Syllabi Archive

A 2009 course by John Fea at Messiah College focuses "on the role of religion in the American founding era."

A 2006 course by Mark Oppenheimer at Hartford Seminary analyzes religion as "a locus of dissent and counterculture in the United States."

A 2011 course by Ira Chernus at the University of Colorado at Boulder focuses on "the values and cultural patterns that people in the U.S. tend to share in common" rather than "on organized religion."

A 1999 course by Winnifred Sullivan at Washington and Lee University asks "What is American about American religion and what is religious about American religion?"

A 1998 course by Debra Washington and Brett Smith at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary "offers a general introduction to the emergence of Christianity in the United States from Puritanism to Vatican II."

A 2014 course by John Imbler at Phillips Theological Seminary "designed to introduce various events, movements, and peoples of Christianity in the United States from the pre-colonial period to the present."

A 2005 course by Susan Ridgely at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh "explores the colorful, contested history of religion in American culture. While surveying the main contours of religion in the United States from the colonial era to the present, the course concentrates on a series of historical court cases that reveal tensions between a quest for a (Protestant) American consensus and an abiding religious and cultural pluralism."

A course by Ira Chernus at the University of Colorado at Boulder explores "the notion of 'American Civil Religion' as an academic category."

A 2002 course by Jeffrey Richey at Berea College "adopts an area studies approach to the introduction of traditional religious materials from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Himalayan regions)."

A 1999 course by Michael Moffat at Rutgers University "about south Asian religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, Zorastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism) as they have been studied anthropologically and historically – as daily beliefs and practices, and in relation to wider south Asian culture, history and politics."