Core Curriculum Guide: Values Areas
Understanding Spirituality or Faith in Action in the World
Learning Outcome: Evaluate the significance of faith traditions and spiritual formation in life-long actions and decisions.
The Jesuit Catholic tradition emphasizes the role of spirituality and faith in shaping the person. It is part of the heritage of the Jesuit Catholic educational experience to assist students in their spiritual growth and faith journey by fostering appreciation and application of faith traditions and actively pursuing the ideal of living as a person for others. The curriculum ought to assist each student to better understand his or her own beliefs or faith traditions intellectually and in practice, to overcome cultural barriers that hinder his or her faith journey and spiritual growth, and to search for his or her calling or vocation in life. These overarching objectives are designed both to assist students in recognizing and living out their personal beliefs or faith traditions and to teach the impact of one's own beliefs on life-long actions and decisions.
Competencies: By way of example, Loyola graduates should be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of and capacity to articulate the foundations of one's own and others' beliefs or faith traditions.
- Demonstrate how faith traditions or belief systems have been or can be related to intellectual and cultural life.
- Develop an ability to reflect upon the applications of one's beliefs or faith traditions to decisions in one's personal, professional, and civic life.
Spirituality and Faith in Action Courses
| Ancient Greek Religion | CLST 371 |
| This course examines the beliefs and practices in ancient Greek religion by studying the written, artistic and archaeological evidence for their forms and functions and the environment in which they flourished. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Religion and Literature | ENGL 287 |
| This course introduces the study of literature and religion as a contemporary academic field of inquiry. It aims to explain and illustrate the nature and theoretical strategies of a literary-religious interpretive approach to texts, and to encourage an appreciation of it as a valuable and productive way of reading. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Nursing as Vocation | GNUR 110 |
| This course examines the practice of professional nursing as a "calling," and students will have the opportunity through reflection and discussion to identify their own spirituality and how it will affect their calling. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Philosophy of Religion | PHIL 171 |
| This course explores the development, not only of some classic positions within the philosophy of religion, but also of how these views have affected the formulation of more contemporary discussions. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Culture and Civilization | PHIL 188 |
| This course examines the nature, causes, and possible future development of human culture and civilization. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Religion and Society | SOCL 245 |
| This course examines how religion and society interact. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to Theology | THEO 100 |
| This course is an introduction to reflection on and analysis of the Christian theological tradition. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| The Theology of Faith | THEO 101 |
| This course studies multiple dimensions of religious belief as a phenomenon. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Jesus Christ | THEO 104 |
| This course examines the life of Jesus Christ, utilizing the Gospels, the writings of Paul and other biblical authors, the early ecumenical councils, and the history of church doctrine, including contemporary scholarship. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| The Church and the World | THEO 105 |
| This course provides an introduction to ways in which the Christian churches, and primarily the Roman Catholic Church, understand and enact their identity in relation to the secular world of culture, economics, and politics, both nationally and globally.
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Skill Area: |
| Theology of Sacraments | THEO 106 |
| This course studies the realities of Christian faith life as expressed and celebrated in the concrete rituals of the Christian communities. |
Skill Area: |
| Introduction to the Bible | THEO 110 |
| This course provides an overview of the Bible, and examines the contents and major theological themes that have shaped the religious traditions of Christianity. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures | THEO 111 |
| This course provides an introduction to the Old Testament / Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures). | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to the New Testament | THEO 112 |
| This course is an introduction to the historical and theological reading of the various documents of early Christianity known as the New Testament. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the various literary genres found in the New Testament and explain why the recognition of genre is essential to the interpretation of the New Testament, as well as the importance of how the New Testament documents have reached their present form. |
View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to the Qur'an | THEO 114 |
| This course provides an introduction to the central Islamic scripture, the Qur’an. This course will consider the Qur’an as a basis for the theological and ethical teachings for Muslims, as well as a source of literary inspiration. Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the nature of the main Islamic scripture, the Qur’an, and its influence on Muslim beliefs, ethical understandings, and social and religious practices. |
View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to the Study of Religion | THEO 170 |
| This course is an introduction to the contemporary field of religious studies. focusing on both the theoretical investigations of religious traditions, as well as on the study of selected religious texts and practices (such as creation stories, sacred biographies, sacred scriptures of a religious tradition(s) rituals, ritual taboos, religiously motivated behaviors.
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Skill Area: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Great Christian Thinkers | THEO 171 |
| This course studies the ideas and contributions of a select group of writers, thinkers, artists, and activists, all of whom have been significantly shaped by their encounter with Christianity, and have, in turn, created lasting testimonies of significant cultural value because of that encounter. |
Skill Area: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to Classical Judaism | THEO 172 |
| This course provides an introduction to Classical Judaism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| The Orthodox Christian Tradition | THEO 173 |
| This course provides an introduction to Orthodox Christianity. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Religion in America | THEO 174 |
| This course provides an introduction to religion in the United States of America and explores the impact of the American culture upon very diverse religious traditions and religious movements as well as the contributions of various faith traditions to the American culture. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Contemporary Protestantism | THEO 175 |
| This course provides an introduction to contemporary Protestantism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| African American Religious Experience | THEO 176 |
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This course is an introduction to the study of African American religious traditions. Specifically, this course will examine, the religious experiences of the African-American community as modeled and expressed by several of its most prophetic leaders. |
Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| World Religions | THEO 177 |
| This course will provide introduction to major world religions. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Women and Religion | THEO 178 |
| This course will study the role of women in at least one (if not more) of the major world religious traditions. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Roman Catholicism | THEO 179 |
| This course provides an introduction to Roman Catholicism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Theology & Interdisciplinary Study | THEO 180 |
| There are two guiding features of course: a) that it present knowledge from the field of theological and/or religious studies focused on a topic of importance to an undergraduate student body; b) that in the consideration of this topic it take an interdisciplinary approach. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Christianity through the Ages | THEO 181 |
| The course is a survey course in the history of Christian thought. Not a course in Church history, this is a course whose primary goal is to investigate the major interactions between Christian thought and practice and the cultures that it has been a part of in its two thousand year history. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Moral Problems: War/Peace | THEO 183 |
| To be determined. | |
| Moral Problems: Ecology | THEO 184 |
| To be determined. | |
| Moral Problems | THEO 192 |
| This variable topics course provides an introduction to theological and religious ethics through attention to a select number of moral problems. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Christian Marriage | THEO 193 |
| This course examines the Christian understanding of marriage. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to Islam | THEO 195 |
| This course will provide an introduction to Islam. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to Hinduism | THEO 196 |
| This course provides an introduction to Hinduism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Introduction to Buddhism | THEO 197 |
| This course provides an introduction to Buddhism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Jews and Judaism in the Modern World | THEO 198 |
| This course examines the reshaping of Judaism in response to the challenges of modernity, focusing primarily on one hundred and fifty years of European Jewish history, from the mid-eighteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, in order to study the foundations of religious, intellectual, and social trends characteristic of modern Judaism. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |
| Religions of Asia | THEO 199 |
| This course provides an introduction to Asian religious traditions. | View syllabus Value: Spirituality & Faith in Action |