New THEO Classes for Freshmen Students

Reported by Michael Nellis

NEWBERG, ORE. – The religious component of incoming students’ general education classes has changed drastically this year with the addition of two new classes, THEO 101 and THEO 102. Both classes are titled “I Believe” and focus on a basic deconstruction of the Apostle’s Creed and biblical theology.

Brian Doak and Leah Payne, the co-directors of the course, are part of a nine-person core teaching team, in addition to 30 other section leaders, dedicated to tracing back the roots of Christianity. “The tradition is deep and wide, historically, intellectually, and spirituality, and we’re doing everything we can to learn about it,” Doak said.

“We decided on going with the oldest, most ecumenical articulation of the Christian tradition we could find,” Payne said about the creed.

The year-long pair of classes is replacing Religion 300 and Bible 100 as a requirement for new students.

“We wanted to create an experience where students were able to think through Biblical church history and theology together, and we weren’t able to do that the way the curriculum was structured,” Payne said.

Doak stated, “We’re taking what we’re hoping are some of the best features, intellectually and spiritually, of both courses and putting them in a group experience.”

On Mondays over 560 students meet in Bauman Auditorium, making this class the largest ever in the university’s history. Every week the class takes a work or phrase from the Apostle’s Creed and looks at it from a variety of angles.

“We only go up to where we are,” Doak said, “so the first class was just ‘I.’ The second day was ‘I Believe.’ By the very last class period, the hope is we’ll all be reciting the creed together.”

On Wednesdays students meet in small groups in various locations around campus to discuss the lecture and other assigned readings. “Studies show and, personally, I find that I learn a lot better when I have a chance to discuss something with peers in a small group setting,” Payne said. “We want that to be an opportunity for people to do some intellectual wrestling, as well as some personal reflection.”

On Fridays a panel of professors and other faculty hosts a Q&A discussion with the students. “Fridays are a lot of fun, the students ask whatever they would like, and so it’s a broad swathe of questions,” Payne said. “I hope students are talking about this stuff outside of class, and that they’re getting into late night, fun conversations in their dorm room about the meaning of life and what it means to love God.”

In the class, students read other works alongside the Bible. For the fall semester, students also study a treatise on the incarnation by St. Athanasius. “These [texts] are just common heritage for students in the theological tradition,” Doak said. “We read a poem about the creator from Hildegard of Bingen…also Howard Thurman. These are just great voices from the history of theology.”

All of the lectures from the class are recorded and put onto a podcast, also entitled “I Believe,” that is added to over the course of the week by the professors. “We really hope that people in our community and other faculty members, students who can’t take the class for whatever reason, parents, can kind of just tune in and see what’s going on,” Doak said.

The directors have high hopes for the future of the class. “We hope [students] will build a common theological language and network that would last throughout their college careers,” Payne said. “Maybe they’d even discern a calling, or find a major that they like in the process.”

Doak stated, “I think we want to have a place where this department can gather together and say, ‘This is the Christian message, and here is the intellectual structure, the scriptural structure, that makes that alive and real.’”

Jessica Daugherty