200 Religion
210 Philosophy and theory of religion
220 The Bible
230 Christianity
240 Christian practice and observance
250 Christian orders and local church
260 Social and ecclesiastical theology
270 History of Christianity
280 Christian denominations
290 Other religions
200s is where religion is catalogued in the Dewey Decimal System. In order to understand the composition of the religion section, we must revisit its creator, Melvill Dewey. Dewey graduated from Amherst College, when it was a liberal arts school with a strong Christian worldview. This influenced the creation of the classification system, whose first draft was created while Dewey was working for the university library [1]. The reason this focus on Christian theology has continued to present day is a result of modern-day publishing trends. Religious publishing is a lucrative industry with a large portion of the market share being affiliated with Christian theology [2]. There is a selection of books across the length of the religion section that seeks to provide a balanced snapshot below.
--Anissa Alexander, Librarian
Sources
[1] https://www.amherst.edu/about/history/bicentennial/amherst-college-timeline
The 200s covers religious studies around the world from a diversity of authors. We have a curated a sampler of the section seeking to equally represent the the array of topics in this section.
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