DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY & RELIGIOUS STUDIES

RELIGIOUS STUDIES MAJOR

Entrance  Essay

Revised September 2002

We are asking you to complete this essay in order to get a sense of your current intellectual orientation and writing skills, so that we can compare your answer at the declaration of the major and your answer at the completion of the program in your senior year. This is for assessment purposes only and will not be graded. There is no particular right answer: take some time to explore your own ideas and then write approximately two pages to articulate them. This is not a research paper, but you may incorporate ideas from other thinkers if they help to illuminate your own perspective. Please choose one of the following questions as a prompt for your essay.

Question 1:

What is “religion”?

Question 2:

Choose a story from a sacred text or one that plays an important role in a religious tradition and discuss its key themes.

Question 3: 

Max Muller  wrote that to know one religious tradition is to know none. What do you think he means by this? What implications does this idea have for the academic study of religion?

Question 4:

Discuss the significance of religion in terms of its relevance to a contemporary issue or event.  What does this imply for how we ought to approach the study of religious traditions?