To: Courtney Campbell, Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture
From: Marcus Borg, Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture (1994-2007)
RE: Endorsement of OSU Major in Religious Studies
Dear Courtney,
For more than one reason, I am very pleased that OSU is considering reinstating a major in Religious Studies.
When Religious Studies was eliminated as a department and as a major in the early 1990s because of Proposition Five, I was grateful to be kept on in the Philosophy Department, even as I was deeply dismayed by the disappearance of a department of and major in religious studies. So I am delighted by the possibility that a major in religious studies might again be part of OSU’s offerings.
To say the obvious, awareness of and study of the religions of the world is perhaps more important now than ever, given our increasingly global community. Religions continue to shape the lives of billions of people, and thus a basic understanding of them matters for anybody engaged in global activity. Such awareness also matters for all Americans, given that we are the most religious and most religiously pluralistic and diverse country in the world. I wish that religious studies were taught in public schools.
A second reason is the legacy and history of religious studies at OSU. When I came to OSU in 1979, the lore within the department was that OSU in 1927 (then OAC, of course) was the first land-grant college in the country to offer courses in religious studies. I do not know if that is factually true – but it was our story.
And in the 1980s, I heard from a number of publishers of books in religious studies that OSU had one of the two best departments on the West coast (the other being UC Santa Barbara). So there is a heritage here as well as a future.
A third reason is the intention of Al Hundere whose major gift in 1993 established the chair that you and I have shared in sequence. His motivation was to promote the academic study of religion in a non-sectarian context like OSU (from which he graduated as an engineer in the 1930s when it was OAC). To quote one of his memorable lines, “I’m sick and tired of fundamentalists.” The academic study of religion is the antidote to all fundamentalisms.
A first-rate university should have a major in religious studies. It matters for OSU’s students, our country, and the world.
Yours truly,
Marcus Borg
OSU professor from 1979 to 2007