The study of religion is not just for religious people! Religion is a powerful and enduring aspect of human life: it evokes and expresses deep commitments, bold action and beautiful artistic expression; it can be a powerful tool in the construction of meaning; it has been and continues to be a force for division or for communion and justice. Thus for many reasons, it invites our curiosity and merits study. There are two main ways of studying religion: theology and religious studies. Theology looks at the matter of religion from the point of view of a particular faith tradition. Religious studies, or the academic study of religion, is a newer discipline and seeks to look at all religions in an even-handed way; to do so it uses the tools of many different academic disciplines, such as history, sociology, theology, philosophy, political science, to name a few.
At
Campion College we teach and do research in religious studies.
Working in partnership with Luther College and the University of
Regina Faculty of Arts, the Campion College religious studies
department is a constitutive part of religious studies at the
university. Campion's religious studies department consists of Dr.
Jacoba Kuikman
and Fr.
Benjamin Fiore, SJ, Ph.D.
Dr. Kuikman specializes in Judaism with an emphasis on contemporary
Jewish thought, and is also quite interested in religion and ecology.
Fr. Fiore specializes in the study of New Testament scripture and is
the director of the Catholic Studies program. With the help of
sessional lecturers, Campion offers many sections of the Introduction
to Religious Studies; then students may go on to choose from a
variety of topics, such as surveys of Judaism or Christianity, and
more specific topics such as the Holocaust, liberation theology,
contemporary Jewish thought, contemporary Christianity, and other
more specialized topics at both undergraduate and graduate levels.