This philosophy of religion course is one I designed for the job market. My hope was to design a philosophy of religion course that introduced upper-level undergraduate or graduate students to new issues instead of the well-worn path. There are several new books addressing these issues and I decided to build my course around them. One of them is a book I’m co-editing, which my co-editor and I designed in part to be used as a textbook. While I don’t ask students to purchase the book, I do assign readings from it which I provide online. The first book I assign is the forthcoming volume by Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Hinder Them Not: Centering Marginalized Voices in Analytic Theology (Oxford University Press). This promises to be a superb, philosophically inventive collection of papers in philosophy of religion. The second book is Sarah Coakley’s wonderful God, Sexuality, and the Self (Cambridge University Press, 2013), a critical reflection on the nature of human sexuality and ‘longing’ for God. Assigning these two books gives students a nice balance between theoretical theology, empirical theology, and existential/practical theology.
A major pedagogical goal is to get students to write about these new issues, but in an empirically informed way. To do that, I’ve assigned a number of empirics-heavy readings, a final paper they develop throughout the course, and a “Diversity Survey Group” assignment. For the latter, I have students cautiously prepare surveys for college students enrolled in a random college course. The surveys are designed to find noteworthy differences between students from underrepresented groups and students from well-represented groups in their religious views. My students are then graded on the quality of their survey design as well as how plausible their empirical predictions were. When they write their midterm paper, they’re graded on how well they incorporate the findings of other perspectives. In fact, I ask them to design a view of God using the insights of underrepresented perspectives. (Hence the title of the course: “The Rainbowed Divine.”) One significant upshot of this is that student grades depend on listening well — and, indeed, listening well to unjustly quieted voices.
Another major pedagogical (and moral) goal of the course is to close the distance between students’ religious views, or at least the animus that sometimes dominates religious disputes. A common worry in the evolving literature, including many of the course readings, is that we often make God in our image. By asking students to recreate God in the image of the oppressed, they take on the role of defending that image. While this is unlikely to completely transform most students, it closes the gap a mite and encourages creative listening — a trait much of academic philosophy is sorely lacking.
Here is the syllabus.
The Rainbowed Divine: Diverse Voices in Philosophy of Religion
Instructor: Blake Hereth
Email: sbhereth@uw.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 2-4pm
Course Description:
Analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology have been historically pursued by white, cisgender, heterosexual men. As a result, the big issues reflect their interests. Yet millions of religious individuals are women, non-heterosexual, non-white, and outside of Western religious traditions. Their voices and their issues should matter and find a place in the canon. In this course, we’ll hear from more diverse voices in philosophy of religion on unique and underexplore questions such as: Will Heaven be gendered? What will be the place of disabled people in the afterlife? Are nonhuman animals aware of the divine? Do they worship? Will transphobic and queerphobic bullies owe reparations in the afterlife?
Course Goals:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Identify some recent, underexplored developments in analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.
- Explain problematic assumptions in the history of analytic philosophy of religion, beginning with Bertrand Russell and continuing to the present day.
- Unearth areas for further development in analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology in an empirical survey and a term paper.
Course Requirements:
- Participation (20%): All students are expected to read the material thoroughly, show up to class, and actively discuss the material.
- Diversity Survey Group Assignment (25%): Students will be divided into groups and design a survey to explore interesting differences in responses from overrepresented people (e.g., cisgender, heterosexual, white men) and underrepresented people (e.g., non-cisgender folx, women, people with disabilities). For example, you can ask, “If you discovered that God was a woman, would you think the existence of Hell was more likely or less likely?”, a question that may reveal whether and to what extent gendered expectations correlate with expectations of punishment. Once your survey is designed, we’ll test it on a sample audience — for example, on a big lecture course, as a survey distributed to students across the university, or (if those options won’t work) on students from another group in our own class. You’ll be graded on how well your questions reflect knowledge of interesting issues in the course materials and how plausible your empirical predictions are.
- Midterm Paper (25%): Students will be expected to write a paper of 3,000-4,000 words using the results from underrepresented perspectives in their Diversity Survey to develop a view of the divine nature. An excellent paper is one that listens well, incorporating various voices into a single, coherent doctrine of God. Your paper is due during Week 6.
- Final Paper (30%): Students will be expected to write a final paper for the course of approximately 3,000-4,000 words. Your job is to develop an interesting, nuanced, well-researched paper where you argue for a specific position on one of the issues we’ve discussed in the course. An excellent paper is one that breaks the boundaries and offers a highly original argument. Your paper is due the final day of class by 5pm.
Textbook(s):
Required:
- Hinder Them Not: Centering Marginalized Voices in Analytic Theology, edited by Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea (NY: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Further Reading:
- The Lost Sheep: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, Disability, and Animals in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe (NY: Routledge, forthcoming).
- Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, ed. Andrei Buckareef and Yujin Nagasawa (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Reading Schedule:
Week 1: Where Have We Come From?
Readings:
- Syllabus
- Nicholas Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy” (Canvas)
Week 2: Where Should We Go?
Readings:
- Grace Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Chapter 1 (Canvas)
- Sameer Yadav, “Toward an Analytic Theology of Liberation” (Hinder Them Not)
- Michelle Panchuk, “That We May Be Whole: Doing Philosophy of Religion with the Whole Self” (Canvas)
Week 3: What’s the Divine Gender?
Readings:
- Kathryn Pogin, “God is Not Male” (Canvas)
- Kelli Potter, “A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender” (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, “Prelude”
Week 4: Does God Have Sex?
Readings:
- Stephen T. Davis and Eric T. Yang, “Sexual Relations, Reproduction, and the Incarnation: What Could Jesus Do?” (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 1
Week 5: Will Heaven Be Gendered?
Readings:
- Hilary Yancey, “Heavenly Gendered Person? Resurrection Justice and Its Implications for Gender” (Canvas)
- Blake Hereth, “The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice” (Hinder Them Not)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 2
Week 6: How Should We Think About Race and Ethnicity?
Readings:
- Andrea C. White, “Analytic Theology in the Hands of Womanist Theology” (Hinder Them Not)
- Sameer Yadav, “Race in a Christian Social Ontology” (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 3
Week 7: What About Disability?
Readings:
- Scott Williams, “Ableism and the Philosophy of Religion: Is Personhood an Arbitrary Category?” (Canvas)
- Kevin Timpe, “Defiant Afterlife: Disability and Uniting Ourselves to God” (Hinder Them Not)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 4
Week 8: How Does Religious Trauma Shape Religious Identity?
Readings:
- Dawne Moon and Theresa W. Tobin, “How Racism and Responses to Racism Shape Sacramental Shame for Black LGBTQI and Same-Gender-Loving People” (Hinder Them Not)
- Joshua Cockayne, Jack Warman, and David Efird, “Shattered Faith: The Social Epistemology of Deconversion by Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma” (Hinder Them Not)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 5
Week 9: What About Non-Abrahamic Religious?
Readings:
- John H. Berthrong, “Chinese (Confucian) Philosophical Theology” (Canvas)
- Keith Yandell, “Some Varieties of Indian Theological Dualism” (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 6
Week 10: Nonhuman Animals
Readings:
- Shawn Graves, Blake Hereth, and Tyler M. John, “In Defense of Animal Universalism” (Canvas)
- Nicola Hoggard Creegan, Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil, Chapter 4 (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, Chapter 7
Week 11: Nonhuman Animals (cont.)
Readings:
- Faith Glavey Pawl, “Exploring Theological Zoology: Might Some Animals Be Spiritual (but not Religious)?” (Canvas)
- Dustin Crummett, “Eschatology for Creeping Things (and Other Animals)” (Canvas)
- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, “Coda”
Week 12: Finals Week
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Blake Hereth
Dr. Blake Hereth (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. Their research is in neuroethics, bioethics, applied ethics, and philosophy of religion. The APA awarded them the 2023 Alvin Plantinga Prize and the 2019 Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize.
