Higher Ed Courses
For those looking for a more academic/scholarly approach to learning about our faith, there is a growing number of on-line courses published by some of the world's greatest universities. The Good News, is that most of these courses are free and very easy to access!
Please note that while we have screened them to some degree, many of them are full-length university courses that we have not had time to view in their entirety. So, watch with this caveat: just because we have posted the course, does not mean that we are in full agreement of the content shared. If you run across something that seems counter to who we are as a faith community, please let us know.
An Introduction to "edX"
One of the leading providers of on-line education is edX. edX was founded by MIT and Harvard and includes over 30 other major university partners (click here for list). Their goal is to provide outstanding college level classes on a variety of topics that are easy to access, self-paced, and usually cost free. Registration with edX is very easy and the course work is well organized and taught. While we will list courses from other sources, these are so well put together that we wanted to highlight them in a special way.
For more information, you can click here or watch the short video below, which describes edX.
We recommend that you begin your edX experience by taking a short class (less than 30 minutes) which teaches you how to navigate and make the most of your courses. Don't let the topic of grading worry you, you can audit most courses if you prefer.
You can begin the course by clicking here.
Jesus in Scripture and Tradition
(This is an edX Course presented by the University of Notre Dame)
The Bible says that Jesus was identified as God's beloved son at his baptism. The same identification was made about Israel in the Old Testament and the disciples of Christ at their baptism. The striking similarity of these titles establishes a tight interrelationship between the people Israel, the person of Jesus Christ, and the church.
The course will be eight weeks in length and organized around three topical questions:
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Who is Israel? (primary source material: the book of Genesis)
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Who is Jesus? (primary source material: the Gospels and the Creeds)
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Who is the Church? (primary source material: a selection of post-Biblical Christian writers)
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To learn more about this course or to register for free, click here.
Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul
(This is an edX Course presented by Harvard)
The letters of Paul are the earliest texts in the Christian scriptures, written by a Jew at a time when the word “Christian” hadn’t yet been coined. What is the religious and political context into which they emerged? How were they first interpreted? How and why do they make such an enormous impact in Christian communities and in politics today?
Whether you’ve been studying Paul’s letters for years or are merely curious about what Christian scriptures are, this course will provide you with information to deepen your understanding of the ancient contexts and present-day controversies about these texts.
To learn more about this course or to register for free, click here.
Introduction to Philosophy:
God, Knowledge and Consciousness
(This is an edX Course presented by MIT)
This course, which is one of the most popular at MIT, has two goals. The first is to introduce you to the things that philosophers think about. We will look at some perennial philosophical problems: Is there a God? What is knowledge, and how do we get it? What is the place of our consciousness in the physical world? Do we have free will? How do we persist over time, as our bodily and psychological traits change? The second goal is to get you thinking philosophically yourself. This will help you develop your critical reasoning and argumentative skills more generally. Along the way we will draw from late, great classical authors and influential contemporary figures.
To learn more about this course or to register for free, click here.
Religion and Hip Hop Culture
(This is an edX Course presented by Rice University)
What is religion? What is Hip Hop? Are they the same thing? Do they overlap? Over six weeks we’ll get a sense of how some individuals answer these questions, and you’ll get the tools you need to explore these questions for yourselves.
We will start our time together with some basic assumptions, the most important being a willingness to think about Hip Hop and religion as cultures that wrestle with the huge questions of our existence: Who are we? Why are we? Where are we? on hip You will also need to be open to the possibility of Hip Hop as a language through which these complex and religious questions are presented, explored, and interpreted.
To learn more about this course or to register for free, click here.
Introduction to the Old Testament
As part of the Yale University open course educational program, this course examines the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) as an expression of the religious life and thought of ancient Israel, and a foundational document of Western civilization. A wide range of methodologies, including source criticism and the historical-critical school, tradition criticism, redaction criticism, and literary and canonical approaches are applied to the study and interpretation of the Bible. Special emphasis is placed on the Bible against the backdrop of its historical and cultural setting in the Ancient Near East.
The course is the exact course offered to Yale Undergraduates and you will have access to each lecture via video as well as other course materials.
Introduction to the New Testament
As part of the Yale University open course educational program, this course provides a historical study of the origins of Christianity by analyzing the literature of the earliest Christian movements in historical context, concentrating on the New Testament. Although theological themes will occupy much of our attention, the course does not attempt a theological appropriation of the New Testament as scripture. Rather, the importance of the New Testament and other early Christian documents as ancient literature and as sources for historical study will be emphasized. A central organizing theme of the course will focus on the differences within early Christianity.
The course is the exact course offered to Yale Undergraduates and you will have access to each lecture via video as well as other course materials.