Belongingness and Abrahamic Religions

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Beginning with an overview of the terms “belongingness” and “Abrahamic religions,” the first part of this course situates the notion of religious belongingness within the theological sub-disciplines of comparative theology and religious ethics, introducing students to valuable theoretical tools upon which the remainder of the course is built. Next, the second part of this course systematically compares various historical and contemporary notions of religious belongingness within the Christian Church to Jewish and Muslim notions of the Synagogue and the Ummah, focusing on what a comparative examination of these traditions’ various understandings of religious communality might teach Christians about what belonging to the Church means today. Finally, the third part of this course examines the ongoing phenomena of religious belongingness within shared, pluralistic contexts and asks: What might a Christian comparative theological approach to the ethics of religious communality look like in our day and age?