Religion influences how we perceive and address global challenges in many ways. This ranges from how we relate to other people to our relationship with the world we live in. It affects our beliefs and ethics, our behaviours and sense of belonging, whether we consider ourselves religious or not. This module will support you in building the confidence and skills needed to analyse and understand religion in a global context.
You’ll engage with traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and a range of Indigenous cultures. As well as learning about specific religious traditions, you’ll see how religion continues to be important in law, politics and the media, with real power in today’s global society and people’s everyday lives. You’ll explore a range of religious practices and ideas in relation to global challenges in different cultural and historical contexts. You’ll study diverse topics, such as yoga, conspiracy theories, American Christian nationalism, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, concepts of the state in modern Islam, colonisation of the Arctic, the rise of international Indigenous movements, and climate activism in the UK and Romania.
The following core questions are threaded throughout this module:
As part of your studies, you’ll work with a range of disciplinary perspectives, including history, philosophy, sociology, politics and anthropology. Engaging with ideas and methods across these different disciplines will help you gain a fuller understanding of the relationship between religion and global challenges in the past and present. You’ll also have opportunities to deepen your knowledge in areas of particular interest and develop your communication skills using various media.
This module includes the following blocks:
Block 1: Being Human: Religion, the Body and Inequalities explores the global challenge of reducing inequalities. The focus is on the relationship between religion and the body, for instance, in relation to health, well-being, technology, education, and human rights. You’ll also consider how religion can facilitate, reinforce, and challenge structures that create or perpetuate inequalities.
Block 2: Living Together: Religion, Conflict, and Peace is centrally concerned with the global challenges of promoting peace and justice and reducing inequalities. Drawing on a variety of historical and contemporary examples, you’ll explore how religion has contributed to conflicts but can also play an important role in peacebuilding.
Block 3: Sharing the Planet: Religion, Environments and Justice focuses on religion in relation to the climate crisis. This includes considering how religion has shaped different perceptions and ways of engaging with environments, including religious responses to natural disasters and religiously motivated climate action. You’ll also look at the relationship of religion to contested claims about knowledge, including conspiracy theories.
The study of religion and of global challenges inevitably touches on potentially sensitive and emotive topics. The study of this module can provide you with new perspectives and new ways to talk about these subjects that can be very powerful, personally and professionally. This will help you develop skills that will enable you to explore potentially sensitive topics as objectively as possible.
This module will help you develop your understanding of religion in social, cultural, and political life from diverse perspectives. The skills and knowledge involved are important in a wide range of professional settings, including the police, legal services, business, health care, education, politics, and NGOs. UNESCO also recognises these skills as central to addressing global challenges.
You’ll also earn a digital 'DA332 Multi-Media Skills' badge that you can use on your CV, or share on social media, like LinkedIn and other platforms.
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
Course work includes:
You’ll be provided with three printed books and have access to a module website, which includes:
The module authors have also recorded a podcast series to guide you and help consolidate your learning of the most important themes, issues and skills covered.
Where possible, the materials are also available in other formats – which may include PDF, EPUB, interactive ebook (EPUB3), Kindle ebook and Microsoft Word – to enable you to study on the move. You can also access the module materials via the OU Study app.
You can study this module on its own or use the credits you gain towards an Open University qualification.
DA332 is a compulsory module in our:
DA332 is an option module in our:
Religion and global challenges in the past and present starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2036.
As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations, which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.
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