Religion has never been something I have interacted with throughout my life. I am non-religious and none of my immediate family members follow any religion so I have lived quite a sheltered life in regards to this. Up until recently I would have said that I disliked religion as a concept due to its negative connotations and, to me, seemingly outdated stances on a lot of subject matter. However, I realised in the past year or so that this is a very close-minded view of mine and that I should be more open. and although I myself don’t follow a religion it doesn’t mean I can’t look at it from the outside and at least attempt to understand where those who follow religion are coming from. Upon today’s lecture I discovered that this is known as the “scholarly approach” to religion, and this resonates with me. I also feel that a knowledge, even if only broad, and an understanding of a variety of different religions and cultures will be very positive for my future career.

I felt that today I looked at the place of religion in a society and the motivations behind those who are religious. I found this interesting and am keen to look more into this. We were also introduced to various theorists (Bourdillon, Durkheim, Malinowksi etc.) who write on religious culture, these will be very important moving forward when justifying viewpoints. I think I had a vague understanding of what we were looking at but will absolutely need to investigate further- and I look forward to this as I want to broaden my knowledge base. My hope is that by the end of this module I will be able to approach the variety of religions in my future classroom with a knowledgable and open mind.