From left, student Ellen McCormick, professors Peter Steiger adn Regina Pfeiffer, and students John Phee and Jessica Yogi.

The religious studies major

Some Chaminade University students are choosing an academic degree that enriches life over career

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

“So what are you going to do with that?”

The religious studies majors at Chaminade University of Honolulu get asked that a lot. Their response: “Whatever we want.”

Three of the department’s seniors and two of its professors sat down last month to talk with the Hawaii Catholic Herald in a little more detail about what they get out of their small but vibrant program.

Kaneohe resident John Phee picked the religious studies program when he transferred to Chaminade from a Texas university early in his college career because of his interest in debating and philosophy. The department has a large number of ethics and philosophy courses.

“I joined [the major] not knowing what I was going to do with it. I leave not knowing what I’m going to do with it,” said the 22-year-old. “But [the major] is not really about that. It’s about who you are becoming.”

According to professors Peter Steiger and Regina Pfeiffer, many religious studies majors advance to related graduate studies, into teaching or parish ministry jobs like director of religious education. They’ve also seen students move in a completely different direction, like law school.

“I think there’s a variety of possibilities people take advantage of when they’re going for a religious studies degree,” Pfeiffer said. “Part of it’s going to be how you see it applied in life as opposed to looking at it as a specific career path.”

Catholic intellectual roots

Chaminade being a Marianist institution, the religious studies program is rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition. The major’s focus is Christian studies and there is a minor in that concentration as well. However, students also can minor in philosophy or Asian and Pacific religions.

A religious studies major takes courses in ethics, Asian or Hawaiian religions, Scripture, church history, Christology, spirituality and other topics. They also participate in a community service internship for a religious or nonprofit institution and take a senior seminar.

While Chaminade University’s more visible programs in criminology, forensic sciences, interior design and education sometimes overshadow the religious studies program, Steiger and Pfeiffer both see a growing interest in the area. When Pfeiffer got her bachelor’s in religious studies here in the early 1990s there were only three majors and she doesn’t remember any minors.

Steiger said, “There is more interest and openness to religious studies and philosophy among the current generation of students. There’s an interest in religious questions particularly as related to certain situations in the world … and religion generally.”

Small is good with limitations

Today there are 20 religious studies majors and minors and nine full and part-time department professors. The small program size attracted Jessica Yogi, 21, to Chaminade after a year in a community college in her home state of Maryland which did not have the rich professor-student interaction she receives at Chaminade.

Fellow major Ellen McCormick, 20, came to the university from Seattle because she wanted to be a high school religion teacher. Chaminade was recommended for its Catholic identity and small classes.

She’s enjoyed getting to know the professors beyond the classroom.

“I really think my experience would have been a lot different if I didn’t have professors that genuinely cared about how I was doing, what I’m doing,” she said.

The program could use more students, however. McCormick, who has helped plan some department lectures and events, said it’s sometimes hard to get enough people to attend because of the size of the program. When she spent a semester at the University of Dayton, which has a large religion program, McCormick found herself thinking, “Man, I wish our program was bigger.”

For Yogi, who is minoring in philosophy, the small class size can be an issue in upper level classes when they are attended by non-religious studies majors just fulfilling the school’s religion course requirements. The different levels of knowledge among the students can hamper advanced learning.

Yogi would also prefer an even larger diversity of religions covered in the courses, as would Phee.

Steiger hopes the department can increase to a more ideal size of 30 majors and minors. That would still allow for small class sizes while eliminating the need for mixed-major upper-level classes.

More students could also resurrect the currently dormant religious studies graduate program.

‘I made the right choice’

But despite the negatives, all three students say they’ve received a lot from the program. McCormick, who is minoring in environmental studies and who is a Catholic, hopes to get her master’s in religious education.

Phee and Yogi are agnostics, which made their choice of major surprising to some who knew them.

“Because of the classes that I’ve taken and the things that I’ve learned, I really feel like I made the right choice,” Yogi said. “I feel like it’s really helped me as a person more than if I had taken any other major. It wouldn’t have been the same experience for me.”

She’s enjoyed doing “a lot of critical thinking and delving into the bigger, more substantive questions.”

Phee also likes the courses whose subject matter delves deeper than normal class dialogue.

“I can feel not only myself but other people wishing they had more time to discuss a particular topic,” he said. “I actually see people changing who they are based on what they’re hearing and really asking themselves important questions.”

That observation seems to fit the religious studies department’s mission, which is “to foster an understanding of human responses to the sacred that invite personal and communal commitment to faith in action and spiritual growth.”