In this module you will reflect theologically and professionally on contemporary chaplaincy and pastoral care, drawing on inherited models and approaches, but considering and evolving models of chaplaincy and pastoral care for today and for the future. The aim of the module is to enable you to consider how chaplaincy/pastoral care practice addresses, and is shaped by: different faith and belief traditions; the context in which chaplaincy/pastoral care is situated (such as the hospital, prison, workplace, etc. where you serve); and contemporary religious, spiritual, pastoral and moral needs.
View the full module definitionThis module is primarily designed for students on the Chaplaincy and Pastoral Care pathway to give them the opportunity to work in and reflect on practical contexts and situations of pastoral care. It will provide students the opportunity to be supervised working within a particular placement context and to develop skills suitable for pastoral and chaplaincy roles. It will engage students in developing appropriate theologically reflective approach to their own practice, and require them to critically evaluate their own pastoral development. This module will work therefore collaboratively between classroom based learning, and a placement set up with tutor support in an appropriate pastoral context, such as a parish, school, prison or health-care setting. The setting will have a designated supervisor, and student, supervisor and tutor will establish a memorandum of understanding to guide the student’s placement based work. Teaching will therefore focus on theological reflection and pastoral skills, as well as reflection on practice within the classroom context. This will involve critical engagement with literature on pastoral practice, and concepts and example of theological reflections. Students will also be expected to bring example experiences from their placement for small group discussion and reflection. The Pastoral Placement module can be used by Healthcare Chaplains to support their application for registration with the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplains. It is currently envisioned that this will be taught synchronously (either face-to-face or blended learning) concurrently with the work-based learning. Students will be required to pass appropriate checks such as the DBS/CRB Check prior to the beginning of their placement and to complete the ARU Ethical Approval process prior to beginning their placement.
The Major Project module enables students to demonstrate their ability to articulate meaningful questions within the area of their course. It encourages students to draw systematically on the knowledge and understanding they have already established in their taught modules and requires them to take a further critical step by analysing the contributions of major texts and thinkers, relating them to the area concerned. To this end, as independent, reflective learners, students will identify a theological question and design a method of investigation, showing it to be consistent with the epistemological and methodological assumptions of their approach. For some students this will include consideration of issues of research ethics. The student will then take a constructive role by reflecting on the results of their investigation in order to contribute to understandings of the particular theological question in play, potentially shaping conceptual or practical approaches for the future, while acknowledging the limits of their investigation. Through supervision students will be challenged and supported to engage critically with diverse viewpoints, develop their own analytical perspective and to communicate their findings effectively. NB: Students undertaking a Major Project module which includes elements of assessment based on research involving the collection of primary empirical data are required to comply with Anglia Ruskin’s ethical approval requirements. Students are required to submit evidence of passing the LMS-based ethics training course with their application.
View the full module definitionThis module will enable students to explore the history of pastoral theology and the practices of pastoral care in a variety of Christian traditions. It will uncover ways in which these dimensions are now in dialogue with multi-cultural, multi-faith and non-religious settings and insights. It will see some of the ways in which social science thinking and practice has entered into critical dialogue with established ecclesial practices and understandings. Participants will be expected to contribute their own experiences, practice and contexts into the emerging and developing conversation surrounding contemporary pastoral theology as a discipline and its outworking in Church, chaplaincy and wider society today. The aim of this module is that it enables participants to discover and draw upon the variety of traditions and lines of thinking that have influenced the practices of pastoral care within the wider Christian community. As we uncover, through literature, case studies and personal experiences some of the ways in which these traditions engage in contemporary contexts of care, including but not limited to more formal chaplaincy settings (e.g. hospital, hospice, prison, etc.) we will see ways in which thinking and practice are evolving. It is not assumed that participants will currently be working within formal chaplaincies or will be holding public offices and roles within churches. But the lived experiences of everyone in the class of care giving and receiving care with and from others will be honoured as essential elements in the discussions that develop throughout this module.
View the full module definitionThis module is designed to introduce students to research within children’s spirituality. It will provide students with background knowledge, introduce students to current research and consider what supports and hinders children’s spirituality. The module will encourage students to consider and evaluate their own contexts in the light of research into children’s spirituality. It is currently envisaged that this course will be taught by blended learning with face to face classroom sessions across five study days, or by distance learning with synchronous elements This module will be of particular interest to paediatric healthcare chaplains, teachers with responsibility for pastoral care in schools and pastoral workers within church settings with responsibilities for children’s outreach.
This module is designed to introduce students to the theory and practice of pastoral supervision. It will provide students opportunity to be supervised and to develop skills in supervision. It will engage students in developing an appropriate rationale for supervision for their own practice context and in critically evaluating their own skill development. The teaching methods in this module will involve critical engagement with the pastoral supervision literature as well as reflection on practice within the classroom context. Students will be required to bring live work to reflect on in triads as part of the course, and following the taught component, to supervise at least 2 individuals for a total of 6 sessions of 1 hour’s duration. They will also be required to be in supervision for this supervisory work with a course designated supervisor.
View the full module definitionThis module will consider the role and shape of Christian Spirituality in the contemporary world East and West. Students will examine the impact of secularisation on expressions of Christian spirituality East and West. The will consider the subjective turn within western society and the challenge presented to Christian spirituality by New Age and secular spiritualities. The idea spiritual capital and its place within wider societal evaluations of spirituality. They explore the emergence of spirituality as an important component of well-being within contemporary society (e.g., healthcare, education etc), and the challenges that such expressions of spirituality pose for Christian spirituality. They will also examine expressions of spirituality that respond to these challenges, e.g., emerging church, fresh expression of church, and contemporary critiques of these.
In this module students will study the relationship between spiritualty, materiality and the body. Examining early Christian, medieval and contemporary expressions of spirituality, student will explores how different expressions of Christian spirituality deal with issues such as gender, sexuality, race and the body. They will consider the place of erotic desire within Christian spirituality, how different traditions relate spirituality to healing, examine disability in the context of different expressions of spirituality, consider spiritual abuse, transhumanism, and contemporary discussions of spirituality and sport. Student will engage with theoretical material pertinent to these topics, including, feminist analysis of the body, sexuality, transgender identity etc., and pertinent materials from within race studies.
The Wesleyan family of churches is one of the most widely-spread Christian traditions. About 80 million people world-wide belong to Methodist and other Wesleyan churches. Many more are part of movements – such as Pentecostalism - influenced by this Wesleyan tradition. Distinctive Wesleyan approaches have developed in response to important issues of theology, spirituality and ethics. These include the ethical issues of slavery, economics and equality, a spirituality focussed on the concept of holiness and a theology that sets mission within a vision of the universality of God’s grace. This module will introduce students to a rigorous and critical study of these key aspects of the spirituality and theology of the Wesleyan tradition. In particular, it will help students connect traditional Methodist emphases with contemporary issues of faith and ethics.
This interactive, interdisciplinary module is designed to explore ethical concepts as they form, relate and critique a particular professional context, with a view to helping students develop their own foundations and tools for reasoning about their own professional ethics. Elements such as sources of ethical thinking and moral imagination; central concepts such as equality, common good, human dignity; the value and spirituality of work; the role of ethics in society, all contribute to the theological context in which a particular profession will be approached. Various case studies will be introduced throughout the course in order to address these questions and discuss the possibilities of responsible professional practice. It will draw on key philosophical and religious issues and ideas about being human, discussed in the shared core module ‘Human Condition’ in relation to professional practice. Each year a different professional context will be considered and it will include: market economy, prison service, healthcare, media and education.
View the full module definitionThis module examines the key texts and theories related to the study of interreligious understanding and interfaith relations (e.g. Buber's I and Thou and Institutional statements such as A Common Word, Nostra Aetate and Dabru Emet). The module will also focus on the real-world applications of these texts and theories, such as the importance of sacred land and space, asking students to examine their use in fostering interfaith encounter. This module adopts historical, theological and pastoral approaches to questions and debates around interfaith relations. The module will be divided into an introduction to the main themes, an exploration of the key texts and key moments in the interfaith encounter pertaining to the themes described above.
This module will introduce the students to different ways of thinking about moral matters and dilemmas within developmental moral psychology, normative philosophical ethics, neuroscience and art. It will inquire into such questions as ‘what is moral maturity?’; ‘what constitutes and conditions moral growth’?; ‘how to achieve moral excellence?’; ‘is good character enough for leading morally good life?’, ‘how do we assess difficult moral situations and prioritise goods?’; ‘how do we deal with moral incontinence or failure?’ In searching for answers the students will consult moral theories studied in the ‘Foundations of Ethics’ module. The students will be helped to think in an informed and structured way about the meaning, role and patterns of moral reasoning and decision making within deontology, teleology, and virtue ethics. Selected moral psychological theories of ego, cognitive and affective development as well as contemporary discussions within social and neuro psychology will also be studied, to offer a contained interdisciplinary element to this module. Other themes for investigation will include: ‘conscience and consciousness’, ‘moral luck’, ‘handling moral disagreements’, ‘arete and akrasia’ (excellence and weakness of the will). Assessment will be by one 6000-word assignment.
View the full module definitionThe module will focus on understandings of missiology in key historical contexts, aiming to provide an understanding of missiology as a theological discipline. It will being with a particular emphasis on the scriptural interpretations that lay foundations for diverse models of understanding mission, and the way in which these understandings shifted in patristic and modern periods. The motivations behind the practice of mission will be considered from a critical philosophical approach, and particular examples will be addressed through historical analysis. Building from this inter-disciplinary understanding of missiological conceptions and activities, the module will address particular questions such as the contrast between theologies of home and overseas mission. The module is directed primarily at developing critical and reflective thinking for those engaged in mission, or who have an interest in the topic. Students should therefore be prepared to think reflexively, as well as critically engaging with historical and theological readings of mission. The student must engage an enquiring mind, organise material critically be prepared to accept the challenge of others to thoughts, ideas and analysis, and present their own position cogently. Students will be required to receive material (choice of face-to-face and online), to submit regular formative writing and to prepare for, and engage in, seminars (face-to-face or online).
View the full module definitionSome of the main challenges to any theistic worldview arise from the sciences of our time. In the science-theology dialogue of the last half-century there have been attempts to meet these challenges in a variety of ways, and these attempts, together with their theological implications, will be explored in this module. There will be a particular focus on the concept of natural theology, the nature of scientific and theological language usage, theological anthropology, the Christian doctrine of creation, and the problem of divine action in a world characterised by obedience to laws of nature. The student will, by the end of the course, have a broad understanding of the recent history of the science-theology dialogue. The aim is to enable students to undertake an in-depth and sophisticated investigation of one or more key topics at the interface of theology and science. They will learn how to integrate theological thinking into their own spiritual formation and intellectual outlook on the world.
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