What is the Church? Exploring Christian Community

HDS 2873 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Ecclesiology is the branch of theology concerned with comparative, critical, and constructive reflection on the identity and purpose of the Church, in its local, universal, and cosmic/mystical forms. Both philosophical and practical, traditional and innovative, institutional and radical, ecclesiology is perhaps the most integrative and creative of the theological disciplines, uniting systematic, biblical, and liturgical theology with questions of authority and mission. This course aims to empower students to identify and release visions of Church rooted in nostalgic, oppressive, or colonialist systems and structures, and to imagine and claim an ecclesia that reflects God's love, justice, and abiding concern for the most vulnerable. Readings will range widely across Christian history and denominations (including Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox), and will include voices from the global south, feminist, womanist, queer, and liberation theologians. Alongside "What is the Church?," we will ask "What should the Church look like today?" in an age of ever-widening global inequality and overconsumption, rising secularism and fundamentalism, institutional decline, and climate crisis. Students will design a final project focused on a tradition of their choice and reflecting their vocational aspirations.

[Note: this is not an introduction to Christianity. Students should have a basic familiarity with the Bible and at least one church or denomination.]