Section 2: Tues 1:00Pm 5:00Pm Office: Faculty Hall, A212

9

HS501-02 Dr. Chris Armstrong

Winter 2012, Jan 9 – Mar 19 Bethel Seminary

Section 2: Tues 1:00pm – 5:00pm Office: Faculty Hall, A212

E-mail:

TA – Tim Magnuson:

EARLY CHURCH TO THE REFORMATION

Course Description

An introduction to the major movements, persons, and ideas in Christian history from the church's birth through the fifteenth century. Students will also be introduced to basic methodology and bibliographical tools used in the study of the past.

Objectives

1.  Recount major events, ideas, figures, and movements in the Church from its beginnings to the fifteenth century.

2.  Analyze, discuss, and write about selected documents and ideas in church history.

3.  Learn how to connect the church's past to our present in a careful, responsible, and practically helpful way.

Texts

Gonzalez, Justo. The Story of Christianity, vol. 1, Early Church to Reformation. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984. ISBN 9780060633158

Bettenson, Henry and Chris Maunder, eds. Documents of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 9780192880710

Heath, Gordon L. Doing Church History: A User-friendly Introduction to Researching the History of Christianity (Toronto, Ont.: Clements Publishing, 2008; 9781894667906)

www.christianhistory.net. Currently this website is giving access to all articles from all back issues of Christian History magazine (all 99 of ‘em), for free.

Course Requirements

1. Testing: Three unit exams will be given, each covering one segment of the course, with questions on the Gonzalez text and lectures. Short answer questions will be asked on Gonzalez and essay questions on the lectures. A study guide is provided on Moodle. 1st Edition page numbers are followed by (2nd edition page numbers).

Exam I Gonzalez 7-17, (8-23), 31-108 (41-125) and lecture material

Exam II Gonzalez 113-219 (131-260) and lecture material

Exam III Gonzalez 231-374 (269-445) and lecture material

2. Online Forum Posting: See Section I

3. In-Class Discussion Leading: See Section II

4.Final Integrative Paper: See Section III

Integrative Portfolio: This assignment has been identified as a required integrative assignment that you may wish to review and reference in future integrative coursework.

Grading

Three exams (3x16%) 48%

Online Forum Posting (2x8%) 16%

In-Class Discussion Leading 10%

Final Integrative Paper 24%

Evaluation (see below) 2%

EVALUATION

Owing to a change in Bethel Seminary policy, I am required to count your completion of the course evaluation at the end of the course as 2% of the final grade. I won’t be able to look at the evaluation text itself (have no fear!), but I will be able to tell whether you completed it or not, so I can add that 2% to your final grade.

PARTICIPATION

Involvement in our discussions; attendance is assumed, and mandatory! This will be used as a “straw in the wind.” That is, my observation of your involvement in class discussion will serve to push you, if your final grade is on or near a “line” between two letter-grades, toward either the higher or the lower grade. As stated in the Academic Course Policies, your completion of the course evaluation electronically at the end of the course “will be included as a factor in your final course grade.” See “Course Grading” above for how this will be calculated. All evaluations remain anonymous to the faculty.

Academic Course Policies

Please familiarize yourself with the catalog requirements in the Academic Course Policies document on the Syllabus page in Moodle. You are responsible for this information, and any academic violations, such as plagiarism, will not be tolerated.

Class Schedule

* NOTE: Lecture topics may vary from this chart. This is a general guide only.

For Week 2: Please read the following: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/robinson-sources.html and http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/-- choose "How to read a primary source" from left navigation bar.

I. Online forum posting

Summary

We’re going to have topical discussions both on the Moodle forums and in the classroom. What we’re aiming for is to begin our topical discussions for each week in the Moodle forums and then continue and expand them in the classroom.

During the course, each student will post on two primary topics and two secondary, for a total of six posts, in Moodle “topic forums” (the topic areas and readings for these are listed Section IV). In two weeks during the quarter you will post (1) one meaty presentation post on a primary topic, (2) one “probe” on the other student's post (Secondary), and (3) one wrap-up post addressing the “probe” that the other student has made on your own primary post. If there is not a secondary topic during your week, post your probe on the student who shares your primary topic. Topics will be assigned to you during the first week.

Reading requirements

In the course documents area of the course’s Moodle site, you will find scanned copies of the contextualizing readings listed under Section IV below. These contextualizing readings come from Everett Ferguson’s Church History: From Christ to Pre-Reformation and Mark Noll’s Turning Points. You will also find listed readings from Christian History magazine (marked “CH”), which are accessible via www.christianhistory.net (issues are sorted by number at the left of the main webpage, near the bottom). These readings, along with Gonzalez and some additional library research, will help you contextualize and understand the Bettenson material.

Each week in which forum postings are due, you are responsible for reading the context material and assigned Bettenson readings associated with the topic assigned to you. Then you will need to post the following:

NOTE: In addition to the contextualizing reading for the two topics on which you are posting (either primary post or probe), you are responsible for the contextualizing readings for discussion #1 (week 3) and #12 (week 10).

Your Three Postings

(The deadlines for all three posts may be found in section IV below.)

A. A two-page (500-word) initial post on your assigned topic.

You should use what you know from Gonzalez and the extra readings (e.g. Ferguson, Noll, the Christian History issues) along with at least two Bettenson excerpts:

(1) from the contextualizing readings, explain briefly and contextualize the topical question listed in Section IV below, then

(2) answer the question in brief, using at least two quoted passages from Bettenson to illustrate your answer

B. A one paragraph (75-word) probe on another student’s topic

Your probe should pose at least two penetrating questions on the other student's post. You should read the contextualizing readings for that topic before posting your probe. Also, please probe on time, so your initial post-er can wrap up on time.

C. A two paragraph (150-word) wrap-up post addressing the question posed by the other student’s prove.

Your wrap-up post should address the question posed by your respondent in a summing-up-and-clarifying statement, along with anything else you'd like to add in the way of clarification or further insight.

Grading

These Blackboard forum postings are worth 16% of your course grade, calculated as follows: 5% for each initial post, 1% for each probe, and 2% for each wrap-up

I may browse the posts, but they will be read and graded by my teaching assistant, according to a clearly defined rubric, which is provided on Moodle.

Deadlines

The week after you do one of your two primary posts, you will be leading discussion on the topic on which you posted (see Section II below). This is an opportunity for us to help each other explore further the themes and questions we uncovered during our research for the post, in a way that goes beyond the limits of discussion-board posting.

Each week when you have a posting assignment:

·  Post your primary post by 11:5pm on Friday night.

·  Post your probe by noon on Monday.

·  Post your wrap-up post to the other student's probe by 11:59pm on Wednesday.

All posts receive an automatic time-stamp when you post them. Late work will be docked, and will also, in the case of initial posts and probes, prevent your fellow students from completing their assigned probes or wrap-ups—PLEASE be sure to complete these on time! If, however, your assigned probe-r does not post on time, then a statement extending the thought of your initial post with new ideas & material is acceptable.

II. In-Class Discussion Leading

Each student will lead the in-class discussion for one of the two topics on which you are posting to the Moodle forum. There will be 10 student-led discussions during the course (plus one, discussion # 1, that I will lead, for which you are also responsible to do contextualizing readings). Each will be led by somewhere between 1 and 4 students, depending on class size. The discussions should take roughly 30-40 minutes each.

When you lead discussion, you and your fellow discussion-leaders are expected to lead off with about 15-20 minutes of "set-up." During this set-up, leaders will do the following (you should meet together before you lead the discussion, to decide who will do what; you can divide things up any way you like, but as a rule of thumb, allow at least 5 minutes per leader):

1.  Contextualize the topic using what you know from the readings posted on Moodle, the recommended CH issues/articles, and the appropriate sections of Gonzalez. Essentially, you are putting both the overarching topical question (see list above) and any sub-questions you pose (see #2), along with the relevant Bettenson documents and particular quotations from those documents, into the larger historical context of early church history—that is, in the framework of what you discovered in your readings.

2.  Pose, as "sub-questions" to the overarching topical question listed above, several fruitfully discussable questions (one to two per presenter is good). See below for definition of a "fruitfully discussable question."