DESCRIPTION:

This is an advanced seminar primarily for doctoral students open on the 500-level on a limited basis to qualified master's-level students. In early modern Europe, Christian thought and institutions dominated vast areas of human endeavor, including science, philosophy, social and economic theory, law and politics. The revolutions of the modern world have almost completely overturned this relationship and thrown the church into a series of prolonged crises. This seminar will survey the critical points of intersection between the church and society since the Enlightenment, particularly in Britain and North America. We will read selections from several of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Positivism, and we will study the most important contemporary theories of secularization, including those of Weber, Berger, Wilson, and Pannenberg.

This course is intended for students who plan a vocation in teaching, research, and writing. The course will furnish students with an understanding of the most formidable intellectual challenges facing the church today, and hopefully, it will help lay a foundation that will enable the Christian intellectual to offer a credible answer to these challenges.

The seminar will meet two hours a week for discussion.

Cashdollar, Charles D. The Transformation of Theology, 1830-1890. Princeton, 1989.

Gilbert, Alan D. The Making of Post-Christian Britain. Longman, 1980.

May, Henry F. The Enlightenment in America. Oxford, 1976.

Noll, Mark A. Between Faith and Criticism. Harper, 1986.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Christianity in a Secularized World. Crossroad, 1989.

Rigorous participation in the seminar discussions and a major research paper. Students will be able to choose from a wide variety of specific topics for their papers, but the seminar is also designed to enhance the student's overall competence in the broad field of modern church history.

The seminar is intended primarily for PhD and ThM students working in the area of modern church history and theology. The course is open to a limited number of MA and MDiv students who are planning advanced work in the fields of history or theology by permission of the professor. Such students should have completed one or more survey courses in modern church history, American church history, or modern theology.

Elective for MA and MDiv students; it is part of the required curriculum for history students in the Center for Advanced Theological Study.

None.