Religious Studies News

One problematic area in the teaching and learning of religion and theology is the quality of statistics and other data that students use in their assignments and reports. Students often rely on Google for statistics, grabbing the information from the first page of search results without asking critical questions about the quality of the data. For students who are looking for statistical and other primary research data on intercultural, global, and transnational trends and their implications, I always encourage them to visit the Pew Research Center as a starting point. The Pew Research Center tracks public opinion, as well as national and global trends, on various issues including religion. Specific examples of Pew Research Center’s projects that focus on religion include the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; the Pew Forum’s United States Religious Landscape Survey; and the Pew Forum’s United States Religious Knowledge Survey. Another useful source of data on religion and its social, cultural, and political implications for students is the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA).

Without a doubt the days of students consulting print encyclopedias in the library are long gone. Today Wikipedia has become the default initial reference resource for most students. To break the cycle of overdependence on Wikipedia, I suggest that students visit online peer-reviewed encyclopedias such as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, since there are often areas of overlap between philosophy, religion, and theology. While it is true that their range of articles is limited in comparison to Wikipedia, the quality of the writing is significantly better because these are articles that are written by experts in their field.

For historical, cultural, and artistic projects on religion and theology, students are often captivated by the rich visual presentation of religious art, manuscripts and codices, rare books, photographs, film, and objects. In situations where it is not feasible to visit a museum or gallery, I often use the World Digital Library, a joint project of UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress. The images and digital resources in the World Digital Library, many of which pertain to Christianity and other religions from across the world, are very useful for both classroom use and personal viewing by students outside the classroom.

As for students who are in the habit of “Googling” websites and uncritically taking the first ten links as authoritative, I often recommend that they begin their research by visiting general sites such as the Lilly Endowment’s Insights into Religion, CNN’s BeliefNet, Patheos, and the BBC’s Religion Section. In particular, the BBC’s Religion Section is often a good way for students to get a bird’s eye view of global and transnational developments in religion. It collects links to BBC’s news and analysis on religion in one convenient starting page, for comprehensive and objective coverage of religion throughout the world.

For more focused research on news about religion and theology in North America, I often recommend that students consult the New York Times’s topic sections, the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section, and the Huffington Post’s religion section. In particular, the New York Times’s topics section is often a useful starting point for research on a dizzying array of news articles. For example, students looking for news articles on religion and society might want to begin with “Religion and Belief”. For news articles on religion, migration and immigration, students could visit the topic sections entitled “Immigration and Emigration” and “Immigration, Religion, and Churches”. While the New York Times’s topics sections focus on reported news and analysis by columnists and commentators, both the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section and Huffington Post’s religion section go one step further to offer blog posts by scholars, pundits, and other commentators, as well as active discussion boards on a variety of contemporary issues on religion and society in the North American context. While it is true that the blog posts and commentaries vary in terms of depth and quality, they are often thought-provoking in their willingness to take on major political, social, global, intercultural, and religious issues.