REA: Last day of the 2014 conference

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(em>Above: Yes, there were arts and crafts at the Religious Education Association 2014 conference. In keeping with the more interactive approach at the 2014 conference, there were several opportunities for conferees to participate in interactive projects around the topic of unmaking violence. Here, conferees decorate a “peace pole.”

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Above: REA president-elect Mai-an Tranh, professor at Eden Theological Seminary, speaking at the final plenary session: wrapping up this year’s conference, and tying this year’s conference topic to next year’s topic. Tranh used Henry A Giroux’s “disimagination machine” as a central theme in her talk.

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Above: In the final plenary, Evelyn L. Parker of Perkins School of Theology led conferees in an interactive theatre exercise. She invited ten conferees to imagine with their bodies what the “disimagination machine” might look and feel like. Then she invited the rest of us “spec-actors” to disassemble the machine. In the photo above, a conferee is gently removing a piece of the machine.

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Above: The close of the conference, just before the business meeting.

REA: Interrupting violence on the ground

The second plenary sessions at the Religious Education Association 2014 conference was devoted to field trips to various locations in Chicago that are working for nonviolence. One field trip was to the a href=”http://www.swopchicago.org/home.aspx”>Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP); a second trip went to the John Marshall Law School Restorative Justice Project. I chose to go to Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation (PBMR) in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago.

At PRMR, we met with Father David Kelly, a Catholic priest affiliated with the Precious Blood missionaries, and three young men who participated in PBMR programs. Father Kelly said that he had been involved with various prison and inner city ministries before helping to organize PBMR. In his experience, he had found that the criminal justice system is primarily adversarial in nature, and that it does not provide any real support to either perpetrators nor victims. And at times he found himself in situations where he had a relationship with both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime — how could he minister effectively to both?

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REA: Teaching about Islam using a worldview framework approach

In the final breakout session at the Religious Education Association 2014 conference, I attended a presentation by Mualla Selçuk of Ankara University and John Valk of the University of New Brunswick titled “Journeying into Peaceful Islam: A Worldview Framework Approach.”

Valk and Selcuk reported on a pedagogical model they used to engage Muslims and non-Muslims in learning about “a comprehensive Islam.” The problem they are addressing with their pedagogical model is pervasive stereotyping regarding Islam. In particular, Islam is stereotyped as violent; as authoritarian, patriarchal, and rigid; as a religion that persecutes other religions; etc.

Sometimes the stereotyping of Islam is subtle, particularly in media coverage of Islam in the west. Media coverage of Islam “often confuses correlation with causation” — if an individual Muslim engages in, say, an act of violence, the act of violence will be attributed to the individual’s religion. Sometimes the stereotyping is not as subtle, as when anti-religious and anti-Islamic discourse cherry-picks elements of Islam (or religion more generally) to “prove” that religion/Islam is bad.

Religious education can be complicit in stereotyping, if it uses a passive passive pedagogical model. It’s not enough to give students information about religion, e.g., disconnected facts (e.g., Muslims pray using certain prescribed body motions), or prescribed answers (e.g., Islam as a whole believes X).

Valk asserted that an appropriate pedagogical model must include an experiential component. He mentioned site visits, meetings with spiritual leaders, human interaction, etc. He added that “personal engagement” is also necessary, i.e., engaging the questions and challenges of Islam: religious, spiritual, science, religion, etc. Valk said that they challenge the learners to think. “So instead of saying, ‘Islam believes in God’,” he said, “We ask, ‘What does it mean to believe in God?’ … Let the students explore the possibilities.”

Valk then outlined their worldview framework for an appropriate pedagogy. This worldview framework has five sub-frameworks, including: personal/group identity;
cultural dimensions;
existentialist questions; etc.
The pedagogy uses a “Socratic” approach of open-ended questions.

Mualla Selçuk, a Muslim, pointed out that Valk is a Christian. Thus the collaboration between them reflects their pedagogical approach. She referred her listeners to their recent article in the REA journal for more information about their work. “This worldview approach to Islam, or I would argue to any religious or secular worldview,” she concluded, “is a valuable resource for religious educators and teachers.”

One questioner asked, “Both your presentations had components of unlearning. Do you have a pedagogical model for this?” While unlearning was not explicitly mentioned in their model, this was something they had thought about.

REA: Ecology and RE

In a Sunday morning colloquium at the Religious Education Association 2014 conference, Miriam Martin of Saint Paul University in Ottawa spoke on the subject “Ecology, Christian Discipleship and the Role of RE.”

When considering environmental problems such as global climate change, Martin said, “We have to recognize that a situation of violence exists.” To unmake violence, she added, first we have to acknowledge “the situation of violence.”

“Violence against against nature is basically predicated on the fact that we have such a deep separation from it and a false sense of disconnect,” Martin said. Just as we justify human violence against other humans by demonizing the “other,” so too human violence against other beings is justified by thinking of other organisms as the “other.”

Therefore, Martin said, we humans must look at ourselves and ask: Who do we say we are? Citing such thinkers as Sallie McFague (A New Climate for Theology, 2008), Elizabeth Johnson (Ask the Beasts, 2014), and Francois Euve (“Humanity Reveals the World,” in Ilia Delio, ed., From Teilhard to Omega, 2014), Martin called for a new theological anthropology.

In thinking about a theological anthropology, Martin reflected on the uniqueness of humankind. The unique ability of human beings to reflect on the whole emergence of the universe story comes with a great responsibility. “Humans are the uniquely responsible animals,” she said.

She came at the issue of responsibility from another angle, turning to recent work by religious Gabriel Moran, who asks: Are humans superior? Moran asserts that we cannot understand differences at higher or lower levels. Moran says there is one place where humans are superior, and that is “we are uniquely responsible.”

In terms of specifically Christian religious education, Martin referred to Sallie McFague, who says we cannot continue to “live in a way that consumes the world’s resources and undermines its most basic systems.” Thus, said Martin, there is not a separation between the damage being done to the poor, and the damage being done to the environment.

So what do we need to do? Martin said that Elizabeth Johnsons’ recent work offers a solution: “[Theology] needs to reclaim the natural world as an essential element both theologically and in practice.” Then, Martin said, we must bring these rigorous theological conversations into wider interdisciplinary dialogue. Finally, as theology reclaims the natural world, this can be brought out through ritual and through the arts. As a partial demonstration of this, Martin closed her presentation by singing one of her songs on the relationship between humankind and the natural world.

REA: Religious literacy, bullying, and RE teaching

In the second breakout session of the Religious Education Association 2014 conference, I attended a combined colloquium. Wing Yu Alice Chan, a doctoral student at McGill University, presented work in progress under the title of “Can Religious Literacy Deter Religious Bullying?” Andrea Haith of Canterbury Christ Church University presented her work in progress under the title of “An Exploration of Religious Education Teachers’ Understandings of Religiously Inspired Violence and the Worldviews of Children in the Classroom.”

Chan presented a definition of religious literacy based on a definition by Diane Moore (2007), the ability to discuss and analyze the intersections o religion with society.

She next defined religious bullying as bullying on the basis of religious difference, including physical and psychological bullying, online bullying, etc. In a review of literature on religious bullying, she found research that indicates that religious bullying gets transmitted across generations. Furthermore, she found research that the aftereffects of religious bullying can lead to religious extremism.

At the moment, her research is focusing on two North American religious literacy programs in public schools: Quebec’s “Ethics and Religious Culture” program, and the “World Geography and World Religions” programs in modesto, California. These are the only two mandatory courses in religious literacy that she found in North America. In her research so far what is most prominent is the role of dialogue.

Her research methodology is outlined in her online prospectus here.

Andrea Haith is a teacher of religious education in the United Kingdom (U.K.). She began by saying that teaching religious education is extremely challenging, as the young people taking the courses “don’t see the point.” It is also challenging because “any discussion of Islam does evoke stereotypes.”

Haith said that the U.K. has complex legislation that implements religious education in the public schools. The challenge then is how to discuss religiously inspired violence within this framework. Her research focuses on the teaching of religiously inspired violence as it relates to religious education teaching more generally.

Her hypothesis is that religious education has become “sanitized,” in part because examination-focused learning outcomes may serve to distort the subject matter of religious education. Her research questions include:

— What is the nature of RE teacher’s understandings of religiously inspired violence?
— How are these understandings translated into teaching practice in the classrooms?
— Is there a relationship between teachers concepts of religiously inspired violence and their pedagogy?

Haith’s research project is outlined online here.

At the end of the two presentations, a questioner pointed out that a key issue is how we train teachers. Haith and Chan both agreed.

Another questioner pointed out that it is problematic to consider religious literacy out of any other context, and that religious literacy must be placed in a values-based context. Haith and Chan seemed less interested in this idea.

I asked a somewhat inarticulate question about the importance of students recognizing their own religious identity. Interestingly, in a later colloquium, I learned about the “worldview framework approach” in Mualla Selçuk and John Valk’s presentation “Journeying into Islam” (more on their research here); Selçuk and Valk’s worldview framework explicitly names religious identity as important.

I would say that I found both Haith and Chan’s research to be of great interest and importance. Chan’s research into the relationship between religious literacy and religious bullying could be especially valuable.

REA: Experiential and multimedia

The Religious Education Association 2014 conference was more of an experiential, multimedia experience this year — as befits religious educators, who often have a progressive pedagogy. Here’s some evidence that this conference is not just the same old lectures-with-Powerpoints:

Taiko Legacy Chicago at opening Plenary

Above: Taiko Legacy Chicago, live performance at the opening plenary session, accompanying a slide presentation

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Above: Andrea Bieler’s professionally produced video, which included tours of sit-specific art works

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Above: Participatory opening ritual about (un)making and (re)membering violence

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Above: Photo from Precious Blood Reconciliation Ministries, one of three field trips to sites and organizations in Chicago where people are actively working to unmake violence. In the photo above, the center of one of Precious Blood Reconciliation Ministry’s “truth circles”; the four key values of the truth circles are printed on the four cards: confidentiality, listening, respect, and truth.

And while photos were not allowed during her performance, I have to mention “Unveiled,” a one woman play about five Muslim women, written and performed by Rohina Malik.

I should also mention the superb plenary talk by Willie James Jennings. He eschewed the usual Powerpoint slides, and simply spoke to us. He didn’t need slides: his voice, his delivery, what he had to say was gripping on its own, without any need for multimedia. His talk was a reminder that the spoken word can be performed as a lively art, one just as engaging as a one-person play.

REA: “Cross-cultural Analysis” and “Sabbath as Post-Christian Ed”

On Friday afternoon at the Religious Education Association 2014 conference, I attended a colloquium with two presenters: Courtney Goto ofBoston University presented “Troubling Cross-Cultural Analysis in Healing the Effects of Racism,” and Jonathan LeMaster-Smith, doctoral student at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, presented on “Sabbath as Post-Christian Education: The (De)valuing of Rural Working-Class Persons as Liberation from Socio-Economic Disposability.”

Goto told us that she was presenting work in progress, and what she was going to present differed from the outline on the conference meeting Web site. She is working on two case studies, comparing the way two different cultural communities use aesthetic practices to form people theologically, aesthetically, and culturally.

Her first case study is of Lithuanian rituals on All Saints Day, during which families place candles and decorations at the grave sites of deceased family members. Her second case study is of an All Saints Day ritual at the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church.

Since Lithuanians and Japanese Americans are people on the margins, Goto’s research will use the concept of “social death” to explore these two case studies. Social death happens when a group of people is treated as nonpersons by the dominant culture. Examples of victims of social death include Jews during the Holocaust, native Americans in the U.S., etc. Both Japanese Americans and Lithuanians were victims of social death before and during the Second World War. Both communities use All Saints Day to hold rituals which serve as a response to trauma.

Of particular interest to me were the slides that Goto showed of an All Saints Day art installation in the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church. 26 yukata (a type of traditional Japanese clothing) were hung from from the ceiling of the sanctuary; another yukata clothed the usually plaint cross at the front of the church. The symbolism — how this art installation represents the way Japanese Americans were treated during the years of internment — was explained during services, in orders of services, etc. I felt this was a powerful example of all-ages religious education in a congregation.

Jonathan LeMaster-Smith spoke about another marginalized group, rural white working class persons. He is in the process of investigating ways to do religious education around the Sabbath in a post-Christian rural working class context. “One possible pedagogical practice is the observance of Sabbath,” LeMaster-Smith said — but not Sabbath in the traditional sense of a day of rest on Sunday (or Saturday).

Rather, LeMaster-Smith wants to ways the concept of Sabbath could be incorporated into popular culture rituals such as, for example, a Hallowe’en bonfire. (One of the participants later pointed out the obvious parallels between the Lithuanian popular culture ritual on All Saints Day described by Goto.) LeMaster-Smith said he saw potential in finding Sabbath-type observances in existing holiday celebrations.

A draft of Lemaster-Smith’s paper is online here. I saw a great deal of potential in this idea of translating the old observance of Sabbath into current post-Christian celebrations. Indeed, I believe some churches and faith communities are already on this path, e.g., many non-Hispanic congregations are incorporating Dias de los Muertos into Sunday services. LeMaster-Smith is simply asking faith communities to take this kind of thing outside the walls of the church building, out into the community. It seems to me that powerful things could happen at the intersection of pop culture and post-Christian religion.

REA: Peace Experiments

The text of the formal presentation portion of my workshop:

Let me begin by telling you about the context in which I do religious education. I’m minister of religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, a mainline congregation founded in 1947. Like so many mainline congregations founded in the post-World War II era, today we struggle to adapt to new and different demographic, economic, and theological realities. In particular, we’re trying to figure out what the end of Christendom means to us as a post-Christian congregation, and we’re adapting to an intensely competitive nonprofit landscape.

Four years ago, I suggested to our lay leaders that we might do a six-week spring curriculum unit in peacemaking for K-5 Sunday school classes. That program, which I based on an old 1980s curriculum called “Peace Experiments,” was described by Geez magazine — a magazine subtitle “Holy mischief in an age of fast faith” — like this:

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REA: “My God, what have we done?”

Leah Gunning Francis opened the first plenary session of the Religious Education Association 2014 conference. She introduced the plenary speakers, and informed us that unfortunately Gabriel Moran was not able to be present. Francis lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and given that the theme of this year’s conference is “Religion and Education in the (Un)Making of Violence,” she showed some of her photographs of the protests in Ferguson, Missouri — to the great interest of the conferees.

The first “speaker” was Andrea Bieler, Professor of Practical Theology at the Kirchliche Hochschule in Wuppertal/Bethel, Germany. Bieler did not appear in person; her presentation was a video, in which she spoke, and showed various works of art and other material.

Bieler’s video began with a statement by Theodor Adorno: “The principal demand upon all education is that Auschwitz does not happen again.” Bieler extended this to other instances of systematic violence, including systemic racism in the United States, the state terrorism and “disappearances” in Argentina and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, etc.

In the video, Bieler laid out a nuanced argument, beginning with theories of memory and winding up with a discussion of remembering violence through aesthetic art. I was most interested in her analyses of several site-specific art works in Berlin, particularly the Chapel of Reconciliation, built near the site of the Berlin Wall.

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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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