Previous Years' Course Catalogues

In 2020 Wilda Gaffney published a further volume in their series A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. Drawing on their work as a Black biblical scholar, priest and translator, as embodied in the volume, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church Year A, as a critical lens, we will examine the larger questions surrounding lectionaries. What is the purpose of a lectionary? How are lectionaries created or come into being? What is the relationship of lectionaries to power? Whose perspectives do lectionaries and translations include or exclude? What are the differences between lectionaries and translations created by groups or committees and those created by individuals? How do patterns of public reading of scripture respond to context? How responsibly do lectionaries use the scriptures? When lectionaries avoid using some parts of scripture what are the reasons, and what might be lost? In doing so, among other lectionaries, we will examine: the traditional Jewish pattern of reading the Torah in an annual cycle with Haftarahs from the prophets, patterns of the lectionaries of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, traditional Orthodox patterns and cycles of scriptural reading, and the Revised Common Lectionary (an ecumenical lectionary in wide use in differing forms among Protestants and Catholics in North America).

This course will examine how the Psalms have been read, interpreted, and proclaimed from the time of their composition through to today by well-known, forgotten, and emerging voices, including the majority world and women voices . Attention will also be given to traditional and contemporary approaches to the study of the Psalms-- including literary forms, canonical shaping, trauma and moral injury studies, biblical theological reflection, and exegesis of representative Psalms.

This course will examine how the Psalms have been read, interpreted, and proclaimed from the time of their composition through to today by well-known, forgotten, and emerging voices, including the majority world and women voices . Attention will also be given to traditional and contemporary approaches to the study of the Psalms-- including literary forms, canonical shaping, trauma and moral injury studies, biblical theological reflection, and exegesis of representative Psalms.

What does it mean to pray the words, “Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer? How does one exercise power in leadership? In an era of at-times abusive, and often failed leadership, this course opens an Old Testament theology of divine and human kingship and power. Focused on the Old Testament in its ancient and literary contexts and with attention to a New Testament telos, it explores several loci in which God’s kingship is expressed. These may include creation, covenant, worship, warfare, the monarchy, and Israel’s history. Extending God’s sovereign rule, the office of human king is explored in its various stages including inception, development, and failure. The consideration of key biblical texts works toward forming a biblical theology of God’s kingship within the Old Testament, and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to pray the words, “Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer? How does one exercise power in leadership? In an era of at-times abusive, and often failed leadership, this course opens an Old Testament theology of divine and human kingship and power. Focused on the Old Testament in its ancient and literary contexts and with attention to a New Testament telos, it explores several loci in which God’s kingship is expressed. These may include creation, covenant, worship, warfare, the monarchy, and Israel’s history. Extending God’s sovereign rule, the office of human king is explored in its various stages including inception, development, and failure. The consideration of key biblical texts works toward forming a biblical theology of God’s kingship within the Old Testament, and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to pray the words, “Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer? How does one exercise power in leadership? In an era of at-times abusive, and often failed leadership, this course opens an Old Testament theology of divine and human kingship and power. Focused on the Old Testament in its ancient and literary contexts and with attention to a New Testament telos, it explores several loci in which God’s kingship is expressed. These may include creation, covenant, worship, warfare, the monarchy, and Israel’s history. Extending God’s sovereign rule, the office of human king is explored in its various stages including inception, development, and failure. The consideration of key biblical texts works toward forming a biblical theology of God’s kingship within the Old Testament, and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to pray the words, “Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer? How does one exercise power in leadership? In an era of at-times abusive, and often failed leadership, this course opens an Old Testament theology of divine and human kingship and power. Focused on the Old Testament in its ancient and literary contexts and with attention to a New Testament telos, it explores several loci in which God’s kingship is expressed. These may include creation, covenant, worship, warfare, the monarchy, and Israel’s history. Extending God’s sovereign rule, the office of human king is explored in its various stages including inception, development, and failure. The consideration of key biblical texts works toward forming a biblical theology of God’s kingship within the Old Testament, and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

This course interrogates the intersection of education, digital media, and evangelization in the 21st century. Using a variety of materials from theology, educational theory, organizational development, and media studies, the course explores the conceptual and communicative dynamics of multiple and changing contexts, and offers practice in using specific digital media for engaging those contexts effectively. This class is rooted in a Catholic understanding, but asserts that we live in a multi-religious context and as such evangelization must entail prophetic dialogue. Students from a variety of degree programs are welcomed, with assignments structured according to individual degree program levels.

This course interrogates the intersection of education, digital media, and evangelization in the 21st century. Using a variety of materials from theology, educational theory, organizational development, and media studies, the course explores the conceptual and communicative dynamics of multiple and changing contexts, and offers practice in using specific digital media for engaging those contexts effectively. This class is rooted in a Catholic understanding, but asserts that we live in a multi-religious context and as such evangelization must entail prophetic dialogue. Students from a variety of degree programs are welcomed, with assignments structured according to individual degree program levels.

This course explores not only Orthodox (both Byzantine and non-Chalcedonian) understandings of the Church but also the singular perspectives and experience of the Eastern Catholic Churches whose very nature as “Uniate” bodies poses questions of ecumenical and ecclesiological import. Special attention will be paid to controverted issues of conciliar and papal authority and primacy, the rise of synodality in the Catholic world, and the problematic relationship between nationalism and ecclesial structures. Sources for the course will run on parallel tracks: official (in a Catholic context: “magisterial”) documents on ecclesiology and ecumenism from both Orthodox and Catholic sources; official documents of bilateral and multilateral regional and international ecumenical dialogues; and published scholarship from academics of these traditions. 

From the beginning, Christianity has been at its heart a religion of learning. The Greek word rendered in English as disciple is not originally a religious word, but simply means a learner. Christ thus charges his apostles to Go out and make learners of all the nations (Matthew 28.19). In this course, students will face up to the crisis of catechesis and Christian formation within a contemporary church struggling to come to terms with the secularity and diversity of a post-Christendom world. Drawing on insights from ancient Christian tradition as well as contemporary authors and thought, students will creatively explore what it means to teach, learn and live the Christian faith today.

From the beginning, Christianity has been at its heart a religion of learning. The Greek word rendered in English as “disciple” is not originally a religious word, but simply means a “learner.” Christ thus charges his apostles to “Go out and make learners of all the nations” (Matthew 28.19). In this course, students will face up to the crisis of catechesis and Christian formation within a contemporary church struggling to come to terms with the secularity and diversity of a post-Christendom world. Drawing on insights from ancient Christian tradition as well as contemporary authors and thought, students will creatively explore what it means to teach, learn and live the Christian faith today.