At JST, we study what we call "culturally contextual theology."
Rather than approaching academics from an ivory tower, we study theology in context. Our contexts are plural: the west coast marked the tech world, migration, climate change, rich cultural diversity, and spectacular environmental beauty; the Christian tradition which forms us as professors, students, and people of faith; our vocations as priests, scholastics, religious sisters and brothers, and lay people from all over the world; and our ministries in parishes, universities, schools, and social justice organizations.
We bring these contexts with us as we study the breadth and depth of theology, from Scripture and the history of Christianity; to systematic theology and ethics; to liturgy, sacraments, and spirituality. We also study the skills needed for ministry today.
Students are able to choose courses from JST, the Graduate Theological Union, and the University of California, Berkeley that allow them to explore their theological questions, deepen their faith, and prepare for their future.
Apocalypse Amidst Empire: The Book of Daniel
An investigation into the Book of Daniel as an apocalyptic text, with particular attention to its literary and theological themes in the imperial context of its composition in the Second Temple period.
Literary Criticism of the Old Testament
A survey of literary criticism and literary methods used to study biblical texts. An examination of the application of literary methods to actual biblical texts.
OT Prophets
An investigation of the historical, compositional, and literary dimensions of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, including relevant outside readings and contemporary ministerial issues and challenges with which they intersect.
Paul in Context
A historical, theological, and contextual introduction to Paul's letters. Beyond ancient contexts, the course examines histories of the reception of Paul's letters and contemporary approaches to reading Paul today.
Methods: Pentateuch & Histories
A socio-historical and literary survey of the Pentateuch and Histories with attention to the effects of culture upon both the composition and reception of these writings in faith communities. Provides a foundation in critical methodologies and in the theory and practice of exegesis.
Wisdom, Wonder, Creation
Utilizing William P. Brown's hermeneutic of wonder, this course treats Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon in detail over the course of the semester. Readings and discussions focus on the themes of perplexity, curiosity, and encounter with the Other.
Claiming the Psalms for the 21st Century
A literary-contextual approach to the study of the Old Testament Psalms with attention to how these ancient verses can more fully become expressions of our contemporary prayer addressing the topics and events of this era (e.g., poverty, racism, trauma, ecology, social justice, modernist quests for God, violence, etc.).
Gospel Literature: Methods
This foundation course (a combination of lecture and seminar) introduces students to the practice of New Testament interpretation through historical, theological, and contextual study of the Gospels. The course will orient students to the Roman Mediterranean context of early Christianity and introduce a wide range of critical approaches (including feminist, womanist, postcolonial, queer, and disability scholarship).
Mark from the Margins
In this seminar, students will read the Gospel according to Mark in conversation with postcolonial, decolonial, and Afropessimist thinkers, focusing on questions of life, death, violence, and memory. Students will: (a) read pivotal works of postcolonial, decolonial, and Afropessimist thought and (b) deploy these critical perspectives in their own creative readings of the Gospel according to Mark and its Roman Mediterranean context.
Ruth - A Cultural & Literary Study
A cultural and literary study of the book of Ruth with particular attention to its contemporary representations and how they function as intertexts that both challenge past interpretive traditions and broaden the interpretive horizons of this book.
How to Read the Book of Job(?)
The biblical scholar David Noel Freedman once published an article whose title posed a genuine question: “Is it Possible to Understand the Book of Job?” From the book’s opaque language to its purported layers of composition to its slippery rhetorical questions, Job is difficult to pin down. This course constitutes an attempt to understand Job by reading through the book from beginning to end over the course of the semester in conversation with a range of contemporary voices.
The Elijah/Elisha Tradition
A study of the Hebrew text of the Elijah/Elisha stories (I Kgs. 17 – II Kgs. 10) followed by an overview of the tradition of interpretation of individual stories in this cycle with particular attention to the historical, literary, and theological elements therein.
Old Testament Methods
A general overview of the history and theory behind biblical interpretative methods with a close examination of current critical approaches. Scholarly analyses and research of a selection of Hebrew texts serve as the basis for the illustration and discussion of these approaches.
Hebrew Readings
A biblical Hebrew readings class that provides an intensive review of grammar and syntax for the first half of the semester and then offers more advanced readings of Hebrew biblical poetry and text-critical matters for the later part of the semester.
Women: Biblical Portraits and Issues in Ministry
This course considers biblical traditions focused upon women in conjunction with ministerial issues that relate specifically to women. It explores how these biblical accounts might inform responses to these ministerial challenges and how these contemporary ministerial challenges illuminate our interpretation of these stories.
Re-Reading John
This course integrates historical, literary, and theological perspectives on John’s Gospel. Students read the text of John carefully and repeatedly in conversation with major scholarship on John’s Gospel.
Early Christianity and Enslavement
This seminar offers a historical and theological investigation of the entanglement of early Christianity with the practices and ideologies of Roman enslavement.
Apocalypse, Empire, and Hope
This seminar examines the political world of the early Jesus movement by reading the Apocalypse of John (Book of Revelation) in its Roman imperial context. Students engage in questions of empire, justice, suffering, and hope.
New Testament Research Methods
In this advanced method seminar, students develop advanced competence in New Testament research methods and hone their skills in persuasive academic writing. Method seminars alternate between the Gospels and Pauline literature.
Mission, Church, and Cultures
Introduction to mission and world Christianity that surveys biblical, historical, cultural and theological resources for the theory and practice of mission, with particular emphasis on current concerns and perspectives.
Canon Law: Introduction & Marriage
An overview of the 1983 Code of Canon Law with emphasis on pastoral application and the rights and obligations of the Christian faithful. The second half of the course covers both the celebration of marriage as the law prescribes and the work of marriage tribunals when a marriage ends in divorce.
Celebrational Rites and Practice
This course acquaints students preparing for presbyteral ordination in the Roman Catholic Church with the principle rites of the Church’s liturgy. Its goal is to develop prayerful leaders of prayer and to develop in presiders the necessary skills for gathering the ecclesial body and celebrating the sacramental rites of the Church.
Composing Sacred Spaces
The goal of this part-workshop, part-art history course is to prepare and empower students to make aesthetic decisions by providing historical background and practical tools for creating spaces--real and virtual--for retreats, meditation, and prayer.
Confessional Rites & Practice
Examination of the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Reconciliation from its historical, theological, moral, pastoral, liturgical and canonical perspectives. The course is designed for those who will preside at the Sacrament of Reconciliation as presbyters.
Parish Administration
The course covers practical topics related to serving as an administrator in a Catholic parish, school, or other organization. Specific topics include: leadership; stewardship; human resources; the diocesan Catholic school system; parish budgets and finance councils; parish pastoral councils; volunteers; and self-care. Exploration of the theology of preaching in the Christian tradition and investigation of the ways that different theological perspectives intersect with the preaching event. Opportunities for shared preparation (lectionary based) and actual preaching integrate the practical ministry of the preacher with the theological investigation.
Pastoral Counseling Process and Skills
Highlighting pastoral case material and interpersonal processes, the course introduces students to the basic interviewing/counseling skills in the context of pastoral counseling. This course will take a biopsychosocial and spiritual perspective. Through developing counseling skills and integrating these into pastoral care, students will experience themselves as pastoral agents of healing. The course will be taught from a clinical psychodynamic perspective with attention to professional ethics for pastoral ministers.
Intercultural Ministry: Parish, Campus
Multi-ethnic parishes, campuses, and classrooms have become the "new normal" in the U.S. Catholic Church –one-third of parishes are now "shared parishes" composed of culturally diverse communities sharing the same space; more than half of college and high school students do not fit the traditional profile in terms of race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status; and faith communities are receiving a significant influx of international pastoral ministers. While in the past, skills in interculturality might have been seen as optional, now they are required for all who minister in the U.S. Catholic Church or similar settings. This seminar, designed around parish, campus, or classroom settings and taught by a missiologist who has written on culture-sensitive ministry, engages recent research, art, case studies, and theological reflection, all towards the goal of improving one's ability to work interculturally. It aims to stress intercultural competencies, that is, those which shape knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Besides readings, some required beforehand, and class discussions, it features guest speakers, films, and other learning activities built into a learning contract, which the student will put together with the help of the instructor and the participants.
Theology of Ministry and Practice
This course will explore a contemporary theology of ministry to equip students to serve as reflective ministerial practitioners. Students will consider their ministerial vocations and ecclesial identities and the call to be missionary disciples within the context of a global Church. In addition to ecclesiological themes and models of ministry, the course will address topics in ministerial ethics, including collaborative leadership. Students are preparing for ministry in a time of “epochal change,” given Pope Francis’ vision of a collaborative and synodal Church. In the spirit of collaborative leadership, the course will employ synodal and Ignatian pedagogies and provide students with the opportunity to build a cohort community.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola
In the tradition of Western Christian life, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola certainly have a leading role as a practical method to seek and find the will of God. The course introduces the study of the composition of the text and its literary and theological structure.
Experiments in Prayer and Meditation
Exploration of ways of prayer and meditation within the western Christian tradition and helping people notice and articulate their religious experience as a ground and test of their theological reflection.
Spiritual Direction Practicum
Focus on religious experience in spiritual direction for those engaged in or preparing for this ministry. This course enables participants to identify, articulate and develop religious experience.
Spirituality, Scripture, and Self-Implication
This course is designed for advanced M.Div., MA, ThM and STL or STD students. The seminar will employ a modified class format (lectures, presentations by students, discussion, online learning aspects etc.) to bring spirituality into direct dialogue with biblical texts, but also mystical traditions in poetics and imagery embedded in contextual theologies referring to biblical text.
Discernment: Ignatius and Beyond
Examines the theory and practice of discernment in the Christian tradition. Ignatian-oriented theory and practice grounds the course, but various other perspectives will also be presented. It covers both personal and communal discernment suitable for leadership groups. Complements the Internship in "Spiritual direction, but useful for anyone intending to serve in pastoral ministry.
Spiritual Diaries of the First Companions
This seminar will study the personal spiritual diaries written by Ignatius, Peter Faber, Francis Borja, Simon Rodriguez, Jerome Nadal, Peter Ribadeneira, and Luis Gonçalves da Câmara. These personal documents will help us discover the prayer, the spirituality, the mission, and the construction of Jesuit identity in the beginning years of the Society of Jesus.
Mystical Literature
This course will introduce the students to some of the more significant texts in the Church’s mystical tradition. After an inquiry into the category of “mystical,” this course will engage students in a critical reading of mystical texts, studying the authors, the contexts, and the reception of these texts in this ecclesial moment.
Food, Justice, and Eucharistic Eating
This seminar invites a more profound appreciation of the sacredness of food and eating, the planetary interdependence that a just food system entails, and the destructiveness of the current industrial food system that has left millions of persons hungry and without adequate food to live productive and dignified lives. It explores the food crisis as a spiritual and ethical crisis that calls communities of faith to conversion: to embrace principles of integral ecology, the common good, the integrity of creation, and a just distribution of food resources rooted in the dignity and rights of each person. Critical issues of food will be the context for exploring Christian eucharistic meal-practice: its historical roots in Jesus' meal-fellowship in an imperial Roman world of pervasive food insecurity; its practice today within a world where the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth for justice must awaken communities to the ethical demands of eucharistic eating and drinking. A key aspect of the course is the class's engagement with four "community partners"–groups in the Bay Area working to address food injustice and food insecurity through community-based, organic farming that provides local communities access to safe, affordable, and nutritious food. Students will engage with these groups on-site as an integral part of the course.
Contemplation and Action
What is the life most worth living? Greek philosophy can be understood as an extended debate on this question, coming to focus on the options of philosophy as a way of life (theoria) and the practical life (praxis) of politics in the context of the Greek city-state. This debate was inherited by Christianity, using much of the same conceptual and argumentative machinery, but now articulated in terms of the lives of contemplation and action—Mary’s part and Martha’s part (Lk 10:38-42). While the first was often valued more highly, the history of Christian spirituality soon settled into the task of understanding the necessity, and interrelationships of both. This course investigates some landmarks in this history, from patristic homilies on the Martha-Mary story, moving through figures such as Meister Eckhart, Jan Ruusbroec, and Teresa of Avila, and concluding with post-Vatican-II figures such as Gustavo Gutiérrez. Tracing this history will enable us to reflect on the ways that Christian spirituality is situated at the intersection of the theological elaboration of core Christian doctrines, cultural-philosophical accounts of what human flourishing entails, and the concerns of Christians living in those cultures.
Theology of the Spiritual Exercises
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola invite the ones making them into a traversal of the history of salvation in order to place themselves in it in a way that promotes their flourishing, and, at the same time, ("by the same grace") that of others. As such, implicit in it is a nuanced theology, knowledge of which can enrich the experience both of the one making them and the one giving them. In this course, we will explore that theology. We will strive to grasp the text in its original context and also consider contemporary interpretations. We will also attend carefully to the fact that this text is not meant to be read, but to be performed.
Vatican II
Study of the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) with historical background. Focus on the theological content of the documents, their implementation, and current status of the issues, especially as these are being received by Pope Francis.
Ecology and Liturgy
Exploration of the vital connection between human concern for the Earth community and worship of the living God. Special attention is given to the encyclical Laudato Si' (2015).
Inculturation and Liturgy
Inculturation is a work of justice and liberation by which Christian communities grow into the richness of their mature identity. Focus given to issues of globalization, justice, popular religion, women, as well as community resilience and sustainability.
Liturgical Theology
A theological introduction to the actions, symbols, texts, and contexts of Christian liturgy. Particular attention is given to reflection on the Church’s worship as the arena of encounter with the Paschal Mystery of Christ and as a communal participation in the Trinitarian life.
Sacramental Theology
A systematic view of the nature of the sacraments, the sacramental economy as a way the Church understands created reality, the community of faith, the individual believer within that Body of Christ, and the seven sacraments. Particular attention devoted to the reform of Roman Catholic sacramental life that developed after Vatican II, as well as the emerging issues of cultural diversity and the unity of the Church in a global reality.
Sacraments in Latino Context
An inculturated approach to the theology, preparation and celebration of sacraments for a U.S. Church which is becoming predominantly Latino. Introduces both the theology of the sacraments and pastoral resources for celebrating sacraments in a Latino context.
Theological Readings in Spanish
By providing select readings from such topics as Sacred Scripture, Christology, Ecclesiology, Mariology, and Sacraments, this course provides the student not only an opportunity to read theology in Spanish but also a chance to teach and preach in the same language.
Theology and Spirituality of Priesthood
Contemporary sacramental and ecclesial understanding of presbyteral order, biblical foundations for priesthood, and contemporary theologians reflecting on religious life in the Catholic Church.
Christology Ancient and Modern
An exploration of the development of Christology from the New Testament to the major councils, the medieval times, the Reformation, and contemporary debates including feminist/liberationist/Black/Asian/Latin American approaches.
Cross-cultural Christologies
A cross-cultural approach to Christology which considers the social and cultural contexts of Euro-American, Latin American, African, and Asian Christians.
Foundations of Theology
Introduces the nature and function of theology through a systematic inquiry into the dynamics of faith and revelation, the role of scripture and tradition, the use of religious language and symbols, the genesis of doctrine, the operation of theological method, and the relationship of theology to praxis.
Introducing Ecclesiology
An introduction to ecclesiology that surveys biblical, historical, cultural, and theological resources for the understanding of the Christian churches, with particular emphasis on ecumenical concerns and global perspectives.
Systematic Theology
A historical, critical, and pastoral approach to the study of Christian Systematic Theology. It examines the major subdisciplines of theology in their historical developments and interrelations with each other: the theology of revelation, trinitarian theology, Christology, ecclesiology, the theology of creation, eschatology, sacramental theology, and more.
Theological Anthropology
A foundational theological inquiry into self-understanding, including concepts of person, affectivity, sexuality, individuality, and community based on contemporary social and natural sciences.
Theology and Interfaith Dialog
Exploration of the various historical and contemporary approaches to the theology of religions and interreligious dialogue including the phenomenon of multiple religious identity and the implications for contemporary missiology.
Trinitarian Theology
An overview of the development of Trinitarian theology, from its gradual emergence in the early Christian period all the way to the present.
Theological Methods
The course will give students a thorough grounding in approaches to the study of theology by introducing methods for research. Through close reading of select texts from a variety of historical and cultural contexts and introductions to exemplary projects from the various sub-disciplines of religious studies, students will develop a comprehensive grasp of key figures in the development of academic theology and their distinctive methodologies.
Food, Justice, and Eucharistic Eating
This seminar invites a more profound appreciation of the sacredness of food and eating, the planetary interdependence that a just food system entails, and the destructiveness of the current industrial food system that has left millions of persons hungry and without adequate food to live productive and dignified lives.
Marian Art
From the early Christian centuries to today, representations of the Virgin Mary have evolved and changed and are as diverse as her many titles. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, this course will examine the making, meaning, and reception of Marian images within the various social, religious, and cultural milieus from which they emerged. For example, we will consider Byzantine icons depicting Mary as Theotokos, or God-bearer, Italian Renaissance imagery of the Virgin and Child, nineteenth-century portrayals of Mary as the Immaculate Conception, the miraculous Black Madonnas the world over, and vernacular Marian shrines. Note that this course includes an international immersion in France: Paris, Chartres, and a service-learning component at Lourdes.
African Theological Ethics: Development and Issue
Exploration of the development of principles, methods, and theories of African theologies and ethics including the contribution of African Christianity to global Christianity from cultural, anthropological, ecological, Christological, and eschatological perspectives.
Catholic Social Thought
Study of contemporary Catholic social thought, including both the major documents of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the work of Catholic ethicists who address social issues using the framework of CST.
Ethics, Economics & Liberation
The course aims to address the following question: How does the tradition of Christian reflection on economic justice relate to the task of liberating whole peoples and the whole person in the face of globalization? We engage this question by studying (1) aspects of the tradition of Catholic social teaching and (2) various liberation theologies and spiritualities in order to address (3) the implications of globalization for how we think about and live our Christian faith, and (4) the implications of faith for how we respond to globalization and economic injustice. We will seek to apply these theoretical frameworks to a range of contemporary issues that transcend national borders: genocide, migration, terrorism, humanitarian intervention, development, mining, and forests degradation.
Ethics of Social Reconciliation
A study of theological and ethical questions connected to social reconciliation in relation to themes of justice, liberation, mercy, forgiveness., and common ground.
Family Ethics
A course at the intersection of sexual ethics and social ethics that engages Christian thinking on sex, gender, marriage, family, and children.
Feminist Theology and Ethics
A consideration of major voices in feminist theology and ethics. Will treat both constructive and ethical questions, emphasizing the dialogue between sex and gender studies and theology.
Political Theology in the Context of Africa
Since the second Vatican Council, Catholic theology has passed through very determining developments. Some even claimed that theology has successfully negotiated the turning of a more classical approach to a more interdisciplinary way of theologizing. From an African perspective, the renewal of faith has also engaged theologians to think Christian faith in relation to the world in the move, which is in taking into account the social and political dimensions of faith. Thanks to the work of theologians such as J. B. Metz and J. Moltmann, attention has been called to de-privatize God-talk and to interpret faith as incarnated in the world. This course provides insights and meanings of political theology in an African context. More specifically it will address ways of God seeking in the midst of various situations, and how the particular context of Africa is a theological locus. Experiences of suffering and hope, reconciliation and justice, peace and conflicts resolution, among others, will highlight the ongoing interpretation of faith in African societies.
Political Theology
The course explores how Christian theology is political. It will explore a diverse range of approaches to cross-examining, (re)imagining, and (de)constructing the intersection of politics, religion, and theology, present and past. It is designed to help students think more deeply about the relationship between faith and politics, Christianity, and political arrangements, and assess theological arguments of democracy as a primary means for pursuing a flourishing life. Running through the course are examinations of how different political theologies address questions about the common good, justice, poverty, commonality, difference, and power across continents. Finally, we will look at distinctive approaches to enduring questions in the Christian tradition by twentieth-century scholarship across topics in contemporary political theology across religions, such as reading the Bible politically, the Option for the Poor, the Kingdom of God, State and Church, Church-Based Politics, confronting the powers, gender and race, and the postcolonial challenges.
Liberation Theology
The course takes a historical and thematic approach to examine the fundamental presuppositions of Latin American liberation theology, which traces its origins to the grassroots Christian communities that struggled for justice and solidarity with the oppressed in the 1960s. It explores the contribution (characteristics, methods, approaches) of Latin American, Asian, black, and womanist liberation theologies to contemporary theology. It assesses their efforts to articulate the Christian message as a practical response against oppression and on behalf of integral human liberation while scrutinizing the essential criticisms in their regard. The topics will include the spirituality of liberation, grace, eschatology and politics, the Church, poverty, critical pastoral questions, and some liberationist voices coming forward from different social and cultural contexts and their ethical implications.
Ethics of Nonviolence and Just Peacemaking
The clear enemy is the cycle of violence. This course will first explore the historical development of Christian reflection on war and peace, pacifism, nonviolence, and peacebuilding strategies. Drawing on the challenges to peace, moral dilemmas regarding conflicts, and ambiguities non-resolved by just war thinkers, the course empowers students to assess the ways ethical and theological grounds for a virtue-based just peace ethic as sustainable responses to conflicts and violence. It uses case studies to show how nonviolence and just peace work in the form of peacebuilding and reconciliation. The course will also consider the challenges to peace posed by contemporary warfare issues and worldwide violent conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, the Holy Land, Africa, and Latin America, and the peace initiatives of multiple Church and society actors.
Healthcare Ethics
This course is an introduction to healthcare ethics from a Catholic perspective. We will study the main principles of healthcare ethics, their sources, and practical and pastoral applications. We will also explore the broader context of healthcare, including systems, global health, and access and equity. Discussion of specific issues may include: autonomy, informed consent, and vulnerable persons; private versus public healthcare; pandemics and resource distribution; environment, climate change, and population health; pain and suffering; euthanasia and assisted death; abortion; reproductive, maternal, and child health.
Ecological Ethics: Theological Approaches
This course studies the development of ecological concern within Catholic Social Teaching, especially the relationship between human and environmental ecology, and the concept of integral ecology as presented in Laudato Si. It will examine ecological ethics according to theological sources, interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue, and contextual questions. Topics include: role and interpretation of Scripture, preferential option for the poor, role of science, Indigenous ways of life, global and local outlooks.
Methods in Ethics
A clear understanding of ethical methods is a fundamental tool for teaching and research in ethics and moral theology. In ethics, the methodology determines what "counts" as relevant information, the process by which that information is used, and the nature of an adequate response to a moral question. This seminar will explore the major methods used in Christian ethics and their historical development and apply them to contemporary issues.
Culture, Context & Lived Religion
An introduction to the concept of culture and its implications for theological study and pastoral ministry today. The course attends to theoretical concerns and to issues such as secularization, religious change, and the salience of religiosity in shaping people’s perceptions, identities and strategies of action.
Marian Art
Using a cross-disciplinary approach, this course examines the making, meaning, and reception of Marian images within the various social, religious, and cultural milieus from which they emerged.
Religion & Social Transformation
How does one go about changing the world? This course investigates on the efficacy of religious ideas and constituencies with respect to understanding and challenging institutional power, engendering civic discourse and engagement, and contributing to social activism.
Hope: An Experiment in Loving the Future
What is hope? How and when does it become manifest and what difference does it make? Why do we hear more and more expressions of hopelessness amid our public discourse? How can we learn to nurture hope -- what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur famously dubbed a "passion for the possible" -- within our everyday lives and for the purposes of fashioning a better, more humane future? These are the sorts of questions that animate this course, which is experimental in at least a few senses. First, we draw upon philosophy, theology, biography, sociology and so forth to determine if we can come to a deeper understanding of what hope can be and how it can inflect (even constitute) our lives. Second, tilting in the direction of hope -- making an effort to hone it, taking time to think about it, etc. -- is itself experimental, testing whether it is indeed the sort of variable upon which the prospects of a future propitious of human flourishing truly depend. And, third, since this is the first time teaching this class, it's hard to know how deeply it might resonate with students' lives, scholarship and ministries. However, my work on this topic thus far gives me reason to be enormously hopeful.
Sociology of Non-Religion
In his monumental work titled A Secular Age (Harvard 2007), philosopher Charles Taylor provides a summoning and nuanced account of what he considers to be a “titanic change” whereby “we have also changed from a condition in which belief was the default option, . . . to a condition in which for more and more people unbelieving construals seem at first blush the only plausible ones” (12). This course attempts to flesh out what this new sensibility looks like within contemporary American society and beyond. In doing so, our goal will be to better understand the everyday lives of people – atheists, agnostics, the “spiritual but not religious,” the so-called “nones,” and so forth – who, to one degree or another, claim distinctly secular identities for themselves. As a sociological course, it also aims to introduce students to important theoretical frameworks, empirical methods, and analytical foci (political behavior, cultural trends, generational distinctions, etc.) that should equip them to appreciate and more nimbly interrogate the inner lives of people who identify as secular.
Climate Change, Culture, and Creation
This course explores the reality of climate change and what it means for people in terms of understanding the human connection to nature, thinking about possible responses among individuals and governments, imagining the future, and accessing the wisdom of religious traditions with respect to re-conceptualizing spirituality and ministry. Drawing upon sociology, environmental science, political theory, and so forth, this course is interdisciplinary.
Inculturation and Liturgy
Inculturation is a work of justice and liberation by which Christian communities grow into the richness of their mature identity and participate in the mission of the church. Today, it is essential that inculturation be deeply aligned with the church's move toward synodality as a constitutive dimension of the church of the present and future. In a unique timing, the course unfolds this year as the international Synod on Synodality will be meeting in Rome. Both inculturation and synodality flow from Vatican Council II's affirmation of cultural and racial diversity as essential to the church's life and liturgy. In a unique way, the option for synodality invites the voice, creativity, and expressiveness of all people, walking together, lay and ordained, responding to the Spirit's guidance regarding each community's unique mission of service in the Kingdom of God, and engaged in the necessary revision of structures of participation and decision-making within the local and larger church. Course readings and visual resources draw on emergent theologies from around the globe, key church documents, and narratives of communities engaged in inculturated worship. Discussion and reading will explore Asian, African, Latin American, Asian American, Latino, and African American perspectives and practices in light of the central themes of inculturation and synodality.
Art and Pilgrimage
Geoffrey Chaucer famously wrote that ‘folks long to go on pilgrimage.’ Indeed, traveling over long distances to a sacred destination is an important ritual practice that has crossed cultures and times. Such journeys have inspired legends, folk-stories, and artistic representations from the early Christian centuries to today. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, this course surveys the relationship of art, material culture, and Christian pilgrimage practice through a close examination of major shrines and their dedications and decorations, paintings, pilgrimage badges and other souvenirs, films, and surrogate sites of pilgrimage such as maps, labyrinths, and manuscripts. We will address the theological underpinning of pilgrimage, as well as the conjunction of artistic practice and contemplative prayer as pilgrimage.