From "Folk Religion" to the "Search for Meaning": Teaching Folklore Outside the Discipline‪.‬

In the mid-1980s, while working on a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania where I combined both Folklore and Folklife and Religious Studies, Folklore Department chair Kenneth S. Goldstein asked me to create an undergraduate course with the title, "Introduction to Folk Religion". I envisioned a course with many objectives: I wanted the students to become sensitive to the public and private expressions of religion, including religious experience; I desired them to be aware of the vitality of the study of belief and belief systems; and I sought to sensitize them to the individual negotiations of religion apparent even within powerful religious institutions. The summary of this offering, as I now list it in the course guide of Cabrini College, the Roman Catholic liberal arts college in the suburbs of Philadelphia where I currently teach, reads as follows: This course will introduce the study of religion through the exploration of the search for meaning among religious people, with the emphasis placed on Christian "folk" religion in Europe and America. Among the topics to be discussed are the Holy Shroud of Turin, stigmata, incorruptibility of holy persons, relics of the saints, demonic possession, healing miracles, magic, divination, historical witchcraft and contemporary Goddess Religion, as well as apparitions of the Virgin Mary.