REL 6102a, The Theology of Julian of Norwich  Ryan McAnnally-Linz

This course offers students the opportunity to become deeply familiar with the writings of Julian of Norwich, which we read in both Modern English translation and the original Middle English. (No prior knowledge of Middle English is required. Students pick up Julian’s language over the course of the semester.) It is assumed (1) that—whatever else she is—Julian is a theologian and (2) that her work is at least potentially significant not only for historical understanding of late-medieval England but also for contemporary Christian reflection and practice.  3 Course cr
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

REL 6104a, Soul and Society: Theological Liberalism in the US  Eboni Marshall Turman

Although its roots extend back to seventeenth-century England, liberal Christian theology was formally founded in mid-eighteenth-century Germany as a third way between orthodox authoritarianism and atheistic disbelief and is largely defined by its insistence on intellectual freedom and relevance to the modern world, its embrace of scientific reason, and its broad acceptance of biblical criticism in opposition to dogmatic presuppositions of scriptural inerrancy. Its European beginnings notwithstanding, liberal Christian theology’s richest and most diverse tradition is found in the United States where pastors—rather than academics—who were immersed in the social and spiritual concerns of their congregations played significant founding roles that would eventually lend itself to a Christian embrace of a uniquely American activist conscience that would propel social-justice activism in every decade following World War I, including the contemporary movement for Black freedom (Black Lives Matter), a free Palestine, and global concern for ecological justice. While liberal Christianity in the US has overwhelmingly been identified with a neo-Puritan claim that the state is responsible for protecting liberty, the tradition, nevertheless betrayed its own rhetoric of freedom by ideological justifications of capitalism and white supremacy that “carved exceptions to their rhetoric of universal human dignity to all” except those who had been marked inferior and therefore unworthy of the right of “civilization” for reason of racial, sexual, and/or cultural distinction. The course explores the emergence of liberal Christianity in the US, the content of liberal theological idealism and realism, the ascendence of progressive religion, visions of liberation for the disinherited, as well as theological doubt, creativity, and the boundaries of theological reconstruction.  3 Course cr
T 9:20am-11:10am

REL 6105a, From Baumstark to Bell: Methods in the Study of Christian Liturgy  Nina Glibetic

This graduate seminar examines the development of methodological approaches in the study of Christian liturgy, attending both to pre-modern liturgical interpretation and to the emergence of liturgical studies as a modern academic discipline. From its earliest centuries, Christianity generated sustained reflection on the meaning, history, and authority of liturgical practice, as mystagogues, canonists, and commentators interpreted ritual action, shaped traditions, and narrated change long before the rise of modern historical scholarship. In early modernity, Reformation and Counter-Reformation polemics intensified attention to the historical origins and theological legitimacy of rites, laying groundwork for the discipline’s later critical formation. Liturgical studies emerged as a distinct academic discipline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with the historical-comparative work of Anton Baumstark and other foundational figures, we examine how modern scholarship constructed its categories, methods, and narratives of development, and how intellectual commitments and institutional contexts shaped its assumptions. Alongside major figures such as Gregory Dix, Josef Jungmann, Robert Taft, and Catherine Bell, the seminar also considers methodological developments that have expanded the field in recent decades, including the material and sensory turn, gender and embodiment as analytic lenses, and historiographical reflections that question inherited frameworks. By placing classical comparative and historical-critical models in conversation with these new approaches, students assess the strengths and limits of competing methods and develop a critically informed methodological positioning within the study of Christian worship.  3 Course cr
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6606a, The Eucharistic Prayer and Eucharistic Theology  Bryan Spinks

This course looks at the broad structural development of the Eucharistic liturgy at certain key epochs in the history of the Christian Church. However, its main focus is on the central prayer of the rite, the Eucharistic Prayer or Great Thanksgiving. It examines the theories put forward regarding its possible origins, its historical development, its treatment by the various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformers, and subsequent epochs to the present. It reflects on the theologies expressed in this prayer genre and considers the corresponding sacramental theology in doctrinal writings on the Eucharist, East and West, as well as contemporary discussion. Area II. Prerequisite: Completion of REL 682 would be useful background.  3 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

REL 6612a, Christ and Being Human  Drew Collins

This course explores the ways in which Christ—as a character in the gospel narratives, an object of Christian theological reflection, and a living presence in the life of the Church—informs Christian visions and practice of (individual, communal, and cosmic) flourishing. Students engage a thematic reading of the Gospel of Luke, organized around the Gospel’s core themes and touchpoints with key concrete phenomena of human experience. The guiding questions are: What does it mean for Christ to be the key to human existence and flourishing? And what does flourishing look like if Jesus Christ is taken to be the key? Area II and Area V.  3 Course cr
Th 9:20am-11:10am

REL 6616a, Introduction to East Asian Theologies  Chloe Starr

This course introduces a range of theological themes and key thinkers in twentieth- and twenty-first century Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong. It surveys different theological movements within these countries (such as “homeland theology,” Minjung theology, the “no-church” movement, protest theology) and encourages a critical response to the challenges that these theologies raise for Christians in Asia and elsewhere. The course considers contextualization and inculturation debates in each of these societies, as well as regional responses to Christianity. We read primary texts in English, with background reading for context, and students are encouraged to develop their own responses to the authors and their thought. Area II and Area V.  3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6626a, Introduction to Systematic Theology  Miroslav Volf

The aims of this course are (1) to learn the craft of doing theology by close reading of five theologians from ecumenically and socially diverse perspectives and significant trends in contemporary theology and (2) to reflect critically on the task of theology. We pay special attention to how these theologians’ visions of flourishing life are (1) rooted in the life and person of Jesus Christ, (2) set in the larger story of God’s relation to the world, and (3) informed by Scripture as the primary source for doing theology.  0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

REL 6629a, Theology and Medicine  Mark Heim and Benjamin Doolittle

Team-taught by a member of the Yale School of Medicine faculty and a member of the Yale Divinity School faculty, this course explores the challenges of contemporary medicine from a theological perspective. It considers theological resources relevant for the practice of medicine and examines the practice of medicine as a resource for deepening theological reflection. Topics of traditional interest in both fields—suffering, illness, healing, and well-being—are addressed in interdisciplinary terms. The focus is not on chaplaincy ministry nor on biomedical ethics, but on a conversation reflecting on the application of healing science and religious wisdom to human need. Key to this conversation is recognition that doctors and theologians share a need for the healing and spiritual health they hope to nurture in others. There are class meetings at Yale New Haven Hospital in settings where the spirit and body intersect, through cooperation with the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine. Area II. Prerequisite: one term of graduate-level study of theology is assumed.  3 Course cr
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6631a, Christian Ethics Seminar  Clifton Granby

This course examines a number of recent and influential works of relevance to central problems in Christian moral thought and in modern religious thought more generally. Course topics include political theology; religious ethics and culture; human flourishing and social responsibility; the ethics and epistemology of protest; criticism and the politics of tradition; feminist theory and womanist ethics. Methodological approaches to these topics comprise theological, philosophical, historical, politico-economic, and ethnographic perspectives. Course materials draw from a range of sources from late antiquity to the present. Area II.  Prerequisite: REL 615 or equivalent.  3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6635a, Creaturely Agency and the Contestation of the Human  Jennifer Herdt

What it is to be human is often defined by way of contrast to animality. This contrastive definition of the human is peculiarly salient when it comes to the ethical: human beings are moral agents, persons, characterized by self-ownership, responsibility, and accountability; other animals are outside the ethical. Theologically, these claims to human exceptionalism are bound up with the doctrine of the imago dei and with the Incarnation; philosophically, with claims regarding human dignity. But “the human” is now under fire from multiple directions: posthumanism, animality studies, race and animality studies. Meanwhile, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, and evolutionary anthropology are revealing new things about the agency of human and nonhuman animals. How ought we think about agency and responsibility, both human and nonhuman, in light of all of these developments? And what possibilities emerge for the doctrine of the imago dei and for the confession of Christ as fully and perfectly human, moving forward? Area II.  3 Course cr
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6662a, The Anglican Way I  Staff

This course explores the origins and development of the Anglican way of being Christian, focusing attention on two case studies: the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, from the English Reformation (sixteenth century) through “The Colenso Affair” (nineteenth century). The course is a companion to REL 663, making a two-term study of the historical evolution and theological traditions of the Anglican way of being Christian. The primary aim of the course is to analyze and make a constructive theological assessment of early Anglican traditions and to explore these as a pastoral and spiritual resource for Christian life and ministry. We do this by engaging in the study of both well-known and lesser-studied texts and figures. In addition to lectures, each week we discuss the respective texts, interrogating them with respect to the distribution of power, questions arising from colonialism, and issues relevant to the formation of the global Anglican Communion. We ask the questions: What does it mean to be Christian in the Anglican Way, and how do we do Anglican theology? How do we approach the study of the Anglican story in light of the dialectic between the Catholic and contextual, secular and Church, universal and particular, the global and the local? To what extent is the Anglican Way an exercise in depolarization?   3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6663a, The Anglican Way II: Continuing Depolarization  Dorothy Chang

This course explores the continued development of the Anglican way of being Christian in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, giving particular attention to the continued evolution of the Episcopal Church and emergence of the Anglican Communion, as well as the controversies that face Anglicans in their postcolonial situation. It is a companion to REL 6662, making a two-term study of the historical evolution and theological traditions of the Anglican way of being Christian. The primary aim of the course is to analyze and make a constructive theological assessment of modern Anglican traditions and to explore these as a pastoral and spiritual resource for Christian life and ministry. We do this by engaging in the study of both well-known and lesser-studied texts and figures. In addition to lectures, each week we discuss the respective texts, interrogating them with respect to the distribution of power, questions arising from colonialism, and issues relevant to the formation of the global Anglican Communion. These questions guide us: What does it mean to be Christian in the Anglican Way, and how do we do Anglican theology? How do we approach the study of the Anglican story in light of the dialectic between the Catholic and contextual, secular and Church, universal and particular, the global and the local? To what extent is the Anglican Way an exercise in depolarization? Area II and Area III. Prerequisite: REL 6662.  3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6682a, Foundations of Christian Worship  Nina Glibetic and Gabriel Radle

This  course focuses on theological and historical approaches to the study of Christian worship, with appropriate attention to cultural context and contemporary issues. The first part of the course seeks to familiarize students with the foundations of communal, public prayer in the Christian tradition (such as its roots in Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament; its Trinitarian source and direction; its ways of figuring time, space, and human embodiment; its use of language, music, the visual arts, etc.). The second part offers a sketch of historical developments, from earliest Christian communities to present times. Area II.  3 Course cr
MWF 9am-10:15am

REL 6687a, Books of Common Prayer: Anglican Liturgy in History, Theology, and Practice  Staff

This course traces the development of Anglican liturgy from the time of Henry VIII through the English prayer books of 1549–1662, and then the books and practices of the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion to the present day. Attention is given to the Reformation, the first American liturgies, the aftermath of the Oxford Movement, and the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement. Theologies and practices in present Anglican worship, including sacramental theology and issues of enculturation, are also addressed. Area II and Area III. Prerequisite: M.Div. students should normally have taken REL 6682.  3 Course cr
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

REL 6691a, Ecclesiology, Ministry, and Polity: Presbyterian  Maria LaSala

This course is intended to help students understand the church and its ministry in terms of both theory and practice. The course deals with the historical and theological basis of Presbyterian Church polity and offer opportunities for reflection on theoretical and practical dimensions of ministry in the church. Students can demonstrate knowledge of the Book of Order, including the Form of Government and the Rules of Discipline, and apply the principles to specific situations in ministry. Students study the Directory for Worship of the PCUSA, with particular emphasis on the Sacraments and the ordinances of marriage and funeral. Students encounter the theological tradition in the Confessions, from the perspective of the practice of ministry.  This course prepares students for the Standard Ordination Exams in Church Polity and Worship and the Sacraments and encourage students in their preparation for the Bible Exam and the Theological Competence exam and, more broadly, to be able to engage these issues both practically and theologically.  3 Course cr
W 4pm-6pm

REL 6911a, Ecclesiology, Ministry, and Polity: Baptist  Gregory Mobley

Lectures on comparative ecclesiology, doctrines of the ministry, and patterns of church polity in the Baptist family of denominations Western Christianity. Area II.  3 Course cr
M 6pm-7:50pm