The Triune God

Well all. I have finished my spiritual autobiography and am ready to turn it in tomorrow. I am now looking for a region of the country to do a small study on so I can do a presentation in class. It’s between Boston and St. Louis. There is an odd possibility that I might do it on Philadelphia; as I am interested in the start of the AME church and I am attending a Quaker school.

For Theology 101 I am working with a partner on the chapter about the Triune God. It seems like it will be fun. I have the music picked out and am outlining and highlighting the chapter so our handout will make sense.

I’ll write about Intro to the New Testament at some point, but we only meet once a week so my news out of that class will be limited.

Spiritual Autobiography

I have to write a spiritual autobiography for my US Church History class. And the way Dr. Garman has asked us to write it is very interesting. Instead of what most of us would think of when we hear the words “spiritual autobiography” which tend to be ‘tell me your journey’ or ‘what is your theology’, Dr. Garman wants us to write “a brief account that focuses on the various religious or non-religious groups or ideas that have influenced you.”

I must say, I am more excited about this paper than I thought I was going to be. And to be limited to 2-4 pages. What fun that’s going to be.

So I ask the question of you that Dr. Garman is asking of us in the class: what religious or non-religious groups or ideas have influenced you?

U.S. Church History

Today is the start of my short days. I have classes on W-Th-F from 8:30 to 9:45 in the morning and then I’m done for the day.

The class for today was US Church History. The professor is a woman who teaches for Earlham College and occasionally for ESR. The most exciting thing (from my point of view) was the word Unitarian appearing on our reading and discussion list.

When we went around to introduce ourselves I told Dr. Garman that she made me really happy because Unitarians/Universalists don’t normally see our names in histories, unless they are talking about Emerson, Thoreau and the rest of the Transcendentalists.

After the introductions, we talked about Native American religions. We knew it was going to be brief because as our professor said, there hasn’t been as much research into it as there have been in other areas. (she did say that this was changing, just like it had for African American religious history)

Our reading for class on Friday is part of a collection of documents on early church history. So I got to read a papal directive (which I have a question about) and writings from John Winthrop. I also read ahead a little so I could see what documents they had from Anne Bradstreet.

Tomorrow is Theology 101 day. That’s going to be fun. I have questions already from our required reading. And I must say that it is very weird to read the Preface of the book and go “well, what about the rest of us?” But the professor for my theology class seems to be real cool and will probably get a kick out of the fact that I had to suck my teeth while reading the Preface.

That’s it for now. More tomorrow.

The First Day of School

Today was a good day. My first class was at 8:30 and I saw someone who I had been at Prospective Students Day with. There will be a lot of reading, but I think that I can handle that.

Second class was at 1:20 and lasted until 4:20. It was more interesting than I originally thought it was going to be. The really interesting thing about the class is that all of us who have been out of school for a while sat on one side of the room, the chippies sat on the other.

I have one class tomorrow and then I’m done for the day. Then I will be able to read as much as I can before the next class. 

More later.

An Introduction

Hello everyone. Welcome to my blog about my time at Earlham School of Religion. I plan to write a lot about my classes, but also about other things such as books, music and public television. I will also throw in a few comments about things going on in the outside religious world when I get a chance.

I won’t be able to post much for the next few days, as I will be packing and moving to Richmond, Indiana. When I get settled, I will post as I can.

Thanks for coming to my blog and I hope to talk to you again soon.