RELIGION
Welcome
Political Culture of Religion
Religion has long been an influential force in shaping political life, informing identities, legitimising authority, inspiring resistance, and framing moral visions of society. This course explores the political culture of religion: how religious beliefs, practices, symbols, and institutions interact with political ideas, behaviours, and power across historical and contemporary contexts.
Instead of viewing religion solely as a private belief, the course explores it as a cultural system that shapes how communities perceive authority, citizenship, justice, and collective identity. Students will analyse how religious traditions influence political cultures by forming narratives of nationhood, public morality, law, and social movements, and how political systems, in turn, regulate, reinterpret, or utilise religion.
Through comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, the course examines case studies from various regions and traditions, including secular and post-secular societies. Key themes include religion and nationalism, church–state relations, political rituals and symbols, religious populism, fundamentalism, pluralism, and the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding. Attention is also given to everyday practices and popular discourses, highlighting how ordinary believers and institutions participate in political life.
By the end of the course, students will develop a nuanced understanding of religion as a dynamic component of political culture. It both mirrors and influences power relations, social norms, and political imaginations in a globalised world.
Science, Technology, and Religion in History
This course examines the long and intricate relationship between science, technology, and religion throughout world history. Instead of viewing these fields as separate or naturally opposed, the course considers how they have continually influenced, challenged, and reshaped one another. From ancient cosmologies and sacred technologies to contemporary debates over evolution, medicine, and artificial intelligence, scientific and technological advancements have often developed within religious, philosophical, and cultural contexts.
Students will explore how religious beliefs have shaped scientific research and technological progress. They will also examine how new discoveries and tools have influenced religious ideas and practices. The course covers various historical periods and regions, featuring case studies such as medieval Islamic astronomy, technology and rituals in early civilisations, the Scientific Revolution in Christian Europe, and current global debates on faith, ethics, and science.
By exploring science and technology within their historical and religious contexts, this course promotes critical thinking about knowledge, authority, and meaning. Students will develop a deeper understanding of how societies have debated questions regarding the natural world, human purpose, and divine order and how these debates continue to shape modern life.
Political Economy of Religion
This course examines religion as a significant social institution embedded within economic systems and political structures. Instead of viewing religion solely as a matter of belief or doctrine, the political economy of religion investigates how religious ideas, organisations, and actors interact with markets, states, and power networks. Throughout historical and contemporary contexts, the course considers how religion both influences and is influenced by material conditions, economic motives, and political authority.
Students will analyse how religious institutions acquire and deploy resources; how states regulate, support, or suppress religious activity; and how religious beliefs influence economic behaviour, public policy, and political mobilisation. Topics include religion and capitalism, welfare and charity, taxation and property, colonialism and development, nationalism, secularisation, and the role of religion in inequality, conflict, and social movements. Competing theoretical approaches, ranging from classical political economy and Marxist critiques to rational choice, institutional analysis, and postcolonial perspectives, will be used to frame these debates.
By the end of the course, students will be able to critically evaluate the economic and political dimensions of religion, compare religious economies across societies, and assess the implications of spiritual power for governance, development, and social justice. The course promotes interdisciplinary thinking and provides students with analytical tools to understand religion as a dynamic force in political and economic life.
Material Culture, Religion, and Power
This course explores how religion is constructed, experienced, and challenged through material culture in daily life, with a focus on power dynamics across different historical and modern contexts. Instead of seeing religion solely as a set of beliefs or doctrines, it is approached as something practised, embodied, and negotiated through objects, spaces, bodies, technologies, routines, icons, clothing, architecture, food, media, money, rituals, and domestic settings. These material forms are inherently active: they reflect and reinforce social hierarchies while also serving as sites for resistance, reinterpretation, and change.
Using historical case studies and practical theology, this course examines how power operates through material religion to shape perceptions of the sacred, authority, and belonging. It analyses how gender, race, class, colonialism, and institutional authority determine which religious practices are recognised or marginalised, and how daily religious life becomes a space for negotiating between dominance and agency. In practical theological settings, the course examines how lived religious practices shape pastoral care, community building, and ethical action, highlighting the impact of material conditions and power dynamics on theological reflection.
This course combines material culture studies, religious history, and practical theology, allowing students to critically examine how religion manifests in daily life through what is seen, touched, worn, consumed, and contested, and to explore how emphasising materiality and power can deepen understanding of history and enhance contemporary religious practices.