Dates: June 22rd to July 5th, 2025
Total Credits: 3
Application Deadline: May 31, 2025

Application
 

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

— Gettysburg Address , November 19, 1863

In this course, professors from the Templeton Honors College will help students grapple with the history of America as the continuing struggle to complete the “unfinished” work of the American Revolution. That work was rooted in the idea that “all men are created equal” and are granted certain unalienable rights by God their Creator that should be acknowledged and honored by the government. Capitalizing on its unique location just outside Philadelphia, the first capital of the United States, the course will examine three “revolutions” in American history: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. These three revolutions represent the ongoing work of the United States to live up to its founding ideals of freedom, dignity, and equality for all people. 

The course will include readings in primary sources, seminar discussions, and visits to places where these revolutions occurred, including Valley Forge National Park, Independence Hall, Carpenter’s Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Museum of the American Revolution, and the Gettysburg Battlefield and Cemetery. Students will stay on the campus of Eastern University, St. Davids, PA, home of the Templeton Honors College.

Dates: June 22nd to July 5th, 2025
Total Credits: 3
Application Deadline: May 31, 2025
Application

Two of the most memorable of Lewis’s short imaginative writings are The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters. Each book frames a moral vision of the Good, but the former invites us to look from the perspective of God or of Heaven, while the latter intentionally adopts the perspective of sinful humanity or of Hell. The result in both books is an extended consideration of perennial moral questions: What is it to be a free moral agent, in a world governed by a moral Lawgiver? How are Heaven and Hell related to each other? Does God create Hell? How does moral knowledge work? What is the relationship between the Good and rational argument? How do we save our lives by losing them, or lose them by saving them? How does the work of God in the incarnation transform our vision of the Good?

This is a course in moral theology, in which students will be guided not just by Lewis’s own winsome imagination, but also by some of the writings that inspired him: Milton’s portrait of Satan in Paradise Lost; excerpts from Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso; stories of Odysseus and Aeneas, ancient heroes traveling to the underworld. The aim is a coherent Christian vision of ourselves, our world, and our responsibilities in light of the comprehensive supremacy of God in Christ.

• The Examined Life: Knowledge, Wisdom, Virtue, Calling (Western Civilization)
• Coding with the Ancients (Coding/Technology Ethics)
• Citizenship: On Earth as it is in Heaven? (Western Civilization/Political Philosophy)
• Confronting Dragons: How Goodness Prevails in The Lord of the Rings (Theology/Literature)

To find out more about Summer Scholars Program, reach out to our Officer of Recruitment, Ellen Francis.