Classes
This course will explore Paul’s longest and perhaps most important epistle with attention to the challenges that the apostle confronted and the arguments he made to Roman Christians about the nature of his Gospel. We shall treat approximately three chapters each day. Two or three accessible scholarly articles of about 25 pages each day will supplement the study of the biblical text. No special expertise is required for the course. The secondary readings will be available on Canvas.
Don’t we just pick up the Bible and read it? What are various ways of interpreting the text and why do these methods matter? With attention to texts of the Hebrew Bible, this class offers an introductory sampling of different approaches in biblical studies to discover how they shape not only our understanding of the Bible, but also our own self-perceptions.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions and Oratorios, considered cornerstones of the Western classical music canon, form the culmination of his art as a composer of sacred music. For a listener today, it is almost inconceivable that these large works were originally composed for the Lutheran liturgy, framed by readings, hymns, and a sermon. But when we explore the pieces in their original context, we can see a close relationship between liturgical practices, the church year, and Bach’s music. Following the order of the church year, many of Bach’s larger works trace the life of Christ: his birth in the Christmas Oratorio, his suffering and death in the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the resurrection in the Easter Oratorio, and the ascension in the small yet magnificent Ascension Oratorio. The course will introduce the participants to Bach’s major vocal works and explore the theological and liturgical contexts of these compositions. A background in music is not necessary—just the love of great music and an open ear for the fascinating ways in which Bach tells the story of Christ.
We live in a contentious time. Howard Thurman offered an analysis of how racial bias stymies our understanding of what it means to be fully human, and how it diminishes our self-esteem and thwarts our efforts to combat systems of oppression. Central to his understanding of human flourishing is our need to think of the universal nature of human negative discrimination and to liberate ourselves psychologically and spiritually from its internalized prejudices. To that end, he conceptualizes fear, deception and hate as the hounds of hell that plague us. The religion of Jesus, as interpreted by Thurman, is a way to defeat the hounds of hell, with only love leading to freedom. This course will explore these frameworks and some of their implications for how we think and live our lives today.
This Summer Study course will explore intersections between Christian practices of worship and understandings of creation and the cosmos. Some of the specific intersections highlighted during the course will include both biblical and historical materials and insights as well as contemporary ones. Special attention will be paid to the many creation-attuned liturgical resources that have emerged over recent years as well as the ecumenical initiatives around the official establishment of a “Season of Creation” and, more specifically, a “Feast of Creation” in the liturgical calendars of the churches. Overall, the course seeks to highlight the many ways in which a vision of Christian worship as rooted in God’s creation is both ancient and also vibrantly new, as we confront ever more deeply our own time of ecological emergency.
This course will study the relation between faith in God and the capacities of human reason. The main topics will be the relation between faith in God and morality, religious experience, the problem of evil, the nature of faith, the traditional proofs for the existence of God, miracles and science, immortality, and religious pluralism.
The poet Dana Gioia once asked in a book of this title, “Can Poetry Matter?” That question of course begs another question: matter in what ways? We may read poetry for any number of reasons, but this class considers how poetry nurtures, and enriches, our spiritual lives. By our close reading of poems together from outstanding poets of the last 100 years, we will explore the many ways that poetry inspires us to comprehend our relationships with God, each other, and ourselves with fresh insight. Whether you are an avid or an occasional reader of poetry, we will dig deeper into how poems work, while encountering the work poems do in us as people who aspire, and struggle, to experience a more profound living faith.
In the early modern period, “Providence” was a term often used synonymously with “God,” but also used to identify God’s acting in the world to order events. Occurrences, both good and bad, were interpreted as “providences” in which God sought to convey meaning, although not always in parallel ways, and it was up to believers to consider what lessons were being taught and to form their lives accordingly. Nothing happened for nothing, or simply was the product of natural causes. We today might think of this as a rather “enchanted” way of conceiving of reality, but broadly conceived, the concept or doctrine of providence included the nature of being, continuous creation, divine and human agency, grace, and other urgent issues of both faith and human living. Combining selections from the writings of eighteenth-century British-American theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards, including theological essays, notebook entries, and sermons, along with interpretive literature, this course will open up to participants the many facets of Edwards’s providential world, showing both transatlantic influences and legacies.
The Book of Job is the Bible’s bizarre masterpiece. This course is devoted to a detailed examination of the translated text and its interpretations in Judaism, Christianity, art, literature, and popular culture. Job is the Bible’s most sustained exploration of the questions of suffering, cosmic justice, and the chaotic features of creation, and our mission will be to wrest theological and ethical insights for contemporary communities of faith from this opaque and elusive classic. The class will meet daily from June 1–5 by Zoom and will consist of close readings and discussions of the biblical text. The workload will be about 20 pages per day. The texts will be sent to students via email in mid-May. The class is open to learners at all levels.