What is happiness? And how, if at all, is it related to goodness? In this course, we examine classic and contemporary responses to these questions. Our approach will be guided by the three Anglican sources for theological reflection: scripture, tradition, and reason. We begin with recent insights on the nature of happiness from positive psychology (Christopher Peterson …
View course details “Happiness and the Good Life”

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No further description is available.

How do we practice spiritual presence in challenging times? And let spirituality lead us to action? When communities are polarized, and peace is unpopular, these are urgent questions. Together, we will explore answers from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each tradition offers powerful tools to critique institutional power, confront the ego, open the heart, and explore …
View course details “Interfaith Spirituality for Polarized Times”

With Derrick Weston Food is at the heart of human society. The ways we grow, source, buy, prepare, serve, and eat all have the potential to build community or break it down. Food connects us to our own personal histories and can be a source of healing and comfort or pain and trauma. This retreat …
View course details “The Just Kitchen: Connecting to God, Neighbor, and Self Through Food”

With Naomi Washington-Leapheart This retreat asks the question: If God is benevolent, just, and powerful, how can (does) evil persist in the lives of Black people living in the United States? In this retreat that will include both you and students from Rev. Naomi’s Villanova religious studies class by the same name, we will explore …
View course details “Do Black Lives Matter to God? A Theological Exploration of Evil, Suffering, Resistance, and Divine Accountability”

The climate crisis is an unavoidable pastoral concern in the church today. As the effects of anthropogenic climate change continue to increase in the coming years, increasingly the pastoral work of the ‘cure of souls’ is directly impacted by the intersecting crises of the climate crisis. This class will proceed in two parts. In the …
View course details “Integral Ecology and Theologies of Solidarity Course Registration”

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”

Living in modern nation-states, intensified by globalization, our personal lives and relationships and everyday activities are unavoidably embedded in the complex realities of societal racial disparities and tensions, but in ways often unrecognized and unaddressed. How should we engage Christianly with the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that condition and either restrict or expand …
View course details “Race, Racism & Christian Identity”

Taking each of the five continents in turn, this course looks at the significant missional achievements of their Christian pioneers (both cross-cultural missionaries and local communities of believers) to embody Christian faith and practice in their cultural contexts. The course focuses on each continent’s unique cultural embodiments (such as texts, liturgies, visual arts, architecture, institutions, …
View course details “Christianity & World Cultures: A History of Contextualization”