Current Course Offerings

The purpose of this hybrid—concurrent format—course is to help students explore the challenges and opportunities that may arise in teaching biblical texts in contemporary settings. In this course, students will learn and explore the creative, innovative, and important ways to teach biblical studies in their respective contexts. The exercises designed by students in this class will help foster an environment of biblical literacy and also help students to develop strategies that can help students communicate historical, cultural, and political issues of the ancient text in contemporary contexts. This course will engage disciplines from biblical studies and religious education in order to promote better teaching and understanding of biblical texts that encourage a more inclusive, ethical, and moral interpretation of texts.
Prerequisite: Introduction to Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Scriptures
[Faculty Consent required, Auditors with faculty permission]

Transformational leadership entails a dynamic relationship between the leader and the community of which the leader is a part. It entails developing strategies that enhance the probability of achieving shared goals and visions. Essential to transformational leadership is the inspiration that lifts one from commonplace existence to living beyond the norm. In the quest for a more just and compassionate world, transformational leadership challenges dominant systems and other forms of oppression. This course will explore various expressions of transformational leadership, including those resulting from prophetic imagination and social entrepreneurship. Any student enrolled in a degree and/or certificate program at the Graduate Theological is eligible to enroll in this course.

Using interactive presentations, case studies, readings, thick descriptions, online tools, short writing assignments, and guest presentations from a variety of church leaders, this course surveys the history, polity, theological beliefs, and ethos of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), from its historical beginnings to its contemporary manifestations. Paying particular attention to the cultural context in which it emerged, we will examine the church’s roots. And focusing on the ongoing relationship between church and culture, we will examine how the church continues to develop and respond to social, ethical, and theological needs today. We will explore Disciples church governance and the ways congregational, regional, and general manifestations of the church function and relate to one another. And we will con-sider ways our Disciples history, polity, and theological commitments all contribute to the formation of a dynamic Disciples ethos that is expressed practically in the structure and development of church leadership, in the implementation of mission and service, and in performing important church rituals, including communion, baptism, baby dedications, weddings, and funerals.

*This course fulfills the Disciples history and polity requirement set forth by the Christian Church (DOC) Northern California-Nevada, Training & Care and Recognition & Standing committees.*
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We live in a world of day-to-day experience that is largely of our own making; technologies, buildings, products, institutions, services, brands, and experiences all clamor for our attention. Every one of them has been created by someone with intention, by design. The question we must ask is whether it was designed well, equitably, justly, beautifully, or not. Design thinking is a framework for skilled human-centered design practice that can be applied to any kind of artifact, including organizations, ventures, services, and products intended to drive positive social change. You will be introduced to design thinking, its origins and theoretical underpinnings, and the specific discipline known as design for social impact. You will learn by collaborating on a creative challenge drawn from your own experience. You will learn to see the world through a design lens and begin to explore a theological understanding of creative praxis as integral to spiritual formation. [Auditors excluded]

This course is a hands-on experiential learning journey designed to encourage, empower, and equip participants to imagine both congregational ministry and organizational leadership through the lens of social entrepreneurship. This course is intended for both emerging and established leaders and will help them to design, plan, and implement social business models as they advance their congregational and/or organizational mission and vision. The course will be structured like a startup incubator/accelerator, equipping students with the tools and frameworks to enable the adaptive strategic planning necessary for leading ventures. A priority of this course will be tending to the impacts of personal identity and leadership formation to effectively grow healthy cultures of belonging within teams, in tandem with the creative solutions to social problems through igniting vibrant ventures.

United Methodist History, Doctrine, and Polity I is the first of two courses intended to provide a broad overview of the theology, history, and governance structures of The United Methodist Church and its predecessor bodies. This course, in particular, focuses on the theological per-spectives of John Wesley and the 18th century Methodist Movement, which later came to be embodied in the Articles of Religion and the doctrinal standards of a global denomination. This course is required for M.Div. students seeking ordination in The United Methodist Church.

NOTE: All UMC Students MUST take this course in person on the PSR campus

This hybrid course provides an introductory overview of Christian history with a focus on the diversity of ways in which Christians have worked to effect social change for the common good in times of societal, economic, political, environmental, and religious change – from the first century of the Common Era to the present. Class format includes lectures and small-group activities and discussions based on the reading and interpretation of primary and secondary texts.

Written requirements: six essays; two take home written essays; and a Final Project designed in consultation with the Instructor. This course satisfies the basic history requirement for PSR’s degree programs. Intended primarily for MDiv and MAST students, this course is also suitable for CSSC, CSR, MTS, and DMin students.

The Senior Integrative Seminar, a 1.5 credit course for MDiv students, is to be taken by students in their final semester at Pacific School of Religion. This seminar provides students with the opportunity to assess their learning process over their time at PSR and to consider this question, in particular: “How has your education at PSR met the MDiv Student Program Learning Outcome (PLO’s), which are listed on page #10 of this syllabus, and helped you to integrate your intellectual and spiritual lives?”

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the collection of writings that we come to call the New Testament. In this course, students will become familiar with the historical context, culture, and politics that led to the production of this text. In addition to the traditional historical critical approach to the text, students will be introduced to other methods such as feminist, queer, postmodern, and postcolonial readings that will help us deconstruct these texts and reconstruct interpretations that are socially, ethically, and politically relevant to the world we live in.

This course gives an overview of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, with a focus on societal and religious transformations detailed in the texts and is designed primarily for 2nd year students in PSR’s stackable curriculum as an application of the methods learned in the Rhetorical Use of Texts course. Social justice issues in the ancient world of the Hebrew Bible will be discussed along with their modern applications using Feminist/Womanist, Gender, Postcolonial, Queer, Racial/Ethnic (Minoritized), Ecological, Disabilities Studies, and Hermeneutics of Suspicion approaches. The geographic focus of the course will be on the southern Levant (Holy Land) in its Middle Eastern contexts, the temporal range will be approximately 1200–400 BCE. Themes will be stressed that echo PSR’s core values, with special focus on leadership in its biblical forms, critical thinking, contexts (both ancient and modern), postcolonial theories, race/ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disabilities, and ecology. Evaluation will be based on class participation in discussions, written exegetical exercises, chapel service design and implementation, and a final reflection paper. The written work for the course will aid 2nd year MDiv students in their Middler and SAIL capstone portfolios.

Throughout history, humans have utilized rituals to negotiate the complexities of life transitions, to explore the deeper, spiritual aspects of living, and symbolize and story their experiences. This course explores the dynamics of what ritual is and what ritual does by engaging participants in both developing ritual design skills and in understanding the roles that ritual can play in a variety of spiritual leadership contexts. Together we will ask, how do we engage communities in activities that carry values and deep-en meaning? How do we create practices that embody beliefs and form people for particular ways of being in the world? What role do embodied spiritual practices play in people’s spiritual lives and in the work of social transformation and how do we employ them?

PS1462 is a one credit hour introductory class taken in a one semester sequence with PS1461 and PS1463 which are also one credit hour classes. This course will invite students to think about the importance of communication in the varied tasks of their ministries and vocations. Heightened emphasis will be given to the art of preaching and the varied theologies and practices that arise in differing cultural contexts and communities. Discussion on preaching will focus on connecting individual situations to meta narratives, with particular attention to biblical exegesis, interpretation, sermon form, orality, the person of the preacher, and the sermon’s embodiment. Students will familiarize themselves with the theories regarding the use of narrative in spoken word.
PSR requires three hours of outside work for each hour spent in the classroom. Students will spend time outside of class watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading assigned articles and critically reflecting on them orally and in writing. Students will create a sermon in a format/mode that is best suited to communicate the student’s message and that can be used beyond the classroom in a setting of the student’s choosing—a congregation, public event, or virtual public forum.

For students who are completing a Chaplaincy Track, PS-3260 and PS-3378 MUST be registered for and taken together.
Together these 2 courses will suffice the 3-credit requirement. This course aims to ground the practice of pastoral care in the empowerment and liberation of marginalized bodies and communities. Grounded in postcolonial, intersectional, and inter-religious approaches to pastoral care, this course asks that students reflect on pastoral theology, pastoral care practices, and various case studies that center experiences of marginalization, including issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and migration. Each week, the instructors will give a brief reflection on the required readings and group discussions on the readings will follow. Students will be evaluated through class participation, assigned projects, and a class presentation relating to the final project. The course assumes students have completed an introduction to pastoral care course and aims to deepen their imagination of pastoral care sensibilities and possibilities in a variety of contexts.