The philosophy department is offering a new religious studies minor after a growth in popularity nationwide.

“Religious studies is very popular at a lot of universities around the country. It’s sort of a growing trend recently for universities that haven’t had religious studies to add new programs or new departments,” said Grant Sterling, assistant philosophy professor.

Sterling said religious studies is important, and it should be covered at Eastern because of religion’s significant role in shaping human society and culture both historically and currently.

“I think religion is a central part of human society and human thought, and university students should have the opportunity to study religion,” Sterling said. “Not just in the sense of, ‘Well, you go to your local church, synagogue or whatever and participate in your own religious movement,’ but to actually study different religions-how they came about, what their teachings are, how they can be understood and sometimes how they can be criticized.”

Members of philosophy faculty began discussing the development of a religious studies department years ago, Sterling said.

“Our original plan was to hire a full-time staff member just to teach religious studies courses, but over time we decided it would make more sense to start the program with classes that already existed,” Sterling said. “So, we created an interdisciplinary minor that has classes in it from anthropology, communications studies, English, history and philosophy.”

Sterling said the goal was to set up the program so there would be a lot of flexibility.

“We have found that some students have already taken three or four of these classes just as electives-not part of the program or anything-and so now that can become a religious studies minor and finish the program without having to take a whole bunch of extra classes outside of whatever they’re taking for their major,” Sterling said.

A student must take 18 credit hours, or approximately six courses, that would fulfill the required curriculum to complete the religious studies minor. Also, the only two required courses are Introduction to Religious Studies and Philosophy of Religion, according to Eastern’s course catalog.

Currently, Introduction to Religious Studies and Special Topics in Religious Studies are the only two classes identified by the prefix RLS.

A few years ago, the philosophy department had set up an introductory religious studies course, not as part of a minor, just as an elective, Sterling said.

“That’s been a very popular course, we’ve had to offer multiple sections of it and we’ve had a lot of student interest,” Sterling said. “A lot of students really enjoyed the course and thought it was valuable.”

Sterling said, in response to that interest, Special Topics in Religious Studies was created when the minor was established.

The philosophy department thought the course would give faculty members who were interested in teaching a more in-depth, upper-level religious studies course a framework they could use without having to create a whole new course with a new number every time a different professor wanted to teach it, Sterling said.

“This class could be thought with one topic this fall, and then next spring could be taught with a totally different topic; still within the confines of religious studies obviously,” Sterling said.

The class will be offered for the first time in the fall of 2010 and will be taught by Dannie Otto, a philosophy professor.

Sterling said the committee, which was established to oversee the minor, is an organizational stage right now.

“I’ve just started getting the committee together and talking about ideas for things we might do in the future,” Sterling said.

Sterling said, at some point, the philosophy faculty would like to offer in-depth courses taught by someone with a strong background in biblical languages, for example.

“A lot of universities with religious studies programs have that,” Sterling said.

Jason Hardimon can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].