Religion in America

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course is an introduction to some of the most influential religious thinkers, texts, and intellectual movements in American history, from the colonial period to the present. We will seek to understand these thinkers, texts, and movements in terms of their historical and cultural contexts, but as a student in the course you will also be asked to evaluate the religious ideas and arguments you encounter for yourself. Accordingly, the course not only aims to increase your understanding of the history of American religious thought, but also invites you to engage in philosophical and theological reflection on that history and some of its most interesting and important representatives. Figures to be studied include Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Hodge, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and John Courtney Murray.