Faith and Culture: Being Salt and Light Today

In this course we will think along with great Christian apologists and cultural critics about ways to winsomely and faithfully exhibit a Christian witness to our culture. With the help of authors like C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton, we will think about and discuss both the obstacles and opportunities for Christian witness in contemporary Western culture.

Note: The .5 credit for this course is optional.

Course Objectives:

1. To expand students’ understanding of ways of maintaining a faithful witness in culture
2. To engage in fruitful and respectful conversation about matters of the faith
3. To develop the skill of discerning what lies under the things said and done in our culture and address theological responses to them
4. To hone one’s own sense of how to best be a disciple for Christ in our world today.

Texts:

• C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
• G. K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows, Tremendous Trifles
• George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
• Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark
• Charles Williams, Essential Writing in Spirituality and Theology
• Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
• Makoto Fujimura, Refractions