The concept of heaven has played an important role in Christian thought since the earliest New Testament writings, and the Christian vision of Heaven has influenced the world. How do we intersect with this concept, starting with what we were taught and continuing through the sense-making we’ve done for ourselves around the idea of heaven? …
View course details “Heaven in the Theological Imagination”

What did it mean to be a child in the ancient world? Did Jesus and the early Christians accept and value children in different ways than their fellow Jews or neighbouring Greeks and Romans? This course will look at Jesus’ teachings on children, on reading other New Testament texts that deal with the life of …
View course details “Listening to and Learning from Children in the Ancient World”

Merton’s writings on the problem of racism are perhaps the least known of his works. They are, however, among his most important, not only because they address issues that arose at the height of the Civil Rights movement, but also because his writings continue to have astonishing relevance today. In this course, we will examine …
View course details “Thomas Merton and Racism”

This course is about embodying an authentic spirituality that is rooted and lived out in the ordinariness of our daily existence—a life with God that is both human and holy – an everyday spirituality (based on exploring and learning from the varying yet overlapping features of Celtic, Benedictine, Franciscan, and Ignatian spiritualities). It seeks to …
View course details “Spirituality of Everyday Life: Learning from the Celtic, Benedictine, Franciscan and Ignatian Traditions”

This course delves into the mid-eighteenth-century Protestant evangelical revival in New England from the perspective of one of its major figures, Jonathan Edwards, pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, an epicenter of transatlantic evangelical culture at the time. During the decade from 1734 to 1744, Edwards oversaw two “awakenings” in his congregation and participated in many other …
View course details “The Great Awakening-Era Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 1734-1744”

Amid political polarization in the U.S., Christians who believe and advocate on each side of the Red-Blue divide tend to cite scripture as if God’s voice is simply and very unambiguously on their side. However, inconveniently for these Right- and Left-wing advocates, the Bible is politically and theologically multi-vocal. One strand of tradition craves a …
View course details “The Red- (and Blue-) Letter Bible: Reading the Book Together in a Divided Land”

Some scholars have argued that the letter to the Romans is so unclear that it must be a pastiche of letters or the product of a confused, contradictory writer. We will together make sense of the letter in its historical context as a Jewish Paul articulates (not entirely clearly) how it is that God’s justice …
View course details “The Letter to the Romans: Justice and Race in Antiquity and Today”

The Psalter is the hymn book of the Bible. The 150 psalms have been an integral part of both Jewish and Christian musical traditions, and over the centuries they have inspired countless composers to create important works. The course will explore the richness and power of the Psalter through an examination of the relationship between …
View course details “The Psalter – A Journey through 1,500 Years of Music”

In this week-long seminar, we will form a multi-cultural group of pastors, teachers, professors, and non-profit organization leaders to learn from the poignant and prophetic autobiographical writings of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Howard Thurman, and Ida B. Wells. We will pay particular attention to the implications of their writings for vital and faithful pastoral, priestly, and prophetic leadership …
View course details “2023 African American Religious Autobiography Seminar”

In this course, students will be introduced to theological-ethical perspectives from liberation traditions with attention to various cultural, social, ethnic, and political contexts that have emerged from historically marginalized communities, with a focus on the United States and Latin America. This course places scholars from various liberation traditions (Latin American/Latinx, Black/Womanist, Indigenous, Asian American, Feminist, …
View course details “Theology and Ethics: Liberation Perspectives and Praxis”