Ted Chicago

I agree that doing a history MA would serve you well within most areas in religious studies. Watch out though with these field designations. At UChicago, "History of Christianity," rooted in what used to be called "church history," is very historically inclined (as is History of Judaism and a lot of people working in Bible, Islamic Studies, etc.). "History of Religions" is a very different discipline, going back to Mircea Eliade and much closer to what would be called "comparative religion" elsewhere. It also, for some reason serves as the institutional home for work on Buddhism and Hinduism at Chicago--and obviously you could do historical work on those traditions.

Feel free to PM me and I can talk specifics. But Harvard has done very well over the last few years--it was one of the reasons I chose to come here rather than history programs elsewhere.

Here's a few comments on the field: The University of Chicago has been hurt by the loss of Catherine Brekus to Harvard--they will hopefully hire a replacement next year, but at the moment the whole program is being run by Curtis Evans--although Evans is great and it's a fantastic place to be in general--and you could probably also spend some time at Northwestern with Orsi. I'm biased, but I do think Harvard is the best place in the country to do American religious history due to the sheer size of the faculty and their diversity of interests. The dean of the Divinity School, David Hempton, is a historian of transatlantic evangelicalism, and in addition you have David Holland, Catherine Brekus, Ann Braude, Marla Frederick, Jonathan Walton, and the list could go on, especially if you include faculty in history and American Studies. Princeton University has always had a very strong program, especially in African-American religions, as has Yale--but it might be harder to do early American topics at these places than it used to. Obviously Duke and UNC are also traditionally very strong, but UNC lost Maffly-Kipp and Grant Wacker has retired from Duke. Albanese has also retired from UCSB and Holifield from Emory. I won't keep going on because I don't have exhaustive knowledge of the field (I'm sure Vanderbilt, Florida State, UVA, etc. are strong, but I'm not very familiar with them), but my strong belief is that the more faculty you can draw from in an institution, the better off you are going there. If there's just one or two faculty, you could be in trouble if someone leaves, doesn't get tenure, etc. Plus, the more faculty, the more students there will be in the area, which will help to shape your project in ways you can't anticipate. I think it's a little artificial to separate out religion programs from history programs that have strong emphases in American Religious History--for example, some of the most important figures in the field in recent years such as Mark Noll and George Marsden (and a whole slew of historians of American Catholicism; and now Darren Dochuk as well) are in the history or (in the case of Tom Tweed) American Studies departments at Notre Dame--part of this I think is the fact that few of these historians would fit in a Catholic theology department. Another example: Washington University in St Louis now has a very strong contingent of American religion faculty (Leigh Schmidt, Marie Griffith, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, etc.) in their Danforth Center, but in order to work with them as a doctoral student I think you'd need to go through the history department. Quick edit: I would also add Boston University to your long list depending on your specialization (if you are interested in world Christianity/missions at all, BU, Yale, and Edinburgh are the three centers). Very strong in mission history (Dana Robert), Jon Roberts would be a great resource in the history department, Stephen Prothero is in religion, and there's a number of potential faculty in the School of Theology. Plus you could take classes across the BTI.

Yeah--Study of Religion, not NELC.

I can confirm that Harvard does not interview--at least I never interviewed and I am here. The decisions should be out soon (current PhDs just got an e-mail asking for those willing to contact admitted students)--though I would expect to be contacted by your POI rather than to get an official e-mail.

I graduated from the MA program in June and really loved my time there. I'm now in a PhD program elsewhere and I definitely miss a lot about my time in Hyde Park. That said, it's definitely not for everyone and it's quite different from most other divinity schools. In terms of MA admission, I don't think there are any "must haves" beyond the basics of a reasonable undergraduate performance, a decent verbal score on the GRE, and a statement of purpose that expresses an interest in religion in a compelling way. I remember when I applied someone in my university's career office who knew what she thought to be the ethos of the U of C looked at my original statement (which was pretty focused on my specific academic interests within the history of Christianity) and told me to add some "religious studies" theory. I think I ended up mumbling something about Durkheim, but in retrospect I think it's more important (unless you are in the field of history of religions) to talk about various faculty who interest you, the opportunities to take classes in the broader university, your academic interests, and how you foresee developing them at Chicago, etc. They're not expecting you to be a religious studies scholar already coming in. In terms of finance, my understanding is that most accepted students receive a 50% tuition scholarship to begin with and that generally funding increases from there, up to full tuition with a stipend. This page outlines the different forms of funding available to students: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/divinity-school-aid. I think this is where the U of C loses some students to other places like Harvard and Yale. I don't know if you're at all interested in an MDiv, but the degree is just as academically-focused as the MA with some extra ministry classes. Before I applied, a professor had strongly encouraged me toward the MDiv, in part because the funding is often better. If you have specific questions about faculty, classes, disciplines, etc., I'd be happy to answer them.