CH202 - Christianity in History from 1550

  • 0 Standard Tuition Fee
  • 4
    Credit Points
  • 0.125 EFT 
  • 5
    AQF level
  • church historyUnit Discipline

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will

A. Know and understand

  1. The major phases and developments in the history of Christianity identified in the unit content
  2. The life and thought of selected key figures in the history of Christianity

B. Be able to

  1. Describe the impact of the social, political and cultural context on Christian beliefs, practices and movements
  2. Use primary and secondary sources
  3. Present an evidence-based perspective or narrative

C. Be in a position to

  1. Apply historical perspectives from this period to their theological studies and in ministry contexts

Content

Section A: Reform and Revolution

1. Reformation: England and Scotland (1533-1588)

        Thomas Cranmer OR John Knox

2. Puritanism in England and America (1563-1662)

        Oliver Cromwell OR Richard Baxter OR John Winthrop OR Roger Williams

3. Revolutionary Learning & Radical Politics

3.1 Deism and the Enlightenment

3.2 Jansenism

3.3 The Church in the French Revolution

        John Locke OR Blaise Pascal

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 2 of the topics

Section B: Change & Renewal

  1. Renewal:

4.1 Pietism,

4.2 the Evangelical Revival in Britain

4.3 the Great Awakening in America

4.4 The Oxford Movement

John Wesley OR George Whitefield OR Jonathan Edwards OR John Henry Newman

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 2 of the topics
  1. Responding to the changing Social Order:

5.1 Frontier Religion in America

5.2 The abolition of slavery

5.3 Christian Socialism

5.4 Salvation Army

5.5 Women in the Church

Francis Asbury OR William Wilberforce OR F.D. Maurice OR William & Catherine Booth

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 2 of the topics
  1. Responding to challenges to Faith

6.1 The Rise of Biblical Criticism

6.2 Science and Religion

6.3 The First Vatican Council

6.4 Fundamentalism

Friedrich Schleiermacher OR Charles Darwin OR Pius IX OR John Gresham Machen

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 2 of the topics

Section C: The Church Universal

  1. The church in a global context:

7.1 The birth of modern missions,

7.2 Christian missions in India OR China OR the Pacific OR Africa (nineteenth century)

7.3 Christian missions & the rise of nationalism (twentieth century)

7.4 Ecumenical movements

7.5 Vatican II

7.6 The History of Pentecostalism

William Carey OR David Livingstone OR Hudson Taylor OR J. R. Mott OR John XXIII

7.7 Christians in a Totalitarian State: the church in Germany (1931-1950) OR The Soviet Union (1917-1990)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer OR Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 3 of the topics

 

  1. A history of the church in Australia:

8.1 Building a Christian Country 1788-1901

8.2 The Church in Secular Australia 1901 to the present

8.3 Ministry to Indigenous communities

  • Lecturers must focus on at least 1 of the topics

 

Notes:

(a)   Students are expected to cover all nine areas covered in the syllabus outline. But there are considerable options within all sections, and lecturers should take full advantage of this flexibility to design a coherent program which best addresses the needs of students and the philosophy of the college offering the unit.

(b) Students taking this unit will be expected to engage seriously with primary sources. The names of prominent figures in Christian history, named above in italics, are to encourage lecturers to set documents for study written by or about those people. Lecturers should feel free to substitute a major figure in the place of those named. The study of primary source documents need not be a requirement for diploma (CH202) students.  Lecturers should feel free to exchange with lecturers from other colleges advice on documents which have worked well for them.

Set Readings

As well as the works listed in General Recommended Readings, the following provide more detailed treatments of sections of this unit.

 

Reform and Revolution

Brown, J., The English Puritans (Fearn: Christian Heritage, 1998).

Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation (2nd ed.; University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 1989).

Kellar, C., Scotland, England & the Reformation 1534-61 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003).

Pearse, M., The Great Restoration: the Religious Radicals of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998).

 

Change and Renewal

Askew, T. A. and R. V. Pierard, The American Church Experience: A Concise History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

Harding, A., The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion: A Sect in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: OUP, 2003).

Heitzenrater, R. P., Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995).

Herring, G., What Was the Oxford Movement? (London: Continuum, 2002)

Kent, J., Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge: CUP, 2002).

Knight, F., The Church in the Nineteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).

Noll, M. A., America’s God: from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford/NY: OUP, 2002).

Noll, M. A., The Old Religion in the New World: the history of North American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

Numbers, R. L., Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (NY: OUP, 2007).

Pearse, M., The Age of Reason: From the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution, 1670-1789   Oxford: Monarch, 2007).

Rosnan, D., The Evolution of the English Churches, 1500-2000 (Cambridge: CUP, 2003).

 

 

The Church Universal

Askew, T. A. and R. V. Pierard, The American Church Experience: A Concise History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

Bellito, C. M., Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II (New York: Paulist, 2001).

Bergen, D. L., Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1996).

Breward, I., A History of the Churches in Australasia (Oxford: OUP, 2001).

Briggs, J., M. A. Oduyoye and G. Tsetsis (eds), History of the Ecumenical Movement Vol III: 1968-2000 (Geneva: WCC, 2004).

Gilley, S. and B. Stanley (eds), World Christianities, c1815-1914 (Cambridge/NY: CUP, 2006).

Holmes, D. J. and B. W. Bickers, A Short History of the Catholic Church (3rd ed.; London: Burns & Oates, 2002).

Kung, H., The Catholic Church (London: Orion, 2002).

Moffett, S. H., A History of Christianity in Asia (Vol. I, 2nd Rev. ed.; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998).

Noll, M. A., The Old Religion in the New World: The History of North American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

O’Malley, J. W., Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2000).

 

Candidates are advised to have access to a good Atlas of Christianity (e.g. MacMillan’s).