Frequently Asked Questions

Seminars are multi-week online classes where a religious studies expert guides a small group through assigned readings and exercises. Guest lectures are single-topic public talks and prerecorded lessons. Religion Department members get free access to all guest lectures and 50% off seminars.

Subscribe to our annual membership to get access to the full archive, which you can watch in your browser or on our mobile app. 

You will get lifetime access to the course material and live recordings. We will continue the online community as long as the group follows our Community Guidelines.

No. Seminars happen once. They are recorded for asynchronous learning, but we want to encourage students to participate in the moment knowing who is in their learning community.

No. The Religion Department is not affiliated with any religious tradition or institution. We are an academic organization dedicated to the critical and scholarly study of religion. Our instructors come from a variety of intellectual and personal backgrounds, but we approach the subject from a non-confessional perspective.

The critical study of religion is an academic approach that examines religion as a human phenomenon— something people create, perform, and interpret within specific cultural and historical contexts, expressed through institutions, rituals, texts, and other social constructs.

Importantly, the critical study of religion doesn’t mean criticizing religion. It means asking analytical questions about how religion works in the world: who speaks in its name? To whom? With what authority, and to what end? 

Rather than treating the phenomena of religion as timeless or essential, we study how they operate, with curiosity and critical reflexivity.