41 courses with the subject RELC, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies the history, literature, and religion of ancient Israel in the light of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Emphasizes methods of contemporary biblical criticism. Cross listed as RELJ 1210.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies the history, literature, and theology of earliest Christianity in light of the New Testament. Emphasizes the cultural milieu and methods of contemporary biblical criticism.
Effective Date 05/01/2014 This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Christianity
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Surveys Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). Examines how the Bible becomes sacred scripture for Jews and Christians.
Effective Date 08/01/2012 This course traces the rise of Christianity in the first millennium of the Common Era, covering the development of doctrine, the evolution of its institutional structures, and its impact on the cultures in which it flourished. Students will become acquainted with the key figures, issues, and events from this formative period, when Christianity evolved from marginal Jewish sect to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.
Effective Date 02/10/2014 This course is designed to add substantive depth to a general understanding of American religious pluralism and insight into the socio-historical context of American religion through the study of Mormonism. In addition to introducing Mormonism’s basic beliefs and practices, the course will explore issues raised by Mormonism’s move toward the American mainstream while retaining its religious identity and cultural distinctiveness.
Effective Date 08/01/2023 The story of Christianity’s emergence in the Middle East and its migration into Europe and then North America is just one aspect of Christian history, which also has a rich and long history in Africa, Asia and other parts of the global South. This course looks at the shape Christianity is taking in non-Western parts of the world and how this growth impacts Christianity in the West.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 This course considers the complex world of Christian thought, examining various perspectives on the nature of faith, the being and action of God, the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, the role of the Bible in theological reflection, and the relationship between Christian thought and social justice. Students will read various important works of Christian theology and become acquainted with a range of theological approaches and ideas.
Effective Date 01/01/2022 This course engages in a historical survey of American Catholicism from colonial beginnings to the present. It especially explores the theme of how Catholicism has been enculturated in America, how Catholic faith and practice have interacted with the social, cultural, and political environment of the nation.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Christianity
Effective Date 01/01/2026 How have Christians and Muslims learned from and disagreed with each other? Focusing on the premodern Middle East, this course examines the encounters of Christians and Muslims in areas ranging from scripture to ethics and from law to mysticism. Students gain an understanding of fundamental aspects of Christian and Islamic thought, as well as the areas of conflict and resolution that shape Christian and Muslim life down to the present day.
Effective Date 10/21/2021 “The Black Church” carries unique symbolic weight in America–but why? This course explores how the idea of the Black Church gained moral authority, whether there is a collective Black Church or only black churches, the traditions and practices the concept names, who the concept celebrates and who it marginalizes, and how–or whether–the Black Church, as myth or reality, is still relevant in African American life today.
Effective Date 12/07/2015 This course examines the influence of theological ideas on social movements in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America and investigates how religious commitments shape everyday living, including racial perception and economic, political, and sexual organization. The course will examine the American Civil Rights Movement, late 1960s counter-cultural movements, and recent faith-based community-development movements and organizing initiatives.
Effective Date 08/01/2015 A text-focused class that will read the entire City of God, supplementing that work with several other of Augustine’s smaller texts (particularly letters and sermons) to attempt to understand that work’s argument, paying attention to the various audiences to which it was addressed, and to Augustine’s larger thought as captured in that one great and difficult book
Effective Date 08/01/2014 This course focuses on Jesus of Nazareth as an historical figure, that is, as he is accessible to the historian by means of historical methods. Our most important sources of information on Jesus are the canonical Gospels, and so much of the course will involve reading and attempting to understand these texts. We will attempt to reconstruct at least the broad outlines of Jesus activity and teachings, keeping in mind the limits of our sources.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Intensive study of the theological ideas and arguments of the Apostle Paul in relation to their historical and epistolary contexts.
Effective Date 01/01/2024 This course is an introduction to the thematic core of the Orthodox Christian tradition. There is first reviewed the major elements of the Orthodox faith, its theology and doctrine, that developed over the course of the Byzantine era, This study is followed by an examination of writings on scripture and tradition, iconography. liturgy and sacrament, as well as the relationship of Orthodox Christianity to the culture.
Effective Date 01/01/2021 In the context of Christian thought, “liberation theology” refers to scholarship that links reflection on God, Jesus of Nazareth, human beings, creation, the Holy Spirit, and ethics with normative analyses of race, sex and gender, economic injustice, poverty, sexuality, post-colonialism, and human rights. This course engages both landmark and cutting-edge texts in this field of study.
Effective Date 09/21/2020 In this course, we will study the biblical text itself, appreciating it in its own terms but also paying special attention to the ambiguities that activate our own imaginations. Then, we will analyze how fiction, film, and poetry respond to and re-imagine the biblical text-how they might make us think of the biblical text differently (or perhaps shed light on issues that were already there?). Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELC 3559 topic #39 Bible, Fiction, & Film
Effective Date 08/01/2020 From the revivals of George Whitefield to the antebellum abolitionists to the unexpected rise of Donald Trump, Evangelicals have played a vital and contested role in American society. Evangelicalism has also burgeoned into a truly global faith tradition, with an estimated 600 million+ adherents around the world. This course presents a multidisciplinary and polyperspectival introduction to this religious movement in World Christianity.
Effective Date 04/22/2019 Reading historical and social analyses along with a range of environmental theologies, this seminar investigates entanglements of Christianity with modern environmental problems. It considers the influence of Christianities in various environmental imaginations, and the role of ecological science and environmental stress in reshaping religious imaginations.
Effective Date 08/01/2023 This course introduces students to the extensive philosophical, theological and exegetical work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Students will read his foundational texts, a range of important tractates from the *Summa theologiae*, and a range of Aquinas’s scriptural exegeses. Comparisons will be made to other scholastic theologians and commentators, including those of the previous generation, i.e., the monastic theologians.
Effective Date 09/20/2013 This course is about America’s newer religious movements: Scientology, Nation of Islam and Mormonism. The class will be using theories of ritual and text to understand how religious communities constitute themselves around an originating vision and retain a sense of continuity notwithstanding dramatic change. We will ask also why these three movements have created such crisis for the American state and anxiety among its citizens.
Effective Date 08/01/2015 A seminar focused upon some of the most significant philosophical and religious thinkers that have shaped and continued to shape American religious thought and culture from the founding of the Republic to the Civil Rights Movement, including Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jane Addams, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr. We will explore how their thought influenced the social and cultural currents of their time.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Introduces the major mystical traditions of the Middle Ages and the sources in which they are rooted.
Effective Date 08/01/2021 An examination of the legal evolution, philosophical underpinnings and political application of the First Amendment religion clauses. Analysis of specific controversies and court opinions will be supported by attention to such key concepts as “secularism,” “tolerance,” “civilization,” “gender” and “race” in the application of these clauses domestically and in U.S. foreign policy.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course examines eastern Christian thought with a focus on the Greek and Syriac traditions and their historical development in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia. By examining texts that have shaped eastern Christian spirituality, interpretation of the Bible, and understanding of God, students learn about the emergence of Christianity as a global religion and about the ideas that have animated eastern Christians down to the present.
Effective Date 08/01/2026 A seminar on the biblical book of Job (with attention to its literary artistry and compositional history) and its subsequent interpretation.
Effective Date 01/01/2021 Survey of development of Christian ethical thought and teaching from beginnings through Reformation era. Major ethical themes are traced through the centuries, as the church’s scripture, evolving doctrine, and emerging tradition interact with secular society, politics, and philosophy. Readings will be taken mostly from primary texts, such as the Bible and the writings of selected Christian thinkers.
Effective Date 01/01/2021 This course examines the history of the interplay between theology, morality, social movements, and politics in America. Topics covered include temperance and prohibition, abolition, labor, civil rights, anti-war and pacifism, and environmentalism. Lecture, weekly readings (often a book), class presentations, short papers, and original research. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELC 3559 topic 40: Religion, Reform, & Democracy
Effective Date 09/30/2024 This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject of Christianity.
Effective Date 08/01/2025 Anxiety is the affliction of most striving college students and the most common mental health disorder of our time. What are its religious and theological meanings, causes, and consolations?
Effective Date 04/03/2013 Who are the great modern Christian theologians? What do they have to say to us? What do they argue about? Who did they offend and why? In this seminar we shall read major works by four of the truly great modern theologians of the twentieth century. Two are Protestant (Karl Barth and Paul Tillich), and two are Catholic (Karl Rahner and Henri de Lubac).
Effective Date 09/23/2016 This course is an introduction to Christology, that part of Theology concerned with the claim that Jesus is the Christ. How is this doctrine built up from Scripture, Church Councils, and the Fathers? What roles do heresies and creeds play in the construction? What events in the life and death of Jesus are most relevant to Christological claims? Particular attention is given to Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom of God.
Effective Date 12/02/2016 Why were women excluded from the priestly hierarchy of the church? How did male clerics subsequently circumscribe women’s roles in the church? And how did women respond? These are the questions that we will explore in this course on the intersection between gender and power in pre-modern Christianity.
Effective Date 09/19/2013 This class engages debates about Christianity, gender, and sexuality in past and present. Topics addressed include: biblical treatments of sex, gender, and sexuality; theological views of the human in patristic, medieval, and modern theology; Christianity, feminism, and feminist theology; sexuality and sexual ethics; and queer theology.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Examines the life and thinking of Augustine of Hippo, a major figure in Christian history and a formative influence on Christian thought to this day.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Historical and topical survey of Christianity in Africa from the second century c.e. to the present. Cross listed with RELA 389.
Effective Date 01/01/2016 An examination of Christian missions in Africa in the 21st Century. Through a variety of disciplinary lenses and approaches, we examine faith-based initiatives in Africa–those launched from abroad, as well as from within the continent. What does it mean to be a missionary in Africa today? How are evangelizing efforts being transformed in response to democratization, globalization and a growing awareness of human rights?
Effective Date 08/01/2025 This topical course provides upper level undergraduate students in Religious Studies an opportunity for advanced coursework in Christianity
Effective Date 07/21/2014 This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject of Christianity.
Source: University of Virginia-Main Campus's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
