History of Religions (M.Phil)

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Religion and History in the Pre-Modern World: Encounter and Conflict.

Why is Jerusalem still such a contested place? What are the reasons for the systematic destruction by the Islamic State (IS) of the cultural heritage of the past? Why do sacred texts produced centuries ago continue to shape the lives of people today? How are they used and abused? Why does the sword sometimes replace the word in religious matters? How did religious groups, ideas and artefacts travel from one continent to another and how did that migration transform them? In other words, how did religious conflicts and encounters shape the modern world and why do they still matter today?

These are some of the topics MF Norwegian School of Theology tackles in its new M.Phil program in History of Religions, with a primary focus on Religion in the Pre-Modern World: Encounters and Conflicts.

The program is focused on the issues of religious cross-pollination, coexistence, and conflict in three target areas: Europe, South-East Asia and the Middle East. Addressed in a long historical perspective stretching from Late Antiquity to the European Renaissance, the program seeks to illuminate the roots of present peaceful coexistence and interchange, as well as of today’s antagonisms and conflicts. The underlying idea of the program is that, in order to fully grasp current religious conflicts and alliances, we need to understand how the perceptions of past and present are intertwined, reciprocally dependent and constantly reshaped.