Fall 2019

Community Intern Reflection

This course is a peer group seminar for interns in community field sites. It offers spiritual reflection, linking the experience in the internship to the student’s broad educational and vocational goals (praxis). The class is designed for students to assess their personal progress, gather support from peers and the instructor, integrate their internship experience into their degree program, and deepen spiritual practices to sustain religious leadership in community ministry. Students gather multi-religious sources of wisdom, which serve as touchstones for group spiritual reflection. The course includes a frequent required live web-based video seminars as well as online discussion postings that orient the live sessions. Students must have consistent internet access to relevant technology. Evaluation is based on participation, depth of engagement with peers and resources, as well as written self-evaluations. Required for MDiv/ MASC students enrolled in credit for community internship during the same semester. Fulfills thresholds based on personal learning goals. Low residency with synchronous online Zoom meetings every other week. Simultaneous enrollment in community internship credits for the semester required. Full and complete approval of the internship agreement by the Director of Contextual Education, site supervisor and faculty advisor. Student must submit description of approved internship and copy of agreement to FE-4222 instructor prior to first session.

Forgiveness and Moral Repair

In this class we will meet people from all over the world, from a variety of religious and cultural traditions, who have practiced forgiveness as a means of healing, peace, and liberation. Through readings, films, spiritual practice exercises, and projects we will develop interpersonal and pastoral skills in forgiveness. We will also explore moral repair: how we individually and collectively might apologize, repent, and make amends after wrong-doing. This class will be multi-religious and counter-oppressive. It will draw on personal narratives, neuroscience, psychology, practical theology and world religions including earth-based traditions. The course is especially suited to those preparing for ministry, chaplaincy, interfaith work, and/or sacred activism. Relates to SKSM Thresholds: Spiritual Practice & Care of the Soul; Prophetic Witness & Work. Relates to MFC Comps: #3 Encourages spiritual development for self and others, #4 Witnesses to Social Justice in the Public Square.

Freedoms in a Complex World

The course discusses the inadequacy of Western classical interpretations of freedom. First, it presents interpretations of freedom such as: freedom to be a moral human being; freedom of choosing the authentic self; freedom as fight for the change of the shared world and community. Second, the course investigates how these Western classical interpretations of freedom must be reconsidered in light of multiple perspectives and contemporary challenges, such as: the problem of injustice in freedom as existential choice, as analyzed by Black Existentialism; the compatibility of Christian mythology within the globalized world; the clash between law and freedom in the urgent issue of migration in the US southern borders and the Mediterranean Sea.

Evaluation methods will include research papers, reflection papers, and class presentations and is open to MDiv, MA/MASC/MTS, DMin, PhD/ThD or any combination thereof. The course is taught by Dr. Andrea Vestrucci (Ph.D., Th.D.), a SKSM Research Scholar.

Relates to SKSM Thresholds: 1) Life in Religious Community and Interfaith Engagement, 2) Prophetic Witness and Work, 4) History of Dissenting Traditions and the Thea/ological Quest, 6) Thea/ology in Culture and Context, 7) Educating for Wholeness and Liberation, & 8) Embodied Wisdom and Beauty and Ministerial Fellowship Competencies (MFC): 2) Pastoral Care and Presence, 3) Spiritual Development for Self and Others, 4) Social Justice in the Public Square, & 7) Leads the faith into the future

Health Ethics

Health and medicine lie at the intersection of our religion/spirituality, values, and bodies.  This course provides a foundation in bioethics and the complexities of health, illness and health care. Students develop the ability to apply ethical theory and bio-political knowledge to key ethical issues, such as end-of-life decision making, patient-provider relationships, genetic/reproductive technologies, the care of vulnerable populations, organ donation, and crisis medicine. The course includes a significant “laboratory” component, in which students develop and lead discussion of key concepts and cases in order to produce valuable arguments and cultivate pastoral leadership. The course requires weekly consistent online community building and peer-to-peer accountability practices, which enhance the learning and engagement for all.

Relates to SKSM Threshold 5 and MFC Comp. 2 and 4.

Prerequisites: Students are expected to have taken an introductory course in ethics, have significant undergraduate philosophy or ethics experience or some equivalent education experience in a related field. Final acceptance to the course will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Students should contact the instructor to discuss their interests and experiences.

Intro to Pastoral Counseling

This online pastoral counseling course will introduce students to culturally responsive counseling practices and foster multicultural awareness. Students will examine societal and institutional structures of power and privilege, and will become more aware of the biases, prejudices, and microaggressions that are detrimental to the growth of the human spirit. Students will study major counseling theories and will practice basic helping skills centered on Person-Centered (Rogerian) counseling and Bowen Family Systems Theory. Contextual pastoral elements will be included, especially in the use of Bowen Family Systems as applied to congregational contexts. This is an asynchronous course, with written lectures and frequent use of videos and links to online resources. Weekly personal reflections and weekly Zoom skill-practice exercises with a class-mate-practice-partner will be required. It is an intermediate course intended for MDiv students, and with doctoral upgrade possible.
Meet Thresholds: Spiritual Practice and Care of the Soul, Prophetic Witness
Meets MFC Competencies: Pastoral Care and Presence, Social Justice in the Public Square

Queer Liberation Theologies

What does «liberation» mean to queer individuals and communities? How do Christian traditions worldwide relate to queer issues and queer believers? For the last twenty years queer theologians and communities have been developing contextual theologies in order to challenge and critique the ingrained heteronormativity in theological thought, spiritual practices, and institutional governance. Drawing from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course aims to examine and explore the development of queer theologies in the specific contexts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The focus of the course is intentionally non-US centered in order to offer future ministers, scholars, and activists tools to collaborate and interact with experiences, key topics, and thinkers within the complex and yet fascinating world of queer liberation
theologies, thus, enriching their worldview and praxis glocally.

Sex & Sin

Sex & Sin in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
This course will introduce ways in which sex was used as a proposed boundary marker for religious identity in Second Temple Jewish and Early Christian texts. Contextualizing these boundary markers in the cultural, religious, and political landscape of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean destabilizes the meta-narrative concerning the picture of ‘proper’ sexual ethics and gender identity by exposing the permeability of those boundaries. We will explore how Jewish and Christian pseudepigraphal and apocryphal texts from the third century BCE to the third century CE can offer alternative access points into Jewish and Christian tradition. These texts offer a diverse set of voices that can be used to subvert oppressive interpretations that have had lasting and painful repercussions in lived gender experience because of the conflation of sex, gender, and sexuality with sin. We will engage with traditional readings of passages known as ‘clobber texts’ and challenge them with counter-oppressive readings from a range of hermeneutics including feminist, queer, postcolonial, liberation, and ecological perspectives. Topics such as religious leadership, ritual participation, sin, violence & rape, the afterlife, fertility & abortion, and sexuality in the Greco-Roman world will be surveyed and discussed in light of current debates on women’s ordination, reproductive rights, and LGBTQI identity to track how ancient debates are alive today and consider how silenced voices from this period may be used as counter-oppressive lenses for Biblical and extra-Biblical interpretation.

This is an online synchronous with Zoom 3000 level course. The format is lecture/discussion. Lectures will be pre-recorded and weekly Zoom sessions will be primarily for group discussion of the lecture and the readings.
SKSM Thresholds: 3) Sacred Text and Interpretation and 4) History of Dissenting Traditions and Thea/ological Quest

Sustainable and Resilient Spiritual Leadership

How do those called to bless the world – to engage with the suffering and healing of others, and of the planet – ground and sustain themselves? Students will link theory, practice, and personal experience to develop their personal theologies for sustainable, resilient leadership – and learn practical tools to serve their vocations “for the long haul”. Together, we will explore concepts including compassion fatigue, measuring emotional and spiritual health, vocational burnout, trauma stewardship, boundary setting, and care for self and community. Participants will also explore how to positively influence organizational culture and build healthy, sustainable congregations and other collectives. This interactive, multi-faceted course combines multimedia, readings, class discussion, a praxis (action/reflection) component, and more, and is open to all interested in spiritual leadership for social change.
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UU History

This course begins with a discussion of recent historical developments in Unitarian Universalism and then extends back through time to the various antecedents of Unitarianism and Universalism in pre-Reformation Europe, all the way back to the early church and the Council of Nicea. Students will have the opportunity to explore Unitarian Universalist heritage, as well as different historical approaches. We will examine social location in relation to class, race, and gender identities, and how these enabled or impeded social justice advances. We will discover the origins of our faith by progressing from our known contemporary experience to the unknown, and perhaps unknowable. Along the way we will consider various theological developments within this tradition, as expressed through various identities and the challenges presented by new modalities of faith including Transcendentalism and Humanism. Sources will range from primary sources to anecdote, with an emphasis on articulating contemporary experience in the context of historical identity and experience. Evaluation: Demonstrated preparation, Weekly posts on the Moodle, Final paper or project. Students who take the course for a grade instead of pass/fail are required to submit a 25 page paper with original research. Students who take the class pass/fail have the option to turn in a paper or a project. Projects must be approved in advance.

This course relates to the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Ministerial Fellowship competencies 6 and 7, and the Starr King Thresholds 4 and 6.

UU Theologies

Unitarian Universalist Theologies: This reading-intensive online course grounds its exploration in the fundamentals of liberal theology, through a survey of Unitarian Universalist voices. Its main purpose is to engage those considering UU ministry in the practice of theological reflection while exploring some of the historical, philosophical, and theological contexts shaping Unitarian Universalism as we know it today. This course is not intended to replace a class in systematic theology. Students will be expected to complete the reading, write a brief weekly reading response, and participate in dialogue about personal and spiritual responses to the topics each week. All students are required to submit a final paper or project. Class is limited to 25 students, please contact instructor for permission to enroll. Prerequisites: A) a systematic theology class or B) UU History before or concurrently with this course. Relates to Starr King Threshold 1 and MFC Competency 6. This course is online only.

Writing for Religious Leaders

Whether working for justice, serving communities, or guiding organizations, religious leaders should be able to write well and often for a variety of audiences. Theological school is a perfect place for thinking about how we put our ideas and interpretations into words. Writing as religious leaders requires thoughtful articulation of our own ideas as well as the ability to clearly explain multiple perspectives on a variety of critical issues. This is an online course geared toward students who wish to improve their critical thinking skills and writing habits for graduate-level academic work and religious leadership. It is recommended for students early in their degree program, but open to all. Students will engage texts from a range of substantive topics and explore various writing assignments, which are common in their education at the GTU. Each week includes reading activities to build comprehension and reconstruction skills, synchronous writing “chats,”, peer-editing sessions, and student-led themed discussions. Students will be familiarized with the GTU library resources early in the semester and use of electronic library resources will be a consistent component of assignments. Upon registering and in preparation for the start of the term, students will be asked to read and write a brief essay on an assigned topic. Prerequisites: None, Relates to Threshold 3. Online, asynchronous with synchronous online chat meetings.