The Department of Religious Studies & Classics is happy to announce the winners of the Fall 2024 Lionel Rombach and Ora Bretall Scholarship Awards.
Ora Bretall Scholarship Awardee: Melissa Baker
Lionel Rombach Scholarship Awardee: Annika Rasmussen
Congratulations to our outstanding Religious Studies majors!
Read (in their words) how majoring in Religious Studies has enriched their lives and studies:
For me, studying religious studies has meant peace and understanding. It helped me grow beyond the dogmas and religious abuse of my fundamentalist upbringing. It gave me tools from different faiths to draw from while I suffered extreme hardships in my personal life. I think everyone should do some studies in religious studies as it can increase your resilience in your life and increase your cultural competency and awareness to better function in an increasingly interconnected world where the distances that once separated our nations and ideologies melt into the past.
I’m an atheist who believes in religion. At least, in what religion could be. We humans are meaning-making creatures, finding and creating patterns and stories and communities. We need these things to be whole, individually and collectively. Without shared meaning-making systems we are fractured from one another. The increasing secularization of Western society has created a need to reimagine new approaches to religion for modern, non-theistic communities. Religion is among the most powerful forces in human civilization, and it is not going anywhere. For good and for ill, religion continues to shape the worldviews of individuals and societies. By studying religion we can better understand humanity. And maybe even create circles within circles of connection we all so desperately need.