Religious Studies 102. Christian Origins (4 units)
Summer Session 2
T/W/R 2:10-3:50pm
CRN 73752
227 Olson
Taught by Wendy Terry
This course is designed as an introduction to early Christian thought and practice for
advanced undergraduates. It will focus on the intellectual and social issues that
preoccupied Christian thinkers from approximately the year 100 to approximately the
year 500, and will examine the ways in which early Christians thought about the
content of the statement “I am a Christian.” These are the dominant questions behind
the course:
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What were different Christian identities, and how did people claim them?
How did Christian communities develop rituals and beliefs (and vice versa)?
How and why did Christian identities change over the first five centuries?
These questions cannot be answered in a single quarter course. In order to begin to
address them, this course takes just two major themes in early Christian thought - the
idea of a social and ritual community, or church, and the idea of a set of fundamental
identifying beliefs, or a creed—and introduces some of the diverse approaches that
Christian writers took in thinking about them.
GE Credits (Old):
Arts & Humanities, Domestic
Diversity, and Writing Experience
GE Credits (New):
Arts & Humanities, World
Cultures, and Writing Experience
Prerequisite:
Religious Studies 040
This map details the approximate spread of Christianity
through 500 AD, from its beginnings in what is now Israel to
small swaths of North Africa to much of Asia Minor and
modern day Europe.