Religious Education (REGR)

REGR 0000. Ph.D. Program Transfer Credit. (24 Credits)

This is a transcript designation representing transfer credit awarded to Ph.D. students in religion and practice for an earned master’s degree.

REGR 6102. Introduction to Religious Education. (3 Credits)

This course is an examination of the various theological, philosophical, and educational models that inform the foundations of religious education. Students will examine how these models have influenced different schools, theorists, practitioners, and materials of religious education. Criteria for evaluating the adequacy of competing models will be offered.

REGR 6120. Education for Peace and Justice. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on developing a greater understanding of the social ministry of the Christian churches. After a historical survey of Christian attitudes toward peace and justice, participants will explore ways of bringing a concern for peace and justice issues into liturgy, preaching, religious education, and pastoral ministry. The course also examines how to relate Christian understandings of peace and justice to everyday work, and to civic, political, and family life.

Attribute: PSJH.

REGR 6125. Moral Education & Development. (3 Credits)

This course explores various aspects of moral education. The topic will be explored from various perspectives: theology, psychology, education, sociology, and the arts. It will aid those involved in religious education and pastoral ministry in making effective use of the arts in their work. The course provides a framework for exploring foundational issues of morality and moral development, including how our understandings of the human person, community, and attitude toward the natural environment shape our moral outlook. Emphasis is placed on enabling religious educators and pastoral ministers to make moral formation an integral dimension of education in the Christian faith.

REGR 6130. Theological Issues: Religious Education and Ministry. (3 Credits)

The course explores major Christian classical themes in contemporary theological development. Foundational concepts of revelation, scripture and tradition, Trinity, creation, Jesus the Christ, and sin and grace are examined. The practical ministerial and educational implications of these developments will be collaboratively pursued.

REGR 6140. Curriculum and Religious Education. (3 Credits)

This course is an exploration of the what, who, where, when, why, and how of curriculum design in religious education. The various philosophies, principles, and processes of curriculum formation are critically examined. The course addresses the central question and activities of curriculum designers: what educative content do we make accessible to which learners under what governing structure? This question highlights the impact the nature of content, teaching processes, the readiness of learners, and the social-political arrangements of diverse educational settings has on a religious education curriculum.

REGR 6143. Imagination: Ministry and Religious Education. (3 Credits)

This course will explore the link between the imagination, patterns of church ministry, and religious educational activity. The role and power of imagination in disclosing new life and reenvisioning our work will be examined. A central focus of the course is the critical exploration of the images, metaphors, and guiding visions undergirding educational and ministerial work in churches and in our public life. Our educational and ministerial task is to create a counter-discourse to the dominant discourse of our time. Particular perspectives (religious, prophetic, feminist, artistic) will be employed as resources for enriching the imagination, fostering a counter-discourse, and cultivating imaginative activity with people.

REGR 6150. Foundations for Intercultural Ministry and Religious Education. (3 Credits)

Ministerial contexts are spaces of intercultural encounters that can serve to positively affect the practice of ministry and religious education. This special topics course will explore key pillars for understanding these encounters as revelatory moments that can be constructive for the “kin-dom” of God. Among the literature explored in this course will be theories of intercultural teaching and learning, anti-racist identity development, and cultural studies critiques, all within the context of students’ self-exploration of their own cultural identities. From this exploration, students will envision how their own ministerial praxis can be shaped to form liberating spaces for intercultural ministry and solidarity.

Attribute: PSNM.

REGR 6180. Religious and Educational Development of Children and Youth. (3 Credits)

This course inquires into the spiritual, moral, and educational development of children and the implications of this development for religious education. Emphasis is placed on developing a theology of childhood, and the influence of childhood faith development on adult spirituality.

REGR 6202. Young Adult & Adult Ministry. (3 Credits)

Responses to religion in society, as well as to the many ways that young adults and adults make meaning of the world, are rapidly shifting. While there are growing numbers of people who are disaffiliating from organized religion, many continue to identify as spiritual. At the same time, there are many young adults and adults whose religious and spiritual development is affected by the harsh realities of violence, racism, depression, and other intersecting systems of oppression. How might ministers and religious educators respond to these realities? What questions should shape those responses? What knowledge informs those questions?.

REGR 6204. Special Questions: Youth and Young Adult Ministry. (3 Credits)

This course offers a study of identity formation, sexual development, social consciousness, the influence of popular media culture, attitudes toward authority, and Generation X and millennial spirituality. Participants will explore ways of reenvisioning religious education and pastoral ministry to respond more adequately to contemporary youth culture.

REGR 6220. Ministry & Leadership. (3 Credits)

An investigation of the basic structures of organization and principles of administration and supervision as they apply to parish and other religious education settings. Emphasis is placed on the person and the role of leadership within evolving structures of parish and various learning communities.

REGR 6311. Digital Catechesis. (3 Credits)

The Digital Catechesis course provides a new social landscape for imagining faith formation and religious education today. This new landscape integrates Pope Francis’ clarion call for the New Evangelization and the worthy potentials of the New Media, to come up with a leadership agenda that offer ways to explore and call into question traditional assumptions and understanding of both the catechetical and the technological. The course’s goal is to lead pastoral leaders to viewing digital catechesis as a vital expression of the truly catechetical in contemporary religious context.

REGR 6600. Religion & Criminal Justice. (3 Credits)

What are various goals and aims of criminal justice ministry? What do or how might religious beliefs or practices shape or guide different approaches to ministry? How might we respond to critiques of criminal justice ministry as supporting practices of domination and punishment? This course will explore theories, theologies, and practices of criminal justice ministry in an age of mass incarceration. We will investigate religious and faith-based responses to the needs of those impacted by the criminal justice system as well as responses to the crisis of mass incarceration. This includes examining approaches to ministry with or by people living in incarceration as well as preventative, post-incarceration, decarceration, and abolitionist ministries.

REGR 6688. Issues in Religious Education. (3 Credits)

This is a special issues course in religious education. Each time the course runs, it will be focused on a unique and current aspect of religious education. Please see the course book for the term in question to find a description of the course.

REGR 6705. Religion Society & Culture. (3 Credits)

Explores various ways of thinking about how Christians and Christian faith communities can and should relate to the broader social world of which they are a part. Emphasis is placed on developing a heightened awareness of the ways religious educators and pastoral ministers can enable people to work for greater peace and justice in the world.

REGR 6999. Religious Education Final Integration Seminar. (3 Credits)

The Master of Arts program in religious education concludes with this final integration course (offered each spring). The course involves a terminal research project on a topic determined by the faculty.

REGR 8102. Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Religious Education. (3 Credits)

This course—for doctoral students only—is an examination of the various theological, philosophical, and educational models that inform the foundations of religious education. The attempt will be made to show how these models have influenced different schools, theorists, practitioners, and materials of religious education. Criteria for evaluating the adequacy of competing models will be offered.

REGR 8110. Ph.D. Year 1 Doctoral Seminar. (1.5 Credits)

The doctoral seminar is a venue for building our Ph.D. community as we explore research that bears on the focus of the doctoral program. We will consider matters of religion and practice across practical theology, religious education, and related fields. In keeping with the spirit of this doctoral program, which is focused on theological and pedagogical research and practice that makes a social justice difference for persons and communities in churches and society, the doctoral seminar will invite the participation of Ph.D. faculty and may include visits from other students, scholars, or accomplished practitioners. Goals of the doctoral seminar include clarification of your scholarly identity, contributing to our learning community and your communities of accountability, and producing a research-informed work—a Seminar Project. Students register for this course in both semesters of their first year of doctoral studies.

REGR 8111. Ph.D. Year 2 Doctoral Seminar. (1.5 Credits)

The doctoral seminar is a venue for building our Ph.D. community as we explore research that bears on the focus of the doctoral program. We will consider matters of religion and practice across practical theology, religious education, and related fields. In keeping with the spirit of this doctoral program, which is focused on theological and pedagogical research and practice that makes a social justice difference for persons and communities in churches and society, the doctoral seminar will invite the participation of Ph.D. faculty and may include visits from other students, scholars, or accomplished practitioners. Goals of the doctoral seminar include clarification of your scholarly identity, contributing to our learning community, and your communities of accountability, and producing a research-informed work—a Seminar Project. Students register for this course in both semesters of their second year of doctoral studies.

Prerequisite: REGR 8110.

REGR 8120. Education for Peace and Justice. (3 Credits)

(Doctoral Students Only) Focuses on developing a greater understanding of the social ministry of the Christian churches. After a historical survey of Christian attitudes toward peace and justice, participants will explore ways of bringing a concern for peace and justice issues into liturgy, preaching, religious education and pastoral ministry. The course also examines how to relate Christian understandings of peace and justice to everyday work, and civic, political and family life.

REGR 8188. Seminar: Religious Education. (3 Credits)

Reserved for special seminar topics in religious education .

REGR 8401. Research Methods. (3 Credits)

Research Methods course is for students in the PhD in Religious Education.

REGR 8580. Young Adult / Adult Ministry and Education. (3 Credits)

This course—for doctoral students only—examines key issues in the religious education of adults. It situates adult religious education within the broader framework of adult education theory, principles of practice, and the application of this theory to contexts of faith communities. Foundational issues explored will include the meaning of adulthood, adult learning, and development, and adult social worlds.

REGR ADVI. Faculty Advising. (0 Credits)

REGR MTNC. Maintenance of Matriculation. (0 Credits)

Maintenance of matriculation.