How I Created My Own Seminary Syllabus | A Christian Witch Talks Theology
- Sara Raztresen
- Jan 15
- 7 min read
You know, it's really not that bad.
Alright, listen. While I've now written a good couple books on Christian Witchcraft with my friend Mimi (the latest being Discerning Christian Witchcraft, which you should check out!), and while I've certainly done plenty of my own independent research on the topic, I find myself still wondering sometimes: should I go back to school? Should I get a seminary degree? Become "officially" educated? Because a Virgo's biggest kryptonite is tidy, neat, and legitimate learning schedules that come with an instititutional stamp of approval, don't you know—and that means that for all my reading, all my learning, and all my consulting with my friends who did go to seminary, I must admit that I find myself staring Imposter Syndrome square in the face. Much more often than I'd like to admit.
After all, wouldn't a seminary education shut all the critics up who say I'm just interpreting the Bible wrong? As a Christian Witch, I only get accused of "twisting the Word" a dozen times a week, so surely if I did have some fancy piece of paper from a shiny seminary, that'd make these folks realize that I'm not so out of step as they think, right?
(By all means, laugh. I've seen the comments left on the pages of official priests, and they're no better than the comments left on my page. Turns out that seminary education doesn't mean anything to people who have gone to Google University and are convinced they know better just because they can read an out-of-context verse that came up in an AI overview.)
Still, you know, I find myself wondering if I should go to seminary, but often, I give up on the idea—because it requires a lot of time and money that I just don't have to spare. As it is, I've run myself quite thin between my many jobs and responsibilities, and the money we're saving right now is for a house (one day), not more schooling. However, that doesn't stop me from just wanting that knowledge on principle. As a college professor myself, I know how to get that knowledge, and I was thinking maybe a few of you would want it, too—or at least want to know how I went about creating a mock syllabus for the spring semester in case you had another topic you wanted to look into.
So let me tell you!
The Method for Finding My "Seminary Classes"
Now, anyone who has ever navigated a university website knows that it can be an unholy pain in the ass to figure out exactly what a degree entails. Sometimes the pages to the course requirements are obvious and easy, and sometimes the pages are hidden under thirty separate links as hidden subpages, which is infuriating. But nonetheless, no matter, what, the first step is to identify colleges with good programs, and then check out their course requirements.
Step 1: Identify good schools for your degree of choice and find their course requirements
For me, with a seminary education in mind, that meant checking out schools with notable philosophy and religious studies programs. I'd consider what I know to be somewhat at master's level, and in fact I'm sure I could go for an advanced degree like that since I already have a BFA in English, so I was looking more at master's programs from Yale Divinity School, Providence College, and Boston University, but if you're looking for bachelor's level courses, starting there would probably be better.
Still, I looked at all of these schools, and I found their course requirements. On those requirements, they'll tell you things like:
How many classes you need overall (credit hours)
What types of classes are required (typically the first ones you take: foundational, entry level stuff that situates you before getting into broader topics
How many of each class you need per "cluster" (as there are certain areas you need to learn about, but there can be multiple different topics or subdivisions within those areas: for instance, early church history could have 5 class options, some of which focus on St. Augustine, others on other church fathers, etc.)
Once you've figured out those classes, the next step is the most important: finding materials.
Step 2: Find out what materials each course's professor recommends
This part is pretty fun. What you're gonna wanna do is open up the bookstore of whatever college you're looking at and search by major and course number (ex: REL 1400). Not every course will be running every single semester, so maybe there are some classes that sound pretty cool, but aren't listed; that's okay. Either shelve that topic for another time when it is running, or look into other classes that seem interesting.
When you run all your courses through the bookstore, it'll tell you what books, if any, professors recommend. Not every course has books attached to it, unfortunately; these are courses that professors likely hand out their own materials and printed stuff for, or provide articles and the like. However, generally, a lot of these classes will tell you exactly what edition of a specific book they want, and you can use that information (author, edition, ISBN) to find it on your own—and often for a lot cheaper than college bookstores sell them for.
From here, now, we have to actually piece together a semester's worth of work, which is its own battle. As a professor, and a former college kid, I can give you a bit of insight as to how that works.
Step 3: Organize your resources into reasonable class workloads
Now, I dunno about you, but when I was in school, I could take up to 18 credit hours per semester. If each class is about 4 credit hours, that's 4 classes (16 credits), and if each class is about 3 credit hours, that's 6 classes (18 credits). 1 credit hour is the equivalent to about 1 hour spent physically in the class, from how it works with my teaching and my own experience as a student (so when I was an undergrad, if I had a 4 credit course, I could expect to sit my ass in a chair twice a week for 2 hours at a time, or, as happened one semester, once a week for 4 fucking hours straight; that sucked).
Nonetheless, you might think of it that way: one semester is about four "classes." What "classes" are you taking? Figure that out, then get two books per class. If your chosen courses only have one book per class, then it's time to hit Google and see what books scholars recommend on the topic you're looking at. Put those together, and then figure out their page counts.
Once you have your page counts, divide the pages of each book by 15 weeks. Each real semester lasts about 14-15 weeks, so that'll be the amount of time you have to get through the material. Don't worry if you have 8 books that are a bit chunky; trust me that when you break it down like this, it actually gets way less daunting, and you'll end up only needing to read about 20 pages of each book per week (generally); that's not much. At least, my English major ass doesn't believe it's that much.
My Seminary Plan for Spring 2026
So what does my seminary plan look like this semester? Well, let me run it down for you. My four "classes" this semester are:
Biblical Hebrew 101
Old Testament Interpretation 101
Introduction to Christian Ethics
Foundations in Christian Theology
The first two of these, I'm splitting in half, as I'm not trying to cram an entire language into 15 weeks, and because the programs I looked at likewise suggest splitting it into two semesters. Moreover, some of the books in here are huge (like that Intro to Hebrew Bible; that's 660 pages long! No way I'm doing all that in one semester; I'm splitting it into two pieces to be more manageable).
With college courses, the thing is that colleges aren't trying to kill their students. It may feel like it sometimes with the amount of work that gets piled on in four courses, but the reality is that colleges understand the reality of students: having clubs, sports, and oftentimes jobs to work to pay for rent or other necessities. It's not realistic to expect a student to be able to devote 100% of their time to their studies, even if that's the true ideal, so the workload actually isn't ever as crazy as it seems.
Because for me, all of these books and all of this reading amounts to, including the Hebrew lessons, about ~130pgs a week? Add some Bible in there extra, and that's ~150pgs? That's it. Just a little ~150pgs a week. Divide that by even 5 days a week, and that's only 30pgs a day. That's nothing! Trust me when I say I didn't go through two English degrees just to not be able to read a measly 30pgs a day.
And breaking it down like that makes it seem way less daunting than I thought it'd be before putting this plan together, so... here's to a seminary education all on my own, I guess! A seminary education for a fifth of the price and way less stress and time constraint with assignments and whatever else. Maybe I'll write some blogs about what I've read to reflect and digest the material more, but otherwise, that's that.
What major or area of knowledge would you want to explore this way? ♥
Sara Raztresen is a Slovene-American writer, screenwriter, and Christian witch. Her fantasy works draw heavily on the wisdom she gathers from her own personal and spiritual experience, and her spiritual practice borrows much of the whimsy and wonder that modern society has relegated to fairy-and-folktale. Her goal is to help people regain their spiritual footing and discover God through a new (yet old) lens of mysticism.
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