For decades we’ve been wondering and worrying about our young people leaving our beloved church. For 4 Wednesday mornings this Lent, join Bishop Anna and Christine Conkin to explore the social, spiritual, religious and theological movements of the late 20th century. What happened in the wake of the great optimism of the 1960’s? Why haven’t …
View course details ““Where did all the young people go?””

This survey course will examine the English Reformation of the sixteenth century though the birth and development of Anglicanism leading up to the founding of the Episcopal Church and its history to the present day. These developments will be studied within the context of Western Christin history. The course will survey the more generally acknowledged …
View course details “Church History: Reformation Roots to Episcopal Church”

This course explores the pertinence of the message of the prophets of ancient Israel for contemporary issues through reading, exegesis, and preaching. We will read significant parts of prophetic literature, asking how literary, historical, and theological lenses provide ways to see, preach, and teach its messages. We will also learn from classic preachers (e.g. John …
View course details “Preaching the Prophets”

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”

It has become rather commonplace to suppose that Anglican Christians care mostly about liturgy and not very much about theology. That’s not true! Anglican traditions exhibit a rich and diverse history of theological reflection. Anglicans have always insisted that that how Christians think and talk about God makes a critical difference in what Christians believe. …
View course details “What We Believe: Theology in the Anglican Tradition”

Whenever the church has aligned itself with worldly, coercive power, it ends up on the wrong side of important justice issues. But when the church cooperates with God’s power through his presence among the least powerful, its witness for Jesus transforms the world and the church into a better place. Join us for a 4-week …
View course details “Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power; Book Club with David Fitch”

Over the course of ten academic weeks, students will encounter ten “crossroad” moments in Christian history, each reflecting epic and representative developments in the evolution of faith communities. This course survey’s the broad sweep of history of Christian history, from the Patristic Age to the 21st century. For each week, a “crossroad” event serves to …
View course details “Crossroads of Christian History”

The early eighteenth-century British-American philosophical theologian Jonathan Edwards has often been called a “mystic.” Through a selected series of primary and secondary readings, supplemented by presentations and discussions, this course seeks to evaluate Edwards’ place within the mystical tradition, the contours and nature of his mysticism, and his appraisal of how mystical experience was appropriated …
View course details “Jonathan Edwards, the Mystical Tradition, and Revivalism”

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 …
View course details “Sounds of Death and Mourning: Requiems and Funeral Songs through the Ages”

For centuries many have perceived a strong bond between the work of the Spirit and artistic creativity. Talk of inspiration, spirituality, and the life of the spirit abounds when the arts are in view. This course asks why this might be so. What is it about the arts that lends themselves so easily to “spirit-talk”, …
View course details “The Holy Spirit & the Arts”