The following personal statement is written by an applicant who got accepted to several top MA programs in religious studies. Variations of this PS got accepted at Columbia, Harvard, and Colorado University. Read this essay to understand what a top personal statement in religion should look like.
Example Personal Statement in Religion
In our society, it’s natural and encouraged to accept without questioning; given this cultural norm of blind following, we accept without thinking about the social and spiritual contract we enter once we are of sound mind. However, reason can only stay unconscious as long as it doesn’t actively think, but when it does, everything we once did robotically becomes a question of why.
Something similar happened during my first year when a professor started questioning religion on philosophical grounds. Although shattered because nothing I said or thought defended my religious beliefs, my mental state became what James Baldwin once said. “The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” Thereon, I started questioning everything in our community, including religion.
Although being a full-time Finance major momentarily distracted me from my undeniable thirst for knowing the reasoning behind the following religion, a mandatory course during my fourth semester brought the interest boiling back to the surface. I enrolled in the socio-economic-political philosophy of Islam (SEPPI) offered by the same professor I mentioned previously. My intention was solely to settle my mind, which ruthlessly questioned why I followed Islam, particularly when there were so many other religions too.
However, we didn’t start there; we began with metaphysics – the ever-live debate about the existence of God. Then, as a class, we went out to study every other major religion in the world, critically analyzing everything from Judaism to the concept of the social trinity down to the very purpose of Islam. This class overshadowed every other course I took that semester to the point that even while studying financial management, all I could think about was our class discussions. And at the end, it drove me to my professor’s office, currently also my research advisor, where I told him that this was what I wanted to study.
Next semester, I was recruited as his research assistant and started my research on the most discussed event connecting Judaist and Christian theology – The trial of Jesus (PBUH).
Another significant development occurred during the fourth semester when I started teaching English as part of my social internship. Though my weekends got occupied, I slowly discovered my love for teaching. It was the most challenging job I had taken; I had to prepare underprivileged students for college entry exams designed to test the privileged ones. But the entire experience moulded me, and I immediately signed up for another semester to teach.
In time I realized that I felt comfortable teaching, which gave me a sense of purpose. I was finally giving back to my community, and what better way was there than to impart knowledge? So, it was no surprise when I said in my speech, upon receiving the best intern award, that I wanted to be a teacher, and at the back of my head, I knew exactly what I wanted to teach.
In the next two years that I worked as a research assistant, my research and analytical skills improved because I was constantly reading historical books and journals on Jesus. I critically viewed every stance that an author would take on his trial. As an aspirant student hoping to publish one day, my paper focused on defending Jesus’s (PBUH) position when he was accused of blasphemy and charged with crucifixion upon his claim to be the messenger of God. And while it was one experience to research it, it was another to present and teach it in a live class.
As the content of my research was part of the SEPPI curriculum, I got the opportunity to teach in the university classroom. The sophomore students not only commented but also questioned my position and thus drove me further to defend it logically. Consequently, those classes became crucial feedback to improve my research work and only confirmed my zeal for studying and teaching religious studies.
In my four years of undergrad, living away from home, finding an academic route amidst batch mates aspiring to meet corporate heights and realizing that the young generation silently thirsts for justification has inspired me to decide resistance. It’s neither dazzling nor lucrative but teaching religious studies to strengthen reasoning is a social change I would like to start.