What is the experience of studying for a doctorate in religion in Britain?

What is the experience of studying for a doctorate in religion in Britain?

Release date: 20 17-05- 10 20:33

Li Xinan

Loughborough University, UK

Doctoral students in the fields of religion and immigration

Loughborough University, UK

Master of Media and Global Cultural Industry

Author's Press: The inspiration for this article comes from the article Lies, Church Schools, Paradise, Sectarianism, Bible Courses, and my experience in American universities. This paper is the author's experience in studying liberal arts overseas, and discusses religious studies from an academic perspective.

We study liberal arts.

What the hell are you studying?

-"What are you doing abroad?"

-"Doctor."

-"What are you reading?"

-"Nothing, I am a liberal arts student."

-"liberal arts ...? What major? "

-"sociological, religious."

-"Sociology ... Religion ..."

This is the beginning of a classic conversation between me and many people. Symbolic words such as "doctor", "liberal arts", "sociology" and "religion" have become labels that I cannot get rid of in the eyes of many friends. If the first three are barely related, then the latter is obviously inconsistent.

It is an obvious fact that among the students who started studying abroad more than 0/00 years ago, those who studied liberal arts were far less than those who studied science and engineering.

There is a simple reason. As far as practicality is concerned, the "realization" ability of liberal arts knowledge is far less direct than that of science and engineering.

Because the study and research objects of liberal arts are mostly ideological content, with various languages as the carrier, naturally, for students studying abroad, the language ability and related cultural background required for studying liberal arts are higher. In the blind pursuit of short-term quick success and instant benefit, media technology makes information and knowledge cheap, and deep reflection seems to be no longer popular.

Art and science. What? "Humanities" is a dichotomy relative to the western classic discipline "natural science". The humanities pursue "wisdom" about human existence except all the knowledge that natural science can produce.

Humanities generally include literature, art, history, philosophy, cultural studies and social sciences that we are familiar with. Social science usually includes three basic disciplines, namely sociology, anthropology and psychology.

This kind of discipline aims to study various phenomena in the human world by scientific methods. In social science research, researchers themselves directly participate in and may interfere with the research process or results, which cannot fully guarantee the "objectivity" of research. So some people think that social science is a "soft science" relative to natural science.

Oxford University historian Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of the most famous "popular historians" in Britain. He said in a public lecture held by the British Academy of Social Sciences: "The British Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society are just like brothers ... It is difficult to quantitatively analyze and study the things studied by the humanities simply by scientific methods ... but these disciplines are so important to us human beings that they give the society a clear head.

"We may not be able to tell you simply what the' truth' is. This problem is too complicated ... any idea put forward in the name of "truth" may be abused by lunatics ... and we (humanists) can at least point out something untrue. By constantly explaining and reconstructing the narrative of human history and current phenomena, we can at least prevent some' crazier' things from happening. " Mai said.

If you study liberal arts with a particularly utilitarian mentality, then you are likely to be disappointed.

We talk about religion.

What the hell are we talking about?

Religion is a very interesting topic.

Several great grandfathers of social sciences: Max Weber, Emile Duckheim and Karl Marx all chose to cut into their research fields from "religion".

Later, the analysis and explanation of "religion" phenomenon also accounted for a large proportion in the research of sigmund freud and carl jung. What exactly is "religion"? What do you know about "religion"?

For "religion", the academic community has not yet reached an accurate and universally applicable definition. Because human religious phenomena are extremely complicated and highly mobile. Religious research itself involves the exploration of human physiology, psychology, ethics and other aspects, and the core issues involved in religion itself are often more or less beyond the cognitive scope of human existing scientific methods, which puts on a mysterious coat.

However, as a rational animal that constantly seeks to know and master the law, we always try to get "unchangeable" from "change" when studying such a complicated problem.

Generally speaking, "religion" is a subjective term, and everyone has different definitions, and these definitions may be more or less similar or overlapping. Religion believes that religion is an artificial phenomenon, except for the discussion of religious doctrines involving "supernatural or transcendental fields" (that is, immortals).

This phenomenon contains many elements (about supernatural/transcendental), such as doctrine system, leader, ceremony, organization, moral teaching, scripture text, history, art, believers, personal behavior practice and so on. When one or more elements in * * * work together, it may show a certain dimension of religious phenomenon.

For example, when a religious leader with good moral behavior and charm appears, he may attract a large number of believers through a series of moral education-style preaching, and under his education, some of these believers may practice such moral teaching in real life; So the "ethical" dimension of religion appears.

Studying religion, more precisely, is studying various religious phenomena in the human world.

This kind of research is not to judge the value of a religion, such as good and evil, true and false, good and bad, high and low, but to "disenchant" religion as much as possible through the study of phenomena, and to help people understand religion as rationally as possible while respecting the traditional culture and wisdom of various great religions.

As one of the oldest phenomena since human existence, understanding religion can also help us understand ourselves.

China's public opinion is full of the word "lack of faith", but although faith in some transcendental power or some morality based on religious teachings is one of the core elements of religion, religion ≠ faith.

The English word "believe" has two meanings. One refers to people's intellectual recognition of an opinion or proposition that may temporarily lack sufficient empirical evidence, that is, "propositional belief". Second, it refers to people's dependence and trust based on some psychological and emotional sustenance rooted in social relations, which may be transformed into more practical actions, that is, "expressive beliefs."

The former claims that "I believe the sky is blue" and does not need to resort to too much scientific evidence to explain why tomorrow is blue. It only needs to use personal sensory experience to tell a "belief" that others can understand and generally agree with.

The latter is like "I believe my parents won't hurt me", which is a "belief" generated by personal trust based on parent-child social relationship. This belief may be one of the sources for us to practice filial piety and even filial piety.

Religious belief is often a combination of these two ways of belief.

As mentioned above, the core ideas in many religious doctrines often go beyond the scope of scientific methods, and sometimes believers need to make a "leap of faith" in order to accept a seemingly "not necessarily scientific proposition" intellectually.

Many times, this belief is often difficult to have much practical connection with people's real life, such as the question of "whether God exists". The latter belief is often to show some religious dogmas with ethical implications in real social relations.

Some religious believers' different behaviors from non-believers are also based on their unconditional "belief" in a "supernatural/transcendental" god/power, and they think they have established some relationship with this god or transcendental. Their trust in this relationship partly explains why they practice certain religious behaviors.

For example, someone unconditionally believes that God loves him/her, so he/she believes that there is a loving relationship between himself/herself and God. Based on the trust and dependence on this relationship, this person may show a series of behavior practices such as caring for others different from non-believers.

Christianity declares that "God is love". Although there is no scientific evidence to support this statement, its moral significance is often manifested in a caring social ethics that Christian groups try to show, a series of social identity beyond class, nationality and national boundaries, and the practice of "loving each other" with believers, thus attracting more believers directly or indirectly.