World Religions Extended Essay, Study notes of Religion

Download World Religions Extended Essay and more Study notes Religion in PDF only on Docsity! World Religion Overview Extended essays in world religions provide students with the opportunity to undertake an in-depth investigation into a limited topic within the field of world religions. The study should integrate disciplined research that is informed by scholarly methods with original and imaginative analysis, interpretation, and critical evaluation of the results of that research. Students who are considering submitting an extended essay in world religions are strongly advised to study carefully a copy of the Diploma Programme syllabus for this subject, before making a final decision. The syllabus gives a clear idea of the scope and content of the subject, and will help students to decide whether their choice of topic is appropriate. World religions comprises a systematic, critical, yet sensitive study of the variety of beliefs, values and practices encountered in religions around the world. A rigorous attempt is made to maintain objectivity in the analysis and evaluation of religions. This requires, at the very least, an authentic attempt to understand the beliefs, values and practices of the religion being studied by using language and concepts drawn from that religious tradition. Essays that are primarily a defence or critique of the beliefs, values and practices of a particular religious tradition, or that explain or evaluate religious phenomena from the standpoint of another religious tradition or of a secularist ideology, are unacceptable. The concern is not just with what the followers of a faith believe and do, but also with an understanding of why they do so, through an appreciation of the form of life and world outlook that they constitute. The result of writing an essay in world religions should be, among other things, improved intercultural understanding. Choice of topic Essentially, students may choose to answer any well-defined question about any of the world’s religions, present or past, subject to the following guidelines. • Topics must be appropriate to the subject. Extended essays must address the beliefs, values and practices of religious traditions and show a genuine understanding of the religion from the standpoint of its adherents. Essays that are only indirectly related to religion—for example, legal issues relating to school prayer, the wearing of religious symbols, or the scientific validity of “creation science”—are not acceptable. • It should be made clear to students who have not followed a course in world religions, and who are, therefore, unfamiliar with the discipline and its methodology, that an essay in world religions is not an opportunity to write an essay of a confessional, evangelizing, or apologetic nature. This means that students should avoid topics that involve making judgments about the truth-value of religious beliefs. • Essays should not be purely descriptive but should shed some light on why people believe and/or act as they do, or on the relationship between the religion and the culture of which it is a part. Students should ideally either have taken a course in the discipline or spent some time in independent study, preferably with a mentor who has significant background in the discipline. • The research question should be well defined. Topics that are too broad nearly always result in essays that are superficial, purely descriptive, and riddled with errors and misconceptions. • The research question should permit investigation using a method or approach that the student is capable of completing successfully, given his or her level of training, and the time and resources available. In other words, students should not plan an essay that requires access to unobtainable or unreadable primary sources, or that requires a larger number of in-depth interviews than there is time to carry out. The most successful essays generally focus on the analysis or interpretation of a particular religious text, image, ritual or practice, or examine the significance of a well-defined concept in a particular religious tradition. Some examples of this could include the following. Topic The politics of religious symbols in France Research question Why do some high school students in France wear religious symbols to school? Why do many people in France object? Approach An in-depth interview study of attitudes towards wearing religious symbols in public schools in France. Topic Creationism Research question Why is the doctrine of creation so central to contemporary evangelical Protestantism? Approach An analysis of the understanding of the doctrine of creation and its relationship to other doctrines in the work of three contemporary evangelical theologians. Topic Prophecy Research question What are the differences in the understanding of prophecy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Approach A study of the usage of the Hebrew, Greek and Arabic words translated into English as “prophet” in selected texts from the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament and the Koran. Topic Prayer in public schools Research question How do high school students in South Carolina experience school prayer and its prohibition? Approach An in-depth interview study of the attitudes and experience of South Carolina high school students regarding school prayer. Topic Sacred spaces Research question What is the difference between a Catholic church and a mosque? Approach An ethnographic study incorporating observation and interviews of believers visiting both types of sacred space, informed by background reading of theological texts addressing the question from both traditions. Treatment of the topic The first step in preparing an extended essay is to formulate a well-defined research question. Essays that pose a question that might reasonably be answered in different ways are generally better than those that simply discuss a topic, even one within the limits defined above. The best research questions are those that indicate familiarity with existing research and with the larger concerns of the discipline. Many methods of investigation are possible. Students might, for instance: • analyse and interpret a sacred text, image, or ritual • analyse the role of a particular doctrine within one or more theological systems • conduct in-depth interviews in order to understand how ordinary believers approach a particular religious belief or practice. Students should be careful to obtain the permission of the leaders of religious communities before observing services and rituals, and should obtain the permission of everyone they interview, making it clear how the results will be used and how, if at all, the interviewees will be identified. Students are encouraged to use both primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources should be consulted in order to locate the topic being studied within a broader context, and to gain an understanding of various methods of investigation, analysis, interpretation and argument. The best essays generally test these established positions against primary sources or data collected for the extended essay. Supervisors should make sure that students have at least a basic grasp of the scholarly methods needed to interpret primary sources—for example, literary, source and historical-critical approaches to sacred texts, formal and iconographic analysis of visual images, various approaches to the interpretation of rituals. While it is understood that students are just beginning their study of world religions and are not expected to have a complete mastery of methodological issues, essays that contain naïve analyses and interpretations that reflect no training, and could have been prepared without any formal study, will not receive high scores. It is important that methods of investigation and analysis are appropriate to the topic and well executed. In-depth interviews are an excellent way of finding out how ordinary members of a religious community actually understand and experience their religion, but a study of this sort must involve a significant number of interviews with a diverse cross-section of the population being studied. Interviews should not be used naïvely as a source regarding the “official teachings” of a religious institution: simply supplementing readings of secondary sources with a few interviews with local clergy accomplishes very little. Comparisons between well-defined aspects of two or more different religions are permissible, but students must take great care to ensure that the comparisons are, on the one hand, genuine, clear and specific, and, on the other, a manifestation of sensitive and objective analysis. It is important to understand that different religions do not always pose competing answers to the same questions, but