This course will consider broadly and in narrative fashion the existence of religious life and religious communities in the history of the church, primarily in the West. From the early days of the church, intentional communities have existed. Eventually, communities of desert monastics arose and monastic rules developed. Religious life came to be ordered in particular ways, eventually in what we would think of as religious orders with governing structures, but also in the form of confraternities and lay movements. This course will explore instances of religious life - lay, vowed and clerical - from the deserts to the cities, from patristic times through the medieval, modern, and postmodern periods. The course will consider not only arrangements and institutions, but also the spirituality of various groups and the attempt to follow Christ more closely by Christian women and men throughout time.
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