History of Global Christianities I

3 credits · Graduate School

This course surveys key themes in the origins, spread, and diversity of the various movements that identified themselves as "Christian" from the second century of the current era to year 1700. Students will be introduced to selected cultural, social, political, religious, and intellectual contexts in which Christian communities formed in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Throughout the course, students will learn and apply historical methods of inquiry. The primary purpose of the course is for students to use primary sources to investigate questions of doctrine and practice, religion and politics, the creation of institutions, and varieties of Christian experience and identity. These questions are examined within a wider context of pre-modern to early modern global history. Special attention will be given to recovering voices and perspectives lost or muted in the sources. This is the first of the two-course sequence in History of Global Christianities. The course focuses especially on two formative periods: Christian formation in Late Antiquity and again surrounding the reformations beginning in the 1500s. [3]