Religion 300: Transformative Spiritual Journeys: Contemporary Memoirs of Religion

This course presents individuals who have created religious and spiritual lives amid the variety of possibilities for religious belonging. By engaging this canon of memoirs, we will take seriously the writings of theologians, religious laity, spiritual gurus, pop icon philosophers, LGBT clergy, religious minorities, and scholars of religion as foundational for considering religious authority through popular, institutional, and otherwise forms of religious leadership. Themes of spiritual formation and religious belonging as a process—healing, self-making, writing, converting, renouncing, dreaming, and liberating—characterize the religious journeys of the writers, thinkers, and leaders whose works we will examine. Each weekly session will also incorporate relevant audiovisual religious media, including online exhibits, documentary films, recorded sermons, tv series, performance art, and music.