No educated person can claim an understanding of the educated world without some genuine grasp of religion in all its global diversity, moral ambivalence, and historical complexity. As a future medical, legal, educational, or public professional, you will routinely enter and exit -- perhaps unknowingly -- a dozen different religious worldviews in a typical week or even a typical day (consider a modern urban hospital). If you do not understand something of these life-worlds and their values, if you cannot negotiate their similarities and their differences, then you will be less a doctor, less a lawyer, less an educator, less a public servant. So, get smart about religion.

Or Get Really Smart About Religion

Did you know that you can study religion in graduate school, as well? And did you know that Rice University's Department of Religion is a recognized leader in the professional study of religion? We are an intellectual community of some fifty individuals (faculty, staff, and Ph.D. students) all dedicated to one thing: teaching people how to be really smart about religion.

'Life-changing!' This is how our former majors commonly describe the courses they took with us

We are here to help you apply the study of religion to your professional goals, whether these be in medicine, law, mental health, education, public affairs, government, environmentalism, or journalism. Our graduates have gone on to successful and deeply satisfying careers in all these professions and more. Join our students who are making a better world, one that is more tolerant and globally aware.