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 MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• STH TC 906: Situational Preaching
  This course is designed with occasional and situational preaching in view. It presupposes the probability of both recurring and unique situations in which the gospel (the "good news," not the final lection in the ecumenical order) must be preached in a way both clear and arresting. To deal with this presupposition, the course will deal with preaching the gospel when some situational feature of congregational or organizational life demands attention. Indirectly, it is also an exploration of theological method. In whatever situation, the preaching task will be viewed as a theological one, i.e., as an opportunity for discerning the import of and articulating the gospel anew in a given situation. Thus students will be equipped to be "theologians of the Word" who can interpret situations from a variety of viewpoints, evaluate the usefulness of various tools for preaching in light of the gospel and then employ them fruitfully. In order to do this, we will work on the following tools: 1. Bringing to critical awareness our own understandings of the gospel, 2. Developing skills and resources as contextual theologians in residence, , and 3. Developing skills and resources as homiletical exegetes of situations. As a result students should develop greater pastoral sensitivity, rhetorical savvy and think-on-your-feet theological acumen while preparing for preaching in a context in which transformational theological leadership needs to be exercised.
• STH TC 909: Spiritual Autobiographies
  Participants in this course will read selected spiritual autobiographies in order to gain an understanding of the varieties of religious experience and the interrelationship between spirituality, theology, and historical and cultural context. We will examine the nature of religious experience and the difficulties in translating this experience into language. Moreover, we will explore the important issue of how spirituality relates to the institutional churches, and the various shapes spirituality takes outside these institutions. Through close, empathetic, and critical examination of the texts, participants also will reflect on their own spiritual journeys and spiritual identities. They will prepare written analyses of course texts and, by the end of the course, will write a portion of their own spiritual autobiography.
• STH TC 912: Classics in Christian Spirituality
  This course serves as an introduction to the study of Christian spirituality through in-depth reading of selected classics in Christian spirituality as well as secondary source scholarship in the discipline. We will delve into texts by early monastics and visionary medieval mystics; look anew at Protestant hymns and poetry; go deeper into Ignatian discernment; and engage the spiritualities of Latin American liberation theologians and African American women. This interdisciplinary seminar opens up reflection on spirituality and theology; spirituality and history; spirituality, gender, race, and ethnicity; spirituality, poetics, and autobiography; spirituality and ministry; and spiritual practice. Students are encouraged to integrate the material with an eye toward their own spiritual lives and vocations. The course will integrate music, art, and poetry to offer a fuller engagement with spiritual classics.
• STH TC 913: Embodying the Kingdom
  Embodying the Kin(g)dom fosters transformational leadership by helping students to discern and interrogate habitual ways of mentally separating the physical body from spiritualized visions of what Jesus calls the "kingdom." This course assists students in appreciating the embodied nature of enacting and experiencing faith through personal, congregational, and social practices such as prayer, eating, and moral injury. The course is designed to prepare students to help those they serve to reflect critically and creatively on the connections between body, Spirit, and faith.
• STH TC 914: Worship in Times of Change
  Birth, maturation, sickness, and death are life changes that are addressed ritually in most human societies and cultures. Christian communities, though initially slow to do so, have introduced worship events/liturgies that speak the Gospel in such times of crisis or change- -those human as well as institutional. Even so, new occasions or circumstances arise in each generation where Christian communities may be called upon to supply ritual interventions that both sustain and transform. This course will focus on contemporary rites addressing human and institutional "life-cycle passages," which will be examined and evaluated with attention to contextual, theological, liturgical, ritual, and pastoral criteria. After learning basic skills for ritual writing, students in pairs or triads will work collaboratively on a project to address a "gap" in the liturgical resources available to churches and other Christian communities and institutions.
• STH TC 919: The Sacraments: Rites and Theologies
  Contemporary study of the sacraments brings together ritual studies, liturgical history, the history of dogma, and systematic reflection. This course examines the baptismal and eucharistic rites of the Church, both past and present, along with theological rationales of and commentaries on them offered by ecclesiastic writers of the patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern periods.
• STH TC 938: Church Renewal
  Literature on church renewal abounds, as theologians and practitioners respond to the declining attendance and cultural influence of the church in Western societies. This course engages a variety of approaches to church renewal, requiring students to compare and contrast the selected proposals with respect to their contextual analyses, theological foundations, and practical strategies. The course functions as an advanced workshop in which students explore the efficacy of "church renewal" as a conceptual framework for guiding contemporary ministry praxis. The aim of the course is to equip students with the tools to construct a theologically informed plan of action for transformational leadership in their own specific contexts of ministry.
• STH TC 960: Theologies of Preaching
  This doctoral seminar course helps students become familiar with attempts across multiple traditions to understand what preaching is theologically. It aims to equip them to engage the theological task constructively as homiletical theologians in their own right.
• 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 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 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 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.

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