Tamar and David, Women and the Church: The Place of Her in Christian Ecumenism

Thanks to the Massachusetts Council of Churches and the United Church of Christ’s Commission on Ecumenism I am able to attend the World Council of Churches’ International Ecumenical Peace Convocation. I will do the best I can to report on some of the happenings while here in Kingston, Jamaica.

The theme for the first day of the convocation was “Peace in the Community.” Various presenters spoke, from a Jewish woman and a Palestinian Christian woman who live in Israel  to a presenter addressing Dalits in India. However, an issue that repeatedly arose throughout the day in my context was the general treatment of women.

At the beginning of the day in a biblical reflection group the passage of the rape of Tamar was examined (2 Samuel 13:1-22). It was interesting to note the relationships and exchange of discourse of Tamar and her brothers Amnon and Absalom. After her rape, she was told by her brother to keep quiet and even king David upon finding out the atrocity kept silent and exercised no justice.

Here we find a story of a woman wronged and then made to keep silent. This continues to occur all over the world in many different contexts. However, what interests me the most in this ecumenical context, is David’s role in this story. He, in a position of power and authority, decides to keep the matter quiet, not exposing the matter in attempt to maintain face and to apparently keep unity.In a position of authority one is often compelled to make such decisions- to do justice or let it slide for the sake of avoiding a schism. Of course we read in subsequent chapters that David’s decision to keep the matter quite was a grave mistake, and the cycle of familial violence perpetuated throughout his reign.

I propose that in this ecumenical context that the role of David in this narrative be read as the role of the Church. I am fortunate enough to belong to a tradition, an expression of Christianity, that upholds the gifts of women in every aspect, including ordination. However, for many denominations and Christian traditions the role of women is subordinated to the role of males. Is the penis the only conduit for the emission of the Holy Spirit? Did Jesus not come forth from the watery womb? Many people within these expressions of Christianity are questioning the validity of patriarchy. Jules Hart recently made a documentary, Pink Smoke Over the Vatican about the movement of women being ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Those that were ordained, were on June 3rd, 2008  issued an order of excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church. At the Peace Convocation, I had an opportunity to meet one such Roman Catholic priest. She was actually part of the film and is still presiding over masses and ministering in 3 locations in San Jose, California. In talking with her about Canon Law, she expressed Nelson Mandela’s notion that if a law is unjust it should be broken and that the Magisterium, or the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, needs to be taking into account sensus fidelium, or the sense of the faithful- how Catholics really feel on the issue.

Of course, I have only highlighted the Roman Catholic tradition, but many other expressions of Christianity are still exclusively patriarchal and participate unabashedly in the violent act of sexism. In yearning for the amplification of women’s voices all over the globe in their own contexts, yet denying them equal rights as a male to fulfill their call to ordination and enter into Church leadership, the Church is acting like David on the Tamar narrative: too concerned with face and power to act in the spirit of justice. As Christians, we should keep working ecumenically toward the amplification of women’s voices in all of our traditions. After all, as Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza traces in her,  Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology, Jesus is supremely connected with Sophia, and almost all within the academy can draw the connection of the Greek Sophia to the feminine portrayal of the divine in the Hebrew concept of Hokhmah. If the  priestly father is a representation of the Father, and we affirm the feminine as also being in the divine, where then is the priestly mother representation of the Mother? Jesus’ first apostle could easily be the Syro-Phonecian woman found in John 4, and women were first to proclaim the resurrection. Mary was also known as the apostle to the apostles. Women’s voices need to be fully legitimized within our traditions- as they once were at the beginning (there’s also archeological evidence of this presented in the documentary). If not, then we are no different than David or even Absalom, telling our sisters, mothers, and daughters to be quiet. I believe resolving this issue could go a long way in constructing peace in our communities and in allowing us to deal with the theology of ecology, because we need our fathers and our mothers, especially in addressing Mother Nature. Not to mention how it could help the Roman Catholic Church with a surmounting problem of supplying enough priests for its parishes and also in furthering reparations between the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Be quiet no more.

-mlwiser

Harding University and The State of the Gay

Nestled in the heart of Arkansas west of the mighty Mississippi, but east of the Ozarks lies a quaint Southern town with a big college atmosphere. It’s quiet and hot (the humid type!) during the summers, but is lively and thriving with youth during the fall and spring when classes are in session at Harding University, a 6,800+ liberal arts institution affiliated with the Churches of Christ. This is my alma mater. Four years of my life were spent in Searcy, Arkansas with daily chapel and nightly dorm roll calls. There was a lot to offer; the great outdoors, small classes, mentorship-style relationships with professors, close-knit friendships, what more could one ask for? Not much really, because I was a part of a little “Heaven on Earth.” An overwhelming majority of the students were white like me, Southern like me, Church of Christ like me, Republican like me, and heterosexual like me. It was the “Harding Bubble.”

I learned a lot, and I owe so much to my formation to this setting and institution. I was given a language here to worship, to be in awe, and to express immense gratitude for there being something rather than nothing. However, I now realize that the sectarian model of higher education that Harding University propagates had gravely failed me in preparing me to be a world citizen. Upon graduating, I remained deafened and blinded to all that was different from me. I knew so much about divinity, but I was hopelessly lost when it came to humanity. I had never learned to foster a relationship with any person that would potentially fall into a category of “other.” I majored in Psychology and Bible, which was taught from an evangelical, missions-oriented perspective. The only time I encountered a person of another faith was when I was introduced to other religions in order to learn more effective ways of evangelizing and converting the respected constituents. This same ethic was extrapolated and used in dealing with those that were of another sexuality; while there we tried to pray them into becoming like us. The lenses that Harding passes out with which to view the world are marred with binary oppositions.

Though I no longer subscribe to many of the tenets that would characterize this particular institution’s “flavor” of Christianity, I see why it gives meaning and structures one’s life. They attain the “greatest story ever told.” With good reason does one want to share the good news. Life is easily explained, quantified, and objectified when it is viewed as concrete, black and white- or even better with only one lens, one color. However, when monotheism is understood as monochromatic (here I credit a dear professor), and God and tradition are absolutized, the dynamism of God is chocked out, the living God is reduced to an idol that upholds ones own ideals and buffers one’s own insecurities. When does “in one accord” become life restricting??? What if there is dignity in diversity?

This week my alma mater has garnered national attention as can be viewed at The New Yorker Blog, Change.org, The Arkansas Times, the Advocate.com, the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, the New York Times and another graduate of Harding University, whose father is a professor there, Brett Keller who also writes about his experience as a past student at Harding and on what is currently transpiring on campus.

The administration has taken a strong stance to squelch out diversity and champion the dominant biblical interpretation with a sole brush of one dark color. It has publicly stated that, persons that do not identify as being heterosexual are offensive and demeaning and will not be permitted to convene openly. The administration has taken initiative in the past to allow for “safe spaces” where the LGBTQ community might meet publicly in what is called “Integrity Ministries.” Though I question the motives for creating these “safe spaces.” The administration made this statement in response to a student publication, The State of the Gay produced online by HU Queerpress. The school promptly had it blocked from accessing it via their campus while simultaneously calling for a cessation of bullying.

In the eyes of these students it is the university itself that is perpetuating the act of bullying.  Their statement as it appears on the site is as follows:

We are made up of a variety of queers with varying affiliations with Harding University. The State of the Gay is a self-published zine that aims to give voice to the experiences of gay and lesbian students at Harding. It is part storytelling, part religious and political critique, and partly a manifesto of hope for Harding’s future. The voices enclosed are the unedited and uncensored voices of individuals who are all too familiar with censorship. In truth, there is no single, identifiable goal of this zine other than to put our voices out there. Our aim is that through reading these pages you might become the ones to create the zine’s ending—to usher in its full political, social, and religious implications. We fully believe in the potential of communities to be free of oppression, hatred, and misunderstanding of queer individuals—will you help us create that reality at Harding and beyond?

Many of the contributors describe their situation as “stifling, suffocating; We’re at a place that hides us behind lies.” One exclaims that “[We are] suffocating in closets, have a fear of expulsion, don’t know which professors or even counselors to trust.”

Many people have rightly stated that Harding University is a private institution and that it has a right to teach its own values and discriminate against whomever it wishes. This is valid. However, I wish to address the fact that President Burks in using an umbrella statement found within its student handbook (pp. 11-12) concerning a zero-tolerance policy on sexual activity prior to marriage when addressing the student body in chapel this week is completely bypassing the issue here. An administration that attempts to sweep the effects of its moral policies under the rug and offers complementary “counseling” which to me is suspect of unethical practices and a “Christian Home” course to correct same-sex attractions, is pure cowardice. When stories of suicidal thoughts emerge in direct connection with an environment that an administration upholds and maintains, I would hope that said administration would act accordingly, especially in the wake of last year’s string of tragic events. Perhaps it is time that the entire denomination become conversant with mainstream Christianity to explore more holistic ways of dealing with the “sexual deviant.” Demonization and expulsion of this population of students is a lose-lose situation. Also I don’t recall anyone being expelled from Harding on account of dancing (I remember Spring Sing), which is also prohibited in the student handbook (p. 11). Though the institution that employs double standards in interpreting biblical passages would only be seen as being consistent with itself in employing that same method in exercising discretionary disciplinary actions.

Others may note the fact that matriculation into this university is non-obligatory and that students who do not wish to remain enrolled may simply transfer. Many do, however it is not easy for many others. For many this school and its affiliated denomination is all that their social network consists of. For others their parents will only allow them to attend a Church of Christ school, and for others they can only afford college with the monetary support that they receive from either their Church or family or both. So it is not as if simply changing schools is a feasible option for many that live in the shadows. One contributor laments,

“If we don’t want to lose everything we have ever known, then we must conform to their idea of what God wants for us.”

And so they seek to change the system from within. I’ve left this tradition, it took years. I know, I can relate. It’s not easy, one must relinquish a whole world.

Harding University is unabashedly discriminative and all the while it hides behind the Bible. However, what I see when I read the contributions of the students in The State of the Gay is so encouraging, because they are not trashing their tradition, they are not damning their religion to hell. They are knocking on its doors, they are intending to widen the door frames so that their native house of religion will accommodate them.  They are exclaiming that “we’re not going anywhere!” This is our house too and we can pray here as well (Isa. 56). We can co-create this story, life is big enough to share, and so is our God. Many of them meet their situation with profound theological insight and integrity, for example, “Z” states:

“Like Jacob at Bethel we must wrestle with God. When we triumph our name becomes Israel.”

What wonderful life-giving dynamic multivalent interpretations of Scripture they present. I admire their courage and integrity in demanding a full life and reminding all of us that we are all co-creating either hospitable or inhospitable indeed habitable or inhabitable environments. Viva la résistance!

”For You love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that You have made, for You would not have made anything if You had hated it.”  (Wis. 11:24)

Check out soulforce.org for some food for your soul. There is dignity in difference and diversity.

-mlwiser

Why is Interfaith Dialogue Important?

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Interfaith Movement, perhaps not. Either way, it should be important to you. Already in cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other large cities in the U.S., interfaith dialogue is occurring with such frequencies in universities, seminaries, and houses of worship that with quite certainty there will be mention of it in conversations at almost any lecture and brewing at any local coffee shop. Since 9/11 it has become almost blindingly apparent why interfaith dialogue is a critical component for the maintaing of civic and international stability. One’s faith traditions should not be asked to be separated from a person as they enter the civic arena. We must no longer claim ignorance towards the religious other, and we must no longer continue in a practice of monopoly of truths, hegemony of God, and assimilation of those that fall into our periphery. Interfaith dialogue does not exist for the sake of proselytizing others to one religion or one culture, nor does it exist to create a melting pot of syncretism where all religious identities are conflated into one. Not all religions are the same, there exist a myriad of differences, however there is dignity in difference, and this is a central tenet of the Interfaith movement.  Interfaith dialogue is an exercise of learning about those that are radically different from myself and my community and learning how to coexist with those persons that subscribe to different beliefs, customs, and worldviews other than my own. It also serves to strenghthen my own faith identity. It’s one thing to describe my beliefs to another Christian that already comes pre-wired with a set of similar vocabulary and understanding of social constructs to interpret what I am saying within similar parameters to how I myself perceive it. However, it is an entirely different game when I have to explain my faith to someone outside of my faith. I have to use different vocabulary, I am pushed to own what I am saying, search and find different forms to articulate particular truths. I am stretched. I am also amazed to learn similar teachings of say, for example, creation in Islam or Judaism, and consequently in that interaction of learning my own resources are then amplified.

Some have the luxury of embarking into Interfaith dialogue, due to their particular social location it is not necessitated. For example, myself, I had never met a person that was of a different faith than Christian until I was college-aged. The extent of my interfaith interactions was actually intra-faith- I had Catholic and Mormon friends.  Interfaith exists for me because I have earnestly searched it out. Though for many, in such cities as listed above, these interactions are compulsory due to close proximity with the religious other. However, the growing trend in the States is that in the very near future no city or town no matter the size will be immune to these types of interpersonal interactions; no person will have the luxury to elect to participate. I am pleased to learn that a documentary, Welcome to Shelbyville is soon to be released about a small rural town, Shelbyville, TN, just 30 minutes from where I grew up, chronicling the changing of the times, the influx of immigrants and with them the influx of their faiths and traditions and how this is affecting small-town America. It appropriately demonstrates the necessity for authentic interfaith dialogue at the religious as well as at the civic level. Interfaith Dialogue is no longer for just the spiritual guru’s, the academic, or the urban hipsters in the concrete jungles, it has now become a necessary tool for all; yes, even Joe the Plumber. Below is a trailer:

One thing to remember is that we’re all in this together. This year marks the 10th year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. I also believe that we as a collective society are at a watershed moment in our history, something big is brewing, we are learning how to live again, but differently, to construct bridges and not bombs, constructive conversations and not hateful diatribes that only build up some at the expense of a whole demographic. Relationships are the difference that make a difference. I am proud to be a Christian, to learn about others and how Christians are perceived through the lenses of different communities. I am privileged to be a part of this collective dialogue and to be a catalyst for change, to advocate a particular pluralism, to engage the religious and the non-religious alike, and to be a part of an amazing community that is writing on these very pertinent issues, State of Formation.

For further reading and more information about the interfaith movement see my Interfaith Resources.

-mlw

Going Home For Christmas (or The “I am From” Post)

The past several years have been full of change- c’est la vie, no? After returning to the States from Mexico, my wife and I stayed in the San Francisco area before moving to Boston in order to embark on my journey as a seminarian. The 2010 year was marked by not only the start of this journey but also the initiation of many new relationships and new ways of relating to the world about us. All in all 2010 was a challenging yet great year.

This past Christmas season was the first one to be spent back home with family in a few years. It was challenging to re-enter the South again for such an extended period of time (4 weeks) after reconstructing an identity that is seemingly diametrically opposed to the one I had growing up. We knew we were getting closer to where my parents live when on Interstate 81 it seemed as though every other radio station was broadcasting a flavor of Protestant evangelicalism that had “God” micromanaging every detail in their lives, down to their own bouts with cancer and heart attacks.

It was different this time though. It was different to visit my parents’ church. It was no longer my role to rebel against my parents’ ways or belief system. I was now the son that was coming in to visit family during the holidays. Though I still cringed as I sat through several sermons during our stay (this also happened during our stint in Texas), I no longer felt the impetus to impart some form of greater knowledge of the workings of the world to my past fellow congregants. Had I grown tired, weary, apathetic? Or did I no longer possess the same knowledge that I was so sure to have possessed all those years ago? Was I amused at observing a community that possessed such a certitude and concrete understanding of the innards of the cosmos after I had spent so long swimming in a pool of methodological agnosticism? Just as my flame to evangelize “the lost” was once extinguished, had the flame to provide a corrective to the theological system that I was nurtured in also waned? These are a few of many questions that were prompted by a brief return to my roots, to the tradition that nurtured me. I suppose these things happen when one relinquishes a system of beliefs and chooses to subscribe to another one. This process is part of my “state of formation.”

Psychologist Mary Pipher, in her book Writing to Change the World, recommends an exercise for all writers in her chapter entitled, “Know Thyself.” In light of my recent travels, I think it apropos to undertake her challenge.

I am From

I am from Eric and Bridget, Joe and Kathy, and Grandma Bean.

From the foothills of the Appalachians, the gentle rolling hills that lie before the Great Smokey Mountains, Rocky Top, and the Grand Ole Opry, the Tennessee Valley and the Elk River,

from tornado lane, southern creeks, buttercups, blackberries, cotton and tobacco, hay bales, cows and more cows, copperhead snakes, snapping turtles, crawfish, coyotes, turkey, and white-tail deer, and of course big trucks, four-wheelers, and rebel flags.

I am from fried chicken and country ham eaters, chicken fried steak and country fried steak eaters (yes there is a difference)- if it’s fried it’s edible. I am from sweet tea and Sun Drop, suga’-butta’ biscuits, Bar-B-Q, and Wal-Mart.

I am from loggers, lumber yards, and sawmill men.

I am from, “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all,” and “sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you,” “shake it off,” “hush up before I give you something to cry about,” and the classics, “bless his heart,” “Whatchdya go and do that for?” and “dog gon’it!”

I am from no-dancing-no-drinking-no-gambling-no-swearing-bible-believing-a capella-singing church of Christers, and from 65-minute Gospel meetings, and all-night singings. I am from the buckle of the Bible Belt, where no pastors were to be found, but where all male preachers were in abundance.

I am from General Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Dolly Parton.

Where I am from men wear boots and women wear aprons.

Where I am from it is all still this way.

There’s something powerful about honoring my heritage- even liberating. In a state of perpetual formation, it is imperative to recognize where I have been. But at the same time, knowing that where I am now is significantly different because of choice is also empowering. Edmund Husserl, philosopher and founder of phenomenology, is known for putting into words the concept of “free variation of possibilities.”  When applied to religious experiences it espouses that each expression is just as valid as the next. Am I willing to come to terms with the notion that the flavor of Christianity that I grew up in, with a dualistic apocalyptic worldview, is just a valid expression as the flavor that I now associate with (my posts Relinquishing & Receiving, and Acceptance (or Coming Out of the Closet) chronicle these changes)? I find the irony unsettling that I am very much at ease in being in dialogue and even sharing religious experiences with persons that identify with other faith traditions than Christianity, yet I am still cringing when I am in close proximity to certain flavors of my own faith tradition. The seminary that I attend has very close connections with a rabbinical school. So does a certain large evangelical seminary. Sometimes it’s easier getting along with those that have extremely divergent faith traditions than getting along with those that are almost like us, but not the same as us. It’s the infighting that can be the most fierce. As I continue on my journey, I hope to see the continued dismantling of age old boundaries between mainline & evangelical expressions of Protestant Christianity. Am I any better for journeying towards God without God? Am I better than the evangelical preacher that I heard on the radio a few weeks ago, simply because I strive to attain a methodological agnosticism and speak of a “God beyond God” rather than inheriting that ole’ time religion? I still think there’s something beautiful in particular truth claims. Surely it’s not just a “Southern thing,” we’re all engaged in using hermeneutical imagination.

Now I’m back in Boston and looking forward to the year ahead that will no doubt be filled with interfaith and even intrafaith interactions. I’m looking forward to reflecting on these experiences and writing to make a difference; playing my part in changing the world from where I am.

A Hermeneutic of Gracious Pondering in a Season of Glorious Anticipation

Shortly before leaving Boston for the holidays I had an opportunity to attend a lecture by philosopher Richard Kearney at Boston College on his more recent publication, Anatheism: Returning to God After God. For the sake of brevity I will not attempt to summarize his work that tries to push us past the theism/atheism divide, but rather I mention him to credit him for sharing what I believe holds immense implications for the interfaith movement.

After spending much time working with the social construction of the other, and religion’s role of demonizing that other, I was reminded that the sacred is something you find rather than something you seek. With so much energy put into deconstructing what makes us see each other as a stanger for the sake of harmony and social cohesion, we often forget to embrace the differences that our proximity with the other creates and to look for the sacred in this part of our narratives.

It is the advent season for Christians. In this season we abide in anxious waiting as we commemorate the time leading up to the birth of Jesus. As part of the lectionary reading during this season Gabriel’s annunciation of Jesus’ birth is read. The beginning of the passage is as follows:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. (Luke 1:26-29, NRSV)

Much attention tends to be focused on the part of the passage that follows. However, I think in this season it is good to dwell in the uneasiness that Mary does, to abide in the tension of the uncertainty that she finds herself in.  It is this uncertainty that Mary has in interacting with the stranger at her door that reminds us of the uneasiness that we may feel in our own social encounters. A vexed and perplexed Mary is depicted as pondering what this unfamiliar messenger brings to her. What are his intentions? Does he seek to harm me? I do not recognize this man, in all probability he is a thief. She fears for herself and for her child. However later in the passage we find that Mary does not close the door, but let’s the message of the stranger permeate her. It is her willingness to give into the idea that the impossible might be made possible, that the imaginable might be made into a concrete reality that allows the door to remain open and the message to come. She relinquished her fears in hopes that her hospitality, her own outstretched hand would bring whatever goodness to fruition.

This pondering and perplexement is not unfamiliar to the Jewish and Christian tradition. Not only is it present in the vacillations of Mary before Gabriel, but also our forefathers and foremothers knew this feeling all too well. It is expressed in the laughter that preceeded Isaac; the stammers of Moses; the cries of a barren Hannah that pierced the night; and in the proclomations of Qoheleth that all was ephemeral. Nor did it culminate in Mary, for a doubting Thomas was constantly grasping for the impossible made possible. This place of uncertainty amid strangeness holds a prominent place in our narratives.

Today we need to recognize this space where strangeness meets familiarity. There is a certain aesthetic quality to this sort of event. These occassions should not be reduced to their lowest common denominator were all focus is on commonalities. In difference lies dignity. Emmanuel Levinas states,”My ethical relation of love for the other stems from the fact that the self cannot survive by itself alone, cannot find meaning within its own being-in-the-world, within the ontology of sameness.” Therefore, the stranger cannot be simply viewed as a mere social construction, but rather as a gift; indeed a sacred gift. In essence without the other, there would be no meaning.  We need each other to survive, to make meaning and ultimately community- just the way we are. The stranger is thus not a category to deconstruct, but a reality to be embraced, upheld; that which is constantly behind doors waiting to be opened, waiting to be called neighbor. For Christians messianisim is a concept that keeps opening the door to the stranger that comes after the baby in the manger (Mt. 25:40).  It is the concept that lights the flame of hope during this advent season. Dorothy Day, a journalist, social activist, and Catholic commends us to never stop opening the door to the someone who’s inevitably going to arrive.

So in our pondering and discerning may we relinquish our fears and extend hospitality to bring about things that are only imaginable this holiday season. It is this vulnerability that might just lead to the forging of new relationships or the mending of old ones; the creating of sacred spaces of gratitude where difference is no longer demonized.

-mlw

Christians in the Sukkah

Have you ever heard the expression, “You’re in my personal space?” As Americans, we love our space. During the frontier days, barb wire delineated my space from your space. Today, elongated “privacy” bush hedges and white picket fences take their place. We drive spacious SUV’s and have luxuriously wide hi-way lanes. We live in storied houses, and play in our own backyards.  This coveting of space can be detected in our physical interaction with other humans as well. Judith Orloff, MD., says that “most Americans need an arms-length [of personal space] around them,” and that an invasion of that personal space “causes our stress hormones to skyrocket and can affect our physical and mental health. Blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension are all affected.”

In my travels and subsequent period of expatriation in Latin America, I found that in order to truly experience the culture that was up until that time foreign, I would have to lower my arm’s length of personal space. I could not bring my hedges with me and I certainly could not drive a 7-passenger SUV. In my two years residing in Mexico City, I, like most of the 30 million residents, would pile into a metro station every morning and lose all concept of my socially constructed “personal space” all over again. This entailed a time of sustained vulnerability; a living as other and with other. I was a gringo en la casa (An American in the house). However, in Latin America, I was never reprimanded with “you’re in my personal space,” but rather as the saying goes, “Mi casa es su casa.” And soon I too became uncomfortable with wide open spaces, and like those in the communal culture about me, I longed for the closeness of my neighbor – I needed my neighbor.

I am currently in a Master’s of Divinity program at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS), a now interdenominational Christian seminary (and soon to be an as-yet-undefined “Interfaith university”) in Newton, MA. ANTS shares a campus with Hebrew College (HC), which has a transdenominational Rabbinical school. Two months ago, at the start of the academic year and during the Jewish festival of Sukkot, my peers from ANTS and I were invited into the freshly erected Sukkah. After we were served delectable kosher food, we entered the festive song and joy of the Sukkah. It was packed full of people: Jews, Christians, Unitarian Universalists, agnostics, and I’m quite certain that others who self-identify with other traditions or philosophies were also there. Again, there were so many people – and so little space. I felt like I was back on the metro in el DF (Mexico City).  It was in this experience that I felt the similarities that an immersion-style interfaith experience has with an immersion-style cross-cultural experience. Once again, the hedges are to be left at the entrance of the Sukkah. Anything that impeded me from relating was to be left outside. Like Moses, taking off his sandals to commune with the Holy Other, we discarded parts of our constructed selves, in this case our “personal space,” to commune with others.

During the sacred time, I saw no flustered American with blood pressure rising, trying to demarcate his or her own personal space. Though I’m sure some thresholds were crossed, especially if being in such close proximity with the “religious other” was not normative for some, but it was in this action of tabernacling together, in the confines of being and relating in the presence of the other that our personal spaces, and I suspect in some instances, even our preconceptions of the other were to some extent deconstructed.

In my experience, it is in the art of relinquishing certainty and security, when one dares to be truly vulnerable, that one begins to more fully relate with others. I think this principle is no different in an interfaith exchange. Here on “the Hill” (our institutions share a campus on a hill just outside Boston, MA) we express this concept with the phrase, “sacred hospitality.” In participating in the Interfaith movement and in claiming a role in a common commitment for the bettering of the world, I have experienced “sacred hospitality” as a wonderful starting place; a practicing of being intimately present, radically serving/being served, and deeply listening to and mutually cherishing narratives. I believe this is essential for a genuine dialectic encounter. This is why joining State of Formation is important to me. I want to be a part of the bettering of the world; I want to be able to co-experience sacred texts; I want to co-participate in meaning-making dialogue; I want to co-construct communities; I want to be able to enter Sukkahs and I want to be able to say “mi casa es su casa también (My house is your house too),” because we indeed do need each other for the proliferation of Creation. I am far from advocating a universal syncretism of religions, but rather a conscious particularism; a maintaining of religious identities, coexisting in a pluralistic world.  How all this is playing out in my own experience as a Christian and how my own story affects this process will be the focus of future posts. Also I look forward to blogging about the happenings on the Hill here and in the Boston area.

“Truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue.” –Jürgen Moltmann

“Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.” — Emmanuel Levinas

–mlw

Toward a Mutual and Dialogical Philosophy of Christian Education in Postmodern Context

INTRODUCTION

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. -William Blake

In attempting to construct my own personal philosophy of Christian education, I found that my focal point is that the given philosophy should speak to the context in which it is in.  The context is that of my own- the only context of which I know.  To be precise, I know of others’ contexts and can even stand in some of their shoes so as to speak, however the context in which I am fully planted is the one from which I can speak from confidently and thus from which my philosophy ultimately derives.

This said, I must admit that I am totally biased,  biased by my own experiences and my own interests.  I was raised in a fundamentalist Church setting in the southeast of the United States that shunned questions and squelched any form of the spirit of progression. I have spent three years of my life in Latin America. My wife is Mexican and a Narrative Therapist. I am now being acquainted with the United Church of Christ. These are mere facts, not my whole story. I am becoming vulnerable in sharing parts of me with you, I’m giving you power. Now you will be able to critique or affirm as you read this in a new light based on the knowledge you know have. Don’t simply judge based on them, allow them to inform, allow them to be meeting places.

Admitting my own subjectivity and limited objectivity, acknowledging that I bring a lot of baggage with me when I engage any topic- let alone in constructing a philosophy of Christian education, is a stance made possible by the postmodern movement.  It is this movement, this current intellectual and cultural milieu that I wish to engage.  For my generation this is the current context, philosophically speaking: a popular modern-day sophism.  How do we as the Church engage the postmodern situation?  How can we transmit ourself across the generations faithfully amid a foggy mist such as postmodernity? Can the Church stand in a time where epistemologies and worldviews shift with such frequency and intensity that it has become faux pas to extend absolute truth claims?  Can the Church be postmodern?

Challenges the Postmodern Situation Presents

God is dead. -Friedrich Nietzsche

The postmodern situation in which we currently find ourselves presents a number of issues worthy of discussion.  Here I will only briefly outline some.  Postmodernism attempts to debase any form of truth claim that appears absolute.  One such form of postmodernism is social constructionism, which succeeds social constructivism. It has its basis in language and claims that there are no inherent meanings in words, therefore meaning is derived from and relative to its social context; reality is socially constructed.

Our task then is to deconstruct given social constructions in order to come to a realization of where our realities are coming from- they are not universal. In essence, everyone’s epistemology is determined by their social context.

Postmodernism rejects the idea of Enlightenment thinking that we can truly be objective observers. This strand of philosophy has influenced hermeneutics. Today we are seeing a greater emphasis on not what the text (in this case the Bible) meant originally in antiquity, but how the reader interprets it today.

We very well could be standing at a pivotal point in the progression of human consciousness.  We are beginning to internalize others’ viewpoints and are concluding that we influence everything- even that which we observe.  This can be traced in art in Western society.  For example, art during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was primarily portrayed from the observer of a third person.  Today, it has become more common to include numerous points of view, creating a more abstract canvas. Very much the same can be said of the progression of music with the rise of avant garde jazz, and later, free and fusion jazz. The movement is now being reflected in theology and religion.  Most religious groups in the West are now admitting that they alone do not hold a monopoly on God’s truth.  This has given rise to pluralism and the inter-faith movement. It is the shrinking of the world, the contact made among so many cultures, this altering of human consciousness, as expressed through art, music, and language that has influenced philosophers. Of course pure postmoderns would not label themselves as such and most would follow the principle of “whatever works,” they would not approve of using labels, subscribing to one philosophy, speaking in generalities, and would most certainly disagree with terms such as “pure” as applied to themselves. This paper is not meant to be a treatise on Postmodernity, so I will not go into further detail of what Postmodernism consists of, rather I will focus on how the process of education might proceed in such a climate.

Every society that continues in time faces the problem of transmitting its meanings from one generation to the next, the Christian community is no exception.

 

ON WORDS AND WORLDS

Everything depends on the poem and the poet, for our worlds come from our words. -Walter Brueggemann

Education

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. -Paul Tillich

First, I must attempt to provide an operational definition for education, something that we must try to attain in this assignment.  I believe Bernard Bailyn serves as a good starting point for us.  He defined education as “the entire process by which a culture transmits itself across the generations.”

Education is this, yet so much more. The task of education must embody a conserving tactic as well as a subversive one.

Paulo Freire states that education is foremost an act of humanization. As an alternative to the enculturation theory, Freire advocates his theory of conscientization, which I believe should stand alongside Bailyn’s statement.  Freire defines education as an act of raising awareness, to pique learners’ consciousness of what is going on within their society and environment.  This consists of social injustices such as political and economic exploits in order that the learners might be instilled with a passion to pursue justice- the true end to education- within their own social context.  This is education as social transformation.

Walter Brueggemann states “education is an act of socialization, a construction of a world, formation of a system of values and symbols.

He goes on to speak of church education within a postmodern context,

church education must avoid every universalizing attempt. . . education is the nurture of a restlessness with every old truth for the sake of a new truth which is breaking upon us. . . church education is intended to nurture people in an open awareness to alternative imagination which never quite perceives the world the way the dominant reality wants us to see it. . . the educational task is sorting through truths and selecting one, one that honors cries from below, new revelations. . . the task of instruction is to teach the new ones to see in the midst of disorder a coherence that can be relied on. . . [Christian] education consists finally in teaching our young to sing doxologies.

I now offer my own definition of Christian education: Christian education is the on-going process of conserving and confronting one’s traditions and surroundings in order to pass on the faith of old while transmuting it to better and more faithfully serve self, community, and creation, all the while honoring Creator.

Soteriology Re-examined: Social Transformation as Purgative and Salvific Act

Hope is the seed of liberation. -Jon Sobrino

Second, I would like to address the concept of salvation. I believe that it is imperative to have a holistic view of salvation.  Dangers exist in reading salvation as a unilateral act, which I see as an issue of growing concern as our culture becomes more and more enmeshed in individualism.

Salvation should be broad enough to include both the individual and the corporate, the communal.  After careful study of the usage of “salvation” in the Bible, Terence E. Fretheim concluded that “salvation is deliverance from anything inimical to true life, issuing well-being and a trustworthy world in which there is space to live.”

Salvation should encompass socio-economic-political spheres as well as the spiritual; this life as well as the life to come. I follow suit in agreeing that “the objective of God’s saving work is to enable human beings to be what they were created to be.”

Another integral component to salvation is how we interact with it, how we interact with God’s saving grace, God’s will for life.  Isaiah might shed light on this matter:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow (Isa. 1:16-17, NRSV).

Here, it is as if the act of seeking justice has a purgative effect.  Washing oneself conjures up images of cleansing, elsewhere used in biblical accounts as a medium to justify oneself before God.

So, this salvation that can be experienced as from a God of life can be also imparted to the community. En fin, Salvation is not solely a private matter segregated from the public arena. This will serve as foundational to my philosophy of Christian education.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? -(Mic. 6:8 ,NRSV)

Knowledge and Knowing: Epistemological Abuses

But where shall wisdom be found? – Job 28:12

Third, I would like to consider epistemology.  This is a field that considers how we know what we know, or modes of knowledge.  Different periods of time have emphasized different forms of knowing.  For example, one account suggests that all knowledge and wisdom is housed by the gods, all that transpires in life is on their account. This leads one to throw one’s hands up in anguish because we can never know truth, and thus (conveniently?) one evades any type of responsibility of knowing. Another account that arose out of the Enlightenment was empiricism or positivism. Western people began to see their surroundings as objects to be observed, quantified, categorized, and eventually lorded over, secularizing the world from the sacred realm, a “shameless scientism” that “bows before no mystery and reduces all life to objects.”

Deism became a valid alternative to Theism. Knowledge was then to be understood as imparted through the senses, from observation and experience. I don’t want to seem reductionistic in summarizing the Enlightenment in this manner; the scientific method proved to be a great liberating tool of the Enlightenment. However it has had a stifling oppressing effect as well. Can we know all there is to know by mere observation? Is any knowledge inherent within us?  Is all knowledge outside of us? How do we interpret knowledge? Do universals exist or is everything relative? Does concrete reality whither away with the altering of signs and symbols? These are questions that philosophers, scribes, and sages have struggled with over the eons.  Some attempts to reach a consensus (or attempts to keep the matter unsettled as may be the case) can be found in the biblical books of Proverbs, Job, and Qohelet (Ecclesiastes). The inadequacy of some answers offered to the above questions have led many people to agnosticism, and even some to atheism. Today, we live in a time of epistemological unrest. Church education must be active in wrestling with these sorts of questions. If it seeks to be relevant in its society it first must make sure it can communicate effectively and offer a genuine alternative to a generation trudging through this epistemological crisis.

One last point concerning knowledge is that we must acknowledge that claiming possession of knowledge equals power. For example, my disclosing part of my story to you in the introduction gave you a sense of who I am.  That disclosure makes me vulnerable.  Knowing intimate details about me gives you the reader a chance to create an ad hominem argument against me.

On a broader level, knowledge can be controlled as an enterprise by various institutions, not excluding states and nations.

The important aspect is to recognize that we cannot separate our own interests from the pursuit of knowledge- everyone has vested interests.

There is no objective knowledge free of ideological taint. We all select which books we buy, which movies we watch, which journals we subscribe to, what parts of the sermon we listen to.  Knowledge has the power to oppress or liberate, free or enslave, empower or stifle. Therefore, church education should be privy to this circumstance. “How the text is interpreted by the preacher, and how it is received in the congregation may depend on the vested interest of both preacher and congregation.”

The Church should go to every length to ensure that it uses knowledge for the sake of compassion, not giving in to hegemonic tendencies as dominant power structures often do.

And just as having knowledge equals power, so not having knowledge equals impotence. Often times systems are constructed to keep those that don’t know “out of the know.”  The Church should counter this status quo in its modes of educating, making a determined choice to go to the shadows and teach those that remain untaught and nurture those that possess the awareness of the linkage of knowledge and interest.

The Church has a business of making certainties visible and felt amidst uncertainties, making smooth roads out of rough ones, shining light into darkness. Perhaps some universals do exist.

Even though Brueggemann pleas for church education to avoid universalizing, he finds some ground too sacred to make relative: “The sure sovereign God and the resultant interconnectedness of life are not negotiable.”

This is what the wisdom enterprise concluded.  Even though we may not have all knowledge, we have enough to know that that is certain; there are holy places where we are inclined to take our shoes off, where we realize that we are object and not subject. This is the presentation of an epistemology that “lies beyond the conventions of our culture.”

We too must exclaim, “All truth is God’s truth,” along with the sages and Augustine, or more appropriately, “All truths are God’s truths.” We must be reminded: “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings to search things out.”

SOME CONTRIBUTING ELEMENTS IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

We are dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. We therefore see more and farther than they, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and born aloft on their gigantic shoulders. – Bernard of Clairvaux

Antecedents & Canon

Religion begins with a question, theology with a problem – Abraham Joshua Heschel

Much can be said of Christian education’s antecedents. I will not go into the details of Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman contributions. They are too monumental and extensive for me to give adequate treatment and require more attention than I am allotted to give here. I know by not engaging them here I am doing violence to their stories, but I can rest assured that their contributions have saturated all aspects of what we now call Christian education. Therefore I will touch only on a certain aspect that pertains to my personal construction of a philosophy of Christian education.

One such antecedent is the text that Christians use.  I will focus on the work that Walter Brueggemann has done. He has pointed out that the tripartite division of the Hebrew Bible in itself can be a didactic tool. The divisions embody certain elements of the congregant’s relationship to faith and knowledge and more specifically education. The first part of the canon is the Torah, it represents the ethos of Israel, the disclosure of God’s truth, and the consensus of God’s people.  This is one mode of knowing, a firmness, a concreteness, the “old time religion.” The second division of the canon, the Prophets, represents Israel’s pathos, a new word from the LORD, and the disruption of consensus. This also is a mode of knowing and a form of educating, especially when the status quo needs to be checked.  It often comes from cries from below rather than  from the establishment up on the hill. The third part of the canon is the Writings, a few books of diverse voices jumbled together into a miscellaneous section. It represents Israel’s logos, or wisdom, and the discernment of order. Brueggemann states that it is the task of Church educators “to move back and forth among the modes and substances of the canon, depending on context and intent.”

“Our calling then is to not choose one part of the canon (mode of knowledge, educating tactic) over the other, but to hold them in continual tension, to use one to critique the other and seek true discernment to stay with God through the seasons (Eccl. 3:1-8).”

We must recognize that Scripture is interpreted in, by, and for. Another tripartite division that need not have one part supersede the other two is that of the content of education: doctrine, scripture, and experience. They too need to be held in constant tension.

Teacher/Student, Student/Teacher: A Mutual Process

The important thing is to not stop questioning. -Albert Einstein

I am currently in seminary. I feel myself called to be both a pastor and a scholar.  I want to teach Hebrew Bible at either the university level or at seminary. However, I know I feel called to engage in some form of pastoral ministry as well. I recall while in college seeking counsel from local ministers and professors concerning my vocation.  I was almost always directed to one field or the other, mostly towards the academia. This tension swelled within me. One day I came across some excerpts of the writings of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), and John Amos Comenicus (1592-1670), and realized that this forced dichotomy of scholar/pastor was a farce.

In order to be a a good minister one must be scholarly,

and in order to be a good scholar one must be pastoral.  The monastic and scholastic are not mutually exclusive.

And neither were faith and reason.  Why, if these were compatible so then were faith and works.

In deconstructing our usage of language, it has been found that Westerners like to dichotomize, and create polar opposites, e.g. black, white; good, bad; mind, body; physical, spiritual; theist, atheist; the list could go on. In any given setting one word of the pair is esteemed, while its opposite is demonized. Our society still is experiencing a hangover of a double shot of empiricism and positivism.  Our language stinks of it. We are still a culture of either/or; I’m a structuralist, you’re a post-structuralist; I’m a constructivist, she’s a constructionist; I’m a Socialist, you’re a Libertarian; he’s a perrenialist, she’s a reconstructionist; I’m gay, you’re straight.  We’re still obsessed with labels. I’m Marvin Lance Wiser, and I have a story.  I’m sure the person reading this has stories behind the labels he or she is wearing (either intentionally wearing, or because they have been placed there as an act of imposition). This must be something the educators of the Church take a stand on.  If it is to be effective for the younger generations, the products of the current cultural milieu, the Church must be non-sectarian, in all “sectors” of life in order to be welcoming and wholly holy.

In keeping with de-labeling, let us turn to the education “system” itself, in particular, the student-teacher relationship.  Traditionally, (post-Enlightenment) the teacher has been the bearer of truth, the learners mere tabulae rasae.

With the fall of objectivity comes the fall of the profession of the unbiased expert,

and with the acknowledgement of a Creator comes the goodness inherent within human nature.

With the realization of the finiteness of the teacher, it is no longer necessary for the teacher to pretend that he or she is expert. The teacher is recast as perpetual learner. It is also no longer efficacious for the educator to compartmentalize his or her life, it should be holistic.

The teacher is still cast as model– though not ideal, rather real; an embodiment of what is desired to see in others.

Paulo Freire would term subject-object relationship as one of oppressor-oppressed.

Worded this way makes the stakes seem higher: the end goal of education is liberation. This is now painted with the same semantics that was used to tell the story of the Exodus and the Christ events: to set the captives free. Education no longer consists in the passive handing down of traditions from one generation to the next, in an attempt to conserve, but in an active struggle within and without, confronting to liberate those that are oppressed by systems– including the educational one. In order to overcome the teacher-student relationship as a strict dichotomy of subject-object, the goal of Christian teaching should be just that: relationship. Martin Buber describes relation as “reciprocity, being inscrutably involved.”

He goes further to say, “The person becomes conscious of himself as participating in being, as being-with, and thus a being.”

Essentially, Buber is stating that we derive our sense of being from relations; not “I think, therefore I am,”

but I relate and am related to, therefore I am.

To strip this intimacy of being-making, person-actualizing from the teacher-student relation is to commit a great act of violence indeed. Neither party should be inclined to submit to the other. The act of learning should be a mutual process.  This is liberating, this is incarnational.

If a Christian educator would initiate this type of relationship with students, perhaps it could be a model for subsequent relationships in which the student finds her or himself; after all, we are all sisters and brothers (subjects) in the Kingdom of God.

Setting & Curriculum

Experience is the greatest teacher, but is the school of fools. -Proverb

I will only briefly touch this area of where the teacher-student relationship may enter an incarnational subject-subject mode, and where the learning process can and should occur. First of all, educational programs of the Church should not be cast aside, however revitalized. Openness to new forms of worship as expressed through the emergent Church movement should be embraced and utilized alongside more traditional forms. Morphological fundamentalism should be discouraged.  Luis Segundo, in referring to the goal of Christian education in a multicultural context, urged that “the goal is not simply the translation of traditional Christian symbols into new language, however the resymbolization of Christianity and culture.”

The tradition must be faithful to the context in which it is in. Often times Christianity must undergo a process of contextualization before it can communicate faithfully its content.  This process should be honored among Church educators. Educating thus takes on a supreme liturgical bent.

Other places that the learning process is to occur is the public school.  I think it best to not have a confessional stance of educating in public schools as this could be interpreted as an act of tyranny against those of other faiths (as championed by Thomas Jefferson). However, I do believe that times should be set aside for religious devotion, e.g., prayer times, meditation, to provide for a more holistic learning environment.  Programs that foster inter-religious dialogue should be encouraged too. In the public arena, religion may be taught from the perspectives of philosophy of religion and history of religions. Emphasis should be placed on the humanities, liberal arts, and character formation. Courses of instruction should not be based on mere lectures but lively interaction which give way to a more dialogical dimension to study.  Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University maintains that “it should be an educational priority for the students not only to hear the voices of others but to find their own voices.”

This process is imperative so that they may better participate in dialogue. In addition to classroom instruction, group experiences such as visits to the Holocaust Museum or to art exhibits portraying the Civil Rights Movement, for example, should raise awareness of the human situation. Of private Christian schools, much the same can be said. However in this context it is more appropriate to teach from a confessional standpoint, allowing inclusion to the curriculum constructive and biblical theology, Christian social ethics, pastoral disciplines, etc. In addition to character formation, discipling and spiritual formation become an issue here. As well, outside of the classroom, experiences may hinge on more benevolent acts, e.g., short term mission trips

, feeding the homeless, taking a more definite stance concerning social justice as a confessional and salvific act.

Another setting that may in fact be more conducive to learning is simply put: community.  This may occur within the home, congregation, neighborhood, or in either of the aforementioned institutions: public and private schools. It is a vital space defined by mutuality. Allow me to share a personal analogy: When I was in Bolivia one summer I was introduced to a special herbal tea, yerba maté. It is served in a specific gourd with a special straw/strainer, la bombilla. It is offered as a symbol of hospitality.  It is commonly shared in groups, passed from hand to hand, while conversation and dialogue develop. The gourd is continually refilled and passed around as stories are told and friendships are forged. If someone has had their fill, they simply say “gracias,” and the maté continues around the circle. The friend that has had their fill is respected and the person next to him or her remembers this so as not to habitually pass it to them. In participating in this ritual I was welcomed into a community, and out of it a new world was created. Is not this indigenous construction of community mirrored in the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist?  It is around one table that we gather, and share the same “maté”- some, even the same “bombilla.” Both are community creating acts, where the equity of those who are marginalized or displaced are guaranteed and where we authentically engage cultures (whether they be familial, economic, political, or ethnic) that are not our own.

It is in this act of welcoming and true dialogue that we find solidarity, we empty ourselves, all are learners, are taking part in salvation, and are acknowledging God as the base of life. It is from this solidarity that we can band together to engage in being transformed and embark in social transformation.

Encountering the Religious “Other”- Developing Epistemological Humility

Monotheism is not monochromatic -Gregory Mobley

Art Green, rector of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College, recently remarked that for Israel, God dwelt in the space between the two cherubs facing each other in the Holy of Holies.

This is to say that God dwells in the space where humans are facing each other in genuine dialogue. This practice of facing one another is demonstrated in the art of Chavruta,

a Rabbinic approach to learning in which two individuals engage in dialogue. This process of learning has been transmuted to facilitate broader interaction between Jews and Christians on the campuses of Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School. It should be taken into account by Christian educators that God dwells in the spaces in between, perhaps we should linger for sometime longer facing another in dialogue, whether when we are gathered around the Lord’s Table, around a Peace Pole, or when we’re simply passing yerba maté.

How then are we to enter relationship with the religious “other?” How are we to allow that relationship to inform Christian education? I would like to once again appeal to Walter Brueggemann’s method of canon as canon. If we can use the traditioning process of our own texts to inform us on how to educate, perhaps it too can inform us on how to interact with those outside our faith tradition.

I believe the canon makes evident of how Israel related to its neighbors.  Jon D. Levenson points out that substantial sections of the canon (especially parts of the Writings) may not have been composed by Israelites at all.

It is this attitude of ‘honoring what is proven and true regardless of its source, because ultimately all truth is God’s truth’ that permeates Israelite tradition and that sets precedence for our interaction with the religious ‘other.’ Within the Bible exists a so-called Natural theology.  Within the Hebrew Bible it is more pronounced in the third section of the canon, the Writings. In the New Testament it is nuanced in the parables of the Gospels, the Johannine Prologue and in Pauline thought (esp. Romans 1:18-32; 2:12-16).  Paul may have based his natural theology on a Jewish writing that proceeded Jesus by just a few years that we now find as an Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical book, The Wisdom of Solomon. It has numerous arguments in common with Romans.

One of it’s central tenets concerning ‘natural theology’ can be found in a single verse:

For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. (Wisd. of Sol. 13:5, NRSV)

This allows for more than “specific revelation.” An understanding of theology in this manner embraces a broader divine plan, “general” revelation, and has all of creation in scope.

This allows for more commonality across humanity than it does for difference. Our educating must be broad enough to include these emerging forms and accommodate the touching of previously differentiated sacred worlds. This is especially important in an urban context, where religious “border lines” often scrape against one another and even blurr in the living of daily life.  It is a new and courageous goal for Christian education to give a voice to the religious “other” in our own teaching, perhaps this could prove a first step toward genuine reciprocity.

One must take heed to not forsake the particularity of one’s tradition in order to completely embrace the generals.

In order to dialogue one must have a story, a place where one is planted and can speak from. Jennifer Peace, Director of CIRCLE, Center for Inter-religious and Communal Leadership Education, describes this tension as “wanting to convert everyone and wanting everyone to convert me.”

Amy Jill-Levine, a Jewish scholar of New Testament at Vanderbilt University, encourages too often apologetic Christians and the Church to “not sacrifice its own theology, the preeminence of the Christ event on the alter of Interfaith dialogue.”

This is an embodied passion for one’s own story, religious roots, and sense of identity, a valuing of things sacred, and at the same time a willingness to constantly be in contact with the sacred as the ‘other’ experiences it, to understand them and to enter into the broader circle of mutuality and sacred hospitality.  Peace states that “we are called to embrace this paradox.” Perhaps the paradox implies the refusal to understand the world as subject-object and to begin to experience it as subject-subject.

A question was posed long ago: “Why was Adam created singly? An answer to inform across the millennia: ‘So that no person might say: My father was greater than yours.’ ”

This teaching can go a long way to inform the sense of mutuality needed to both procure the endurance of Christianity in all of its flavors as well as extended cooperation and dialogue among the religions of the book.  In the end, it is relationship, or the type of relationship that is “the difference that makes a difference.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION

I confess that I spent more time on confronting than I did on conserving. However, I remained true to my story.  I felt as if though my situation demanded that from me, though there will be times that confronting will take a backseat to conserving. To conclude I would like to raise some additional points that either I did not touch upon or that I did and did not expound upon them in order to raise awareness of how this study could be better complemented in the future by further inquiry.

First, I would have liked to have interacted with greater command with Continental Philosophy. Second, I would have liked to have studied the relationship between personal piety and the way one enters into relationship with others. For example, what type of spiritual disciplines might actually prepare oneself to encounter God as subject and to prepare for a better encounter with others as subject? Next, I did not consider in depth the practice of eliciting questions as didactic tool, e.g., the questioning of the child during the Passover Seder, or simply the construal of art/liturgy to invoke questioning (Joshua 4, “What do these stones mean?”) as means of community formation. It would be interesting to see how the next step in human consciousness, a post-literate or digital age would conceive of a theistic epistemology and how the art of storytelling could fill a huge void in this developing culture. As well, one area that I wanted to consider but was not allowed to due to length constrictions was the ecological implications of a subject-subject worldview.  I would have enjoyed interacting with Rosemary Radford Ruether.

This is an area of extreme urgency for Christian educators. A Church-wide paradigm shift needs to be introduced concerning how we interact with and teach others how to interact with creation. This could also be a point of solidarity for inter-faith action.  Which brings me to my next point. I touched on Jewish-Christian interaction, yet I never once explored Muslim interactions or other religions. This reflects my story, knowledge, and situation. This section is in need of expansion. And lastly the contour of the U.S. society is drastically changing due to its changing demographic make-up. There are now close to 60 million Latinos residing in the States.  This, the now largest minority group, is often a marginalized population. I would like to examine Christian education in a Latino context, as well the idea of ‘other’ as attributed to the ‘undocumented.’ More work needs to be done on how we view the resident alien, the ger,

the sojourner residing with us and how we can initiate a neighborly subject-subject relationship via the Church.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope.

Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

– Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

¹ Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966).

² Karl Mannheim, An Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 1936. (Repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008). The philosophical tenet of Deconstructionism can be traced back to Heidegger’s (1889-1976) rejection of the concepts of “subjectivity” and “objectivity”, but was fully developed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) who has had an immense influence on the Post-structuralism movement, French and German philosophical thought, Literary Theory and Continental Philosophy. Another noteworthy contributor is Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

³ Many biblical scholars are addressing the crisis of historiography and objectivity, the limitlessness of interpretations and the rejection of certainty as attained through reason as they relate to biblical studies and biblical interpretation.  One such recent study is by John J. Collins. He grapples with these issues in The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). He asks the question, “Is Postmodern Biblical Theology Possible?” Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism & God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983), exclaims, “Human experience is the starting point of the circle of interpretation.”

⁴ For a thorough treatment of Postmodernism see Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Theory and History of Literature 10. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

⁵ Bernard Bailyn, Educating in the Forming of the American Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), 14.

⁶ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970 (repr. New York: Continuum, 2000).

⁷ Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as Model for Biblical Education (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 20. This is similar to what John Westerhoff espouses in his theory of socialization. See his Will Our Children Have Faith? Revised ed. (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2000).

⁸ Ibid., 23, 41, 47, 63, 81, 89.

⁹ “Salvation in the Bible vs. Salvation in the Church,” Word & World 13 (1993): 364-365. Fretheim goes on to contend that salvation in biblical usage demands both a redemptive and creative understanding. He likens it to modern situations involving the healing of dysfunctional families, unifying divided congregations, aiding war-ravaged communities, and restructuring our ecological situation. Mark Powell, “Salvation in Luke-Acts,” Word & World 12 (1992) 5, concludes that Luke “makes no distinction between what we might call physical, spiritual or social aspects of human life and relationships.” These studies can help inform our understanding of salvation and Jesus’ overall ministry, e.g., Matthew 25.

¹⁰ Ibid., 368.

¹¹ I credit John G. Gammie  with the development of this idea. Holiness in Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 83, 97, 189.

¹² For the sake of brevity I will not explore Paul’s writings concerning salvation, although I will state that I do not find the framework of salvation presented to be contrary to the Pauline (and Reformational) argument of works-faith, sola fide.  As it is commonly interpreted in Protestantism as dichotomy, is where I disagree, as attested in James 2:17, works cannot be divorced from faith.

¹³ Brueggemann, 74.

¹⁴ cf. God’s self-disclosure to Moses in Exodus 6.

¹⁵ Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980). See also Noam Chomsky, eds. Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (New York, The New Press, 2002).

¹⁶ See Jügen Habermas. Knowledge & Human Interests, 1968, (repr., Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).

¹⁷ Walter Brueggemann, “The Social Nature of the Biblical Text for Preaching” in A Social Reading of the Old Testament: Prophetic Approaches to Israel’s Communal Life, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 215.

¹⁸ Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), outlines three ways that knowledge can be used by people: “control, curiosity, and compassion.” Far too often the first option is seen in the socio-economic-political arena, the second can most commonly be found in the academia.  It is the mandate of the Church to counter those uses and abuses of knowledge with the third option.

¹⁹ This can be argued by the countless pictorial depictions of the sun across time and culture that remain virtually undifferentiated.

²⁰ Brueggemann, The Creative Word, 87. He uses Job 28 to demonstrate the interplay of epistemological certitude and epistemological revolution. From my understanding Derrida, “Force of Law,” (1992), 15,  has opined that justice itself is impervious to deconstruction, for deconstruction is justice. Our God is just. Our God seeks to deconstruct us and our society every time we engage our sacred texts, and in Job’s case, creation itself.

²¹ Idid., 49.

²² Proverbs 25:2

²³ Ibid., 112.

²⁴ Ibid., 75. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pg. 152,  concurs with Brueggemann, “no one interpretation of the tradition can be accorded final and definite status.”  These statements go a long way to overcome the distances between not only the divisions of the HB canon, but also that which exists between the OT and NT. They are to be held in tension, not allowed to seek supremacy.  This also stands against the tendency during the Reformation (which still exists in many contemporary churches) of creating a canon within a canon, e.g. Martin Luther removing several books from canonical status. Was not Marcion excommunicated for doing just that? We must allow all the voices to be heard- whether or not they support our theology or ideology. This means as Church pastors/educators we must give neglected passages their due. We ought to keep reading where the lectionary cuts off.

²⁵ The writings of Jewish rabbi Maimonides (1137-1204) should also receive acknowledgement.

²⁶ John Calvin (1509-1564) wrote that “no one is a good minister of the Word who is first not a scholar.”

²⁷ So, it is not a polarity of orthodoxy and orthopraxy that should be discussed but how they encompass one another.  The liberal arts, catechisms, spiritual disciplines, biblical criticisms, and the practice of social justice are all a part of the educational process and should be viewed in the both/and category as opposed to a limited either/or field of vision. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536) considered prayer and knowledge complementary.

²⁸ Plural of Tabula rasa, Latin: “blank slate,”  is an epistemological thesis which states that persons are born without inherent mental content.

²⁹ Second-order Cybernetics (which builds upon Gregory Bateson’s work) proved a catalyst in restructuring the relationship between the observer and the participant, the subject-object relationship. It states that the system cannot be explained without including the observer. In essence, scientist cannot be separated from experiment; doctor cannot be separated from patient; teacher cannot be separated from student. The ‘subject’ is an integral part of the system; the teacher is an integral part of the learning process. See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, 1972. (repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). cf. Bradford P. Keeney, The Aesthetics of Change (New York: The Guilford Press, 1983).

See also Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of “the Other.”

Martin Buber was ahead of his time when he defined subject-subject relationships.  See his seminal work, I and Thou, 1923, repr., trans., and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 91, we can see the darker side of the Enlightenment seeping through: “What has become an It is then taken as an It, experienced as an It, employed with other things for the project of finding one’s way in the world and eventually for the projects of “conquering the world.” This has led to a vicious cycle of persons and creation being used as means, not ends. Mutuality has for too long been forsaken and it is paramount to reclaim it in order to construct a postmodern philosophy of Christian education. Walter Brueggemann, ibid., pg. 157, applies this concept to devotion to The Other: “Self-groundedness occurs when God becomes an object to be discussed and analyzed rather than the subject to be addressed in complaint and praise.” Might Jesus have had this type of relationship in mind when he quoted the two greatest commandments? Matt. 22:36-40.

³⁰ See the Priestly account of creation, Gen. 1:1-2:4a. The Hebrew t.ôb, good, is used 7 times, t.ôb m‘ōd, very good, is used of mankind.

³¹ John Westerhoff, Spiritual Life: The Foundation for Preaching and Teaching, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1994), pp. 44-45, recounts a Taoist tale originally told by Thomas Merton in which the moral is, “a true teacher is the one who let his life be a resource for others’ learning.” St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) is quoted as saying, “Preach at all times, if necessary use words.” A church educator should never be caught saying, “Practice what I preach, not what I do.”

³² Paraphrase of Benjamin Jacobs as quoted by John Westerhoff, ibid. Teachers that come to my mind that are both perpetual learners and models are Jesus of Nazareth, Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Abraham Heschel (1907-1972), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), and Howard Zinn (1922-2010). In our contemporary society, a person that prays silently has been labeled a mystic; a person that prays loudly a charismatic; a person that prays with their hands and feet an activist. Shall not all these be modeled? Søren Kierkegaard has been ascribed saying “The truth consists not in knowing the truth intellectually, but in being the truth.”

³³ Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970 (repr. New York: Continuum, 2000), 55. In 1837, Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing criticized educational institutions “for stamping our minds on the young, making them see with our eyes, giving them information, burdening their memories, imposing outward behavior, rules, and prejudices.” Horace Bushnell lamented the fact that after the Great Awakening, children had become the objects of conversion. He emphasized the entire growth process (q.v. Maria Montessori) and was concerned about affects, not only doctrines. John L. Elias, A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Perspectives (Malabar: Krieger, 2002), 163-166, 199-204.

³⁴ Buber, 67.

³⁵ Ibid., 113.

³⁶ “Cogito ergo sum,” René Descartes (1596-1650).

³⁷ Brueggemann, ibid., 94, states “The most urgent educational task is asserting that we take our life from another- we exist in community, in relation to the other.”

³⁸ I am trying to call upon Kenotic Christology which is widely attested in evangelical circles, the act of Christ’s emptying divinity, in order to relate to mankind and draw mankind into a relationship with himself.  This emphasizes the empathetic nature of Christ.  Empathy precedes liberation and reconciliation.

³⁹ Luis Segundo as quoted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside. (San Francisco: Harper, 1990).  The necessity of this transformation is reflected in the observation: “new wine bursts old wineskins.”

⁴⁰ Eck, Diana. “Religious Identity in an Age of Religious Diversity.” in “Training Religious Leaders,” eds. Rodney L. Petersen and Marian Gh. Simion. BTI Magazine 9:2. [Spring 2010]: 5-6.

⁴¹ Not to go and impart an absolutized truth in colonial imperialistic fashion or to simply detachedly observe their way of life (subject-object relationship), but to go and interact, to engage, to dialogue, to offer a hand and to receive a hand (subject-subject relationship). We’re not in the business of ‘bringing Christ to cultures’- he’s already there, but to live out the mutuality and praxis entailed in the Kingdom of God- that is to bring and to receive Christ, and that’s everyday, everywhere.

⁴² See Jesus’ table-fellowship ministry/philosophy in the Gospels.

⁴³ Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

⁴⁴ Green, Art. “Seminary Education in a Threatened World.” in “Training Religious Leaders,” eds. Rodney L. Petersen and Marian Gh. Simion. BTI Magazine 9:2 [Spring 2010]: 8-11.

⁴⁵ Aramaic for “fellowship.” Chavruta is also exemplified in the saying, “Find yourself a friend, get yourself a teacher.”

⁴⁶ Jon. D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), 36. For example, Proverbs 22:17-23:11 is virtually an adaptation of the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope. See also Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, tr. James D. Martin, 1972 (repr. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1993). However, one must not overlook the too often excluding nature that the “biblical” enterprise produced; see Lawrence Wills, Not God’s People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

⁴⁷ James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 468-496.

⁴⁸ Cf. Romans 1:19-20.

⁴⁹ Even when assessing ‘specific’ relation, culture and language must be accounted for. Walter Brueggemann attests “if communities mediate revelation from God, surely different communities in different circumstances will mediate different disclosures. . .  if revelation is mediated through community, revelation will reflect the truth available to that community in its life, memory, and experience, and will tend therefore to be partisan disclosure.” This situation further demonstrates the urgency to interact with other faith traditions to move past (all the while still being planted there) the specific, individual to the more general, communal. For the genuineness of alternate stories to the ‘dominant revelation’ see the description of multiple exoduses of different people groups in Amos 9:7, of which we only have a footnote. The journey from God to Ein Sof is riddled with everything and nothing.

⁵⁰ Mary C. Boys and Sara S. Lee, Christians & Jews In Dialogue: Learning in the Presence of the Other, (Woodstock: Skylight Paths, 2006).

⁵¹ Peace, Jennifer, “An Evangelical Interfaith Imperative?” in “Training Religious Leaders,” eds. Rodney L. Petersen and Marian Gh. Simion, BTI Magazine 9:2 [Spring 2010]: 7.

⁵² Amy Jill_Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, (San Francisco: Harper, 2006).

⁵³ Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5

⁵⁴ Gregory Bateson.

⁵⁵ Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992).

⁵⁶ Heb.