Religious Studies

Religious Studies

Religious studies matters because religion matters. Religion is a key element of cultural identities: it drives social change and shapes the ways communities remember the past and imagine the future. 

ASU’s religious studies department offers degree options tailored to fit our students’ goals, with two online and on-ground undergraduate degree tracks: Religion, Politics and Global Affairs and Religion, Culture and Public Life. We also offer master’s and PhD programs, along with an undergraduate minor and religion, conflict and peace certificate.  

Our majors have unique opportunities to develop the communications, critical thinking, and digital and cultural literacy skills needed to navigate our rapidly changing world. Religious studies degrees prepare our students to navigate a culturally and morally complex world, empowering them to become leaders in fields like healthcare, journalism, sustainability, education, politics or law.  

Our faculty includes experts in specific religious traditions, with particular strengths in Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Indigenous traditions in the Americas. Our expertise also concentrates on various societal issues where religion has special significance, including migration, sustainability, peace and conflict, music and art. We aim not only to help students understand and explore particular religions, but to appreciate how religion shapes the world –– both historically and in the present. 

Religious studies is an academic field that brings together experts from disciplines including anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy and foreign languages, among others. It brings intellectually diverse approaches to the complexity of religion: a term that describes major cultural traditions, relationships with God or gods, systems of moral meaning making, creation and origin stories, beliefs about death and the afterlife, ritual practices or the pursuit of liberation. At ASU, we study aspects of religion from many perspectives because they are complex and changing, fascinating yet familiar. Although some religion scholars are social scientists, our faculty is located in the humanities because it strives to help students better understand the human experience.