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 TC 978: Sabbath: Theology and Practice
  This course explores Sabbath keeping as a central practice of faith and a core practice of transformative religious leadership. Drawing upon Jewish and Christian traditions, we will study theologies and practices of Sabbath keeping and reflect upon their meaning in contemporary contexts. As part of this work, we also will explore Christian theologies of the Lord's Day, including the meaning of Sabbath in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The course will include attention to Jewish-Christian dialogue as well as consideration of debates internal to faith communities about Sabbath keeping. We also will focus attention on questions of Sabbath keeping and spiritual formation, Sabbath keeping as a dimension of pastoral excellence, Sabbath as countercultural practice, and implications of Sabbath for social justice. Students will be encouraged to cultivate a practice of Sabbath keeping throughout the semester and as the culmination of the course they will have the opportunity to design a practical theological project relevant to their own community and context of leadership.
• STH TE 808: Creative Pedagogy
  This course examines the transformative potential of creative pedagogy, in which individuals and communities learn through the free play of possibilities that deepen faith. By engaging practical, historical, theological approaches, students learn to consider the tensions, risks and opportunities of creative pedagogy, while acquiring skills to teach and learn through the body, the imagination, and the senses. (Cluster 3)
• STH TE 811: Doing Theology Aesthetically
  In this course learners explore the aesthetic dimensions of meaning-making through visual art and aesthetic practices. Discussion of texts, experiences of making art, and engagement in aesthetic practices shed light on the potential strengths and limitations of using aesthetic experience as an effective teaching approach in religious education. (Clusters 1 and 3)
• STH TE 812: Introduction to Christian Education: Person, Community, and Religious Education
  This course is a practical introduction to ministries of learning and teaching in Christian communities. It will explore the dynamics of individual and communal faith formation in diverse contexts, drawing on a range of perspectives from theology and the philosophy of education. Students will analyze the education offerings of religious communities, evaluate educational resources, practice effective teaching approaches, and design educational strategies appropriate to their community of faith. (Cluster 3)
• 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 906: Transformative Faith Formation and Digital Media
  Transformative learning theory looks at the assumptions and meaning schemes that people bring to their worlds. Several authors in the realm of practical theology demonstrate ways that theological reflection can be brought to bear on such assumptions and meaning frameworks. True transformation (in individuals and groups) toward a better/fuller life in Christ is often impossible without such transformations of assumptions and perspectives. Add to that challenge the new forms of digital communication in contemporary society and one finds a marshland or swamp in which to wade. This course offers a way to appreciate how essential marshes and swamps are to our own ecosystem and offers tools for navigating and taking advantage of such transition zones for the long term good of persons and communities. The course will balance theoretical learning and skill building. Learners will be invited to identify the messages important to their ministries, connect those messages to appropriate communication and educational methods, analyze their various ministerial audiences/contexts, and finally, identify the media forms that are appropriate for delivering those communications.
• 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) (Fulfills Church History II Requirement)

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