World Religions: Western and Eastern Traditions

Course Code: SOCI200

Examine the various ways in which some of world's religions have transformed over time and responded to new environments, new circumstances, and new challenges. To understand these living religious traditions, we look at their origins and histories, and discuss the figures, beliefs, sacred texts, rituals, stories and historical events which helped to shape their development. Particular attention will be paid to founding narratives and figures, the histories of religious traditions and their diversification, theological doctrine, mystical traditions, ritual, concepts of life, death and time, and conceptions of the relationship between religion and ethical, social and political life.