Challenging Christian Nationalism
An online short course
Taught by Drew Strait, PhD
Dates: Oct. 22 鈥� Dec. 9, 2025
Early registration deadline: Oct. 1, 2025
Final registration deadline: Oct. 15, 2025
This six-week short course offers pastors, leaders and laypersons a community-building space for imagining how faith communities can challenge Christian nationalism. The course goes beyond offering definitions of Christian nationalism to discussing how to mobilize faith communities to confront Christian nationalism鈥檚 threat to democracy, human security and the church鈥檚 public witness. Drawing on the disciplines of biblical studies, theology and peace studies, we will explore how nonviolent resistance in the way of Jesus can counter extremist narratives that are radicalizing Christians around the world.
The course covers topics such as political idolatry; polarization and violent extremism in the time of Jesus; biblical authoritarianism; nonviolent civil resistance; and the latest public polling on Christian nationalism in the U.S. It offers strategies for dialogue and concrete examples of how to animate the whole life of Jesus to disrupt political extremism.聽
The primary text for the course will be Drew鈥檚 book, (Cascade Books, 2024).
Drew will host live video meetings once a week during this short course. Attending the live meetings is not required to take the course, and the meetings will be recorded for those who can鈥檛 attend.
The course is designed for students of various backgrounds, whether or not they have completed graduate-level work.
Cost
- Early registration: $300 US per course
- Regular registration: $350 US per course
- Anabaptist Short Course Bundle: $995 US total for four courses!*
- Global South Scholarships are available. .
- Participants should expect to pay for one or two textbooks.
* ‘Challenging Christian Nationalism’ and ‘Biblical Interpretation Across the Two Testaments‘ are not included in the Anabaptist Short Course Bundle.
Short course details
How short courses work
Courses are offered online and last six weeks each. Short course students聽are expected to complete coursework on their own and post to an online forum weekly. Short courses also include optional, weekly, live video conversations with instructors. These conversations are recorded for class members who cannot attend.
Short courses explore topics like Anabaptist history, biblical study,聽spiritual and ethical issues, and more. These non-credit聽courses involve readings from textbooks and online articles and include written forum discussion. You won’t receive a grade, but readings and discussion are comparable to seminary-level work, and professors assume you have critical thinking skills and some previous academic study.
Online course requirements
You will need:
- High speed internet access
- Access to a computer with a web browser, a word processing program, and a PDF file reader (such as Adobe Reader)
- An email account
- Basic computer skills
- One or two textbooks selected by the professor, available from a web source
Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are available. Upon the completion of course requirements, you can earn 2.4 CEUs. However, no academic credit is awarded and these courses do not meet any requirements in the 香蕉影视 Master of Divinity or Master of Arts programs of study.
Before you register
Online learning is not for everyone. To help evaluate your skills and abilities to benefit from an online course, please follow provided by Washington Online. Question 5 asks about available time to devote to the course. Short courses require, on average, 5-10 hours per week rather than the 10-15 hours mentioned in the quiz. With this in mind, we encourage you to take the quiz and find out whether you are a good candidate for online learning.
Refunds
Before the early registration deadline, cancellations will be refunded, less US$50. After this date, cancellations will be granted credit, less US$50, toward a future short course within one year. Refund credits must be requested within one week of the beginning of the event.