REA: Teaching and learning in online spaces

In the afternoon pre-conference session of the Religious Education Association 2014 conference, Eileen Daily of Boston Univeristy and Daniella Zsupan-Jerome of Loyla University presented a workshop titled “Teaching and Learning in Online Spaces: An Experiential Engagement with Digital Creativity.”

While online media are new, Daily reminded us that religions have always used mediated forms of communication. “What did Paul do? He wrote letters!” she said. “Email is just another form of letter,” she added. “These are just new names for things we’ve been doing for a long time. There’s a difference of form, but there’s not necessarily a difference of message.”

Daily told us that when she teaches religious education online, she emphasizes nonlinearity. Whereas face-to-face learning environments lend themselves to a linear path through a subject, online environments lend themselves to a nonlinear approach. However, you still have to pay careful attention to course structure; there is a “Skinnerian side of education,” so there’s always a sense in which you have to “keep students in the rat maze” to produce behavioral outcomes. And Daily reminded us that the goal of any religious education is to “integrate religion into people’s messy lives.”

Daily and Zsupan-Jerome then led us in “a mini non-linear learning event that will appear on a curated platform at the end of the session.” As a subject for this experience in non-linear online learning, Daily and Zsupan-Jerome had us investigate the Salt Creek watershed; Salt Creek runs immediately behind the conference hotel. They split us into six groups, each group charged with investigating the environmental challenges facing Salt Creek through different approaches. Thus one group conducted Skype interviews with people who knew about Salt Creek; one group investigated sacred texts on the subject of the environment; another group researched specific environmental challenges facing Salt Creek today; etc.

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REA: Tending your digital presence

Mary Hess of Luther Seminary presented the first pre-conference session, on “Creating and Tending Your Digital Presence as a Scholar,” at the Religious Education Association annual conference. Although I’m a minister of religious education, not a scholar of religious education, I figured I would hear much that was applicable to me — and I did.

Hess began by making an important point by referring to research on (a href=”http://mediatedcultures.net/youtube/context-collapse/>context collapse done by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch. Hess told us that tending one’s digital presence is a way to intentionally build context in the face of context collapse. “I don’t think it’s a choice any longer,” she said, to tend one’s digital presence.

One problem faced in tending your online presence is figuring out how to uniquely identify yourself — especially challenging for those of us with common names. Hess introduced us to ORCID, a registry of unique researcher identifiers for scholars. (As a minister in a numerically small denomination, I already have a unique identifier — search for “dan harper unitarian” and you’ll find me.)

Hess reviewed some social media sites aimed at academics, including academia.edu, Mendeley as a useful digital repository or archive, and Merlot for sharing teaching resources.

Hess said that for her, Slide Share has actually been more useful at getting her work out than any sites dedicated to academics.

Turning to what she called “popular publication,” Hess spoke briefly of popular Web sites such as the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, and Odyssey Networks. Hess feels that it is critically important for religious education scholars (and practitioners!) to break out of the boundaries of our narrow intellectual speciality.

“I think in my more cynical moments that as higher education focused on production of certain kinds of knowledge, it has removed people from public life,” she said. She contrasted this attitude with the attitude of John Dewey, one of the founding intellects of the Religious Education Association. Dewey, she said, was a public intellectual. She added that the question of what it means to be a public intellectual is critically important.

Slides for this presentation on Slide Share

The day after election day

Yesterday, before I voted, I spent at least an hour doing some final research into the various candidates and ballot initiatives. The San Jose Mercury news and the San Francisco Chronicle had offered a reasonable amount of coverage of California ballot initiatives, and of the more prominent statewide elections. I already had most of the information I needed to cast my vote. Nevertheless, I went to the League of Women Voters (LWV) Web site to review information about those initiatives and candidates.

News media had offered very little coverage of county elections, like the contentious San Mateo Harbor District Commission elections, and very little coverage of minor state elections, like the elections for Board of Equalization Members. Again, the LWV Web site was invaluable — e.g., it pointed me to an online video of a LWV forum with most of the Harbor District Commission candidates.

In the end, I was able to make what I felt were reasonably informed decisions on most of the candidates and initiatives. But I also realized that I had not spent enough time really learning about the issues and candidates. I should have attended candidate forums for local elections. I should have spent more time learning about statewide elections. Democracy takes time, and I did not put in enough time. And these days, I think political advertisements are so full of lies and innuendo that each time you see or hear one should count as negative time spent on learning the issues — which means spending even more time actually learning about issues and candidates.

Today, I was reading Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution, and came across this quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “If once [our people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.”

Is that howling I hear in the distance?

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Sabbatical

I’m taking sabbatical time this year — four non-consecutive months, plus three additional non-consecutive weeks — to work on a writing project.

November is the first month of my sabbatical. So of course I was up late last night, madly finishing of my list of things that Must Be Done Before The Sabbatical. I checked off the last item on my list at 11:28 p.m., and went to bed.

This morning I awoke feeling a little stunned: I was actually on sabbatical. In more than a decade as a minister, and two decades working in congregations, I’ve never had a sabbatical before. It’s a funny feeling knowing that the only thing I am supposed to do this month is — well, what am I supposed to do with a sabbatical?

In contemporary language, a sabbatical is a tool for sustainability. It is abased on the ancient Hebrew custom outlined in Leviticus 25.2-5:

“When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.”

So during my sabbatical time, I won’t sow or prune, nor will I answer email for four hours a day, nor run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to catch up on administrative tasks. Instead, sayeth Elohim, I’m supposed to let my soul lie fallow.

Not only is a sabbatical about sustainability, it is also about social justice for workers, immigrants, and other sentient beings, according to Leviticus 25.6-7:

“And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee. And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.”

I have not done so well in carrying out this part of taking a sabbatical. While I’m away, the Religious Education Assistant and members of the Religious Education Committee have to take care of some of the things I normally do, though I have tried to minimize what they have to do. Ideally, an entire community would all take a sabbatical together; everyone would stop work. However, in this ear of globalization and consumer capitalism, if everyone stopped working we would face economic ruin — the next version of the iPhone would be delayed by a year! there would be no fossil fuels to burn and send carbon into the atmosphere! — so I will just have to accept the fact that I am going to have to go on sabbatical by myself.

And what will I do while on sabbatical? How will I let my soul lie fallow? I’m going to write: writing seems to be good for my soul, and I’ve been too busy the past few years to write much; you may see some of that writing here on this blog. Maybe I’ll do some other things, too; I don’t really know; this sabbatical thing is new to me.

(I’ll include the official statement about my sabbatical below the fold — not that you care, but just so it’s here on my blog, in case someone is looking for it.)

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Weed, Calif.

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Light rain began blowing against the windshield as I drove south on Interstate 5 towards Weed, California. The sun was still shining, but Mount Shasta was obscured by clouds. I stopped at a rest area to stretch my legs, and looked north, the way I had come: there was a rainbow behind me. As I watched, a faint second rainbow was forming. I took a photo, got back in the car, my hair blown every which way, my glasses speckled with rain drops, and drove south into the rain.

UNCO 14: last thoughts

The last session I attended at UNCO 14 West was the session on the spiritual and mental health of pastors on Wednesday morning.

The purpose of the Wednesday morning breakout sessions is to figure out what “has legs,” that is, which of the ideas that emerged during UNCO are worth following up on. One of the key ideas that came up during UNCO 14 West was the idea that innovative ministries need to find new funding sources. This is an important step in the evolution of Unco, as Carol Howard Merritt tweeted: “#unco14 discussions at year 5: We have gone from complaining to dreaming to planting. Now we’re looking at funding. It’s really beautiful.”

And I think the idea that we need to support the mental and spiritual health of pastors engaged in innovative ministries is just as important the idea that we need to support the financial health of innovative ministries. Ministry is, in many ways, an essentially conservative profession: we are supposed to conserve the tradition of which we are a part. My own denomination is theologically liberal, but methodologically conservative and risk-averse: a few innovative ideas have been given the imprimatur of the denominational bureaucracy, but most other innovation is ignored. I’d guess my denomination is typical of all mainline denominations.

And what happens if a minister or lay leader tries innovation goes beyond the innovative allowed by the bureaucracy? What happens when a minister or lay leader tries something risky? Well, because of the conservative nature of ministry, and because of the conservative nature of denominations, anyone who goes beyond the allowed limits of innovation had better be well-connected. If you are well-connected, if you have friends in powerful positions, your innovation may be allowed, and if it is allowed, it will likely be funded. But if you are not well-connected, you may well feel like the goat in Leviticus 16 who gets sent into the wilderness: “The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.” [Lev. 16.22, NRSV]

Innovative and/or risky ministries are stressful enough in and of themselves. If you are engaged in innovative ministries but are not well-connected within your denomination, you are likely to feel more stress, and have less support. You are also less likely to be held accountable in appropriate ways, and your ministries may well be judged by the wrong standards. This is a recipe for burn-out. I suspect that pastors engaged in innovative ministries are at higher risk for mental illness, something that is already an occupational hazard of professional ministry.

This would suggest that those who are engaged in innovative ministries need additional support. In our breakout session on Wednesday morning, we brainstormed a few ideas: setting up some kind of online chaplaincy for UNCO participants; mutual support and accountability groups meeting via Google Hangouts or Skype; continuing to offer face-to-face support at UNCO; etc. We’ll see which of these ideas “has legs” and will turn into a reality.

But there is a need: innovative ministers need appropriate accountability and sympathetic support.

Join the elite

Those of us who are religious progressives continue to try to understand conservative Christianity in the United States, and more specifically to understand how a religious option that asserts the leadership of Jesus of Nazareth also seems to advocate for consumerism, individualism, and intolerance.

I’ve spent some time learning about the theology of the prosperity gospel, so I feel that I have some sense of how conservative Christians can support consumerism and individualism — and honestly, conservative Christians aren’t very different from many religious moderates and progressives in the U.S. If you live in the U.S., it’s hard not to see consumer capitalism and individualism as normative.

But I have had a harder time understanding premillennial dispensationalism. That’s the theological position that there will be a Rapture, at which time a select few persons will be raptured away by Jesus Christ to be the Bride of Christ. The best known pop culture representations of remillennial dispensationalism is probably the “Left Behind” series of books and movies; a reboot of the movie series just came out, starring Nicholas Cage. And most of us religious progressives stop with the pop culture representations of premillennial dispeansationalism. But a closer look at premillennial dispensationalism is worth our time.

On recent post at the Sojourners Web site, Dr. LeAnn Snow Flesher points out that premillennial dispensationalism is “an elitist theology”: a few people get raptured, the rest of us don’t because the rest of us are disposable. This helps explain why premillennial dispensationalism is compatible with the prosperity gospel, that is, with theologies of economics that privilege the few at the expense of the many.

Flesher goes on to point out how premillennial dispensationalism is compatible with intolerance:

“The entire doctrinal belief system necessitates a separatist perspective and lifestyle, an emphasis on individual salvation, and adherence to a homogeneous set of doctrinal beliefs. It does not in any way foster tolerance for an interracial, intercultural, and interfaith context, and certainly has no tolerance for many of the social issues we struggle with in our nation and world today.”

It’s worth reading Flesher’s complete post here.

Link to Flesher’s post from @anglobaptist.

Talent, Oregon

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The old railroad depot at Talent, Oregon. The sign reads: “To Portland 336 mi. / TALENT / To San Francisco 436 mi. / Elevation 1,635”

My cousin Sue tells me that up until a few years ago, two trains a day passed through Talent, carrying lumber south to Redding, California. With the collapse of the timber industry in this part of Oregon, there are no more regularly scheduled trains — this, along with the mills closing down, and good working class jobs disappearing, represents the changing economy of southwestern Oregon. The railroad depot has been converted into shops, perhaps a symbol of the growing importance of service industry jobs.