Selected historic statements marking influential stages in the evolving Christian tradition of belief and behavior in the West. Concluding with the suggestion that the profoundly patriarchal character of the tradition invites rebalancing through assimilation of women's voices and feminist readings.

Format: chronological.
Approach: history of ideas and cultural forms with special interest in religious impulse and vision, and with qualified respect for traditional theological agendas and issues.
Aim: a better grasp of the religious themes shaping Western culture past and present: biblical, doctrinal, institutional, antinomian, secularized.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Songs of Songs (packet)
Augustine, Confessions - excerpts (packet)
Dante Alighieri, Paradise (tr. Sayers-Reynolds)
Martin Luther, Christian Liberty
Jonathan Edwards, two sermons (packet)
William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey” (packet)
Matthew Arnold, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse”: (packet)
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Emily Dickinson, selected poems (packet)
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

(each work a fourth of the grade):

Dante Notebook (to be explained) - Due Week 7
Paper (5 pages undergraduate, 7-8 pages graduate) - Due Week 11
Paper (5 pages undergraduate, 7-8 pages graduate) - Due Week 14
Final Exam (graduate students will be asked to answer three essay questions instead of two)

COURSE SCHEDULE:

Week 1

Introduction

Week 2

Song of Songs
Augustine hand-out

Week 3

Video: selections from “The Mysteries” (National Theatre of England recreation of the York cycle of “mystery” plays)
Video: selections from “The Mysteries”

Week 4

Paradise
Paradise

Week 5

Video: “Romance and Reality,” (Kenneth Clark's Civilization series)
Paradise

Week 6

Paradise
Paradise

Week 7

Video: “Protest and Communication” (Civilization) / NOTEBOOK DUE
Christian Liberty

Week 8

Christian Liberty
Christian Liberty

Week 9

Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Week 10

Video: “The Worship of Nature,” (Civilization)
Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey”

Week 11

Arnold: “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” hand-out
Song of Myself / PAPER DUE

Week 12

Song of Myself
Song of Myself / Emily Dickinson's “lonesome poems”

Week 13

Beyond God the Father
Beyond God the Father

Week 14

Beyond God the Father
Beyond God the Father / PAPER DUE