title appears to be an outdated version of what should be read as courses in
history, gender and philosophy (www.upng.ac.pg/ accessed Jan. 2006). The
more recent Divine Word University (DWU) (formerly Divine Word Institute)
introduced a Diploma in Religious Studies in 1983. Trompf noted (1991: 182),
however, that the Department of Religious Studies at DWU is really focused
on preparing students for pastoral work in Papua New Guinea rather than
offering a religious studies tertiary program.
There have been small additions and some small growth in the discipline
area, but there have also been losses, sometimes as a result of restructuring of
university departments and sometimes as a result of the increasing financial
difficulties of universities, a trend both in Australia and in New Zealand. In
Australia, La Trobe University downgraded its Division of Religious Studies
to a program in the 1990s, and dispersed the existing staff into separate
departments in history, Asian languages, philosophy, and Hellenic studies, but
continued to teach the full range of religious studies subjects. Both Edith Cowan
University and Deakin University repositioned their religious studies programs
into larger schools or departments with a subsequent loss of visibility and
viability for the subject area. The Australian Catholic University, founded in
1991 by an amalgamation of various Catholic colleges and institutes of the
eastern states, introduced a School of Religion and Philosophy, which was
transformed in 1994 into a Sub-Faculty of Philosophy and Theology within
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Here the change was not so much a result
of financial difficulty as a change to a more religiously conservative curriculum.
There are, however, new indications that the discipline is once again growing
in Australia, although not in a highly visible way. The Australian National
University, for example, has recently begun to offer a major in religious studies
within the undergraduate program.
With the institutionalization of the discipline area, a consensus has emerged
about what constitutes the study of religions and how it should be presented
within the university and to the public at large. Home webpages of the major
departments summarize in a similar fashion the major points: a critical and
open attitude to the material being studied; a breadth of methods drawn from
history, philosophy, psychology, phenomenology, sociology, political theory,
and literary theory; a concern with both traditional and contemporary
expressions of religion; and a focus on the part religions play within social
and political life.
Much of what is done both in teaching and in research in New Zealand in
religious studies departments or programs has been and continues to be coloured
by Christian theology. Just tracing the influence on the growth of the discipline
by Knox Theological Hall alone is sufficient to understand why this is so. The
Dean of the Theology Faculty at the University of Otago, who was instrumental
in the introduction of Phenomenology of Religion, was previously a lecturer at
Knox Theological Hall. The first lecturer appointed at Otago in 1966 was Albert
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