Courses

• STH TH 823: Modern Christian Biography
  This course focuses on the period ca. 1600-1899 and examines Christianity of the Modern Period through the lives of representative personalities from Europe and North America. Their lives provide the focus for an examination of the broader artistic, social, economic, and political trends of the time.
• STH TH 825: The Medieval Church
  Social, personal, institutional, and theological aspects of the medieval ecclesiastical structure in the West from Gregory the Great to Boniface. COUNTS AS A MDIV CHURCH HISTORY II CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TH 826: The Reformations.
  We will study the religious crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the social, political, economic, and intellectual context within which the Reformation occurred. Key figures include Martin Luther in the Germanies; the Anabaptist, Menno Simons; John Calvin in France and Switzerland; Henry VIII and his divorce from his wife and from Rome, producing the Church of England, precursor to modern Methodism. The age of the Reformation includes the Catholics, not just the Council of Trent, but also new religious orders, schools, and social initiatives: the socially-conscious Sisters of Charity, the teaching Ursulines, the cloistered Carmelites; Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits; Charles Borromeo, reforming Bishop of Milan; Vincent de Paul, advocate for the poor; Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, Carmelite reformers and mystics; and Jean Baptiste de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers. We will pay attention to the care of the poor in this turbulent era. COUNTS AS A MDIV CHURCH HISTORY II CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TH 827: American Church History
  The development of American Christianity as a social, intellectual, institutional, and cultural movement. The course includes visits to churches in Boston. COUNTS AS A MDIV CHURCH HISTORY II CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TH 832: Modern Church History
  This Church History II period survey (ca. 1600-1865) examines Christianity in light of social, economic, and political trends in the geographic regions of Europe, North America, and Latin America. COUNTS AS A MDIV CHURCH HISTORY II CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TH 848: World Christianity
  Historical development of world Christianity. Emphasis on social, cultural, spiritual, and political issues in African, Asian and Latin American Christianity in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries.
• STH TH 870: Calvin and the Reformed Tradition
  On this eve of the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth, we will accomplish two things in this course. (1) We will read from Calvin in translation from his Institutes, treatises, polemical writings, and letters, and (2) we will analyze contemporary historical and theological writings on him and his era. Students will be able to read and write on any subject within the Reformed tradition that interests them from the 16th century to contemporary topics in the present such as Presbyterianism, the United Church of Christ, Unitarianism, Puritanism (in England and New England),the Great Awakening, and the impact of the Reformed tradition on the worldwide Anglican churches and their denominational offshoots, such as Methodism.
• STH TH 902: Christianity Beyond Early Modern Europe
  An in depth study of the reach of Christianity in the early modern period (c. 1450-c.1650). The course follows the path of early modern Catholicism from fifteenth-century Europe, through the ascent of the Portuguese and Spanish seaborne empires, and examines the role of the missionary religious orders in the processes of Christianization and inculturation.
• STH TH 910: History of Christian Mission
  A seminar in the history of Christian missions, from the early church to the present. Issues of historiography, method, and the emergence of non-western church history. Required course for doctoral students in mission studies.
• STH TH 930: History of Missiology
  Seminar on the classic Protestant mission theorists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• STH TH 937: Proseminar in Historiography
  
• STH TH 971: Seminar: Luther and the Radical Reformers
  Historical-social contexts, theologies, and effects of the history of the church from the Reformation to the present.
• STH TJ 876: Church and Theology in the Contemporary World
  Church and Theology in the Contemporary World is an advanced research seminar in practical theology. The course enables students to design and carry out a research project in practical theology under the guidance of the instructor and with constructive feedback from fellow students. Assignments are designed to help students to articulate a clear, significant, and manageable research question; to design a practical theological approach to the question; to develop relevant bibliographies and other research sources; and, ultimately, to complete a final project in practical theology. Through this work and additional readings, including careful reading of and theological reflection on daily newspapers, we will together identify and address a range of issues facing the church in diverse cultures and contexts. Students gain skills in identifying practical theological questions and interpreting contexts; critically incorporating social scientific research in a theological project; making normative judgments; and thinking through strategic practical theological responses to guide faithful Christian practice. The course is a required core course for all doctoral students majoring in Practical Theology.
• STH TJ 910: Proseminar in Practical Theology
  This doctoral seminar for practical theology majors introduces the primary changes that are under way in practical theology as a discipline, reviews the methodologies upon which these changes are based, and examines the implications of these changes.
• STH TJ 940: Ecclesiology
  This course asks the question, "What is the church?" in dialogue with Christian theological figures and schools representing Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian traditions. While one of the aims of this course is that students be conversant with those voices, it ultimately aims at the student's ability to articulate the ecclesiology of his or her own community and to bring that to bear on the contemporary situation and particular problems of Christian practice in church and society.
• STH TM 801: Christian Mission in a Religiously Plural World
  This course is focused on constructing a theology of mission that is appropriate, adequate, and relevant for the 21st century's religious plurality. The aim of the course is to enable students to 1) recall a quick critical survey of the history of Christian mission, 2) grapple with the varied biblical understandings of mission, and 3) begin to frame and articulate a theology of mission that addresses the challenges posed by the religiously plural world
• STH TM 815: Christian Mission
  Exploration of biblical, historical, theological, political, and cultural perspectives on the world mission of the church. This course is a requirement for United Methodist MDiv students pursuing ordination in the United Methodist Church.
• STH TM 853: NGOs & FBOs
  Explores theoretical and practical issues related to cross-cultural non-governmental and faith-based service work.
• STH TM 856: Women in Mission and World Christianity
  History of Christian women in diakonia and mission outreach, including gender issues in mission and non-western Christianity today.
• STH TM 857: Mission and Development
  This interdisciplinary course will look at two terms that are very important to contemporary experience but that often create cross-cultural confusion. Moving beyond thinking of "mission" just as service and/or evangelism and "development" in a materialist, industrial sense, we will attempt to create new awareness suitable for an era of climate change, economic inequity, and resource wars. Guiding our analysis will be information from worldviews that do not see things as split into sacred and secular realms. Self-reflection will go into the historically dominant role of the United States and American Christianity in forming current policies and practices and we will consider what alternative views might mean for the world's future.

Back to full list of School of Theology