07/31/2026
Our CALL courses registration is open for Fall 2026!
CALL offers a selection of seven-week online continuing education courses for laypeople and clergy. Courses are online and fully asynchronous, each week a separate interactive lesson featuring text-based discussion with your classmates and instructor. The Fall 2026 session runs September 7– October 25. The 2026–2027 reduced course rate is $150.
Register here: https://cdsp.edu/call-courses-fall-2026/
Our fall courses include:
Gender, Sexuality and the Bible, Dr. Mónica I. Rey
This course examines the Old Testament as one of the most influential texts shaping Western and colonial constructions of s*x, gender, race, and s*xuality. Students will develop skills in close textual analysis while engaging critical theoretical frameworks that open new ways of understanding these categories within biblical literature. While many enter with assumptions about what the Old Testament says regarding s*xuality, gender roles, and identity, this course challenges those assumptions through feminist, q***r, trans, and Womanist interpretive hermeneutics. We will analyze key texts alongside their historical receptions and contemporary afterlives.
Pastoral Care with Marginalized Communities, The Rev. Sarah Kye Price, PhD
This course focuses on practical and theological foundations for engaging authentically and meaningfully with communities where life experiences, identities, and/or demographic characteristics reveal a social divide that can preclude others (and ourselves) from recognizing their full humanity. Readings and other course content integrate literature from social science, practical theology, and personal narratives of experience. The course begins with personal and theoretical reflections on privilege, power and difference and then considers approaches to authentic community engagement. Pastoral care in this framework honors the full humanity and unique experiences of individuals while simultaneously recognizing the social challenges of stigma, oppression, privilege and unconscious bias which can affect the quality and effectiveness of the helping relationship. Participants will engage with readings, mini-lectures, case studies and ethnographic narratives and discuss methods and approaches for collaborative, partnered ministry when engaging with marginalized communities. Individual reflections and participation in a group book project are essential components of this course.
Ancient and Medieval Christianity in Asia and Africa, Dr. Liza Anderson
This course offers an introduction to the histories and theologies of Christianity in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa before the period of European colonialism. We will explore diverse cultural contexts including Ethiopia, Nubia, Egypt, India, the Silk Road, and China. Narrative lectures offering historical context will accompany primary source texts and examples of art, liturgy, and music. The aim of this course is to help us tell a truer story about the history of Christianity, since most of us have probably been shaped by a narrative that emphasizes the Western trajectory of the church. This broadening of perspective is not merely an exercise in archaeology, but a way of healing the imagination, which has been distorted if we instinctively think of medieval Christianity as exclusively European. This renewed appreciation for the diversity of the pre-colonial Christian past can free us to imagine new possibilities for post-colonial Christianity in the future.
English Mysticism, The Rev. Daniel London, PhD
This course will cover English mystics from 1000 to 1600, from St. Anselm to Lancelot Andrewes. Students will practice and reflect upon the spiritual disciplines described and prescribed in primary texts (Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations, Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship, The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Julian of Norwich’s Showings) in order to better understand the texts in light of their experiences and their experiences in light of the texts. Their reflections will focus on the following two questions: How does the text inform my experience of the spiritual practice? And how does my experience of the spiritual practice inform and deepen my reading of the text? In this class, which will include both lecture and discussion, students will gain a broad knowledge of the various theologies and spiritualities that formed and eventually produced the distinctive flavor of Anglicanism and its many offshoots.
The Diaconal Hermeneutic, The Ven. Tim Spannaus, PhD
At their ordinations, deacons are charged, “to interpret to the church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.” This charge assumes that deacons have a particular charism and vocation to perceive, derive and share meaning from the world, the church, Holy Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer. Enabling the deacons’ prophetic voice, this course helps the student understand their own social location, ways of finding meaning in culture, society,, and the arts, and then ways of sharing and expanding on meaning with others. Using the hermeneutical circle and other approaches, students will experiment with ways of finding deep meaning for themselves.
Also offered:
-Orientation to the Old Testament with Dr. Donn Morgan
-Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer with the Rev. Melissa Hartley, PhD
-Global Anglicanism with the Rev. John Kater, PhD
-Facing Choices: Ethics in the Anglican Tradition with the Rev. Austin Leininger, PhD
All Fall 2026 courses run September 7 – October 25. Courses are online and fully asynchronous, each week a separate interactive lesson featuring discussion with your classmates and instructor. The public course cost is $150. Or visit: https://cdsp.jenzabarcloud.com/CE_Intro1.cfm Gender, Sexuality...
