Resources

Theological education in the United States finds itself in untested circumstances today. Rapid social change is creating an increasing multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious context for leadership formation. At the same time, international enrollment, cross-border educational initiatives, student and faculty exchanges, and more are connecting US theological schools with a global community of Christian teaching and learning. How do US theological institutions “locate” themselves within this global ecology of theological formation so as to be both responsible participants and creative shapers within it? That is, how do they discern their proper place and role? It is questions like these that the contributors to this volume explore. Building on the decades-long discussion about the globalization of US theological education, this book argues that, in engaging such questions, US theological institutions have much to gain from a sustained conversation with the burgeoning literature on the internationalization of American higher education. This research offers theological institutions a trove of insights and cautionary tales as they seek to discern their rightful place and role in educating leaders in and for a global Christian church. (From the Publisher)

n this learning design, the book of Ruth is read closely and critically in order to foster dialogue about political issues in the classroom. Using bell hooks’ model of engaged pedagogy, political issues such as feminism, immigration, gender, sex, and consent are carefully addressed through the pedagogical strategies described. Teachers may use all of the strategies in a full unit on Ruth, or they may choose one or two to implement in a single class. Cobb suggests the use of polling, creative expression through drawing, videos, small group discussions, and maps to incite thoughtful conversation about relevant political issues and the book of Ruth.

This is an annotated lesson plan for a class discussion and activity about Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans in an “Introduction to the New Testament” undergraduate course. The primary aim of this lesson plan is to help students develop a vocabulary to discuss ethnicity and belonging. In the first part of the activity, students closely read Galatians and Romans and were able to articulate how Paul differentiates between Jews and Gentiles, and further, how their differences are important for how each group achieves the crucial status of righteousness. In the second part, students drew comparisons between Paul’s seemingly universalizing statement in Galatians 3:26-29 and contemporary political discourses that employ universalizing/particularizing dichotomies. Specifically, they analyzed the #AllLivesMatter response to #BlackLivesMatter and how Paul might respond to both.

After the 2016 elections, students at Macalester College, a small private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, encouraged the faculty and staff to combat hate, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy in and out of the classroom. These students inspired me to reconsider the way that I taught my introductory New Testament course. In this essay, I present the process by which I redesigned the course to explore not only the historical context of the New Testament texts but also our present political context and the ways it shapes biblical interpretation. The redesigned syllabus includes scholarship representative of the feminist, post-colonial, African American, Latinx, Asian-American, Jewish, queer, and other liberationist and identity-based approaches to the study of the New Testament.

Professors have an obligation to respond in real time to politically charged events in society, whether they are in the news or in our students' lives on campus (or both). So how do we do that without replicating our own biases and/or confirming our students’ worst stereotypes of us as teachers? In a Twitter thread, with research h-based supporting materials, I discuss the reasons why we should engage our students in conversations about politically-charged events and some of the best practices that I have discovered for doing it. I apply my practices to four complex, controversial current events: national anthem protests at sporting events, the Indigenous Peoples' March confrontation, and a racist incident on my own campus.

Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Tennessee requires creativity, confidence, and compassion. The forty-person upper-level “Introduction to the New Testament” course that I teach every year is my most challenging and most pedagogically interesting class, and also the most rewarding. My goal in this class is to make space for a variety of responses to the material while teaching the context and history of the New Testament texts as well as how to think critically about the politics of their interpretation. The challenge is to take the diverse passions that my students bring to the class and help them all to engage together critically with both the historical study of early Christianity and the politics of its interpretation that are so visible in the world around them.

In this conversation, the Reverend Dr. Shanell Smith shares her strategies for incorporating politics into the classroom via an explicitly politicizing technique, “Keepin’ it Real.” She discusses the process of considering what to include and how to include it (and why we must!), and offers a window into how it might look in the classroom, using examples from a class on Mary that she teaches in an online seminary setting. Smith emphasizes the importance of modeling personalized scholarly inquiry for our students, including and especially the openness and vulnerability that make our scholarship matter both to us and to the world we share.

Shawkat M. Toorawa serves as Professor of Arabic Literature and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. In this conversation he reflects on his decades-long experience as a teacher and administrator in the U.S. and abroad; the role of politics in classroom and curriculum; and the impact of race, religion, and international crisis on pedagogical engagement.