Religion, Culture and Society

Specialisation of: Theology and Religious Studies
Degree: Master of Arts in Theology and Religious Studies
Mode of Study: Full-time, part-time
Duration: 1 year
Start date: September, February
Language of instruction: English
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In the specialisation Religion, Culture and Society you study religion from comparative or historical perspectives, or with an intellectual distance, looking at the interaction with knowledge and practices that are at first external to the beliefs themselves.

The Religion, Culture and Society specialisation is geared towards students who want to work on religious diversity and interaction in the past and present. It brings together approaches from the history of religions, comparative religion, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, philosophy and ethics. Students are required to approach religion from a variety of perspectives and to formulate integrated research questions.

Religion is an immensely important dimension of human culture and society, and can be studied on various levels: from the personal/individual level based on its function in distinct communities, societies or periods of history through to its role in the modern world as a whole. It is clear that there is no single (integrated) theory of religion. An interdisciplinary approach to the subject is therefore indispensable, and students in this specialisation can choose both a focus area (a particular religious tradition or a chosen theme, such as ‘religion and violence’, ‘pilgrimage’, ‘freedom of religion’, ‘esotericism’) and a disciplinary angle from which their subject will be approached. The Institute for Religious Studies, and the Faculty of Humanities as a whole, are almost unparalleled in the broad scope of their geographical, historical, and disciplinary expertise.

Dr. Rico Sneller

Rico Sneller

“In the present-day world you see that the factor of religion plays an in-creasingly important role in consi-derations on societal issues.”

“My specialist field is ethics, an area of philosophy that systematically questions human behaviour. I am concerned with such issues as the relationship between religion and morality. Is man perhaps not inherently irrational? In general you can say that philosophy puts all world views into a common perspective, whether they be religious or scientific. Ethics, as a branch of philosophy, calls into discussion contemporary moral assumptions within religion, as well as issues in this field which emerge from the arts and sciences. I am infinitely fascinated by identifying problems.

In the present-day world you see that the factor of religion plays an increasingly important role in considerations on societal issues. Not so long ago the religious context was regarded as irrelevant: In Europe, for example, Christianity was relegated to the private domain. But now there are definite signs that a change is taking place. Many Muslims, for example, no longer expressly distance themselves from the visible aspects of their religion, such as clothing or public prayers, whereby other religions rediscover themselves as religions.

In 2005 I won Leiden University’s teaching prize. I believe it is essential for a teacher to be fully committed to and engaged in education. You cannot teach ethics as an automaton; to me this seems a contradiction in terms. An automaton has no awareness of what is at stake, or how much pain a particular decision can inflict.”