RELI 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.

Topic for 2021/22b: Religion and Revolution. A commonplace in popular discourse is that religion is an inherently conservative force in culture, politics, and society. This seminar calls this assumption into question by examining historical examples from across the world of religious movements inspiring and enacting momentous, sudden, and sometimes violent changes in the social order. We also address the similarities and differences between political revolutions we think of as “secular” (e.g., the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution of 1949) and revolutions with readily-discernible religious aspects, including the German Peasant Rebellion of 1525, the Haitian Revolution, and the 1979 Iranian revolution. Throughout the semester, we question what divides religious and secular revolutions, and why they often become hybridized in terms of actors, theories, and strategies for changing the world. At the same time, we consider how these developments square with theories of religion and political economy developed by Karl Marx and other dialectical-materialist thinkers. If religion is not simply the “opiate of the people,” how should we evaluate its impact in different times and places, in dramatic cataclysms as well as in everyday life? Klaus Yoder.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS