Religion Master’s Degree Program

The academic study of religion examines how and why religious ideas, practices, and institutions take shape within particular historical and cultural contexts. Scholars work with primary sources — texts, images, material artifacts, and lived practices — and engage a range of scholarly methods, including historical analysis, textual interpretation, ethnography, and critical theory. Rather than evaluating the truth of religious claims, scholars focus on how such claims are articulated, transmitted, contested, and lived.

In the religion graduate program, you’ll:

• Develop an understanding of the historical origins, central teachings, and devotional practices of the major religious traditions.
• Build knowledge of religion’s role in political, economic, and cultural life through historical, social, and cultural contexts.
• Receive training in critical thinking and scholarly analysis.
• Learn how to engage key primary and secondary materials in a way that allows you to offer your own scholarly interpretation of religious issues.
• Understand the key approaches that scholars have taken to study religious phenomena.
• Cultivate skills in expressing your ideas with precision, accountability and originality.
• Graduate with a Harvard University degree: Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Extension Studies in the field of Religion.

The path to your degree begins before you apply to the program. You’ll earn your way in through our performance-based admissions, completing coursework for admission, demonstrating readiness, and earning credits toward your degree right away.

Alumni work in a variety of fields, including law, finance, theology, IT, research, and higher education. They have gone on to do Ph.D. work at universities, including:

• George Mason University
• Georgetown University
• University of California at Los Angeles