Evangelization

Effective evangelists are culturally informed and able to engage productively and confidently with complex literary and nonfiction texts. In this seminar-style course, students will develop and practice strategies for reading in a range of genres and forms with comprehension and charity. Students will also critically assess their own reading habits, use cultural, historical, and/or literary context to gain a deeper understanding of texts, and apply what they learn to the work of evangelization and discipleship.

This course offers a sweeping introduction to the Catholic faith as a unique, compelling, and incarnational vision of reality. Beginning with the person of Jesus Christ, the course explores the Catholic synthesis of truth, goodness, and beauty and its historical power to shape cultures, form distinctive institutions, and inspire the human spirit. Students will engage major theological themes—including the Incarnation, the Trinity, the sacraments, and the Church—as well as explore the Catholic intellectual tradition, its artistic and musical achievements, and its enduring influence on literature, education, and public life. Special attention is given to understanding how the Church’s distinctive vision has historically evangelized the culture and how it can do so today.

The course provides an introduction to the Church's understanding of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, God made flesh, with special emphasis on Christ's identity as both eternal logos and historical redeemer.

The course provides an introduction to Catholic apologetics with the goal of equipping students to respond to the most common secular objections to Catholicism. Topics include arguments for the existence of God, the historicity of the Resurrection, the problem of evil, and the relationship between faith and science.

This course provides an introduction to Catholic moral theology with the goal of teaching students how the Catholic conception of the meaning and purpose of human action leads to authentic happiness. Potential topics include natural law, justice, the common good, virtue, conscience, character, politics, Catholic social teaching, and sanctification.

The course provides an introduction to the distinctively Catholic conception of beauty and how beauty can serve as an effective tool for evangelization. Topics include sacramentality, transcendence, and the relationship between 'high art' and 'popular art.'

The course offers and introduction to Old and New Testament theology using a 'hermeneutics of evangelization' that sees revelation in five acts: creation, the fall, the formation of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the Church. Student will also learn how to evangelize using Word of Fire's distinctive bible.

Summer Residency provides students the opportunity to study a special topic at the University of St. Thomas campus. Topics include evangelization and new media, politics and evangelization, evangelization and persecution, Church history for evangelists, and cross-cultural evangelization.

Summer Residency provides students the opportunity to study a special topic at the University of St. Thomas campus. Topics include evangelization and new media, politics and evangelization, evangelization and persecution, Church history for evangelists, and cross-cultural evangelization.

The course examines one of history's best poets and provides a perennially compelling and relevant vision of the Catholic philosophical, theological, moral, and artistic life.

The course addresses common misconceptions about the purpose and content of Vatican II with the goal of teaching how Vatican II principles remain essential for effective evangelization.

The course provides an introduction to patristics with the goal of showing how the Church Fathers can effectively address both Protestant and secular criticism of the Church.

This course focuses on the concrete 'how to's' of effective evangelization in contemporary contexts. Topics include how to use social media to evangelize, how to create and nurture digital and physical evangelical communities, how to build a culture of life, how to respond to indifference, and how to response to opposition and hostility.

What can social science teach us about human flourishing and what opportunities does it reveal for where and how to evangelize contemporary America? This class will range across social science data from political science, psychology, sociology, economics, etc. in looking at happiness, unhappiness, and how the Church can speak to the predicament of the contemporary American soul.

Informed by media ecology, this course evaluates evangelical approaches in the Catholic church by exploring how their representations of faith and modes of rhetoric evolve out of, and respond to, predominant media environments. First examining the interplay between oral and literate forms of expression as foundational to the Church's intellectual tradition and communication of doctrine, the course then analyzes how Catholic communication has adapted to the challenges of later technological environments constituted by print, electric, and digital media.

Students will complete their capstone project, most often comprehensive examinations. Students may also apply to write a thesis or produce a practical project.