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A Leap of Faith Studying religion at UMass Amherst proved as complex as the subject itself

—Peter Manseau ’96

illustration by Katelan V. Foisy IN MY WRITING AND FIELD research I have spoken in tongues with Pentecostals in North Carolina, called down the moon with Wiccans in Kansas, and tasted healing earth with devout dirt-eaters in New Mexico—among others. On the surface, these different sorts of believers would seem to have in common only the opinion that their beliefs are normal and that those of the others are strange. But in my experience they share another conviction as well: That religious identity is not merely a matter of a checking one box or another on a census form. Far from a being a separate, confined, private aspect of life, religion can affect (some would say infect) all things. One need only read the front page of any newspaper to see the way faith casts its shadow even on those with no particular spiritual affiliation. From intelligent design, to abortion, to gay marriage, the most divisive issues almost always have religious questions at the core. At the same time, they are never entirely religious. Faith does not exist in a vacuum, but in relation to the ideas that form and are formed by it. I had no intention of studying religion at UMass Amherst. If I’d had, I probably wouldn’t have applied. After all, the campus has no department devoted to the subject, and no faculty for whom it is a singular area of expertise. Yet, like many students, once I was taking classes, reading books, and growing up, the interests that would guide the rest of my life emerged. As that began to happen, I realized I was lucky to attend a school big enough, flexible enough, and, frankly, loose enough to allow me to follow my instincts. Devising my own course of study through the Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration program ( www.umass.edu/bdic/ ), I didn’t learn everything a budding religion scholar should know, but I did stumble onto a path of understanding that otherwise would have been impossible. As it turned out, studying something the school did not officially teach was the best thing for me. Since graduation, I have written two books dealing with the varieties of religious experience in America, and I have found that it is not a subject easily reducible to a single theory or explanation—and certainly not to an isolated academic department. At UMass Amherst, as in the world, religion is a subject that exists only in relation. Without the structure of a formal religious studies program, students who wish to learn about Buddhist scripture, Islamic law, or Catholic theology must do so within a broader context. A Department of History course on monasticism taught me religion’s role in shaping modern Europe. In a Department of Philosophy course in medieval thought, I read the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian texts that were a necessary precursor to the Enlightenment. Courses in the departments of Comparative Literature and English exposed me to the beauty and transformative power of religious stories and poetry. When I told someone recently that I had studied religion at UMass Amherst, he quite correctly wondered how this was possible. “But there’s no religion department, is there?” I replied that UMass Amherst taught me to study religion as literature, philosophy, history, and art—a fitting way to study a subject as complex and multidisciplinary as life itself. Read more about Peter at: http://www.petermanseau.com

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A Leap of Faith

A Leap of Faith: larger image