"People don't understand," she said, laughing. "They think it's seminary or
something, but it's the academic study of religion."
By Browning Brooks
FSU Communications Group
Karen Marinelli says people "roll their eyes" when she tells them she's majoring in business and religion.
"People don't understand," she said, laughing. "They think it's seminary or
something, but it's the academic study of religion."
Marinelli says she never intended a double major but found her religion courses so fascinating that she sort of "fell into" the FSU religion department.
"I had small classes with professors at the top of their fields, and I now have a much broader perspective," she said. "It's the best thing I could have done for my education."
In fact, Marinelli was able to tailor her program at FSU, including an honors thesis on church-state issues, to catapult her toward the top law schools. And she's not alone.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the Florida State religion department -- regarded as one of the top five at public institutions in the country -- is thriving and growing in new directions.
"We have more than 1,300 students taking our courses," said Chairman Leo Sandon. "And we now have more diversity in the department, both from the standpoint of gender and subject areas. We have some really great young faculty members."
From its origin in 1965 under the leadership of Professor Robert Spivey, the department has grown to one of the largest in the country.
The past few years have seen the arrival of young professors with Ivy League Ph.D.s from the nation's top universities, joining an already distinguished senior faculty.
"With one-third of our faculty now women, it changes the character of the department," Sandon said. "Both Tessa (Bartholomeusz) and Kathleen (Erndl) are interested in gender studies. They often deal with women in a non-Western context, so their courses meet the cross-cultural and diversity goals of FSU's multicultural requirement."
Bartholomeusz has just published a book about Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka and Erndl has published a book on the Hindu goddess of Northwest India. They teach the entire range of South Asian religions as well as "Women in Religion."
"With more and more of our students coming from immigrant groups, it's important that the emphasis not necessarily be on Western thought," Erndl said.
She was attracted to FSU because she sought "a very vibrant and growing department." The new Ph.D. program launched in 1991 -- the only one in Florida in religion -- a master's degree program in Asian studies and an interest in gender issues told Erndl "they were serious."
David Lamberth, whose dissertation on philosopher William James won raves from top theologians and philosophers at Harvard, arrived just this fall to teach philosophy of religion.
Even so, the uninitiated often picture all religion students as necessarily "religious" or ask, "What are you going to do with that?"
Matthew Day, who is pursuing a master's degree in 20th century Western religious thought, answers this way:
"I think religion is the most expansive subject I could study. I like the interdisciplinary nature of it. It deals with ethics, with basic historical questions. . . It deals with the basics of human existence."
More and more students recognize that religion courses are part of the core of the liberal arts, Sandon said. Training for a trade is valuable, he said, but so is learning to think critically in order to become a responsible citizen.
"Have students learned enough about the scientific method to at least know the difference between pseudo-science and real science? Do they know enough math to know what a sound statistical analysis might look like? Have they read a little Shakespeare?"
Or, have they perhaps taken a course in American religion to understand better how Puritanism or the Great Awakening are woven into the fabric of our national history?
"It's like any liberal arts major," Erndl said. "You may use it (to earn a living), or generally develop writing and analytical skills and interests that you can carry with you always."
That's what attracted Marinelli.
"My business major is number-crunching; It's a trade degree," she said. "Religion is something I'm doing for me."
The past four years have seen the arrival of professors David Lamberth, Ph.D., Harvard (teaches philosophy of religion); Corrine Patton, Ph.D., Yale (Hebrew Bible); Tessa Bartholomeusz, Ph.D., Virginia (South Asian religion/Buddhism); Kathleen Erndl, Ph.D., Wisconsin (South Asian religion/Hinduism); and Galen Amstutz, Ph.D., Princeton (Japanese Buddhism).
They came on the heels of professors John Kelsay, Ph.D., Virginia, (an ethicist and expert on Islam) and Maureen Tilley, Ph.D., Duke (whose field is New Testament and Early Christian Thought).
These seven joined a distinguished senior faculty that includes professors Walter Moore (late Medieval religion), David Levenson (New Testament, modern Judaism), John Priest (Hebrew bible), William Jones (liberation theology), Sandon (religion in American thought and society) -- and, until his recent retirement, Richard Rubenstein (Holocaust studies) -- and others.