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World Religions: Seeing With, Not Looking At LOVETT, STEPHANIE JANE, Ph.D. World Religions: Seeing With, Not Looking At. (2016) Directed by Dr. H. Svi Shapiro. 257 pp. The traditional World Religions construct instantiates a nineteenth-century, Christian, male, Western worldview. Despite its apparent objectivity, it catalogues the peoples of the world according to extrinsic values and descriptors, and parades them in a pageant for the gaze of students. The valorization of historical origins, texts, and doctrines leads students to frame religions as static, logical, and intellectual, leaving them none the wiser as to the lives and feelings and motivations of those around them. This dissertation will situate World Religions in its historical background and critique the worldview it promotes as both misrepresenting contemporary religious experience and simultaneously privileging and repressing students. I will propose instead a World Religions course based on cosmopolitanism, care, and postmodern pedagogy that embeds the students in lived experiences, honors their humanity, and engages them in the worldwide human enterprise. WORLD RELIGIONS: SEEING WITH, NOT LOOKING AT by Stephanie Jane Lovett A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2016 Approved by ____________________________ Committee Chair APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by STEPHANIE JANE LOVETT has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair _____________________________________ Committee Members _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to my advisor, Dr. H. Svi Shapiro, and to my committee, Dr. Silvia Bettez, Dr. Carl Lashley, and Dr. Leila Villaverde, for their assistance and advice in the development of this dissertation. I would also like to thank Dr. Guy Arcuri, Dr. Fred Horton, Dr. Kathy Hytten, and Dr. Joe Provenzano for their valuable advice. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. THE ORIGINS OF WORLD RELIGIONS .............................................................1 II. CURRENT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT TEACHING WORLD RELIGIONS ......................................................................................35 III. PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES FOR A REIMAGINED WORLD RELIGIONS ......................................................................................83 IV. A WORLD RELIGIONS CURRICULUM .........................................................151 V. LOOKING AHEAD AND DWELLING IN POSSIBILITY ..............................219 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................240 APPENDIX A. CLOSE-UP OF THE JUDAISM UNIT .................................................250 iv CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS OF WORLD RELIGIONS In this dissertation, my research topic is the traditional academic concept of World Religions, its origins in a nineteenth-century, European, male, Christian worldview, and its status in the academy and in the culture today, with a view to analyzing the implications of the standard construct for students’ understanding of and relationship to the world and to discovering support for a different pedagogical model. Despite its apparent neutrality, the World Religions paradigm catalogues the peoples of the world according to extrinsic values and descriptors, and parades them in a pageant for the gaze of students. The valorization of historical origins, texts, and doctrines leads students to frame religions as static, logical, and intellectual, leaving them none the wiser as to the lives and feelings and motivations of those around them. In contemporary American culture, where religious issues constantly drive national policies, shape elections, rend communities, and fuel hostilities, students are helped not in the least in their interpersonal and civic interactions by an introduction to World Religions that neither illuminates the modern lived reality of religion nor positions the student within that reality. The research problem that brings me to this topic is my perception that the standard World Religions construct (five or six “great” religions siloed in space and time reinscribes the worldview of the nineteenth-century university that created the academic 1 discipline of religion and reinforces in students an essentialized and othered view of the peoples of the world, but that apparent specialist indifference to a low-level introductory course has ensured the robust continued use of that construct in textbooks and classes. The specific question that I will answer is: Does the conventional introductory World Religions curriculum provide an authentic and meaningful encounter between students and the religions of the world; if not, what might be the principles and practices of a curriculum that would offer greater integrity and meaning? In the following chapters, this overarching question will be explored though four smaller and more specific questions. After this brief introduction, Chapter One will address the question: How did the World Religions paradigm commonly referred to as the Big Five, that we now take for granted as an obviously true representation of the world, originate and take its present shape? To answer this, I will present research about the historical construction in the nineteenth century of the seemingly natural World Religions paradigm we have today. Against this background, I will also highlight some contemporary critiques of the academic study of religion, which are pertinent to concerns about an introductory World Religions course because they focus on matters of the devotional versus the academic teaching of religion and on the reification of religion. The guiding question in Chapter Two is: Is there a critical academic conversation today that troubles the Big Five and that elucidates specific questions and/or strategies for making a more fair, effective, and humane use of an introductory religion course? In order to understand how the world of academia views this course—offered to teenagers in high school and, primarily, in college—and to discover what problems instructors have 2 identified and brought into a larger discussion, I will review the academic literature, analyzing the significance and implications of the tactics a few instructors are employing to transform course content, approach, and student engagement. Taken together, the aspects of the course that these instructors focus on as being in need of change provide some insight into specifically how the standard World Religions paradigm is pedagogically counterproductive. In searching for a path to a different type of introductory religion course, I next ask: What pedagogical principles provide solid ground for a radical shift in both the structure and the goals of a World Religions course? In Chapter Three, I will answer this by grounding educational priorities in theories pertaining to citizenship and cosmopolitanism, peace education, pedagogy of caring, critical pedagogy, and postmodern pedagogy. Since I will be advocating for priorities and methods that differ significantly from those of the traditional course, it will be important to understand on what basis we can make those decisions. Chapter Four asks: Can there be a World Religions curriculum that introduces students to the religions of the world with content and methods that make imaginary strangers present in the classroom in their own terms, that acknowledge multiplicity and uncertainty, and that welcome the students’ full intellectual and emotional humanity? In answer, I will present an alternative curriculum for World Religions, giving an overview of its components and attaching a detailed view of one component, with commentary linking it to its theoretical grounds. This curriculum will give concrete form to the theoretical arguments propounded in the previous chapters and will make plain what 3 prioritizing the practitioners of the religions of the world and the people learning about them over texts, histories, and doctrines could look like—not incidentally embodying my argument that experiencing something is a necessary dimension beyond simply hearing it described. In Chapter Five, I will conclude by briefly exploring some of the institutional, cultural and pedagogic challenges in implementing this curriculum. I have a special interest in the potential for enacting this at the high school level, and so the church/state implications become of particular note. At all levels, implementation is shaped the most powerfully by teacher training, and so I will comment on that at some length. Finally, I will address concerns about how we represent religion and religions and their complicated and contradictory characteristics in ways that are fair and to the purpose. I. The Origins of World Religions World Religions, an introductory survey of the religions of the world usually intended for non-majors, is widely taught, and “the odds are rather high that if a student ever takes a course in the study of religion—whether the student majors in the field or not—it will be an introduction to world religions” (McCutcheon, 1997, p. 103). The standard “Big Five” paradigm represents the world
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