by two distinguished scholars, Dr. Sherman Jackson of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and Reverend Dr. Charles Long, recently retired from the University of Chicago Divinity School. The course will explore the meaning of religion for Africans as they confronted their involuntarily existence in America as slaves. It will investigate the extent to which African cultural and religious influences combined with the American experience to shape the manner in which African-Americans understood, related to and sought to reinterpret Christianity and Islam. In addition, we will look to see how such notions as Christian love or Islamic jihbd shaped African-American Christian and Muslim attitudes and responses to their sitiuation in America. We will also study the phenomenon of African American Christians and Muslims borrowing from each other tools and concepts for interpreting Christianity, Islam and the world around them. A major focus of the course will center on the phenomenon of African-American reliance upon Christianity and Islam to develop and sustain alternative definitions and modes of "Blackness." The course will also examine the Black Christian and Muslim community's struggle to find its own voice, its own distinctive religious expression and its self-determined socio-religious agenda in the context of a broader religious supertradition whose doctrine, history and practices were already set by others. This will include a profile on the contributions of such figures as Richard Allen, the early Black baptists, Daddy Grace, Father Divine, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elijah Muhammad, H. Rap Brown (Jamnl al-Amin), Malcolm X, Louis Farakhan and others.

The course will feature joint discussions by Professors Long and Jackson for the first week of each month, the implications of these discussions being further explored with Professor Jackson over the remainder of the month. The actual experiences of Professor Long in the Christian community and of Professor Jackson in the Muslim community will combine to provide students with a unique insight into the ways in which Christianity and Islam have differentially or similarly shaped African-American's understanding of their religious and secular past, present and future in America. This course represents an opportunity to study African American religion with two of the country's leading scholars of Christianity and Islam. Text: African-American Religion, ed. T.E. Fulop & A.J. Raboteau.

Instructor(s): Richard Mann (rdmann@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdmann/

This course explores the stages of spiritual development, beginning with awakening and initiation, through the deepening of direct experience and the formulation of a coherent spiritual path, including the notion of an ultimate attainment. It explores the function of spiritual groups and teachers in facilitating this development. Of particular interest are: (1) the spiritual seeker's experience of "little death," the mode of apparent discontinuity when the "old life" is supplanted by a new identity and mode of living; (2) times of crisis, adaptation, and "the dark night". and (3) the experience of "physical death," as seen from the perspective of a lifetime of encountering both relative and absolute reality. By means of personal narratives and fictional accounts this course explores how diverse traditions create and value these moments of surrender and transformation. Lectures and readings by Hesse, Jung, Hillesum, Feild, Lessing, Soygal Rimpoche, Wilber, and others will form the basis of three short papers and one long final paper. There will be no final exam.

Instructor(s): R Freeman

Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior standing. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Cultural Anthropology 448.001.

Instructor(s): Terrence McGinn (tjmcginn@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Sociology 455.001.

Instructor(s): Elliot Ginsburg (elgins@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Hebrew and Jewish Cultural Studies 478.001.

Section 001 – Models of Jewish Renewal

Instructor(s): Elliot Ginsburg (elgins@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of nine credits.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Hebrew and Jewish Cultural Studies 577.001.

Section 001 – Women in Tantric Buddhism. Meets with Women's Studies 483.006 and Religion 402.002

Instructor(s): Janet Gyatso

Prerequisites & Distribution: Religion 230. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will investigate the actual position and practices of women in tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet, and the relation of those realities to their representation in tantric texts. Our sources will consist primarily of biographical material, tantric scriptures, and ritual compendia. This study will be preceded by a history of the position of women in Buddhism overall. In order to consider the usefulness of contemporary feminist passages from Irigaray, Butler, Kristeva, and others.

Section 002 – Drawing Maps of the Spirit: Buddhist Debates on the Spiritual Path. Meets with Humanities Institute 411.001 and Religion 402.001

Instructor(s): Luis Gómez (lgomez@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Religion 230. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course uses aspects of Buddhism to explore a classical problem of religion: the tension between intuition or spontaneous experience and systems of religious and ethical self-cultivation. As a common theme in the history of religions, the issue may be expressed succinctly as "cultivated wisdom versus spontaneous insight." However, the debate and conflict usually centers on culture-specific conceptions of these two poles. This course concentrates on one specific conception of the polarity, the so-called Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment distinction.

The focus of the course are a number of Buddhist texts produced in the eighth-century, as part of controversies over immediate (non-mediated) and gradual enlightenment (with cultivated degrees of perfection). These controversies are commonly known in the West as "the Council of Lhasa," but extended well beyond the local events in Central Tibet associated with this "council".

Readings from English translations of Buddhist materials are paired with lectures on the historical, social, and doctrinal backgrounds of the controversies. Additional lectures and student presentations will explore similar polemics in Western Christianity, Hinduism, and Chinese philosophy.

Instructor(s): Ralph Williams (fiesole@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~vika/englbible.html

See English 401.001.

Rel. 487. Independent Study.

Prerequisites & Distribution: Concentration in Religion. (1-3). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit. Only one course from Religion 380, 387 and 487 may be elected in the same term.

No Description Provided.

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Rel. 497. Senior Honors Thesis.

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open only to seniors admitted to the Honors concentration program. (1-6). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for a total of six credits.

No Description Provided.

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