Resources by Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

In a seminary setting with a daily rule of prayer, students and professors can easily fall into a trap of distinguishing between teaching students how to advocate for justice in the “real world” and the “in-church” liturgy of prayer and worship of seminary life. At times, the liturgical rhythms might even appear to be an intellectual or temporal straitjacket: hindering the work of classroom learning or service to the community and work for justice. However, in my own experience teaching in both Roman Catholic and Episcopal/Anglican seminaries, where the traditional Christian liturgy of the hours determines the structures and rhythms of the students’ lives and learning, I have found that teaching social justice in synergy rather than opposition to the liturgical tide has provided opportunity for teaching social justice rather than a hinderance. In fact, this immersion in the liturgy can transform teaching social justice into an act of recollection and connection building, rather than creating an oppositional dynamic. This “calling to mind” in beginning to teach social justice which immersion in liturgy permits has two crucial components. First, the daily liturgy of the Roman Catholic and Anglican tradition provides substantial content for beginning to discuss and understand the need for social justice and its objects. While there are calls to pursue justice throughout the scripture, the liturgy of the hours or of Morning and Evening Prayer, creates a special focus on the book of Psalms. In these liturgies, students will generally read in unison throughout the entire book every month, and then turn around and do it again. This means that students begin and end almost every day with the cries to instantiate God’s justice which fill the Psalms in their mouths and in their minds. Beginning a pedagogical engagement with social justice in the Christian tradition therefore begins with an acknowledgement of the Word which is already in their mouth, and then broadens to seeking to understand that word in the context of the present day. This grounding of the classroom discussion of social justice in the liturgy is, of course, far from novel, but stretches back through the Christian tradition. Explaining this tradition and explicitly linking it to their own immersion liturgy then prepares students for the task of analogical translation into their own world, of the ways in which Christians, from John Chrysostom through abolitionists to the Oxford Movement to Oscar Romero, have seen the liturgy as the point of departure out into the world to seek justice and serve the poor. Just as important as starting a discussion on what God’s justice might demand of them is helping them understand how their formation in the liturgy has better prepared them to work for social justice in the world. By its very nature, formation in liturgical worship demolishes the temptation to autonomy and the urge to seek the spotlight, and rather trains students to be communal, listen to others, and be patient with the small steps and slowly developing processes. For example, when students are taught how to chant the Psalms in choir, they learn that the goal is never to declaim, to take up the most space, to push their own voices forward. Rather, they are taught to listen to the tones and pitches of others, to join in the one communal sound, and to use their breath to sustain rather than project. In another example, students come to realize that the liturgy is only made possible by the invisible labor of the sacristans, who ensure that everything needed for the Eucharist celebration is clean, prepared, and its place, but who are never at the front or receive praise or applause. This approach is the exact opposite of what Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to in a famous homily a few months before his death as the “drum major instinct”: the urge to assume that you are better than other people because you are out in front and people notice you first (https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/drum-major-instinct-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church). Rather than surrendering to this instinct, King urged his listeners to walk in the steps of Jesus Christ, who disdained the drum major position in order to be faithful in the unacknowledged work of bringing about God’s justice in the world: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison, rather than focusing on their own success or prominence in the eyes of those around them.       Oriented properly, students formed in the liturgy have already developed the virtues and praxis which make this type of service which Dr. King describes possible. They are ready to pursue the slow work of justice, neither demanding the spotlight nor seeking to drown out fellow laborers with their own voices or opinions. Rather, they are already equipped for service, and the task of the teacher simply becomes how best to show them the way. *Blog Originally published October 21, 2020

At Nashotah House Theological Seminary, a crucial element of our participation in the seminary’s Anglo-Catholic tradition is the student body and faculty’s regular presence at morning prayer, mass, and sung even-song. In the seminary’s beautiful chapel, surrounded by stained glass and hand-carved wooden statues, we sit in the antique wooden choir stalls lining the chancel and join together in worship. As a junior faculty member, I quickly learned a Nashotah House tradition: your choir stall is not yours to determine. The seats are assigned based on seniority, and priority is zealously guarded. Where you sit matters. This tradition of established place carries its own ethical challenges and requires its own ethical interrogation. What assumptions regarding hierarchy and privilege in our tradition and amongst our student body and faculty does it underwrite? To provide one example, our tradition has come into conflict with our commitment to ensuring that students with mobility challenges have equal opportunity to participate in worship, requiring questioning and ultimately changes to our tradition. Teaching social justice in a tradition requires inviting students to engage in a similar (although broader) excavation of that tradition. Of course, a crucial part of this teaching involves learning alongside my students how to step outside the tradition to critically confront the moral and ethical failure of Anglicans, such as the use of Anglican theology at times to support slavery and colonialism. This critical engagement requires accepting that our seats often are gained at the expense of others, and may require change and even surrender on our parts. These moral failures have been well documented and extensively explored, so excavating the resources for critique has been fairly straightforward. An unexpected joy of this type of excavation, however, has been how many good and constructive resources for social justice remain to be uncovered in the tradition. The Oxford Movement which launched Anglo-Catholicism accompanied liturgical revision with a serious theologically-grounded commitment to working for social justice, spanning generations of the movement and manifested in many different forms. Excavating these resources provides the opportunity to invite students into a different form of engagement with the tradition. Students have become imaginatively engaged in questioning their own social assumptions and career aspirations by reading about the so-called “slum priests,” for example, whose commitment to “ritualism” was equaled by their commitment to working to challenge the economic, social, and political structures which created and justified the appalling living conditions suffered by the poor of British manufacturing cities. Students have learned how to connect social critique and advocacy for justice to Anglican theology through reading the works of the great reforming Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple. Of course, exposure to works of Anglicans such as Pauli Murray and Bishop Desmond Tutu have expanded their conceptions of Anglicanism’s work for social justice beyond Anglo-Catholicism and the British Isles. One of the most fruitful resources I have found for retrieval within the tradition are the editions of the British Critic—the journal edited by John Henry Newman in the early days of the Tractarian controversies. Along with discussion of history, doctrine, and liturgy, the pages of this Christian socialist leaning journal are filled with essays of social critique and challenge. One of the essays, written in 1842, which has engaged and challenged my students the most is a long theological critique of the practice then common in British parishes of renting pews to the social elite. The author describes how the poor, walking in and seeing the great boxed pews lined along the front of the parish church, are confronted with an image of the priority of wealth and privilege which runs exactly opposite to Jesus’s message of the priority of the poor in the gospel. Rather than encountering “the image and pattern of heaven” in the church, they see “the world, the flesh, and the devil apparently in full possession.” As part of the Anglo-Catholic liturgical revival, the author calls for the removal of these pews and the restoration of the parish to the poor and needy whom Christ intends to possess it. Through this image, students begin to encounter the connection between the Anglo-Catholic tradition of beautiful worship and architecture with the beauty of justice and service. Over my time at Nashotah, I have realized that our tradition of choir stall seating incorporates not only seniority, but also service. At every service, one of the sacristans (the student-leaders with the most authority in worship) always forgoes sitting in choir to sit by the back door of the chapel—he or she is placed there by the tradition to greet, care for, and assist any guests who might join in the service. My hope for my students is that they leave our seminary having learned that Anglo Catholicism not only provides choir stalls, but also provides models and methods to emulate, just like the sacristans sitting at the back of the church ready to serve and care for others. Where you sit matters.

Sex, money, politics: all the things we are told not to talk about. However, as the ethics professor at an Episcopal/Anglican seminary which draws diverse students from across the theological spectrum, teaching on these controversial issues is an important and challenging part of my job. As a professor, it’s easy for me to believe that my responsibility in teaching on controversial issues extends only to giving a compelling lecture or leading an animated discussion. However, unless controversial issues are presented in a context in which the students and I are open to learning and changing, there is always a risk that the class simply confirms the students who already agreed with me in their convictions and alienates the students who disagree, making their future openness to change even less likely. Rather, true transformational pedagogy requires not just teaching concepts, but incorporation into a community which creates the conditions for transformation. In February of 1940, Dorothy Day considered the transformation required in order for the members of the Catholic Worker to confront the difficulties of working for “a new heaven and a new earth, wherein justice dwelleth.” Day described how this work depends on God’s grace, but also demands radical change on the part of the human participants. In fact, it requires “indoctrination”—bringing people into the doctrine of the “mystical body of Christ.” Indoctrination is not simply the reception of information, but actual incorporation—becoming one body—with the community. Incorporation requires formation, which is achieved in part through shared practices such as worship (daily attendance at Mass and communal rosaries), community (carried out in kitchens and at the table), and external engagement (political activism and care of the poor). In the rest of this post, I will consider how these same practices are key for developing a community in which transformative pedagogy regarding controversial issues is possible. First, Day examines how the practice of worship highlights the “correlation” between the spiritual and the material while also emphasizing the primacy of the spiritual. Looking beyond the physical to the spiritual expands the imagination by “quicken[ing] the perceptions” to appreciate other material and spiritual experiences than one’s own. Creating fertile ground for engagement with controversial issues in the classroom requires exactly this type of transformation of the imagination. In addition, worship teaches patience and charity. Confronting our own limitations in contrast to God’s goodness should ensure that “we will not lose faith in those around us, no matter how stumbling their progress is.” In Christian seminaries in a liturgical tradition such as my own, communal practices of worship provide the perfect opportunity to encourage students to look beyond their material circumstances to seek “the presence of God” in their analysis of controversial issues. However, any pedagogical practices which move students beyond the classroom into a mode of reflective engagement—with the beauty of art or nature especially—can also prove valuable resources in a nonreligious or interfaith setting for transformation of imagination and expansion of perspective. Day’s description of the communal practices of kitchen and table point to the context which prepares people to engage with controversial questions. In the time of COVID, we have come to realize how important eating together is to create the bond and trust required for vulnerability. In addition, the cooperation of cooking together or other shared creative activities strengthen and reinforce a communal bond. Creating space for students to engage in these types of activities, whether as a whole class or in small groups, creates the conditions for true openness regarding challenging issues. Through these communal practices, students and professors begin to experience the reality of their identity as a communal body. Like a body, students incorporated in the community will start to feel the hurts and joys of one another as their own—preparing them to approach controversial questions which impact the lives of others with new empathy and urgency. Finally, Day describes the practices of service and activism which are the outgrowth of communal and spiritual practices. These actions, especially those which engage the community in service with the poor, build on the first two categories, as well as providing the end which guides them. Of course, these practices are more easily obtained in service-learning programs. However, even taking advantage of opportunities to genuinely serve others in the community can enhance solidarity within the community while also expanding the participants’ awareness of the sorrows and challenges of the world. Through shared engagement in these practices, students and professor gain a deeper understanding of the impact of controversial questions on people’s lives, confront the limited nature of solutions currently available, and come to appreciate the need not only for knowledge, but action. Will all these practices make teaching controversial issues easier? Not necessarily. In fact, they may complicate emotional engagement and can add to the administrative burden. In addition, they require the professor to surrender pedagogical illusions of grandeur or omniscience. However, as Day reminds us, “little works” matter, and through these small practices both we and our students may change and ultimately grow.