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Welcome to the
Department of Religion at Duke
University!
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The study of religion explores one of the primary activities of humankind. It involves a comparative understanding of the various ways different peoples, across space and through time, have developed their religious ideas, values, systems, beliefs, rituals, and traditions in response to fundamental questions of human existence.
As an interdisciplinary academic discipline, the study of religion offers a rigorous, systematic, and dispassionate intellectual inquiry into various aspects of religious systems, their practitioners and outlooks, their goals and expressions. It employs a wide variety of approaches and methods in order to understand the role of religion in both human experience and thought.
The goal of the Department of Religion is to make available to students the broadest possible range of inquiry about this enormous field, which has impacted, and continues to impact, all aspects of human experience.
If you're searching for:
- The opportunity to examine the place and role of religious traditions in human culture;
- An understanding of faiths, world views, and ways of life that command the allegiance of millions of people;
- A major with practical applications across a broad range of fields, including ministerial, law, education, and medicine;
- A path to self-awareness;
Then consider the study of Religion at Duke.