Every Tuesday this semester, about 20 students gathered in J. Walter Wilson for the Brown Religious Literacy Project, a non-for-credit class designed to promote dialogue about world religions.
Ben Marcus '13, the creator of the project, said the name of the project is slightly tongue in cheek because it is impossible to become fully religiously literate in any one religion in one semester — or ever. "The goal is to make people in a way realize how little they know and to give them the hunger and the skills to further their knowledge about one tradition or multiple traditions," he said.
The project followed a 13-week-long schedule and primarily covered five religions — Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. The class covered each of these religions for two weeks, the first of which involved a visit from a chaplain from the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life and a professor from the Department of Religious Studies, who offered views on different approaches to religion. Every other week, class was dedicated to student-led discussion.
During the 12th week, participants researched and presented on traditions not covered during the class.
The student wrote journal assignments and completed weekly readings. They also took part in two field trips, attending either a religious service — like Mass or a Shabbat service — or a meeting of a religious association, like the Brown Muslim Students' Association. Marcus said he provided texts from news sources and asked the chaplains and professors to provide reading material, which ranged from text books to scripture, to foster discussion.
Marcus said he decided to create the project last year when he tried talking to friends about Switzerland banning minarets, an architectural part of Islamic mosques. But he said his friends did not know what minarets were. "That was sort of a wake-up call to me that there are a lot of intelligent people at Brown who are woefully ignorant about matters of faith," he said. "So this is sort of a project in bringing together different people from different academic paths to sort of talk about religion and why it's pertinent to our society."
The Department of Religious Studies does not offer its own course on world religions because many professors feel the constraints of teaching a class would prohibit it being truly fulfilling, Marcus said.
The class had "the luxury of trying things that wouldn't necessarily be possible in a credit-bearing course" because it brought together perspectives from the office of the chaplains and the religious studies department, he said. Because the course was not offered for credit, he said it also allowed "students who had a full courseload but were interested in issues of religion to take part without stress or anxiety about grades and to be more open."
Maddie Johnston '13, a human biology concentrator, said her courseload was primarily filled with science courses, so the project offered her a different venue for discussion. "I feel that this has been a missing part of my education, to just get to talk about big questions that don't have answers," she said.
