Discover these free Philosophy and Religious Studies courses on OpenLearn.
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Religion
Courses tagged with "Religion"
In this Opening up history conversation we speak to Dr Roisin Watson about her research on how Protestants used images and objects to express their faith in the Reformation.
Category: History & The Arts
The global challenge of growing inequalities is intricately linked to the distinction made between those historically regarded as human and those who have not been. The division between ‘civilised’ and ‘non-civilised/primitive’ played a vital role in justifying the colonisation and enslavement of those who were deemed ‘lesser human’, ‘other human’, or ‘non-human’ at all, along with the perception of their lands as empty and waiting to be discovered, explored and governed. In this free course, you will explore how some religions and religious categories were conceptualised and employed in ways that dehumanised and criminalised colonised individuals and communities, many of whom organise and identify as Indigenous today.
Category: History & The Arts
This course is a short journey into the rich world of Byzantine artistic production via its most illustrious representative – the icon.
Category: History & The Arts
Religious education is a statutory requirement for all school children in England. This course explores how the teaching and scholarly community is working to ensure this curriculum remains relevant for the twenty-first century. It is aimed at parents, faith and community group members and all others who might be interested in the purpose and content of religious education in schools.
Category: History & The Arts
Why do Muslim women wear the hijab? How do they reconcile different approaches to veiling between generations, across different geographical regions and in different cultural and social environments? How do they negotiate diverse social and cultural influences, pressures and expectations, legal constraints, practical challenges and fashion trends? In this collection we explore the extraordinary range of different styles of Muslim dress and the emotions people can invest in them. Track 1 looks at different attitudes towards veiling in the Southern Indian city of Calicut (also known as Kozhikode), and in tracks 2, 3 and 4, Stefanie Sinclair, Open University Lecturer in Religious Studies, talks to the anthropologist Emma Tarlo, of Goldsmiths, University of London, about different attitudes among British Muslims towards veiling, fashion and the commercialisation of the hijab. This material forms part of the Open University course A332 Why is religion controversial?
Category: History & The Arts
Why study religion? An understanding of the world’s religious traditions is crucial in helping us to appreciate not just the varied forms of belief and practice that we encounter at home, abroad and in the media, but also the influence that religion has on world affairs. This course offers an introduction to the study of religions, and in particular to six major religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism, including the various roles of their founders and leaders, their texts, rituals, practices and behaviors. This practical insight will enable you to develop a better understanding of different beliefs and worldviews and what these mean to their adherents. This material is taken from The Open University Course A217 Introducing Religions.
Category: History & The Arts
The coexistence of multiple religious communities has been a source of both opposition and diversity since the very foundation of human civilization. This album explores the interaction of competing communities in compelling depth, highlighting periods and cities that experienced turbulence, and occasionally harmony, from such an intermingling of beliefs and ideas. A huge historical range, from the very beginnings of early Christianity to modern-day Africa, is rigorously examined in cultural, social and ideological terms. This material forms part of The Open University course AA307 Religion in history: conflict, conversion and coexistence.
Category: History & The Arts
Religion is a powerful force in today’s world, as almost any newspaper or news broadcast will make clear. Inextricably linked with nationalism, popular culture, social norms and the lives of individuals, it touches almost every area of public and private life. This course examines many of the most exciting and controversial issues in religion today, including the impact of globalisation/Evangelicalism, feminism and environmentalism, and whether secularisation might mean the eventual death of religious practices and institutions, or whether New Age, Wicca and other alternative spiritualities might become the new face of post-modern religion. This material is taken from The Open University Course AD317 Religion today: tradition, modernity and change.
Category: History & The Arts
The idea that there are five or six ‘major’ or ‘world’ religions is so common that it seems natural to us today. What makes something a ‘World Religion’? Why do we group some religions in this way? You’ll explore these questions in this free course. You’ll also look at the potential issues with classifying religions like this and why scholars are increasingly moving away from talking about ‘World Religions’.
Category: History & The Arts
In this short course, Diversity in religion: Islam, you will explore how attitudes and opinions within a single religious tradition can be internally diverse. You will look at Islam in particular, considering the diversity of Muslim attitudes to same-sex relationships. This will focus mainly on relationships between men because Muslim legal experts did not pay nearly as much attention to lesbian sex and did not prescribe specific punishments for it.
Category: History & The Arts
This free course, Exploring the boundaries between religion and culture, engages with questions about the relationship between religion and culture. Are they different things or synonyms that emphasise different ways of looking at the same phenomena? The course uses ‘either/or or both/and’ to point to those possibilities for understanding how religion and culture relate to each other.
Category: History & The Arts
This free course, A spiritual revolution? Wicca and religious change in the 1960s looks at the ‘crisis’ of traditional religion in the Sixties in the Western world. It explores the process of religious renewal, looking at the
development of Wicca, the prototypical form of modern Paganism. Originally presented as a Goddess religion of great antiquity, which had survived the Roman invasion and Church persecution, Wicca is in fact best seen as a new religion, clearly belonging
to an age in which sexual norms, gender roles and traditional power structures were changing. It questions to what degree we can view religious change in the 1960s as spiritual revolution.
development of Wicca, the prototypical form of modern Paganism. Originally presented as a Goddess religion of great antiquity, which had survived the Roman invasion and Church persecution, Wicca is in fact best seen as a new religion, clearly belonging
to an age in which sexual norms, gender roles and traditional power structures were changing. It questions to what degree we can view religious change in the 1960s as spiritual revolution.
Category: History & The Arts
This free course, The ethics of cultural heritage, provides the basic theory
behind the protection of cultural property in war zones and is presented in three parts: the protection of cultural property; the legal basis for that
protection; and accounts of proportionality (that is, on deciding whether or
not there is a feasible alternative to damaging cultural property).
behind the protection of cultural property in war zones and is presented in three parts: the protection of cultural property; the legal basis for that
protection; and accounts of proportionality (that is, on deciding whether or
not there is a feasible alternative to damaging cultural property).
Category: History & The Arts
In this free course, Methodism in Wales, 1730–1850, you will learn about a neglected strand of Welsh history and identity. By the mid-nineteenth century, Calvinistic Methodism had become the most popular religious denomination in Wales and a mainstay of Welsh national identity. Where did this new form of religion come from? Why did it become so popular? And how did it become so intertwined with ideas about Welshness? These are the questions this course will consider, and at the same time it will introduce you to some fantastic free online resources for learning about the history of Wales more broadly.
Category: History & The Arts
Britian is scattered with sacred sites - why do we feel the resonance of ancient religion?
Category: History
Watch video recordings of speaker presentations from a conference, which examined and celebrated the 350th anniversary of the publication of Baruch Spinoza's forgotten masterpiece: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
Category: Philosophy
People use different terms to describe their beliefs about the world but what does religion, faith, spirituality and worldviews mean? This animation explores the themes further.
Category: Religious Studies
What is meant by ‘worldviews’? This animation imagines a public demonstration and the differing reasons people may have for attending.
Category: Religious Studies
Athiest and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said religion and science can't sit side by side. This animation explains more...
Category: Religious Studies