Over the last two years, I have participated in the University’s work to rewrite our core curriculum. During the 2023-2024 school year, I served on the Core Curriculum Revision Task Force. This year, I have provided feedback to the University on proposals for the new core. USF is updating its core to reflect the evolution of our mission and identity, after more than two decades under the present core. We also want to make the process more economical for students, in light of their majors and interests. These are important tasks. But I write to share concerns in my department about the two leading revision proposals, both of which would erode studies in religion and theology as enterprises central to USF’s curriculum. They would disarm students of knowledge in the humanities that is vital for comprehending the life-and-death challenges of today’s world.
USF’s core has long had the smallest theology requirement of any U.S. Jesuit university — just a single D-2 course. Meanwhile, similar schools, such as Boston College or Gonzaga University, have two or three theology or religious studies cores, and a like number in philosophy. Both new core proposals would limit USF’s requirement to one theology or religious studies (THRS) course, and one philosophy course. THRS also shares oversight of the ethics core (D-3) with the philosophy department, so that students can satisfy their single core ethics requirement in either department. But both pending core proposals would decenter the current ethics core, so the ethics requirement could be satisfied in almost any other department. That would harm enrollments in both philosophy and THRS, risking our viability as academic programs, and sapping the expertise needed to educate our students.
We are painfully aware of how neoliberal market ideology, and the perverse effects of technology and social media, have eroded interest in the humanities. Neoliberalism dictates that only marketable programs should survive, so mission-driven values are sacrificed. But theology and religion should never be marginalized in a school like ours. Our department educates on the real-world impact of religious institutions and movements, focusing on vital issues of war and peace, human rights, intercultural engagement, health and science and social relations across the intersections of race, gender and sexuality.
Our mission responds to the call of the Second Vatican Council to develop pedagogies around the “signs of the times.” In this approach, Catholic universities commit to educating on the major events and trends of the age, in light of Christian faith, and in interfaith perspective. The focus on the “signs of the times” gave birth to theologies of liberation, and fed adjacent movements including U.S. Black theologies of liberation in light of the Black Power movement, feminist theologies against ecclesial sexism and patriarchy, new interest in indigenous religions throughout the world and Latinx theologies taking up religious perspectives on immigration, racism and culture. South African Christian churches, armed with African liberationist theologies, were instrumental in the battle against apartheid.
Our faculty is intensively engaged with this world, with perspectives and training that cannot be duplicated or supplemented by other departments. We cover major religious traditions and movements in all corners of the world. We offer courses in Christianity and Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and indigenous religions. We host courses on Latin American and African theologies, anti-racism in religion, and religious movements for feminism, gender equality and queer liberation. Students can study the religious dimensions of migration, eco-theology, the HIV/AIDS crisis, or perspectives on sexuality in Jewish and Christian scriptures. We have courses on Hinduism and ecology, Tibetan Buddhism, and feminism in Islam. Our department is home to an outstanding minor program in Jewish Studies and social justice, focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jewish social justice movements, antisemitism and interfaith dialog.
We work across diverse cultures and languages, and most of us teach across divisions in the University. Our interdisciplinarity offers students a more holistic humanism, addressing questions arising from their non-theological majors, and broader perspective on how religion shapes ethical knowledge and historical understanding at large. Students who start out wondering why they are “forced” to take a core in theology or religion regularly report that they learned to think differently about religion and about life after studying with us. Some tell us they might have undertaken a minor in THRS, had they encountered in their first couple of years what they came to learn all too late in their undergraduate careers.
These are important offerings to a humanistic institution like ours. We hope that our department’s expansive educational agenda is not further cut in the new core curriculum. For those deciding on the new core, it is crucial that anti-religious bias, ignorance, and neoliberal ideology are resisted, and that the real value of what we do, especially our intensive focus on real-world crises and problems, is not lost in the shuffle.
Editor-in-Chief: Jordan Premmer, Chief Copy Editor: Sophia McCrackin, Managing Editor: Jordan DelFiugo, Opinion Editor: Dakota Duran, Scene Editor: Elina Graham
