Resources by Grace Ji-Sun Kim

I met Rev. Jesse Jackson at an Interfaith Conference in Doha, Qatar. It was the first time I heard him speak in person, and during his plenary talk he covered the importance of interfaith dialogue. As I listened to how we human beings, in all our diversity, triumph, and affliction, are measured with one yardstick, I remembered the first sentiment Rev. Jackson stated that resonated with me: We often look at the strangers standing next to us as transient newcomers in our lives— bearing different skin and newborn, young, and weathered faces—but that stranger next to us often stands there as a distant reminder of ourselves, a reiteration of our experiences, a reflection we must welcome and embrace as our own. Such a notion may have been spouted during countless sermons in my life, however growing up in a strictly conservative evangelical household, I was taught that Christianity was the only way. I believe this is one of the ultimate pitfalls in Christianity and other major world religions: the denial of other faiths and faith believers. It draws every person of faith to believe that all other religions must be evil, and thus their followers must also be evil. It took decades of spiritual journeying and education to overcome this false belief, and led to a point in my career where interfaith dialogue became a preeminent focus. While perhaps I was led to this cause for personal edification, I began teaching the “Interfaith Dialogue” course with the intrinsic perspective of social justice as the human pillar upon which my students could act. In this way, interfaith dialogue is not relegated to classrooms and conferences, but belongs in our streets, our churches, and our homes. After meeting Rev. Jackson all those years ago, I have had opportunities to work with him on numerous issues. What comes to mind first, as it is so close to home, is our work on the South Korea, North Korea peace process, where we fought to free Kenneth Bae from North Korean prison. Overall, the issues we have collaborated on are founded in racial and gender justice, and culminated in my editing his book, Keeping Hope Alive (Orbis Books), a selection of his sermons and speeches as one of the foremost figures of civil rights in American history. While working with Rev. Jackson, I became aware of our unequivocal ties, not just to our personal history as teachers and theologians, but also to our ancestry. Truth be told, one cannot help but be reminded of one’s past in this country as an African American, especially during this tremendous time of uprisal, protests, and activism following George Floyd’s death, all insulated within the disorder of the world pandemic. It is as if every story of another black man’s death, a new case of police brutality, is yet another immersion of an iceberg’s tip. We are surrounded by such iceberg tips -- the question is whether we as a wider culture will be pushed to surface these and reveal the singular iceberg of racial injustice and create lasting, dynamic change. During this time in which I oscillated between the news, Twitter, work, and occasionally chatting with Rev. Jackson, I was constantly reminded of just how much I didn’t know; how many stories are untold, and how just as many stories are misunderstood through a majority lens. It challenged me to confront my own history and ancestry as an Asian American woman, and the strange places of marginalization and liminality that I find myself in. Such contradictions and challenges with racial identity come into relevance when examining interfaith dialogue and how we can contextualize from a stringent dogma taught in progressive faith movements to a more universal and enduring truth. What I learned alongside Rev. Jackson has deeply informed my curriculum and pedagogy. One thing I learned is that fighting any form of injustice requires collaboration with those who are similar to us and also those who are different from us. We need to work with Christians and with those of other faith traditions. I experienced this firsthand during my first meeting with Rev. Jackson in Doha, as we held offsite interfaith communications with Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Since then, I have been with him as he met with Muslim and Jewish leaders in the United States to work on eliminating islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Without dialogue, there is no diversity in thought, and thus the possibility of change moves farther and farther away from us. Without dialogue there is no confrontation, and thus, no peace. This is why I adamantly require dialogue, debate, and challenge from my students. As teachers, we must exemplify what we teach. Social justice is threaded through my teaching. When I talk about racial justice and easing the tension between groups of people of different ethnicities and religions, my exemplary work with Rev. Jackson finds its way into the classroom. There have historically been tensions between African Americans and Asian Americans, as experienced during the LA riots and Baltimore riots. The visual and symbolic representation of Asian Americans working hand-in-hand with African Americans is important in the classroom as well as outside the classroom. An Asian American woman working with Rev. Jackson exemplifies a wider ripple in collaboration across all communities, all fields, and offers students a realistic depiction of what they can anticipate and practice in their professional lives. Social justice work is ongoing and it is important to recognize the intersectionality of interfaith and racial justice, as Rev. Jackson encourages. To fight for racial justice also requires us to fight against gender injustice, sexual injustice, climate injustice, etc. Recognizing the intersectionality[1] of these issues provides students with the agency to create some kind of real-world impact; whether you are teaching Interfaith Dialogue, Liberation Theology, or homiletics, social justice issues unify with our work and therefore should be recognized in our pedagogy. To help my Interfaith Dialogue students engage deeper, I take them on a day trip to Indianapolis to visit a Hindu temple, a synagogue, and the Interchurch Center. At these three sites, we engage in dialogue with the Hindu leader at the temple, a rabbi at the synagogue, and the executive director at the Interchurch Center. These engagements and encounters are fruitful, enlightening, and pedagogically important. Some students have said that that the dialogue trip was the first time that they ever met a person of Jewish faith, or a Hindu, and that it was a profoundly enriching way, perhaps the most honest way, to engage in dialogue with them. Many students mentioned afterwards that this physical visit and dialogue was one of the most important events in their learning process. When people meet and engage in critical dialogue, it deepens their sense of social engagement and feeling for social justice from a mere lofty aspiration to a personal, grounded intention. This is what I experienced while working with Rev. Jackson. This was the type of dialogue we engaged in when I first encountered him and worked with him in Doha, and which I continue to practice on personal level, and ultimately share with my students. I have learned tremendously from working with Rev. Jackson and hope that our continued work and collaboration with make a pathway for others to collaborate and work for justice. Author’s note: Grace Ji-Sun Kim is presently working on a new book, Rev. Jackson’s Theological Biography.           [1] For more information on intersectionality, please read Intersectional Theology, Grace Ji-Sun Kim & Susan Shaw, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018).

Education is the process of learning and knowing, an undertaking unrestricted to our schools, curriculums and textbooks. Rather, it is a holistic process that continues all throughout our lives. Even mundane, regular events and occurrences around us are educational in some way or another. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that our lives without education would be stagnant, hollow even. No change would occur, no milestones would be reached. We would float in the same place without meaning. Thus, we organize the dissemination of knowledge not just to give meaning to others, but to ourselves. When we educate a person, we can shift a world; to educate a person, passes on meaning from one person to the next; to educate a person, changes the world. Teachers possess such a power. We teachers and professors should find immense meaning in our work—especially when the role has been recently reconstructed to something radically new. We must challenge ourselves to find inspiration again during a time when teaching and education has been entirely digitized to muted chatrooms and emails, forcing the traditional to become innovative, and the personal to become impersonal. In this moment when the comforts and familiarities of regular life has been put on pause, and slowly started again, we reflect on how to make use of the sudden changes brought on during the pandemic. The fervent discussions about race in America remain at the top of our concerns. It’s timely that attention to the racial and economic divide during the crisis have turned this omnipresent national issue into an urgent and revolutionary world protest given that Covid-19 cases and deaths have targeted black and brown communities. It reminds professors that we cannot forget to tackle basic struggles, and inform others that such a struggle even exists. We must teach our students to be actively anti-racist, and even further, to understand how racism intersects with other forms of prejudice to create stronger forms of discrimination. Be it one’s gender, body type, economic status or sexual orientation, we must remind ourselves and our students that no one issue stands alone, but converges with others. Susan Shaw and I co-wrote a book, Intersectional Theology which talks about how there are no single axis issues, but multiple axis issues. Our identities are not dimensional but multi-dimensional; we understand ourselves through the very personal experience of our gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ableism, class etc., One’s identity is the converging of multi-axis identities. These identities all shape us and define who we are. But these identities are also points of justice as racism, patriarchy, homophobia embed themselves in the fabric of our society. In doing intersectional theology, we recognize that it comes with the requirement to create social justice. In the same way, we want our teaching to be meaningful, to address social issues and to further justice. How can we do this? The books that we need to advocate for students to read must be racially and gender diverse, written by a diverse breadth of writers, covering a diversity of perspective and subject matters. The history of theology is mostly written by men. It is crucial that we listen to voices other than white men’s to get a deeper and more expansive theological understanding. Therefore, pedagogically, we need to urge students to read non-white books[1]. We can strategically put them in our syllabus, include authors of color whose work touch on justice, and also select them for their assignments. Projects in class and outside the class can also incorporate social justice elements. I know in some seminaries and colleges, service learning is part of the curriculum. In those schools, part of the justice work is included in the courses throughout their studies. Early on in our schooling we are required to volunteer or participate in service learning, however this idea of justice work should also be upheld by professors in later education, adjusting the work for students studying for their bachelor’s, Master’s, or higher. Whoever the student or professor, whatever the format, setting or institution, informing and encouraging students to promote justice should be lifted as one of the highest priorities in our teaching. Going forward, we can utilize social media as a vital tool to share information and ideas. We can encourage students to blog (for their seminary, church or denominational blogsite), share, or write social justice posts. Social activism on the internet can be a powerful source of information sharing, encouragement and engagement. Political petitions are shared online, protest events are shared and organizations who do the work can also be shared. These elements can be tied into the course content and assignments. Another powerful tool is the media: movies, videos, music, etc. which used in teaching can make for a more poignant, dynamic tactic to promote social justice. I have used movies such as “Sophie’s Choice,” “God on Trial,” and “The Mission” to raise awareness of the social injustices such as anti-semitism, slavery, and colonialism and how to move forward. As we continue to teach during a pandemic, we can harness all the tools we have available online to express our plights, our activism, and our hopes for the uncertain future. We can be motivated by the challenges of virtual learning, and develop new ways to encourage community engagement, even at a distance. Community building, church building can be done online as COVID-19 continues to spread and spike across the United States. The professor has essential power not just in the classroom, but for the next generation. If the professor can also exemplify what they teach in their own lives, it will make a stronger impact in the classroom.  Practice what you preach can also apply to practice what you teach. Teaching should be meaningful and substantive—but above all, it should be transformative. Let yourself be open to the quiet, and grand transformations in the everyday; the ones that shift your consciousness and provide an experience to learn from and be shared. In this way, we, as professors and learners, can continuously provide pieces of wisdom to promote justice and demand change. [1]A few examples of books to consider reading and adding to your syllabus: De La Torre, Miguel, Burying White Privilege, (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 2018) Cone, James, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011) Kim, Grace Ji-Sun, Embracing the Other (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015) Townes, Emilie, Troubling in My Soul, (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 2015)  

It was just a few years ago when one of my graduate students lost her mother to a sudden unexpected illness. Despite the abrupt passing, three days later that student returned to class. Like any other day, she opened her laptop and took notes while listening to my lecture. Confounded by her composure, I talked to this student later and let her know that she could take extra time with any course-related work, and that I was giving her authorization to be absent and spend time with family. Yet she did not want to. She told me that being in class made her feel like everything was normal, as if her life was intact and unchanged. As a teacher, and of course, a former student, I empathized with her predicament. For many, school offers more than an education, but a place of community, sanctuary, sustenance, and security. In a matter of weeks, Covid-19 has radically altered how students are educated around the world. These transformations give us a glimpse of how our education system can and will change—for better and for worse. The pandemic has put students and educators in difficult circumstances, ranging from mere inconvenience to a total loss of one’s livelihood. It has also prompted new models of educational innovation that may have a lasting influence on the direction of learning and applications on the Internet. For myself, and nearly all the other faculty I know, we have been consistently relying on Zoom, a video platform, for online teaching, meetings, and teleconferencing. As the majority of educational faculty have shifted to online teaching, many of us have encountered the issues that come with it. First, we experience the unreliability of video conferencing as Zoom was not prepared for this heavy global usage. It has had to adapt quickly to the exponential surge in traffic. Second, we cannot ignore the difficulty of teaching online verses being in a physical classroom. Third, is the question of adequate means of evaluations for students and for students evaluating the professors. As a professor teaching online, I have had my share of difficulties and frustrations. The connection on my laptop has been faulty as I teach via Zoom, so I have resorted to using my phone data to teach rather than Wi-Fi. With the limited screen, I can only view two or three student’s faces at a time which isn’t the best way to stay engaged while teaching. During class, most students are on mute to cancel out distracting background noise, therefore, I sometimes feel like I am talking to a blank void because of the silence. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for students to concentrate with the plethora of distractions both online and environmentally. In addition, it takes time for them to ask questions or participate in class discussions as they pause to unmute themselves. Furthermore, when the Wi-Fi is slow, some don’t have their videos on; it is even harder to teach looking at “blank” faces. Spontaneity is an important part of learning. Something a professor or a student shares may lead to further and deeper discussions which may not have been planned. This is often difficult to create in front of a laptop where the students are muted and sometimes their videos aren’t running. Teaching is about being present, engaging, dialogue, eye contact, body language, listening, and communion, and these cannot be simulated in front of laptop or cell phone. Videoconferencing ends up fostering instructor-centric learning, rather than multiway interaction which is ultimately collapsed into a one-way communication after a certain number of people join the conference. Looking through the materials gathered by instructional tech groups and learning centers, I see that the resources focus almost entirely on the operational “hows” of technology: recording lectures, making discussions, and examinations. However, it is not adequate to continue the learning-teaching venture. Past the digital connection, is the emotional one, particularly in times of uncertainty and rising anxiety. Of course, I do not question the shift to online or closed campuses, rather I think about how during periods of fear and anxiety, we must ensure students are not only learning effectively, but also are taking care of their mental health. We professors can provide solace, enrichment, and balance during a mentally and emotionally draining epidemic. Not only do I do my best to ensure that my classes are as positive and entertaining as they can be, but I also bring to attention that I am always available for support. I try to humanize myself and remind myself that so many students have left behind more than academics and classrooms. Above all, it is important for professors to ask our students what we can do to help them. In times of uncertainty, we can do our best to create space where students’ ideas and individual voices bring light to one another, as they do for us. While there is a surplus of uncertainties during this time, what we can be sure of is that Covid-19 has become the catalyst for educational institutions to explore new solutions in a short period of time. The question of student evaluations, therefore, needs to be seriously reexamined. With students under higher stress levels, educational institutions need to rethink how students are graded. With campus shut-downs, many libraries are closed and digital books and journals are limited. In the context of major world panic, economic alarm and growing illness, our students should be given leeway not just academically, but financially. Presently, we are seeing students and solution providers welcome the “learn anytime, anywhere” concept of online education. we have been reminded that the way of the future is through a range of mediums. Conventional in-person learning will be accompanied by novel education modalities, from live broadcasting, to virtual reality, to educational influencers akin to social influencers. We are finding that learning can be a practice integrated into daily routines, becoming a true ‘lifestyle.’  The rapid spread of Covid-19 has forced us to challenge ourselves and build resilience from incalculable threats, challenges, and insecurities. We must use this pandemic as an opportunity to remind ourselves that the skills we must impart to students in an unpredictable world include sophisticated decision making, creative problem-solving, and most importantly, adaptability.  We do this to build resilience in them, and the future we help them create.

As a professor, I am caught in the midst of a revolutionary period in education and technology. Education has had a slow building relationship with technology and has even had a love-hate relationship with the use of social media, despite its impenetrable growing prevalence in our lives. For younger generations, social media has gone from phenomenon to cultural norm, and the debate regarding whether or not to integrate social media into the classroom becomes more relevant. Social media is a pandora’s box of opportune connection, knowledge and dangerous pitfall. Though you can live without it, living with it in the digital age puts you among the same pace with the rest of the world. It holds everything that the modern world relies on for information, culture, entertainment and social activity. Aside from the obvious risks of using social media, like distractions and negative digital spaces, I have always been a vocal advocate for using social media in the classroom. As classrooms are going more digital and even more online courses are being taught, I believe that social media becoming a necessary tool to enhance student engagement, teaching methodology and learning development. I can share social media news that is relevant to the class materials or have students find relevant materials from social media which are pertinent to the content of the class. This can be done intentionally in the classroom, but unintentionally, it occurs rather frequently. This is due to the fact that students are already on social media and are sharing, following and seeking information which may help them in their studies. Social media is used by students for their assignments, for support, and for information. Since the students are already on social media, at times it is important to meet them where they are. We only have to look briefly at the major paradigm shift in education as a whole. Social media and technology have become the primary tool for personal education in the past decade, yet when you examine the educational and academic landscape, the archetypical classroom setting with a student listening to the teacher’s lecture has not changed all that much. The conventional antics in education are as always, a far step behind. Students now are gravitating towards learning digitally, where the preference to engage in information and material at an autonomous pace and in a self-directed manner becomes a greater expectation. Younger generations have grown up learning in such a manner, and its elevated efficiency leads me to believe that it’s not the students that need to adapt to educators, but rather the educators that need to adapt to them. Students today can and should expect to learn anywhere they are any time they want; they should be able to have the option to have a diverse learning source, not just the formal teacher and peer, but the global environment of classrooms filled with other teachers and peers. This fosters the opportunity for energetic co-learning and co-creation, inciting more dissemination of information for a democratic audience in a digital space. This is one of the greatest values of social media: its openness and interactiveness. It breaks down the walls between student and educator, allowing for all to be both simultaneously. We cannot slow down the consumption of information online, nor can we slow down how it is disrupting the traditions of education. As a result, rather than being the owner of knowledge I feel my responsibility adjusting towards being a facilitator and guider of knowledge. When I post on social media, I feel as though it is a conscious act of preparing my students to understand how to use social media as an educational, positive and professional tool in the modern climate. Information can quickly be disseminated on social media as the classroom goes beyond the walls of a classroom. Furthermore, it allows my students the chance to send me questions, while also keeping them informed and updated on what is occurring in the classroom. This unique avenue generates new forms of engagement that I would not otherwise establish in the typical classroom setting. The future of education will not be limited to physical spaces and classroom doors. Students and non-students alike should be able to learn in relation to updated current technology that allows for learning without bounds. As educators and students, we need to welcome this philosophy and utilize social media for a progressive education and a right step towards the future. You can follow Grace Ji-Sun Kim on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Grace Ji-Sun Kim What are your favorite pastimes? Does it include a night with friends at your favorite restaurant or is it watching a movie at home, on the sofa, with snacks? Imagine your college class with movie and a...

Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Associate Professor of Doctrinal Theology, Moravian Theological Seminary It was the second week of January, and I was alone with the three kids as my husband was off to sunny California on business. The first night he...