Can MOOCs be Christian?  That’s the question explored in a recent Christianity Today post.

When Harvard University offered a free-online course in early Christianity, a “massive open online course” or MOOC, so many people took part it nearly blew up the system.  As instructor Laura Nasrallah related in HuffPo,

The day the course launched was astonishing—like drinking from a fire hose. The edX discussion threads couldn’t handle the amount of people who were commenting, and crashed and slowed down. More people participated on Poetry Genius that day than ever before—the apostle Paul beat out Beyonce!

As the CT post explores, some Christian universities are exploring the MOOC model.  But there is some disagreement about the value of the platform.  Could this be a great way to reach more students with the Christian higher-ed message?  Or does this do violence to the need for face-to-face personal contact in a truly Christian intellectual environment?

Christian universities aren’t the only folks struggling with the notion of the MOOC.  As we’ve noted, a variety of conservative intellectuals have also disagreed about the desirability of MOOCing.  Some free-market types have salivated over the notion of bureaucracy-free, low-cost, open colleges.  Other conservatives have worried that MOOCs will abandon the traditional element of character-formation in higher education.

Harvard University has not been a bastion of conservative Protestantism since at least 1805.  Nevertheless, its course on early Christianity seems to be one of the most popular academic experiences of the MOOC era.