Examines the religious basis of society alongside various attempts to reform it (St. Augustine, Luther and Calvin, John Locke), early European attempts to understand other cultures (Spanish missionaries in Latin America, Jesuits in China) and concludes with twentieth-century social scientists analyzing religious experience (William James, Durkheim, Evans-Pritchard). We discuss what is a just war, whether we have natural rights, and whether tolerance is a utopian ideal, with a particular focus on the nature of critical thought and the various modes of argumentation employed in the works studied Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.