The Christian Movement II:

The Modern Church

Spring 2008

Purpose: The purpose of this course is to trace the development of Christianity from the Reformation to the present. We will concentrate on the Reformation because of its importance to Protestant Christianity.

The Association of Theological Schools standards for the Master of Divinity Degree and for the Master of Arts in Religion stress the need for a thorough study of the Christian religious tradition. In almost all seminary classes, the instructor refers to Christian history, to particular thinkers, people and movements in the Christian past, or to the general course of Christian development. The Christian Movement courses are designed to provide a student with the foundational knowledge that will help a student use historical studies in their larger educational program. They are also designed to enable a student to transmit the best of that tradition to the future.

Outcomes: At the conclusion of this course, you should have a clear understanding of the major trends in the thirteen hundred years of Christian experience. We will measure your success in meeting this goal by two assignments. First, each student will write a brief essay on where they are beginning their study of Christian history in the first two weeks of the course. At the end of the class, each student will write a reflective essay on how far they have come toward this goal. Secondly, each student will take two objective examinations during the course of the semester. The second goal, attaining historical skills relevant to the whole curriculum, is divided into two parts. In this semester, we will work on the second goal through the email seminar, through the essay questions on the examination, and/or through a creative project.

Class Structure: Each weekly session is divided into two lecture sessions of fifty minutes each, divided by a fifty-minute discussion of texts.

Readings: The text for the course is:

Glenn Miller: The Modern Church.

In addition, I have chosen some readings for each class that illustrate part of the theological development of the church. These texts have been selected because of their representative character.

Martin Luther: Three Treatises

John Wesley Sermons: An Anthology

Friedrich Schleiermacher: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers

Robert McAfee Brown, ed., The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr

F. Forrester Church, The Essential Tillich.

Cady Stanton, The Women’s Bible

Writing and Preparation:

Each student is expected to be prepared to participate in the weekly discussion sessions. The discussion sessions are an integral part of the course and are considered in the final grade.

Email Seminar: I was pleased with your responses to the email seminar last semester. Students reported that, although it was time consuming, that it enabled them to understand the readings. The weekly submissions, at least the one’s received in a timely manner, will be blogged, as they were last year. The more that we respond to each other about the readings, the better insights we will have into some fascinating material. Since I know that students who complete the email seminar have made a major effort to complete the readings in time for class discussion, there are additional options provided for the participants in the seminar.

Projects as part of email seminar. One of the great advantages of the email seminar is that the student is always current with the readings as well as the lectures. In other words, the instructor knows that the basic material has been studied and some effort has been made to understand it. Consequently, students who complete the email seminar may, if they notify the instructor in advance, may substitute a creative project for the final examination. In the past, such projects have included artwork, studies of hymns and church music, liturgical hangings, and multimedia worship presentations. Of course, such projects should be based on materials covered in the course and should reflect research as well as creativity. Projects are due May 30, 2008. Projects count for 30% of the final grade.

Narrative Papers: Students who complete the email seminar may substitute a narrative paper for the midterm or final examination. See below for a description.

Mid-Term Exam: The mid-term examination which will be posted on my web page after the sixth class and will be due one week later, the seventh class. The midterm examination will be a mixture of short objective questions and an essay question. It should be done without any aids.

Final Exam: The final examination will follow the same form as the mid-term and will be posted during after the twelfth week of classes. The exam is due May 30, 2008, although it will be accepted earlier.

Narrative Paper. A historical narrative is a story based on substantial research that generally unfolds in chronological order and which often depends for its drama on the careful delineation of character and human interaction. Thus, a paper entitled “Strange Events in Danvers Village: Witches and Persecutors” would be acceptable, while a paper on “The Theological Roots of the Persecution of the Witches” would not be acceptable. The Narrative counts as 30% of the final grade. Papers should be at least six pages single spaced and should use sociological footnotes. Sociological notes are those where the author is cited with the page number in parentheses in the text and a complete bibliographic entry is provided at the end of the text.

The basic idea of a narrative is simplicity itself. A narrative is a story. A historical narrative is a story, based on the evidence that we have from the past. Time provides the basic framework for any narrative. Basically, some events precede other events. But where narratives differs most radically from other intellectual genres is its assumption that basic human emotions and motivations explain or, in more formal language, cause, change. Thus, a narrative of Napoleon’s rise is powered by the great Emperor’s quest for power and prestige, and it is very relevant to such a story to deal with his “outsider” status in France and the various signs we have of how deeply that affected his view of the world.

Reading Assignments:

Week of	Reading
First Class	None
Second Class	Luther: The Freedom of a Christian
Third Class	Luther: The Babylonian Captivity
Fourth Class	Luther: To the German Nobility
Fifth Class	Wesley: The Image of God p. 13ff; The One Thing Needful p. 33ff; True Grace, p. 49ff: Catholic Spirit, p. 299; The New Creation, p. 493ff; The New Birth, p. 335 ff
Sixth Class	Schleiermacher: Speeches 1, 2,
Seventh Class	Schleiermacher: Speeches complete
Eighth Class	The Women’s Bible. Introduction and Genesis
Ninth Class	Niebuhr: Parts I and Part II. First half of book
Tenth Class	Niebuhr: III, IV, and V. Second half of book.
Eleventh Class	Tillich: Part I, II, and V. Appro. First Half of book
Twelfth Class	Tillich: Part VI. And Part VII. Approx. Second Half of book
Thirteenth Class	Last Class

Almost all of these texts are available in many forms, including some that are reproduced on the web. Since not all the books will be read in their entirety, some of you may find it more economical to use library copies or to share books with one another. However, all of these books were chosen with a personal library in mind. In that sense, they are all worth having.

Grading: We have yet to find an alternative to grading. Students tend to do significantly less work in pass-fail courses. A grade has two parts. The first is a judgment on whether the student will or will not receive credit for the course. In other words, does the student pass and move on in the curriculum. (The original image of the curriculum was a race track on which a runner advanced step by step. One passed when one went beyond certain landmarks). The second is a judgment about the quality of the work that the student has submitted. This is the familiar A, B, and C range. They are called grades because they reflect gradations or differences in how well different students performed at the set task of the class. In law schools, considerable money can ride on a student’s grades with students who score at the top of their classes often rewarded with prime clerkships and positions. In theological schools they are much less important, more part of the evaluation of a student’s progress than a determiner of a student’s future.

Above all, the amount of work does not determine one’s grade. A student may work harder in a class where they receive a B than one in which they receive a “A,” and we all know that some students in every class do better with less work than others. The following criteria are used for grades in this class.

The self-evaluation of your learning. This document, if carefully and thoughtfully written, is the best evidence I have of the quality and quantity of your work in this class. If you are able to highlight your strengths and weaknesses and to provide both some rationale for why one performed at a certain level and some suggestions for improvement, this will go far toward securing a favorable outcome. A sound self-evaluation may offset a failure on an exam or paper; a poorly written self-evaluation may weaken even appears to be sterling performance. Your final self-evaluation should be part of your mid-program review. You initial reflection on where you are in historical study will clearly be the anchor for this essay.

1. Examination grades will count roughly a third of the final grade for each exam. A full A requires a grade of 96 or higher, an A- between a 94 and a 96; a B+ requires between a 85 and a 93; a B between 75 and 84, a B minus between 70 and 74. C is between 60 and 73. Under 60 is a failure. D’s are not given. The exams and the grading of them are biased towards a grade in the B range. A grade beneath that indicates that you are not getting important information or perhaps that you have difficulty discerning what information is important and what is not.

2. The weekly seminar is not formally graded. At the end of the semester, strong performance in the weekly seminar and class discussions may raise a grade a half a letter and weak performance may lower it the same amount. The best thing about the grading of the weekly seminar is that successful completion of the work means that you have attained one of the two primary learning goals of the course and, hence, are ready for more serious work. Students who take this option will find that their work on the weekly assignment will provide some practice for their work in biblical courses, where exegesis is likewise expected/

3. The essay or project is, likewise, a B based assignment. If the work is done adequately and on a graduate level, the paper will receive a B. There are three components to the evaluation. First, the quality of the argument. Has the student, in fact, understood the material that they are commenting upon and have they used adequate resources to support and sustain their reading? Were the resources used in preparing the essay adequate or were they simply informational. Any essay that only used the Wikipedia for information, for example, would not be adequate any more than one than relied only on a printed encyclopedia, such as the World Book. The development of the essay’s argument is also crucial. Remember from basic English that the argument of an essay is not its agreement or disagreement with another writer (or the instructor) but the way in which the paper moves from the clear statement of a thesis to its conclusions. Again, the student will do well to consult, Lucretia Yaghjian, Writing Theology Well for a good discussion of what is expected in a seminary level research paper. The basic B is awarded if the essays or exegesis is adequate; the A or A- is awarded if the essays or exegesis are particularly well done, finely crafted, or exceptionally well-researched. It is assumed that the mechanics of the paper—footnotes, bibliography, etc. are standard.

Electronic Submission: The professor finds such work easier to grade and return as he can put it in his word processor and type in comments. (My handwriting is notoriously bad). I have learned that I make more comments on electronic submissions. In general, I tend to very sympathetic to people who try to email their work and have problems so doing, and it is a real advantage for you to know that your work is safely on my hard drive and has not been lost or eaten by Hamlin, my attack cat.

Mail to: Gmiller@bts.edu