This course combines the riches of the biblical text with some of Yale’s greatest treasures. Each day will explore the concept of wonder through academic study and lively conversation about a biblical text. We will then enrich our learning about this theme each day with guided e-visits to one of Yale’s collections, led by world-class …
View course details “The Bible Through Art and Artifact III”

All descriptions of the death of members of monastic communities in the Middle Ages have in common that music and song are part of the scenario.  Nobody had to die in silence.  The community accompanied their brothers and sisters on their last journey with singing.  Death and dying are also important subjects in the history of music.  Beginning in …
View course details “Sounds of Death and Mourning: Requiems and Funeral Songs through the Ages”

The American physician-poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. once observed that the famous eighteenth-century theologian and revivalist Jonathan Edwards believed not in a Trinity but in a Quaternity—and that for Edwards the fourth person was “Justice.” Holmes was active during the late nineteenth century, when Edwards’ trinitarian credentials were in doubt: supposedly there were manuscripts his …
View course details “Jonathan Edwards on the Trinity”

What does the “Anglican Communion” mean? How do different histories, cultures, and interpretations of Anglicanism come together into this one global relationship? This course explores the Anglican Communion from its historical origins, its entanglement in colonialism and empire, its relationship to other faiths and other versions of the Christian tradition, and its modern tensions and …
View course details “Postcolonial Communion: The Anglican Communion in Global Context”

This course will explore sacramental theology through the lens of the Episcopal Church and, specifically, how the sacraments are encountered through the liturgies of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The majority of the course will focus on the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, but the other sacramental rites will be examined. By the end …
View course details “Sacramental Theology”

From biblical times to the present, God has been in the middle of politics. Charismatic leadership, the election of leaders and nations, political parties and their social policies, scandal and sin, kingship and triumph—all of these have been peppered with theological rhetoric. Building on biblical and contemporary studies, this course asks whether there is more …
View course details “The Bible & Politics: A Biblical Perspective”

What does it mean to lead during a time of religious, sociocultural, and environmental upheaval? What can churches do differently to better reflect and nurture gospel values and God’s dream of a just, reconciled, Spirit-filled world? This course in missional leadership will ask these and related questions. We will explore concepts and experience practices of …
View course details “Changing Church: Missional Practices and/for Beloved Community”

What forces, ideas, and individuals have shaped Baptists across Canada in past centuries? What components make up Baptist identity in the twenty-first century? And what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for Canadian Baptists in the days to come? The Canadian Baptist Symposium seeks to answer these and related questions through a one-day conference on Saturday, …
View course details “Being Baptist: Past, Present, and Future”

Why are dystopian novels, movies, and television series so wildly popular? After sitting in a theater watching a film about nuclear annihilation (cozily nestled between car and beer commercials), we walk into the light of day to face the “real” media-controlled world of diversion and distraction, of ever-regenerated images that never die. Why is our …
View course details “Apocalypse Now, Then, or Never? Why We Love Dystopian Stories”

The formative period of early Christianity was crucial to the development of Christian faith. It was during this time that the basic parameters of many of key doctrines of the church were worked out—parameters that have exerted a normative influence on Christian life and thought ever since. Many of the issues that were debated in …
View course details “The First Christian Centuries”