Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• STH TE 821: Adult Religious Education
  This seminar explores some foundational theories that have shaped the field of adult religious education, providing encounters through reading, discussion, and practice. Learners will deepen their understanding of key challenges posed by postmodernity as positivism, meta- narratives, and neo-liberalism undergo deconstruction. In addition, learners will test and refine theoretical approaches and their implications by facilitating, experiencing, and evaluating practices. Through the semester, the instructor will illustrate how to read a current research theme through the course literature and invite learners to do the same. The course is intended to provide a rich grounding for further research. (Cluster 3)
• STH TE 921: Adult Religious Education
  This seminar explores some foundational theories that have shaped the field of adult religious education, providing encounters through reading, discussion, and practice. Learners will deepen their understanding of key challenges posed by postmodernity as positivism, meta-narratives, and neo-liberalism undergo deconstruction. In addition, learners will test and refine theoretical approaches and their implications by facilitating, experiencing, and evaluating practices. Through the semester, the instructor will illustrate how to read a current research theme through the course literature and invite learners to do the same. The course is intended to provide a rich grounding for further research.
• STH TF 701: Introduction to Christian Traditions
  This first course of a two-course sequence provides a basic academic orientation to the Christian movement through a survey of its history from antiquity through the Protestant Reformation. Lectures and readings on the history of Christianity will be complemented by parallel lectures and readings on great theologians of those times. Emphasis is placed on increasing students' self-consciousness of their own theological and religious identity, Christian or otherwise, relative to the first sixteen centuries of Christian history. MDIV and MTS core requirement.
• STH TF 702: Christianity Engaging Modernity
  Continuation of TF 701.
• STH TF 703: Practicing Faith
  Situated in the first semester of the MDiv program, the various sections of Practicing Faith, each in their unique ways, aim: 1) to increase the student's self-awareness of lived faith in dialogue with cultural and religious traditions and with attention to formative spiritual and religious texts and practices and 2) to develop the student's ability to reflect critically about practicing faith. Each course aims to do this differently, by providing a lens through which students will explore and examine how persons and communities live out faith.
• STH TF 710: First Year Formation
  This course is required of all incoming MDiv, MTS, and MSM students, including transfer students, in the first fall semester of their degree program and aims at orienting students (1) to the legacy, faculty, curriculum, resources, and community principles of the School of Theology; (2) to a wholistic framework for thinking about stewardship of body, mind, spirit, finances, and the wider ecosphere; (3) to tools for reflection and practice on personal and spiritual formation during the course of one's theological studies; and (4) to a robust embrace of and engagement with social and theological diversity, power and privilege, and one's capacity to relate across difference. The individual sessions will also make room for answering questions students might have about the curriculum or the school.
• STH TF 808: Travel Seminars
  Travel seminars are offered each year by the School of Theology, and they afford students the ability to think about theology and ministry in relationship to various local and global contexts. The descriptions of each seminar and the cluster requirements which they fulfill are listed as the courses are announced. (Cluster 2)
• STH TF 810: Global and Community Engagement Capstone
  MDiv students on the Global and Community Engagement track design a customized practicum or seminar with the help of their advisor that serves as an integrative capstone course and culmination of their degree program. (Cluster 2)
• STH TF 811: Theology and the Arts Capstone
  MDiv students on the Church and the Arts track design a customized practicum or seminar with the help of their advisor that serves as an integrative capstone course and the culmination of their degree program. (Clusters 2 and 3)
• STH TF 821: Contextual Education I (Dual Degree)
  Integration of Theology and Practice (ITP) reflection groups for STH-SSW dual degree students in their advanced placements. Offered fall semester. 1 credit. MDIV CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TF 822: Contextual Education II (Dual Degree)
  Continues and presupposes STH TF821 for STH-SSW dual degree students. Offered spring semester. 1 credit. MDIV CORE REQUIREMENT.
• STH TF 901: Doctoral Colloquium 1
  All first-year ThD and PhD students at STH are required to take this two-semester doctoral colloquia associated with the Doctoral Research and Teaching Internship Program (DTRIP). The colloquia focus on (1) research methods, (2) teacher training, and (3) professional identity.
• STH TF 902: Doctoral Colloquium 2
  The continuation of TF901.
• STH TH 802: Christianity Beyond Early Modern Europe
  The course is dedicated to an in depth study of the reach of Christianity in the early modern period (c. 1450-c.1650). Our narrative 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. (Requires TF 701/702 or equivalent) (Cluster 1)
• STH TH 803: History of Social Christianity
  TBD (Cluster 1)
• STH TH 810: The Bible in the Reformation
  Examination of the role of the Bible in the reformations of the sixteenth century, including the development and divergence of Reformation hermeneutics in late medieval and Renaissance context. Special attention will be given to the vernacular translation and popular presentation of the Bible in the sixteenth century press and pulpit. (Cluster 1)
• STH TH 812: The Church in Late Antiquity
  The development of the Christian Church, its institutions, theology, and social and political roles, from Constantine to Charlemagne, in the context of the transformations of late antique culture and society, East and West. COUNTS AS A MDIV CHURCH HISTORY II CORE REQUIREMENT. (Requires TF 701 or equivalent) (Cluster 1)
• STH TH 817: Varieties of Ancient Christianity
  Surveys the many different and often competing forms of Christianity that arose and flourished in the second to the seventh century, from the "apostolic period" to the Arab conquest in the Middle East. It is highly recommended that students have taken at least one prior course in biblical or New Testament literature. (Cluster 1) (Fulfills New Testament II requirement for MDiv students)
• STH TH 819: American Theological Liberalism
  American Theological Liberalism provides an overview into the historical and theological development of liberal theology in the United States. Through reading a variety of primary and secondary sources, the course is designed to provide students an historical and theological overview into the development of liberalism and assess the ongoing significance of theological liberalism in church and society today. (Cluster 1)
• STH TH 820: History of Western Christian Spirituality
  An introduction to the historical study of Western Christian spiritual practices. The course exposes students to the historical-critical study of spiritual practices through careful examination of selected narratives of Western Christian spirituality, primary texts, and participatory observation. Participants will learn to analyze spiritual practices--such as reading, fasting, and prayer--by the twofold process of "abstracting/isolating" practices and "reading/interpreting" them in their historical context. While emphasis will be placed on the synchronic interpretation of practices, due attention will also be given to their development over time. Readings will include selected articles representative of current methodology in the field. Participants will gain a better understanding of continuity and change of spiritual practices in Western Christian traditions. (Requires TF 701/702 or equivalent) (Cluster 1)

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