Career Potential 

Why Study Religion?
Religion is a fascinating object of study. The study of religion tries to locate and identify religion in different temporal and geographic contexts. Studying beliefs, practices, or, more broadly speaking, forms of human communication, religion can be approached through a variety of different lenses. Indeed, the study of religion is profoundly interdisciplinary, using historical, sociological, linguistic, anthropological, and philosophical methods.

In broadest terms, the study of religion cultivates in students the intellectual resources to navigate a world strongly shaped by religious experiences, communities, and institutions.

Religion courses at Hofstra

• provide the tools students need to think critically and constructively about religion and religions;
• train students to recognize the many different roles religion plays in public life, especially the ways it shapes social, political, and economic discourses;
• enable students to experience and understand the way religions interact with and shape one another, as well as they interact with their non-religious environment;
• orient students to the many different forms of human religious expression from antiquity to postmodernity.

In all of these ways the study of religion prepares students for future careers in fields such as diplomacy, business, politics, journalism, and law. A few of our students will go into the ministry, but most will take their knowledge and skills into secular careers that require people who have an acute ability to recognize and appreciate what things look like from someone else's point of view.