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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
What is God like? Should God be understood as a person or a force? How is God related to the world? This course surveys primarily Western thinkers from the times of the biblial writers, through Plato, Aristotle and early Jewish and Christian sources to the development of modern atheism and beyond it to contemporary understandings of God. Issues such as evil, human responsibility and prayer will be discussed in relation to divine power and knowledge.
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3.00 Credits
Who is Jesus and what did he accomplish? This course surveys the widely divergent answers in history including the gospels, the early church councils, the modern search for the historical Jesus, and contemporary portraits.
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3.00 Credits
An attempt to understand and to analyze what contemporary social institutions, the arts, politics, and ideas reveal about Americans' religious perceptions regarding such questions as the means of human fulfillment, the state of the world, and the nature of religious or spiritual experience.
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3.00 Credits
This course examines the diverse perspectives of leading evangelical thinkers. The historical roots of evangelical theology as well as some of the recent trends and controversies within contemporary North American evangelicalism are covered.
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3.00 Credits
For many Christians the Christian life is a way of living rather than a philosophy or theology. It is guided by beliefs but not reducible to beliefs. This way of living - the life of discipleship -- can include trust in God, respect for the earth, courage in the face of suffering, delight in beauty, openness to surprise, a willingness to be touched by others, and a desire to live simply. It can express itself in terms of many different callings or vocations: to serve the poor, to write poetry, to do scientific research, to be a hermit. This course introduces students to Christians to modern Christians whose lives illustrate different but complementary ways of living the Christian life. We will look at how these live and what values inspire them. Examples include Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Merton, and CS Lewis. A common thread in many of these thinkers is that they seek to live a counter-consumer lifestyle. A special module of the course focuses on the Benedictine tradition of Christianity with its emphasis on listening and ongoing conversion as the heart of Christian living. The course includes a weekend retreat at the Benedictine monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
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3.00 Credits
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries an important form of religious thinking is emerging called ecotheology. It involves exploring how spirituality is connected with an appreciation of the earth and its many forms of life and how the earth needs to be protected from excessive exploitation. There are Christian versions of ecotheology, Jewish versions, Buddhist versions, and many others, including feminist versions called ecofeminism. In this course we look at a wide variety of forms of ecotheology. A special component of the course focuses on human relations to animals, with attention to the animal rights movement and constructive religious responses to it.
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3.00 Credits
This course is an introduction to some the basic social, spiritual, and ecological problems faced by the world today. These include poverty, violence, racial tension, and environment degradation. The course then focuses on faith-based and spiritually-sensitive responses to those problems. Special emphases are on "constructive postmodern movement" in China, the emergence of "progressive Islam" in Islamic nations, "socially engaged" Buddhism, and various types of "liberation theologies" in Christianity. The course involves a weekend retreat at Heifer Project Internati
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3.00 Credits
An exploration of historical perspectives on the nature of the relationship between religion and politics as evident in such concepts as "the separation of church and state," disestablishment, and "the free exercise" of religion, combined with an examination of factors that have altered the religious and political landscapes, in particular some important Supreme Court decisions. Also involves an analysis from a variety of perspectives some pressing issues facing American peopl
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3.00 Credits
Issues related to women's roles in religious institutions and questions about the nature of women' s spiritual lives and experiences will be considered along with questions related to the ways that religious traditions have understood the nature of human sexuality.
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3.00 Credits
What is a shaman, and what does the idea of ? ?hamanism? ?tell us about indigenous peoples and their religions? This course will examine various ways in which anthropologists, historians of religion and others have attempted to understand and interpret the narratives, rituals, religious experiences and the social features of indigenous communities described as ? ?hamanic' . In the process, we will consider contemporary attitudes, debates and perspectives on the value and problems associated with comparative studies and ethnographic representation, explore the voices of particular native people, and conclude with an analysis of the shaman as an aspect of popular culture.
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