An ongoing theme with San José State University’s religious studies courses is the focus on the historical backgrounds and deeper meanings of the respective religions covered, rather than a step-by-step curriculum on how to practice a given faith.
“Academic study of religion is about understanding people and culture around the world, which has great applicability in diverse fields including social service, international business, international relations, health service and education, to name a few,” lecturer Mihwa Choi said.
SJSU offers a Comparative Religious Studies Concentration, where students are to complete the core courses in humanities while focusing on scholarly interpretations of the world’s religious traditions, according to an SJSU webpage.
There is one required course to cover the comparative religious studies concentration’s required major preparation.
The course, Gods, Guns, Gurus, Grails — World Religion, is described as a survey of major world religions and their structures and patterns of each faith according to SJSU’s Religious Studies Concentration Catalog.
Todd Perreira, religious studies lecturer and current teacher of the Gods, Guns, Gurus, Grails course said he is committed to helping his students understand why religion is so crucial to understand on a deeper level.
“It (religion) matters because the world we find ourselves in is an ever-changing world,” Perreira said. “Hinduism and Buddhism can no longer be constrained by geography. Through migration, globalization and the various platforms of social media, we’ve shifted to a new paradigm: it’s all religions in all places at all times.”
Philosophy freshman Ira Zweig said she is taking Death, Dying and Religion, also taught by Perreira, and said even if she arrives to class feeling sleepy, she leaves wide awake because of the engaging nature of each class.
“This class dares to ask fundamental questions with respect to which I have infrequently been able to discuss or learn in the past,” Zweig said. “Each week going into class, I have had my preconceptions of what quantifies, classifies and justifies death and dying challenged, and this has forced me to reorient my own philosophical perspectives on it,”
Zweig said many of the topics discussed in class are open-ended, and that the class encourages each student to develop and consistently reevaluate their own interpretations and stances on death.
Industrial design freshman Selina Cho, who is also in Perreira’s Death, Dying and Religion course said she thoroughly enjoys the class because it opens a forum for conversations about death and its role throughout Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and the Lakota Sioux.
Cho said she is a spiritually-practicing Christian and said as she has grown in her faith, the flaws of organized religion have become apparent to her.
“Professor Perreira’s class is a place for me to understand where it all came from — how we start and how we end,” Cho said. “I never once questioned the before or after, but through his course I have thoroughly enjoyed asking those questions.”
Lecturer Mihwa Choi teaches Legacy of Asia, covering the civilizations of India, China, Central Asia and East Asia, and Censors and Icons: Arts and Religion.
She said this course describes ways of life, forms of governance, artistic and intellectual developments, technological innovations and human interaction.
Choi said her Censors and Icons: Art and Religion course traces the history of civilizations by examining arts and religions beginning with Paleolithic, Mesopotamian and Egyptian arts.
She also said the course looks at how the Persian, Greek and Roman empires utilize religious arts and architectures.
“It is very exciting to teach religions and Asian cultures at SJSU because many students have already been exposed to the subjects through various venues such as their own ethnic backgrounds, social circle, pop culture and multicultural environments of the region,” Choi said.
Humanities Lecturer Lee Gilmore said she currently teaches Magic, Science and Religion. She said a huge challenge she faces is the fact that a lot of people don’t know what religious studies is actually about at SJSU, and believes more people should take a religious course.
Gilmore said that the overarching goal of the academic study of religion is to try to help people better understand the content of various religious beliefs and practices.
“The lack of knowledge about religions is not the fault of any of our students, rather I think it is the result of there is simply not a lot of education about religions in most K-12 public schools,” Gilmore said. “I really do think that everybody would be better off if everyone had to take at least one religious studies course while they were in college.”
