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Religious Studies Supporting Goals

Loras College Religious StudiesLoras College Religious Studies takes pride in maintaining a strong emphasis on the Catholic tradition, Religious Studies seeks to offer the proper intellectual and academic witness to the sources of religious truth and meaning.

  • In its graduate program, the program is committed to the theological and pastoral formation of lay professionals serving the church.
  • In its major, the program seeks to provide a foundation for students to begin service to the church, or graduate work in theology or religious studies.
  • For non-majors, Religious Studies offers a selection of courses to afford a view of religion and its development, and to invite students to a deeper awareness of their own existence as religious persons.

Religious Studies is committed to the mission statement of Loras College. It supports the Catholic identity of the college by striving to impart an understanding of Christian faith within the context of the growing treasury of human knowledge. The program is especially dedicated to the attempt to provide a framework for moral decision-making and Christian practice.

Dispositions we favor for our students:

1. Students who are reflective thinkers
• have a sense of how religion and theology speak 
• can enter into those methods and thought processes are beyond prejudice 
• understand and communicate the religious dimension of life

2. Students who are active learners
• discern, interpret, and communicate the religious dimension of life
• apply religious principles 
• participate in or at least appreciate the Christian tradition

3. Students who are ethical decision-makers
• possess an ethical framework
• are serious about ethical and moral demands
• bring transcendental concerns into decisions

4. Students who are responsible contributors
• are active in parish, Church, and/or ecumenical service
• are involved in local, national, and global issues
• respond to the Christ in humanity
• are active in the apostolate of transforming the temporal sphere

Goals

To enable students to understand, and to communicate their understanding of, the religious dimension of human life;

To increase students’ ability to accomplish the mission of Loras College and of Religious Studies, both critically and ecumenically, in light of Catholic theological convictions;

To clarify for and with students the Christian schema of values, personal and societal, which lead to ethical decisions and human wholeness:

The student will explore depth experiences and ultimate concerns as found in any aspect of human experience and academic studies.

The student of religious studies will learn methods, tools and concepts that are helpful in interpreting the meaning of Sacred Mystery as mediated in the history of world religious and contemporary human culture.

The student of theology will be enabled better assess religious meaning, truth, and moral values by means of dialogue with Catholic biblical, systematic, moral, and liturgical theology.

The Loras student will be actualized as one who can conscientiously choose to contribute to making society and the church more just and loving by using critical thinking and moral principles in ways that embody reasonable and faithful response to human and Christian meaning, truth and moral values.

Loras College