`R 204:Western Religions, Fall 1998`

JOURNAL REQUIREMENT FOR PROFESSOR DALE CANNON

THE ASSIGNMENT

You are required to keep a journal of your personal responses to and personal reflections on your growing empathetic acquaintance with the three traditions we are studying.

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The purpose of this assignment is to provide occasion in the context of the course for you to make connections between the material and ideas that we will be studying and your own personal life and ideas about religion. It is also meant to be a more open-ended, creative assignment to balance the more focused and constrained exams and research project or book review.

The journal entries need not themselves be empathetically objective--especially not if that would not be true to your own thoughts and feelings. Some entries should, however, reflect on the challenge of trying to be empathetically objective and what you are learning through those attempts.

In any case, your journal entries should express a serious and honest attempt to come to terms for yourself with what you are learning, while allowing the expressions of the traditions we are studying to be themselves--especially in their difference from what you may have previously thought about them--seeking as well as you can to understand them with empathetic objectivity.

Journal entries should not simply be a summary of lecture content or of the content of a reading assignment. They should always be a personal reflection on or response to that content.

SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS FOR THE JOURNAL

You should aim at three or more entries per week, at least one per class session.

Journal entries need not be typed. They may be handwritten in a spiral notebook or in some other possible format. They may be done on computer. They should, however, be legible.

Entries may be in response to class sessions, reading assignments, exam study sessions, research project, Field Trip, something in the news that relates to the course, a personal encounter that relates to the course, etc. In any case, most of the entries should relate to the course content rather than be tangential to that content. Should you go on the Field Trip, you are especially encouraged to write about your experience of the trip and your responses to things seen and heard on the trip.

Suggested journal questions may be found at the end of each of the R204 Lectures. They pertain to both the lecture content and the assigned reading selections.

"JOURNAL SUMMARIES"

The journal assignment is to culminate in a "summary" of your journal entries for each of the three traditions -- thus, a "summary" for each of the three sections of the course.

Possibilities for "summaries" are very open-ended.

The simplest "summary" would be simply a sampling of your best entries for that section of the course.
It could be a conventional summary of the entirety of your journal entries for that section of the course.
It could be an overall reflection on your personal experience of that section of the course (and of your journaling for that section).
Alternative possibilities include: something done in a visual artistic medium, a collage of photographs, a fictional dialogue, etc.

The 'summaries' of your journal need not be in conventional written form. If they are in conventional written form, they should be typed and be approximately 2 typewritten pages for each of the three sections of the course. Written journal "summaries" should be neatly produced and be free of spelling and grammatical errors.

DUE DATE

Your complete Journal and a "Journal Summary" for each of the three sections of the course must be turned in Fri. Dec. 5. When you hand them in, you are to indicate in writing which of the two grading options you choose: either Grade Option A or Grade Option B (see below for explanation).

JOURNAL GRADING

The contribution of your Journal and "Journal Summaries" to your overall grade is in large measure up to you. Which alternative you choose -- Grade Option A or Grade Option B -- must be communicated in writing with what you hand in on Dec. 5. If nothing is communicated in writing to me at that time, I will presume that you choose Grade Option A.

If you choose Grade Option A, you may have this assignment count for 25% of your grade, with 25% for each of the other three major assignments (the two exams and the term paper).

Alternatively, if you choose Grade Option B, you may have your grade be based on 33 &1/3% for each of the other three major assignments (the two exams and the term paper), with your still required journal and "journal summaries" weighing solely in a positive way (the extent depending on their quality) to raise your grade in near borderline situations.

In the event that no Journal and "Journal Summaries" are turned in or if no serious effort is expended to fulfill the purpose of the journal, the grade option will default to Grade Option A, regardless of your expressed preference for Option B.

Grading of the Journal and "Journal Summaries" will be based on their thoughtfulness (creativity is encouraged), the seriousness with which you have honestly sought to come to terms for yourself with what we are covering, and the sincerity of your efforts in the course to develop empathetically objective understandings. While these are difficult factors to evaluate, every effort will be made not to have the specific content of feelings and opinions expressed influence the grade.

SUGGESTED JOURNAL QUESTIONS FOR FIRST SECTION OF COURSE

1. Now that you see all that the course will involve and require, how do you feel about it?

2. How do you feel about studying other religions in an empathetic way? Is that something you find threatening to your own faith? Why or why not?

3. How do you feel about the prospect of studying your own tradition (or the one you are most familiar with) as one among many others with no special privilege? What are your fears, if any? What are your hopes, if any?

4. The instructor distinguishes between perspective on the one hand and bias or prejudice on the other. Do you understand the difference and what it implies? Do you agree?

5. The course particularly focuses on developing your capacity for empathy -- stepping into the shoes of the other person in order to see what things look like from her or his perspective, which cannot be seen from your own. What do you think about that prospect? Do you have doubts that it is possible for anyone? For yourself? For what reasons do you doubt it?

6. The instructor says that people have difficulty imagining whether something like an empathetically ofjective understanding of another religion is possible until they have experienced such an understanding for themselves or have seen someone actually achieve it. Could your doubt that it is possible be due to such a lack of experience?

7. The instructor speaks of the "threshold effect" -- the change in appearance (and meaning) of religious symbols and activities as one crosses their threshold and enters the unique perspective of the tradition to which they belong (as in an act of empathetic imagination). Could it be that what seems to you to be the strangeness and pointlessness of practices, symbols, and beliefs in certain religious traditions may be due more to your own limited, external perspective than to what they are for insiders?

8. What do you think of the appropriateness and significance of religious studies courses in the context of public education when they are taught in a way that is truly empathetic and objective?

9. What do you think of the instructor's definition of religion? Is it as neutral as he maintains? Does it seem to identify the heart or essence of what religion in general is about, or no?

10. While emphasizing generic similarities between religions and ways of being religious, the instructor seeks to emphasize also the differences between religions and ways of being religious. Is this a balance you think you will be able, with guidance, to walk also? Or do you find yourself impatient to resolve quickly the qustion: Are religions ultimately all the same? Or are religions ultimately unreconcilale in their differences?

11. Are you prepared to allow that wisdom, insight, and virtue may exist in religious traditions for which you now have no particular understanding or sympathy? Are you prepared to allow that both virtue and vice are possible in the practice of any religious tradition?

12. What do you think of the idea that religion at its best is not a way of avoiding life's problems but rather provides a way of taking them on in a way that reaffirms life's ultimate meaningfulness and a way of appropriately coping with the problem if not solving it.

13. What do you think of the idea that there are different generic ways of being religious, different ways of approach to what is taken to be the ultimate reality, to be found in any religious tradition (broadly conceived)? I.e., that each tradition isn't limited to only one such way? Which of these ways, if any, are you more drawn to? Which, if any, are you less drawn to or not at all drawn to?

14. What do you think of the idea that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam belong to the same family of religions, that they are "blood brothers" as it were? And that Islam is not an "Eastern religion," but despite its apparent differences from Christianity, it has much more in common with it than with the religions of the Orient?

15. Do you understand the idea of the "otherness" of God, its connection with these religions as essentially "historical" -- being based upon an alleged historical "revelation" of God -- and its connection with the "scandal of particularity" in each? What do you think of these ideas?

Return to Syllabus.

Direct suggestions, comments, and questions about this page to Dale Cannon. Last Modified 9/20/98 Western Oregon University