Abstract
“What is suffering? What is hope?” These are questions I have asked for years with classes full of students training for Christian ministry. Now, I ask these questions in classes with Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and ‘spiritual but not religious’ students, all in training to be spiritual care therapists. The institution where I serve is in the process of transitioning from a mono-religious Christian theological College to a centre for multi/inter-religious education. Those of us who teach in the program are disrupted continually by pedagogical challenges that both perplex and energize us. The multi-religious classroom decolonizes spaces long dominated by Christian theological discourse. Course content yields to a fluid and open-ended, interactive process. My “mastery of the field” gives way to an ongoing practice of surrender—a kenotic self-emptying—that usually leaves me shaken in overwhelming awe or angst-ridden questioning. Through a practical theological methodology that begins with lived human experience, this paper shares an autoethnographic account of my experience as a teacher in the multi-religious classroom. It presents key dimensions of the theology of the cross as an interpretive framework and closes by examining how the theology of the cross offers a practical Christian theological reflective process to empower decolonizing pedagogy.
Highlights
A handful of Christian theological schools in North America are in the process of transitioning from being institutions of mono-religious education and professional training to becoming multi-religious/inter-religious schools.1 My institution is in the process of this transition
Through a practical theological methodology that begins with lived human experience, this paper presents an autoethnographic account (Moschella 2018, pp. 5–29; Wall 2008) of my experience as a teacher in a multi-religious course, Suffering and Hope, and reflects on the experience through the theology of the cross as it seeks to reclaim this “thin tradition” (Hall 2003, pp. 13–14; 2012, p. 79) as a resource for Christian decolonizing practices within multi-religious settings
In this paper I have explored how the theology of the cross can function as a practical theological interpretive framework and presented it as a reflective process to support decolonizing the multi-religious classroom
Summary
A handful of Christian theological schools in North America are in the process of transitioning from being institutions of mono-religious education and professional training to becoming multi-religious/inter-religious schools. My institution is in the process of this transition. Practice in relation to my use of autoethnography: While I have shared honestly about my experience of the course, I have altered some details in my descriptions of students to ensure their anonymity and privacy Those of us who teach in the multi-religious programs at my institution see amazing things happening among the students in the program and within our own teaching and relationships. Some questions that framed my goals for the course include the following: While I recognize that ‘faith’ is a contested term in some inter-religious contexts, I use it here to connote the dynamic life-giving core of ‘lived religion’ Including those who identify with more than one tradition/practice and those who identify as Jewish, Sikh, and others. How might students engage in directed reflection on their own lives and that of their communities, their religious traditions, and those of each other to develop perspectives on suffering and hope that support them “at the bedside” and in their spiritual and public leadership? How can they deepen their hermeneutics of suffering and hope to enable them to see multiple perspectives while deepening their understanding within their own faith perspectives? How might students’ practices of care and self-awareness be built up through the course?
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