School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Moral Anthropology and the Registers of Imperfection

This is a seminar in Africana intellectual history engaging in close readings of the written corpus of James Baldwin. It is designed to address larger conceptual issues of religion, race, identity, gender, sexuality through the intensive study of a major thinker in North America. A working knowledge of African American social history is recommended but not required.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

The Book of Baldwin: James Baldwin and religion in the "Great New World"

This is a seminar in Africana intellectual history engaging in close readings of the written corpus of James Baldwin. It is designed to address larger conceptual issues of religion, race, identity, gender, sexuality through the intensive study of a major thinker in North America. A working knowledge of African American social history is recommended but not required.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Pious Words: Religious Language as Ethics and Politics

This course explores the ethical and political valences of the religious language we use in private, communal, and public spaces. Religious sayings, identity descriptors, and public discourses often convey multiple meanings. In the first section of the course, we will explore the truisms about religion and God that abound in the private realm. After reading Kate Bowler's Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved, we will focus on a series of shorter pieces about such common aphorisms and assertions. We will then turn to how religious descriptors figure in personal and group identities, considering what it means to call oneself “religious” or “non-religious” versus “spiritual” or “secular”; "Christian" rather than "Protestant” or “Catholic”; “Judeo-Christian” versus “Abrahamic”; “humanist” versus “naturalist”; and so forth. In the final section of the course, we will explore the religious discourses that have shaped American politics, ranging from the claim that the United States is a “Protestant,” "Christian," or "Judeo-Christian” nation to characterizations of the country as "God-fearing," "covenanting," "religious," or "secular" in some constitutive sense. We will place America’s longstanding culture wars in global perspective by considering the roles played by analogous religious language in other national contexts. Students will have the option to write a series of short analytical papers or one 25-page original research paper on a topic chosen in conjunction with the instructor. They will come away from the course with a robust understanding of how religious language shapes politics and ethics in the modern United States and beyond.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religion and the Governance of Global Issues

COVID19 has painfully highlighted the failure of international organizations to provide a coherent and efficient response the pandemic, raising the issue of global governance to greater prominence than at any time since World War II and the formation of the United Nations. This situation has opened new venues and opportunities for religious groups to posit themselves as credible international collaborators in addressing issues that cut across national boundaries, including global health, the environment, and migration. This course offers an analysis of this new trend. It will assess critically the studies on the role of religion in conflict and peace building which has been the entry point on religion and global governance. It will then address the role of religious institutions on the humanitarian crisis of refugees, limitations of nuclear weapons, climate changes, pandemics, and market economy. It will examine across religious traditions the theological reflection on moral responsibility and community and the ongoing tensions between universalist claims and more reactionary stands. It will also study modes of action  and evaluate the international influence of this particular message in different arenas and international political organizations: Public health, Racial and Religious discrimination, Mass destruction, Social inequalities, to explore the following questions: In which domain is the global moral message of religion more influential? How? Where and why does it create tensions. The approach will combine religious studies, theology and social sciences.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Racial Liberalism and the Ethics of Law and Justice

The course will examine the relationship between race and liberalism in the formation of the U.S. legal system, focusing in particular on the use of moral (and religious) doctrines both to reinforce and repudiate legal codes and institutional practices designed to subjugate African Americans and dispossessed groups in the U.S. Framed by Charles Mills’ category of “racial liberalism” -- the racialization of personhood, rights and public duties -- the course will explore through court cases, trial transcripts, first-person narratives, and political philosophy how efforts to promote a color-blind society often undermine liberal theories of justice and equality and lead to the deepening of racial and economic inequality.

School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Virtue Ethics

This course introduces the emerging field of Christian virtue ethics. The course begins with a study of the theological and philosophical theories of virtue that have shaped contemporary Catholic and Protestant accounts of virtue. Attention is given to the relation of virtue theory and the virtues to: the Gospels and the life of Jesus; the Christian community; theological anthropology; human happiness; the natural law; and moral norms. The course also discusses the academic and pastoral uses of virtue ethics through the examination of contemporary cases in light of the virtues.

School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Fundamental Moral: Theological Ethics

This Level Two course treats Roman Catholic fundamental moral theology, focusing on both traditional and contemporary understandings of principal themes such as: The Nature and History, as well as a Methodological Model for Approaching Fundamental Moral Theology; The Moral Person and Moral Community; Conscience, Moral Norms and the Natural Law; Evaluations of Moral Acts; Sin (personal and social), Conversion and Reconciliation; Roles of Church Teaching (Magisterium) & Tradition in selected contemporary issues in the areas of sexual ethics, health care and bioethics, Catholics in the political arena will be discussed in terms of applying the fundamental themes of moral theology.

School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Theological Critiques from the Margins

Dominant western and northern theology faces a critique from the margins of race, gender, age, sex, culture, and disability. This course explores the contexts of those critiques, key texts challenging the dominant narrative and its responses admitting injustice, dismantling structural sins, and beginning the work of communion, solidarity, reparation, and restoration to which the Gospel calls. Attention will be given to the advent of liberation and other context-based theologies in the developing world and the global north where the power to marginalize has been institutionalized yet where the cry of the poor is heard and signs of heeding emerge.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Christian Ethics and

This course examines the phenomenon of global migration from a Christian theological perspective. Texts from social scientific, legal, and policy perspectives will frame the phenomenon of contemporary migration. The seminar will then undertake ethical analyses of migration paradigms, policies and practices in light of resources from the Christian tradition, considering questions related to globalization, citizenship, economic justice, gender, family ethics, and integration.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Social Reform and American Catholocism

How has American Catholicism interacted with the wider civil society? The course will examine individuals, groups and issues that have shaped the history of American Catholic involvement in social action, e.g. John Ryan and Charles Coughlin, the Central Verein and the Catholic Worker, slavery and church-state relations.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Catholic Theological Ethics: 12-18th Century

A survey of the following major figures in theological ethics: Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Jean Gerson, Antoninus of Florence, Desiderius Erasmus, John Mair, Bartolom� de las Casas, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Francisco de Vitoria, Dominic Soto, Bartolom� Medina, the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Francesco de Toldeo, Thomas Sanchez, Francisco Suarez, Antonio Escobar, Blaise Pascal, Alphonsus Liguori, Johann Michael Sailer, Johann Baptist von Hirscher, and Thomas Slater.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Theology, Ethics, and Politics

How can Christian ethics respond to the intractability of historical evil and the difficulty of structural change? This course will work on the borderlines of political theology, public theology, liberation theology, Christian social ethics, and Catholic social teaching, reading for example, Bohoeffer, Moltmann, Solle, Day, Niebuhr, Murray, Hauerwas, Sobrino, Katongole, and additional examples of global Christian ethics and politics.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Modern Catholic Social Teaching

This course will include historical and analytical treatments of the official social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The course will study the tradition of Catholic social thought as found in papal, conciliar and synodal documents of the modern era.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

HIV/AIDS and Ethics

This course looks at how we can understand a bit better the ethics of public health through the lens of HIV/AIDS. There besides studying the virus itself, we examine the varied related ethical issues regarding stigma, prevention, research, gender inequity, economic disparities, local culture, religion, funding, and access.

School:

Boston University Graduate Program in Religion

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Topics in Religion, Health, and Medicine

Topic for Fall 2022: Health and Medicine in Asian Religions. This seminar investigates how religious and moral narratives in Asian religions have informed understandings of the body in premodern and modern times. We will pay specific attention to how notions of embodiment and health surface in debates over gender differences. Our readings will focus on various traditions and geographic areas in Asia, with particular attention to East Asia

School:

Boston University Graduate Program in Religion

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religion and the Problem of Tolerance

Explores the religious roots of tolerance as an alternative to secular, more liberal foundations for
pluralism. Grapples with the challenge of tolerance to the revealed religions and the ways different societies have met or failed to meet this challenge.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Literature and Ethics

Good ethical conception and practice often demand that we see things from others' points of view. Great novels, plays, poems, and films are good at helping us to reach empathic perceptions of particular people and situations by involving our intellect and emotion. Novels, tragic dramas, and others have the capacity to make readers identify with fictional characters in ways that show possibilities and potential vulnerabilities for themselves. This kind of empathic identification is important for good ethical practice in diverse and pluralistic communities. Narrative works of art are important for developing the human self- understanding critical for embodying certain religious and theological ideals. This course will explore the connections between literature (novels, plays, and short stories) and ethics: the relationship between creative imagination and moral imagination; the nature of moral attention and moral vision; the role of context-specific judging in ethical decisions. The course will help students to deepen and broaden their ethical understanding in ways that involve and give priority to context-specific moral evaluation, compassion, similar possibilities and vulnerabilities, eudaimonistic judgment, rather than abstract general principles for ethical judgment.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Spirit & Art of Conflict Transformation

This course is a response to the experience of destructive conflict in the church and in the world, as well as the experience of religion as a source of conflict. More importantly, it is a response to the call to every Christian to be ministers of reconciliation and peacebuilders. The course will introduce students to the theology, theory and practice of faith-based conflict transformation, preparing students to become religious leaders equipped with fundamental tools and skills for engaging conflict and transforming conflict in a way that advances God's goal of shalom, a culture of justpeace.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Watershed Discipleship

As a section of Practicing Faith, Watershed Discipleship explores place-based spiritual and theological practices in order both to connect students to the Boston watershed and to equip them with the skills needed to get to know and live responsibly in other watersheds they might inhabit in the future.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Christian Social Ethics

Comparative study of historical and contemporary Christian approaches to the nature, sources, methods, and concepts of ethics in diverse contexts. The course is in two parts: an historical overview of the development of Christian social ethics from biblical times to the twenty-first century; an in-depth exploration of approaches to specific contemporary social issues including war and peace, ecology, economic justice, and equality.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Introduction to Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Engaging Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Performing Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary-Hamilton

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Augustine, Restlessness, and Belonging in a Digital Age

Since the advent of smartphones and social media, Silicon Valley and big tech�s influence on individual and societal behavior continues to grow. A return to theological sources for ethical assessment is needed to critically evaluate our social context increasingly defined by persuasive media algorithms that often reduce agency to impulse, objectification, and commodification. Although separated by time and space, the perceptive insights of North African bishop, St. Augustine of Hippo, are relevant for today�s digital challenges. His emphasis on restlessness, desire, vulnerability, power, empire, belonging, love, and humility holds significant impact for Christian theology and ethics. This course will explore the psychological, philosophical, and theological connections between contemporary tech critics and one of Christianity�s seminal patristic authors.

School:

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary-Hamilton

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Christian Ethics

An exploration of how Christians can make and enact good, wise, and faithful ethical choices and develop moral character and community in the midst of a complex world. The course will examine: (1) the foundations of Christian Ethics, especially in Holy Scripture; (2) the contexts of contemporary ethical issues; (3) the methods of moral discernment and decision-making; and (4) the relationship of Christian ethics to that of the surrounding culture and society. Lectures, case studies, and discussion will be employed in an attempt to gain wisdom, understanding, character, and a prophetic voice relative to the moral issues in church and society.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Ecotheology

This course will survey constructive religious reflection that is informed by an ecological worldview and accountable to various forms of environmental activism. Readings will be drawn from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions, among them Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism, religious naturalism, and Indigenous spirituality. We will pay special attention to the interplay between ecotheology and various theologies of liberation. Students will be invited to develop their own constructive theological or atheological proposals in dialogue with the assigned readings. Throughout the semester, we will use optional book groups to explore additional ecotheological texts. All students are expected to complete one or more group projects and to provide oral and written feedback on one another�s work. Students will have the option of completing a major research paper.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

The Book of Baldwin: James Baldwin and religion in the "Great New World"

This is a seminar in Africana intellectual history engaging in close readings of the written corpus of James Baldwin. It is designed to address larger conceptual issues of religion, race, identity, gender, sexuality through the intensive study of a major thinker in North America. A working knowledge of African American social history is recommended but not required.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religious Literacy and the Professions

Religions have functioned throughout human history to inspire and justify the full range of human agency from the heinous to the heroic. Their influences remain potent here in the 21st century in spite of modern predictions that religious influences would steadily decline in concert with the rise of secular democracies and advances in science. Professionals in a wide range of fields need to understand these complex religious influences in order to understand modern human affairs across the full spectrum of endeavors in local, national, and global arenas.� In this course, we will focus on religious literacy in the professions of journalism, media and entertainment, government, humanitarian action, education, and organizing. How can a nuanced and complex understanding of religion enhance the ability of professionals in these fields to serve their populations? Students will learn a critical theory method for comprehending the ways that religions shape, and are shaped by, different social, cultural, and political contexts and will apply that method to case studies in diverse professional sectors. As a way to ground their explorations, students will each choose one of the professions outlined above and one of the following issues to focus upon: racial justice, climate change, immigration, or Native and Indigenous rights. For example, a student may wish to focus on the profession of journalism and the issue of climate change, or the profession of organizing and the issue of immigration, etc.�

School:

Hartford International

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religious and Cultural Contemporary Ethics

This is one of two MAC core courses in which recent efforts in the interdisciplinary study of psychology/sociology are brought to bear on the field of theology, scripture, and ethics in the provision of care. Both courses explore the unique challenges that their subject matter poses to theological claims about God, humans, and the nature and meaning of healing or suffering. Both consider how the integration of theory and practice help a chaplain to examine the contributions that theology and religious traditions offer to analyze and address the subject matter. These courses aim to familiarize students with a particular field of knowledge or area of study and to deepen their ability to respond theologically to the complex challenges confronting challenged persons and communities.
The core course �Religious and Cultural Contemporary Ethics� facilitates understanding of various ethical theories appropriate to professional context, spiritual and emotional dimensions of human development, organizational behavior, group dynamics, and political/social drivers like race, ethnicity, or gender. Making extensive use of case-studies and current journal articles, it addresses cultural or ethical challenges that particular contexts may bring to religious leaders. This course addresses the following Common Qualifications and Competencies for Professional Chaplains promulgated by the Board of Chaplaincy Certification, Inc.: ITP4, ITP5, PIC6, PIC7, PIC9, PPS2, PPS3, PPS7, OL1, OL2, OL3, OL4, OL5.

School:

Hartford International

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Environmental Ethics

The Native American "Tale of Two Wolves" tells of two evenly matched wolves in a battle. One is evil - greedy, arrogant, lying, and full of fear. The other is good - filled with love, hope, compassion, and integrity. The question is: which one will win? The sage's answer: the one we feed.

The study of environmental ethics can easily devolve into a spiral of pessimism, given the unprecedented challenges we face regarding the climate crisis and other ecological threats to the well-being of our planet. We are tempted to �feed the wrong wolf� and give into despair and a fatalistic resignation. Therefore, we will explore religious, philosophical, and environmental perspectives to help us understand the roots of the crises, as well as search for resources to help us �feed the good wolf.� This course will equip students to work toward faith-based approaches to environmental ethics focused on justice and building community.

School:

Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Orthodox Christian Ethics

Christian moral theology is concerned with virtue not as an end in itself, but as an indispensable, challenging, and rewarding dimension of the Good Life, the Life in Christ. As such, a proper aim of Christian ethics is happiness, or rather blessedness; thus, St. Seraphim of Sarov's famous dictum: The goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Taking our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Panaghia as our primary ethical models, the class considers the meaning and shape of 'right action' within the matrix of Uncreated Grace.