Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Fall Classes Connected to the Chapel


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This semester, students are taking four courses with ties to the Chapel.

Undergraduates are taking a house course connected to the Chapel, Religion Across Boundaries; house courses, which are half-credit classes, are taught by fellow undergraduate students with a faculty supervisor. Undergraduate and graduate students are also enrolling in the half-credit Chapel Choir course. Divinity School students are enrolled in Introduction to Christian Preaching with Chapel Dean Luke Powery and The Role and Function of Music in Corporate Worship with Chapel Music Director Zebulon Highben.

Students who wish to enroll in one of the courses should sign up through the registrar. Read more below about each course.

Religion Across Boundaries

Senior Renata Starostka, a member of the Chapel’s Eruditio et Religio living-learning community, is teaching Religion Across Boundaries, a house course that helps students learn interreligious dialogue skills and articulate their own beliefs in a pluralist world. Religious Studies Professor Laura Lieber is supervising the course and the Chapel’s director of Religious Life, the Rev. Kathryn Lester-Bacon, is helping to organize it. Students participating in Eruditio et Religio take the course as part of their living-learning community and will build on the online discussions they had over the summer on spiritual practices, religious contexts, and meaning-making during the coronavirus pandemic. Other students are welcome to take the class as well.

Chapel Choir

Taught by Chapel Music Director Dr. Zebulon Highben, this course is for undergraduate and graduate students in the Chapel Choir. Typically, the class includes choir rehearsals, singing in worship services, and performing in concerts. A brief audition is required.

Introduction to Christian Preaching

The Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, who is an associate professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School in addition to being dean of Duke Chapel, teaches this course on the development of a theology of preaching and methods of sermon construction. It includes preaching in class and receiving constructive criticism from instructors and peers. In the class, students focus on the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the power for the ministry of preaching and listen with discernment to the Scriptures as the source and norm of the sermon.

The Role and Function of Music in Corporate Worship

In this course, Dr. Zebulon Highben, director of Chapel Music and also an associate professor of the practice of church music at the Divinity School, presents the history of the use of music in Christian worship, including the role of the Psalms and the many genres of Christian hymnody. The class also studies practical concerns such as worship planning, clergy-musician relationships, and the varied functions of music within a liturgical framework.