Catholicism and Culture Minor

In the late second and early third centuries Christian theologians debated the relationship of religious belief and contemporary culture. Many Christians sided with Origen who believed that Christians could use contemporary culture both to understand and defend their belief. Since then Christianity in its Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches has had a symbiotic relationship with the cultures in which  they exist. Changes in culture have resulted in changes in church organization and development of Christian dogma. Developments in dogma and church organization have affected the development of culture. The result of these interactions is that the various manifestations of Catholicism as they appear in different places, times, and cultures are shaped by those very intersections.

The subject of the minor is, therefore, Catholicism and its various cultural embodiments across time and across the entire world. Students in this minor will examine the intersection of theological ideas and human culture.