There
are degrees in Islamic education online and in
various aspects of preparation for the ministry available online as well as in
the classrooms of seminaries and Christian universities. If your interest
is in comparative religion, you are better off exploring the options at a
traditional university - which by next fall may be offering those courses
online as well, given the pace with which traditional colleges are adopting
distance learning.
There are several
options offered by respected, accredited institutions. The bachelor's
degree programs generally mix a fairly broad choice of academic disciplines
mixed in with classes on spirituality and on Christian theology. The
result is a baccalaureate in Christian Ministry or in other cases, in Theology
and Ministry.
Some schools are
offering graduate degrees in the field as well. Liberty University has a
mix of twenty two master's programs that are a mix of MA, MAR, and MDiv
degrees. Those are a Master of Arts, Master of Arts in Religion, and
Master of Divinity respectively. Generally, an MAR degree is recognized
as qualification for status in the lay ministry and preparation for further
study. The Masters of Divinity is meant to convey status as a graduate
who is prepared for ordination into a Christian faith.
The Master's of
Divinity options include such areas of focus as Church Ministries, Discipleship
Ministries, Evangelism and Church Planting and Biblical Studies. The
graduate degrees closest to lay studies are the master's degrees in theology,
in professional counseling, and in worship ethnomusicology online islamic studies cover
differing degrees of focus on the evangelical profession, broken out into an
interesting mix or specialties.
There is a college in
Philadelphia offers online courses in the Jewish faith, and one in Los Angeles
that has a distance learning School of Buddhist Studies. There are schools
with online courses in Hinduism and Islam as well, and there is a directory for
comparative religion courses that has developed recently. Religion has
come to the world of digital education, just as every other avenue of learning
led to distance learning.
