Source: Los Angeles Times
On May 27, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported on the religious studies department of UC Santa Barbara, which "brings together the jumble of modern culture and reassembles it under the heading of religion. Though the standard university approach to the study of religion draws heavily from the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish traditions,...Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans and others get equal time here...Instead of promoting any one religious faith, all of them are researched and analyzed." A dean of the department "sees religion as an all-purpose major, like literature or history, a way of understanding the world." Some, however, warn of that "there is danger of reducing religion to social studies."