Course Syllabus
Course themes might be moved for scheduling reasons.
Course Objectives:
To explore historically the interrelationship between Christianity and cultures in the Americas, Asia, and Africa in order that we might begin to:
1) Trace the correlation between the expansion of Christianity and European colonialism since 1492.
2) Come to grips with the emergence of an economic and political world system in the modern period and the implicit and explicit participation of Christian institutions in that modern world system with its structures of power.
3) Recognize the confusion of gospel with Euro-American cultural values that occurred in even the best-intentioned Christian missionary efforts, resulting in the unintended evil of destroying the cultures and values of other peoples in the name of conversion to the Christian gospel.
4) Develop the intellectual and spiritual discipline to enter into the perspective of the historical “other,” and especially to confront courageously the meaning and continuing legacy of cultural contact in our common past.
5) Discover intellectual and spiritual resources for overcoming that past and participating in transformative processes that can lead to a world of genuine mutual respect among peoples, communities, and nations.
Required Texts:
George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (expanded edition) Boston: Beacon Press, 1991 (with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre and afterword by Susan Gilson Miller).
Many other course materials will be listed in the syllabus and posted on CANVAS.
Course Summary:
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