CALL Courses: Spring 2026
All Spring 2026 courses run April 6 – May 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. Registration for Spring 2026 opens on February 6.
- Justice in the Prophets with Dr. Mónica Rey
- The Diaconate with the Ven. Tim Spannaus, PhD
- Sacramental Theology with the Rev. Melissa Hartley, Ph.D.
- Introduction to Preaching with the Rev. Tripp Hudgins
- The Pauline Epistles with Fr. Laurent Okitakatshi, Ph.D.
- Cultivate, Theologize, Organize! Community Organizing Fundamentals for the Church with the Rev. Francisco García, Ph.D Registration for this class is closed
- History of Christian Monasticism with Dr. Liza Anderson
Justice in the Prophets
This course is a survey course of prophets in Ancient Israel and the texts of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Studying the language of the prophetic corpus, we will explore the historical, social, and political contexts of the writings and their meanings for the intended audience and readers today. By the end of the semester, students will be able to:
- Define what it means to be called a prophet.
- Identify and understand who the former and pre-exilic prophets are, what they did in their various contexts, and how they functioned.
- Explain the focus of the messages of the prophets,
- Explore the relevance of the prophetic writings for the reader today.
Special attention will be paid to feminist and womanist perspectives on prophecy, prophets, and the prophetic. The course will also consider what it means for each of us to be prophetic in this historical moment.
Instructor: Dr. Mónica I. Rey (she/her/ella) is Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Gammon Theological Seminary. Her teaching specialty is in courses that tackle religion, gender, sexuality and violence. Rey is especially interested in teaching contextual interpretations of the Bible (especially from feminist and LGBT+ perspectives). As a Latina of Peruvian descent, Rey has an immense appreciation for different points of view, perspectives, and epistemologies. Her research focus navigates multiple worlds at these intersections. This is also reflected in her pedagogy which at its heart is intersectional, experiential, and embraces multiple diverse canons.
A feminist biblical scholar with a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University (2024), her research is primarily concerned with gender, genocide, and the Hebrew Bible (and its afterlives). Rey also completed a graduate certificate from BU in Women’s and Gender Studies and took part in the MIT GCWS Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women’s and Gender Studies which is an outstanding resource for research and collaboration in areas related to WGS. She has published on the law of the foreign female captive (Deut 21:10–14) as a case of genocidal rape in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Rey has a peer-reviewed journal article forthcoming on the use of just war theory in interpretations of Deuteronomy, as well as a chapter in the edited volume The Bible and Violence (Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2026) titled, “Genocidal Language in the Hebrew Bible: A Reappraisal,” and a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Hebrew Bible, Gender and Sexuality, “Yefat To’ar in Deuteronomy 21:10–14 and the Role of Beauty in Warfare.” Her first book, Gendering Genocide in the Hebrew Bible is forthcoming with Routledge in the book series Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible. Rey is a 2023-2024 Charles E. Scheidt Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Faculty Fellow and currently co-chair of the Feminist Studies in Religion CoLaboratory.
The Diaconate
This course explores the history, development, and current and evolving understanding of the diaconate, especially in the Anglican tradition, without neglecting the contributions of other Christian traditions. Beginning with the Ordination of a Deacon, and then continuing through changes in understanding of Diakonia, and changes in ministry context, the course challenges the participant to examine and reflect on their call to the diaconate and the contexts in which they will serve. The deacon’s roles in the church and the world require a deep understanding of the church, tradition, scripture and their own gifts for ministry.
Instructor: Tim Spannaus is Archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan and retired deacon of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit. Tim has been a deacon since 1996, having been raised up and serving in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and then being received into the Episcopal Church in 2006 He previously served at St. John’s, Royal Oak (MI), where he initiated the Stephen Ministry program and Education for Ministry. He continues mentoring EfM, with participants from across the diocese.
Tim also teaches The Diaconate and A Diaconal Hermeneutic; both are CALL courses.
He is retired from Wayne State University, where he was Sr. Lecturer and Program Coordinator of Learning Design and Technology until 2020. Tim served as convenor of the Vocational Development and Lifelong Learning Task Force of the Association for Episcopal Deacons in the development of Competencies for Deacons, 2017 (Rev. 2018). He earned his PhD from Wayne State. He is former president and a Fellow of the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi).
He also has served the diocese and the Episcopal Church in a variety of roles relating to formation and Safe Church, Safe Communities, including the Task Force to Develop Safe Church Policies and Training. He serves on and was formerly chair of the diocesan Commission on Ministry and participated in the revision of the process for ordination, including developing competencies and formation plans for those seeking ordination. He co-leads the cohort of locally formed seminarians in the Diocese of Michigan.
Tim is married to Collette Pariseau and has two sons and two grandsons. He enjoys baking, woodworking and road trips.
Sacramental Theology
This course will explore sacramental theology through the lens of the Episcopal Church and, specifically, how the sacraments are encountered through the liturgies of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The majority of the course will focus on the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, but the other sacramental rites will be examined. By the end of this course, students will have gained a general knowledge of the sacraments and the theology that defines them.
Instructor: The Rev. Dr. Melissa Hartley is Priest Associate at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Huntsville, Alabama, where she oversees liturgy and adult Christian formation. She also teaches at The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, in the ACTS (Alternative Clergy Training in Sewanee) program at the School of Theology. Melissa is an Episcopal priest originally from Atlanta and has served parishes in Georgia, New York, New Jersey, and Tennessee. Most recently, she was the Senior Associate University Chaplain at Sewanee. She holds the following degrees: B.A., University of the South; M.Div., S.T.M., General Theological Seminary; Ph.D. (Liturgical Studies), Drew University.
Introduction to Preaching
“If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?” ― Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
What does it mean to preach in the 21st century as institutional vitality and notions of authority and expertise continually shift and change? In this course, students will explore the sacramentality of preaching, prepare a sermon for Holy Week, and preach that sermon in their parish. Through online conversations, course reading, brief writings, and sermon evaluation, we will begin to answer such questions as “What is a sacramentality of preaching?” “What is an Anglican theology of preaching?” and “Who am I to preach?”
Instructor: Rev. Tripp Hudgins is an ordained baptist minister who has made the journey of returning to the Episcopal Church. He taught Homiletics at CDSP as both the Bogard Scholar and an adjunct instructor. He holds degrees from University of Richmond (‘92 BA, Religion), Seabury-Western (‘04 MDiv, MTS, Liturgics), and Graduate Theological Union (‘23, MA, Liturgy, Ethnomusicology). Tripp is a native of Virginia currently living in Richmond with his wife and their son as part of the Richmond Hill community. Richmond Hill is a monastery and urban retreat center in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond. Tripp serves as the Pastoral Director.
The Pauline Epistles
This course will explore Paul’s letters in their respective historical, social and cultural contexts. In addition, we will study the theology that governed these letters as pastoral interventions into various situations. We will highlight certain themes and assess their relevance for ministry, evangelism, and discipleship today.
Instructor: My name is Laurent Okitakatshi, the instructor Introduction to the New Testament. I am a Roman Catholic Priest and I hold a doctorate in Biblical Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. The New Testament is my primary area of concentration with a particular interest in the letters of St. Paul. I am the author of “Beloved Brother or Slave? Rethinking Koinonia in Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Eugene, OR: Cascade Library of Pauline Studies, 2025.”
Ordained for the diocese of Tshumbe, I am originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Central Africa). English is my second academic language and my fourth spoken language after Otetela, Lingala, and French. I’ve been an instructor for the CALL Program since 2020 and I teach courses on Introduction to the New Testament, The New Testament Parables, and The Pauline Epistles. I am also the professor of New Testament Studies at St. John Paul II Theological Seminary in Lodja (Democratic Republic of Congo).
Cultivate, Theologize, Organize! Community Organizing Fundamentals for the Church
Registration for this class is closed
This course aims to develop skills, tools, and theoretical/reflective capacity for engaging in neighborhood and community ministries from a holistic and theologically-grounded community organizing lens. The course will draw on case studies and center the role of theological reflection, spiritual practices and formation, and the Episcopal tradition as essential aspects of a faith-rooted community organizing approach to organizing in congregational and other ministerial contexts.
By the end of this class, students will begin to
- think about community-based ministry from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining theological, scriptural, and pastoral views with social analysis;
- begin exploring and practicing relational community organizing tools and approaches in a diversity of congregational and other ministerial contexts; and
- integrate course-based learning with the praxis of ministry and other experiences/contexts outside of the classroom, including ministerial identity in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition(s).
Instructor: Professor García is an Episcopal priest with over a dozen years of parish ministry experience and twenty-five years as an organizer, educator, and leader in community, labor, faith, and academic settings. He completed his PhD in theological studies with a minor in ethics and action at Vanderbilt University. His doctoral project involved the development of grassroots, social movement-oriented ecclesiologies outside of formal church structures with a focus on Latine/immigrant faith and worker organizing contexts. In addition to this community organizing for ministry course, Professor García has taught courses in Systematic Theology, Moral Theology, and Ministry in a Global City for the M.Div. Program; and has taught Theology and Ethics: Liberation Perspectives and Praxis; and Theology and Justice at the Intersections: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality for the CALL program.
History of Christian Monasticism
This course offers an overview of the history and significance of Christian monasticism and asceticism in its varied manifestations: the domestic asceticism of consecrated virgins and the Syriac Sons and Daughters of the Covenant, the desert fathers and mothers in Egypt, and the development of coenobitic monastic communities exemplified by Pachomius and Benedict. We will then look at the new forms of vowed religious life that developed in medieval and early modern Europe, including Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and the Sisters of Charity. Particular attention will be paid to the revival of vowed religious life in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We will conclude by looking at Benedictine oblate Dorothy Day and her witness of living the Benedictine charism as a layperson in the world. The course will combine primary source readings on spirituality from the major figures in these traditions with lectures situating them in their wider historical context. In addition to surveying the many forms that monasticism has taken in the past, we will reflect together on the role and relevance that vocations to voluntary poverty and shared possessions, vowed celibacy, or life in intentional community might have in the Episcopal Church today.
Instructor: Dr. Liza Anderson has been a member of the Episcopal Church since her baptism as an undergraduate, and she is active in Episcopal Church governance and churchwide leadership. She holds degrees from Swarthmore College, Trinity College Dublin, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale University, and has held faculty positions at Episcopal Divinity School, Claremont School of Theology, and General Theological Seminary. Liza is a past president of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, the associate editor of the Anglican Theological Review, and a member of the Anglican-Oriental Orthodox International Commission. She has been involved nationally and internationally in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, has taught at seminaries in Iraq and Ukraine, and has studied Islam and Muslim-Christian dialogue in Yemen, Egypt, and Morocco. She lives in central Minnesota, where she shares life and prayer with the Roman Catholic sisters of Saint Benedict’s Monastery, but during the 2025-2026 academic year she is a research fellow at the Angelicum Institute for Ecumenical Studies in Rome.
