Overview
why this course?
Many modern people of faith wish their prayer lives were better or different. This course helps students root their prayer in both the theology and practices that have nurtured the spiritual life of Christians for centuries.
audit for $375
Auditing means you are not required to complete assignments and the professor will not be reviewing your work. We strongly recommend full participation for maximum value.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
- To understand the difference between history and historiography and engage in interpretive discussion around historiographical concerns.
- To have a broad, sweeping overview of the arrival, dissemination, and diversity of the Christian faith in North America.
- To begin to wrestle with some of the struggles the Christian faith has brought to North America, including: Indigenous forced conversions, intradenominational battles, new religious groups, the role of the Bible in American chattel slavery, the ongoing racial tensions sustained in part by Christian groups, and issues of creation care and North American Christianity.
- To understand the idea of “American Exceptionalism” and the debate on whether the USA and Canada were founded as “Christian Nations.”
- To be able to distinguish between different streams of the Christian tradition such as Mainline Protestant, Ultramontane Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and non-Trinitarian groups.
- Have a cursory understanding of some of the major contextual and practical differences between American, Canadian, and Mexican expressions of Christianity.
- To be able to articulate the origins, sources, and distinguishing features of the early Stone-Campbell Movement. Naming its key contributors and their roles, identifying the theological trajectory and rationale of the movement and placing it in its North American context.
- To he introduced to the tools of various historians, including the interdisciplinary work of sociology, anthropology, and social psychology.
- To have a more in depth grasp of the Western Canadian context, giving particular attention to Alberta and its unique Christian-political synthesis through the 20th century.
- To gain sensitivity to the fact that doing history involved interpretation alongside a search for objectivity. To personally chasten our own assumptions and biases to seek to fairly and charitably read other voices.
Noll, Mark A. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.
Holloway, Gary and Doug Foster. Renewing the World. Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers & ACU Press, 2015.
All other readings will be scanned and placed on Populi. For full bibliography see PDF on Populi.
Course Description
This course looks at the key ideas, people and movements of North American Christianity, along with the social, political, and religious context in which it developed. Special attention will be paid to the heritage of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
Prerequisite
G220 History of Christianity will give you the right foundation to get the most out of this course. If you are enrolled in a program, it is a required prerequisite. However, if you have equivalent life experience or other course work and would like to take the course, contact the academic dean.
Course Features
- Lectures 13
- Quizzes 0
- Duration College Semester
- Skill level Level 300
- Language English
- Students 0
- Assessments Yes
Curriculum
-
Lectures
- Introduction
- From Europe to America
- Colonization
- Americanization & Christian America
- Stone-Campbell Excursus (#1)
- Antebellum Evangelicalism
- Gilded Age & Black Church
- Stone-Campbell Excursus (#2)
- Modernist Crisis
- Mid-Century Modern & Evangelicalism
- Coming Y2K & Alberta (Calgary)
- Stone-Campbell Excursus #3
- Final Exam
Instructor
