MA RELIGIONS AND THEOLOGY NEWSLETTER
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MA in Religions and Theology at The University of Manchester Covering a wide range of religious traditions, our Masters programmes prepare you either for work in which religious and cultural awareness is important or for further study. About half our students come with a Religion or Theology degree. The rest come usually with a Humanities degree and a desire to switch focus into the study of religion or a related field. Most teaching is in small-group seminars. These are reinforced by access to a wide range of undergraduate classes, including language classes, and to teaching from other departments. Most of our courses have a distinctive interest in the relation between religion and context. We have four particularly strong areas of focus. Please click on the links to find out more:
Religion, theology and politics, society and media
South Asia (India, Pakistan and their neighbours)
Judaism, from antiquity and the mediaeval period to modern Jewish-Christian relations
Study of the Bible in its original context, such as Dead Sea Scrolls and the Roman Empire
For detailed information and contact details, please see the 2015 postgraduate Religions and Theology brochure. As an MA student, you will have research access to the John Ryland's Library, one of the world’s leading archive centres, housing everything from the oldest New Testament fragment to John Wesley’s letters. Our university library is one of the best in the UK for printed books and one of the best in the world for electronic resources, including access to hundreds of journals in religion.
1 CONTENTS About the Programme
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Career Options
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News from the Department
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Research Seminars and Conferences
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The Graduate School
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Contact Us
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About the Programme This programme aims to provide students in Religions and Theology with the
opportunity to deepen their knowledge of these fields. It stresses a broad, interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Courses can be taken from across the offerings within the discipline and beyond. Courses in Religions and Theology cover a wide range of topics, including subject oriented choices in Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies, Christian Studies, and South Asian Studies, and method oriented courses in philosophy, gender studies, hermeneutics, political theory and more. The subject core course unit is a 1 semester unit covering ‘Religions and Theology: Methods and Impacts’. Optional course units are drawn from a combination of choices available in the specialist research foci (Biblical Studies; History of Christianity; Jewish Studies; Religion and Political Life; South Asian Studies; Theology, Culture and Society and Applied Theology). Your selection will be tailored to meet your particular range of interests. Detailed information can be found here: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/brochures/2015/
Career Options
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πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει Aristotle, Metaphysics, [980α] [21] It is true that ‘all humans by nature desire to know’. The MA in Religions and Theology offers a wide range of career opportunities. Motivations for undertaking an MA in Religions and Theology are diverse. From our international cohort of MA students in the past, at least three strands of future career perspectives should be mentioned. - Further academic studies and prepare for a PhD/re-join academia. - Prepare for a PGCE and a future career as a teacher - Enhance knowledge of Religions today for a professional career like Journalism, Consultancy for NGO’s, Charity trust, Civil service or other professional bodies.
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News from the Department: A Showcase Example
Professor Daniel Langton from the department has been awarded the Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for his project "Darwin's Jews".
Darwin’s Jews: evolutionary theory, Jewish thought and interfaith relations Evolution had been in the air well before Charles Darwin arrived on the scene. It was with the publication of his Origins of Species (1859) and the theory of natural selection as the primary mechanism, however, that the idea of evolution came to be regarded as a serious challenge to religious thinkers. In contrast to alternative theories, Darwin’s insistence upon the chance processes, the cruelty, and the wastage of life that appeared inherent to the ‘struggle for life’ were more problematic. European and North American Jews from across the religious spectrum had, like their Christian counterparts, long been familiar with the general idea of evolution. Many had found in the transmutation of species a useful analogy to spiritual or religious development. But Darwin provoked a sea-change, such that a good number felt obliged to establish oppositional, alternative, synthetic, or complementary models relating Jewish religion to his theory of natural selection. These responses to what is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential ideas in the modern world fall broadly into three contexts of interest to this project.
The first context is the religion-science controversy, and here there is a need to challenge the assumption characteristic of many religion-science studies that there is a shared Judeo-Christian approach to creation and evolutionary theory, an assumption that subsumes the Jewish into the Christian. The 20th century philosopher Hans Jonas, for example, articulated his combination of a free-will defence and biological theory by drawing heavily upon the very distinctive language and imagery of Jewish myth and mysticism. The second context is the historical development of progressive forms of Judaism, whose proponents have consistently claimed since the early 19th century that they seek to reconcile Jewish religion with the best of contemporary scientific thought. Ironically, most studies of Reform or Liberal Judaism have tended to ignore the engagement of reformers with the science of evolution, which was arguably the scientific idea that drew the most sustained interest. A good example here is the series of twelve sermons published as The Cosmic God (1876) by the founder of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Meyer Wise, who offered an alternative theistic account of transmutation to that of Darwinism, which he dismissed as ‘homo-brutalism’. The third context is that of interfaith relations. Despite the high profile given to Darwinism in public Christian theological discourse about creation and the fact that, since the Enlightenment, there has been a strong tendency for Jews to work out their responses to modernity in relation to Christian thought, the place of Darwinism in JudeoChristian debate and dialogue is not well appreciated. The 19th century Italian Elijah Benamozegh is an example of a Jewish thinker who was suspicious of the theory of natural selection and of Christian theology, but who was nevertheless heavily influenced in his reading of evolutionary theory by Christian interpreters of Darwin.
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6 Research Seminars and Conferences The department of Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester is running a number of departmental seminars and annual conferences as well as research based workshops open to all postgraduate students. Further information about research activities by our research centres are listed below: Centre for Jewish Studies http://www.manchesterjewishstudies.org/
Lincoln Theological Institute and Research Network Religion and Political Culture http://religionandcivilsociety.com/blog/
General overview of past, current and future activities: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/religionstheology/
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The Graduate School The Graduate School promotes excellence in Arts and Languages Research. It is an online and physical community where postgraduate students can meet each other, access resources and organise events. As part of our stimulating Graduate School you join a cutting-edge gathering of researchers. You can keep up to date with events, conferences and seminars both in the Graduate School and further afield with our Graduate School Blog or by following us on twitter. In addition to expert teaching and tuition you will be offered excellent training, be able to access great new facilities such as common rooms and workstations, use world-leading library and archive collections, and participate in a thriving academic community. The School has an exceptional record of generating and sharing new ideas, and the quality, breadth and volume of its activity is unparalleled in the UK.
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CONTACT US MASALC@manchester.ac.uk Post Graduate Admissions Office School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Room CG5, Ellen Wilkinson Building The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PT United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)161 275 0322