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Most Christians would affirm that the Bible is “authoritative” in some way—not just important, but also revelatory, instructive, reliable, or even definitive in its communication of certain truths. The word “authority” has its roots in the idea of an author: a singular origin or source imparts meaning through the words of a text, and the reader’s job is to receive whatever the author intended to communicate. But how can a text be “authoritative” if its readers cannot agree on what it means? Which readers get to decide which interpretation is the “right” one?

In this class, Cameron Howard will explore what it might mean to shift our understanding of biblical authority away from discerning the authors’ intent and toward embracing the messy, generative encounters between the text and its readers. That is, what if the Bible’s authority rests not in narrowing down meaning to the “right” interpretation, but rather in the conversations, conflicts, possibilities, and uncertainties that critical study of the Bible unleashes? We will look together at several biblical texts, ranging from the mundane to the controversial, to explore how meaning is unstable in them, and we will consider how we might find authority in the Bible because of this instability, not in spite of it.

What is the right relationship of faith to politics? If you’re watching the news lately you might have seen it play out in a lot of ways, many of them harmful. This class invites us to reflect on what it means for the U.S. to be an “empire” and how the values of empire continue to shape our lives. Rather than separating faith and politics we will look at how Scripture has things to say about politics: about power, injustice, and the mercy and justice of God. In this class, instructor Kat Armas will teach us about the stories we have inherited—about power, belonging, fear, and control—and consider how they echo the logic of empire present throughout Scripture. 

Together, we will explore what it means to follow Jesus when our politics are full of division and domination. How can our theology move us toward faithful presence rather than passive acceptance? What does it look like to embody mercy, justice, and truth in our personal lives, our families and neighborhoods, and out in public?

Few questions have haunted human beings more persistently than this one: are we living in the last days? From the early church to the medieval plague years, from the World Wars to the Cold War, every generation has had its reasons to suspect the end was near. Our own moment — with its wars, pandemics, environmental crisis, and fracturing political order — feels no different.

In this class, Robyn Whitaker takes a candid look at scripture's apocalyptic texts and how they have been interpreted within American Christianity. We'll explore what texts like the Book of Revelation and Daniel meant in their ancient context and ask how that should shape the way we read them today. We'll also reckon with the history of apocalyptic prediction in the USA, and why dispensationalism has proven so persistently popular due to the influence of the Scofield Bible and the Left Behind novels. We’ll see how the theologies of Rapture, Tribulation, the Antichrist, and Armageddon have hijacked our thinking and quietly shaped foreign policy and popular culture.

But this isn't just a history lesson. We'll wrestle seriously with the unsettling feeling that our own moment somehow feels like the end of something. What do the Bible’s apocalypses have to say to people living in genuinely frightening times? And what does it mean to live faithfully when the world seems to be unravelling?