History
HIS6000 Church History I
Professor
Associate Professor of Biblical Studies
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
The Church History I and Church History II courses identify and explore the fundamental theological questions of the Christian tradition and examine the various ways in which the church evolved in response to those questions. Beginning with New Testament communities, it follows the growth and development of the church as an institution beginning with formative early centuries, the Reformation, up until our own day. It gives special attention to the ways in which the church responded to persecutions, heresies, schism, conflict, and the rise of contemporary denominationalism. It also evaluates the impact upon the church of major historical events.
History ⁄ Master of Arts (Academic), Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry, Master of Divinity
HIS6100 Church History II
Professor
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
Associate Professor of Biblical Studies
The Church History I and Church History II courses identify and explore the fundamental theological questions of the Christian tradition and examine the various ways in which the church evolved in response to those questions. Beginning with New Testament communities, it follows the growth and development of the church as an institution beginning with formative early centuries, the Reformation, up until our own day. It gives special attention to the ways in which the church responded to persecutions, heresies, schism, conflict, and the rise of contemporary denominationalism. It also evaluates the impact upon the church of major historical events.
History ⁄ Certificate in Theological Studies, Master of Arts (Academic), Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry, Master of Divinity
HIST7001 Life and Thought of Martin Luther
Professor
Rotating
This course will give an overview of Martin Luther’s life and his major writings. We will read
some of his main treatises, along with the small catechism, and some letters to his wife.
History ⁄ Certificate in Theological Studies, Master of Arts (Academic), Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry, Master of Divinity
HIST7002 Theology and Legacy of John Calvin
Professor
This course engages in a systematic study of John Calvin’s theology, with particular focus on the development of the Reformer’s thought in the various editions of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.
History ⁄ Certificate in Theological Studies, Master of Arts (Academic), Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry, Master of Divinity
TPMT7007 Thought and Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Professor
Associate Professor of Practical Theology
History, Theory & Practice of Ministry (TPM) ⁄
UM102 Church History: The Untold Story
Professor
Adjunct Professor
This course will examine American Church history with emphasis on the particular contribution and influence of the African American Church. The Canadian Church will also be discussed.
History ⁄ Urban Ministry Diploma
HIST7103 The Racial History of Detroit (1650-2020)
The previous three courses in the Race, Racism, and Diversity track looked at the emergence of various forms of supremacy in human history. Cert I offered a big picture overview of civilizational supremacy, tracing the root of contemporary versions of domination to the first move of our species out of subsistence lifestyles and gift-economy relations into hierarchical city-state systems based on coerced labor and market-economy extraction at a distance. Cert II tracked the way that 5,000 year old “cession” of our species from symbiotic interdependence morphed into Christian supremacy (among other forms of religiously organized/motivated grandiosity) and capitalist patriarchy since the late Middle Ages, taking shape especially in Euro-centric settler-colonialism in the Americas. In this third sequence, we will examine the way these prior articulations of a “difference that matters” into structures and ideologies of superiority (city-state organized and Christian identified) have given rise to modern white supremacy as offspring and successor.
In this segment, the larger pictures of race explored in the previous courses will be focused on the formation of “Detroit” from the colonization of Three Fires land known by the Anishinaabe as Wawiatanong, traced through the extractive enterprises of the beaver and timber trades, the emergence of the auto industry and Black migration from the South during the two World Wars, examining the post-WWII suburbanization of southeast Michigan by way of white flight, redlining, and criminalization of the inner city, and finally engaging the struggles of the new millennium in terms of foreclosure, gentrification, school privatization, water commodification, as well as the vibrant traditions of artistic and activist pushback that accompanied white “take over” at every step.