Welcome to the Religion Department! Why study religion? Like language, culture, and artistic expression, religion is a universal human phenomenon. More than any other aspect of humanity, however, religions tell people how they should live, and in many cases, why they should die. That is, religions give an account for all of existence. Through the academic study of religion, therefore, we join the great humanistic enterprise of classical university education: understanding human beings for the sake of living morally with them. Why study religion at Samford? Founded by Baptists, Samford strives to be a university that serves churches of all denominations as well as society as a whole. So while we promote the traditional values of liberal education—training in the classics, schooling in virtues, sharpening the intellect, and writing with clarity—from its founding, an important aspect of Samford's mission has been to educate Christian ministers. In the religion department we do our part to continue that tradition by also offering courses focused on the practice of ministry and by enrolling qualified students in our Preministerial Scholars Program. Samford's distinction is to offer interested students, who are in an academically rigorous undergraduate setting, supervised internships that link the intellectual work of the classroom to ministry in daily life.
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