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Originally, this paper was presented at the Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee and Academic Relations Committee panel of the American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2023, San Antonio. The theme of the panel was: Contingent Faculty, Just Labor, and the Ethics of Care. I. Paradigm Shifts New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth, They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth. James Russell Lowell wrote these words in the 1840s in a poem called “The Present Crisis, criticizing the United States’ war with Mexico.” In this extraordinary and timeless turn of phrase, Lowell reminds us that the world is always changing. In dramatic alignment with Lowell’s sentiment, humanity is only twenty-three years into the twenty-first century. We are a society who has only recently moved from an analogue mindset to a digital universe.  We are only barely acquainted with the rapid-paced technological age. The implications and ramifications of the digital age and the changes in life and lifestyle have just begun to unfold.  This might be especially true in higher education. Grappling in this new time and landscape has caused a wide variety of industries to undergo minor and major shifts in labor paradigms – either by plan or by reaction. Higher Education, as a societal industry, is no different. Higher education is traversing this new landscape.  The needed adaptations and changes have been a tremendous challenge that, at times, defeats us. The decision to shift the labor paradigm of faculty in higher education feels like it was done on an ad hoc basis. Even so, the decision is pervasive. This decision to shrink the pool of tenured and tenure-track faculty and increase the number of adjunct faculty has changed higher education – is changing higher education – will continue to change higher education. School administrators, often out of financial desperation, decided full-time contract faculty would be cheaper than tenured faculty. This strategy was undertaken without anticipating that, or planning for, the toxic environments which have been created. As a result of these decisions, many schools now operate with a permanent under-caste in the faculty. II.Wabash Center The mission of the Wabash Center is to support and strengthen teaching and the teaching life in theological and religious education. Our project has been in operation for 28 years and is solely funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Wabash Center, in serving entire faculties and individual scholars, has an unique vantage point for hearing the stories of faculty in religion and theology. Each summer Wabash Center gathers more than fifty faculty from approximately fifty schools. These gatherings allow me, and other faculty leaders, to hear first-hand the stories and the concerns of teaching and the teaching life. The shift from tenure-track and tenured faculty to the hire of full time adjunct-ing faculty has created in a great many schools a two-tier faculty. The adjunct-ing faculty are treated as “less than,” while the tenured faculty are deemed as being superior. The workplace environments are described as being toxic by the contingent faculty. III. Stories of Toxic Work Environments We hear stories of exploitation, incivility, bullying, intimidation, ostracization, and subjugation. Many contingent colleagues tell stories of being invisible-d, silenced, and relegated to the bottom or margins of the institution. Many contracted faculty are seen as expendable while also being over-worked and demoralized. Colleagues self-report feeling unwell, depressed, anxious, fatigued, and taken advantage of. We hear stories of long work hours, impossible workloads, unhealthy life-work balance, demeaning bosses and colleagues, climates that are super competitive, and normalized behaviors of disrespect and disregard. Colleagues report experiences of sabotage and feelings of being targeted. Many contracted colleagues have a sense of shame for not having a tenure-track or tenured job. Many have a sense of betrayal because, while they earned the requisite terminal degree, they are not treated with dignity, decency, or care as contract faculty. Many feel trapped in dead-end jobs. The stories tell that schools have started a kind of academic segregation in faculties. Academic ghettos have been created. We know that the politics of segregation, when institutionalized, is cruel, brutal, and inhumane. There is no such thing as “nice” dehumanization. While it might be typical to hear tenured faculty with similar criticisms, the clear difference is that tenure-track and tenured colleagues have health plans, retirement benefits, access to professional development opportunities, office supplies, and administrative support. Upward mobility is possible. There is, for some, an agreed upon career pathway in the institution. Most contingent faculty have few or none of these institutional benefits. I suspect, like the toxic environments in corporate workplaces, administrative colleagues, for the most part, are unaware of the severe environment of their own schools. I suspect they are also unaware, or naïve, concerning the legal ramifications for work environments where harassment, bullying, and dehumanization is the norm. An irony is that I suspect the shift in labor patterns has eroded teaching. Oppressed colleagues do not teach well or even adequately. The shift has resulted in a weakening of teaching and the teaching life. Education has been diminished. The problem is not the colleagues who are employed as contingency faculty. The problem is the way institutions are treating people – by that I mean – institutions are treating people without dignity and without respect.  All faculty, tenure or contract, are worthy of honor. A healthy workplace recognizes all employees as being valuable, worthwhile, useful, and meaningful to the organization and treats them as such. Too many schools are unhealthy and doing harm to faculty. IV. Given the Current Mammoth Challenge The shift in the labor force is not without cause. Schools are faced with low student enrollment and the forecast is that the available desirable pools of students will not return. This is compounded by the fact that most schools operate on a business model dependent upon tuition dollars and the related monies of having students on campus. These are critical dollars without which schools are doomed. Endowments require expertise in investment strategies in the roller coaster of the stock market. Some schools have been quite successful while other schools have been hit hard. Shrinking dollars results in withering schools. Initially, many schools made the reactionary decision to shift to contingency faculty to close a shortfall in the budget while thinking this decision would be temporary. This temporary measure has now expanded into a paradigm shift in the labor force of higher education and theological education. We are now living with the repercussions of a short-sighted fix for a very complex problem while we are in crisis. In this time of crisis, how do we navigate the seemingly unsolvable? V. Think Tank Needed Most scholars of religion and theology, in their brilliance, are not able to do organizational problem solving on a large scale. While they are experts in their academic fields, experts in their chosen research area – able to critique, able to deconstruct and analyze – they are not trained in paradigm shifts. Given our current crisis, we do not have the luxury of deconstruction without re-construction. We cannot discuss our crisis as a rhetorical exercise. Lives and livelihoods are at stake. We need minds who can problem solve, strategize, ideate, design, and develop sustainable systems to meet the current needs and available resources. Where are our think tanks? A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues, ideas, or problems.  Think tanks are charged with engaging problems from a multi-faceted approach considering social issues, public policy, economic trends, political strategy, culture, and technology. A think tank can be charged with advocacy, design, and education concerning the problems for which their research, dialogue and development is aimed. Some think tanks have laboratories for experimentation, internships, and apprenticeships. Given the magnitude of our challenges - where is the think tank for theological and religious education? Who is convening scholars beyond religion and theology for their expertise on our crisis? What needs to be turned over to the Think Tank? What is dignity and respect in the workplace for shifting faculties? What is the aim of education in the 21st century? What is the worth and value of formal study of religion and theology for? What sustainable business models might educational institutions pivot toward? What is the role and necessity of tenure? Why have tenure? What are the effects of diversifying faculties? What does it mean to convene a diverse faculty that is healthy for all and not just some? How can doctoral programs better prepare scholars to be administrators for nimble organizations? Or – what is the formation process for school administrators who will be prepared for crisis and problem solving? Other stuff, given the newness and complexity of our time, I have not thought about! VI. Conclusion The work of creating new paradigms, new business models, new models for teaching is confounding, but vitally necessary. I do not believe our future is collapsed nor foreclosed. I do not believe that our passions for education and teaching are pointless.  We must convene our best minds. What is the way forward? The truth is – we do not know, but together it is likely we can create what is needed.

My first sunburn of the year is always from teaching. I inherited my father’s skin, so it doesn’t take much sun for me to burst into flame, and that first warm day of spring I take all my classes outside, find a patch of grass to sit on, and hold lessons in fresh air for the first time in months. I usually forget to bring sunscreen. This year, because we had an unseasonably warm May, my Chaco tan was impressive before summer even began. Nice-day-outside classes are only the beginning. I hold office hours outside (a taped-up sign written in sharpie on my door tells students where to find me). I teach a 3-week immersion course in January or May called “Backpacking with the Saints” that includes a week of backpacking. At the request of one special class I taught a peripatetic lesson on the crusades in ten inches of snow, complete with “knight training camp” and deaths from dysentery. It’s even as simple as this: in the classroom I most prefer on campus—for its two walls of windows—I rely on the natural light and avoid turning on the fluorescents unless the day’s light is not cooperating. My wild pedagogy is a running joke-argument with my dean: I contend that class is simply better when nature is the classroom. For me, it’s simple. I learned to teach primarily by working as a wilderness guide at a children’s camp, so teaching outside, or teaching with nature as part of my classroom, just makes sense. The first day I stood in front of students in a classroom as a grad student adjunct, I looked at the faces before me in the windowless room and realized, “I think they think I’m in charge.” The second day, I took them outside because we were talking about Genesis. It didn’t occur to me that someone could teach the creation story anywhere but outside. Sitting on the grass with my students, I realized, “I know how to do this. This is how I am a teacher.” Nine years later, sitting in a canyon with some students in January, I thought, “Yeah, this is where I am my best kind of teacher.” So yes, my first reason for taking classes outside is simply that I like being out. I breathe better outdoors. I feel more myself outdoors. But the longer I do it, the more reasons I discover it’s a great choice pedagogically. Some of you are already with me; I’ll wave at you across the quad. If it’s more ideas for how to make nature the classroom you’re after, or ideas for immersive classes, stay tuned. Future blog posts will talk about those. This one is for those of you who are here because you know you love taking classes outside but haven’t thought about why it works so well, or you love it but need ways to talk about it with your skeptical colleagues. Or perhaps you are skeptical yourself. (If your skepticism is about how to make it work with student accommodations and opinions or technology use, look for my next blog in this series.)  So, hear me out: Why is wild pedagogy a good choice? Teaching seems more like a conversation outdoors. Students almost forget they are in class and actually talk with one another and with me, learning instead of worrying about whether something will be on the test. Students are less distracted—or at least distracted by better things. They reach for their phones less often. Outside, students feel like they’re getting away with something. I feel like I’m getting away with something. And when we feel like we’re getting away with something, we play more, which enlivens our discussions. Play also increases my students’ creativity, which they need as they work to understand the mysteries of God and human lives. Life feels more possible when we’re sitting in the sunshine feeling the breeze rustle our hair, and therefore my students feel that the work of learning is more possible, if only for an hour. Finally, that the world is wild and alive expands my teaching and the students’ conversations. We are all more alive as our spirits encounter the breath of the world. My teaching becomes more wild as I am in the wild world. More attentive, more responsive, more active, more unpredictable in the best ways. I invite you to ponder with me in this series all of these reasons for wild-ing pedagogy. I’ll be here every other month with a discussion of one of these reasons and how it plays out in actual classes. I’ll share some successful ideas and some failures. I’ll tell stories of canoeing with students and how they learn things in that setting that are hard to replicate anywhere else. Come join me around the campfire. I’ll save you a s’more.

One recent Saturday afternoon, I visit the Hindu Temple of Atlanta in Riverdale, Georgia, for a conversation with one of the priests about my current research. I spend time walking through both the Vishnu and the Shiva temples, appreciating the various deities and trying to embody a respectful posture as devotees and priests go about their ordinary acts of devotion. I feel both familiarity and discomfort. I recognize the rituals and much, if not all, of the iconography, and I am interested to see what has changed since the last time I visited. People are hospitable, welcoming me and my spouse without overwhelming us. At the same time, I am aware of my own identity, not being a practicing Hindu, or a South Asian person. In this space, I am aware of being hyper-visible, of being obviously a visitor, an observer rather than a full participant in the life of the community. What is to be learned from the experience of being a guest? Maybe the slight discomfort itself is valuable learning: the feeling of being uncertain, an interested outsider in a space that will never be my own. I recognize that the discomfort comes from not being “at home,” being a guest rather than a host. Of course, being a guest can be more uncomfortable than my temple visit.  As guests in other people’s homes, sometimes we are offered food that is not palatable to us. We may not receive what we regard as enough to eat, or we may be expected to eat more than is comfortable.  We may not be comfortable in the bed, or with the patterns of sleeping and rising. This discomfort of being a “guest” has helped me think afresh about the complexity of racial dynamics in institutions. Being a guest makes me aware of how difficult and how vital it is to make people welcome, to consider what is needed to be truly comfortable in a new place. In a recent blog, Lynne Westfield reflects on how BIPOC faculty do not always feel welcome in predominantly white institutions (PWI). She reports, “the majority of BIPOC colleagues who leave employment after less than three years report that their reason for leaving hinges upon experiences of being treated inhospitably.” How might my experience of being a guest help me to be more hospitable to colleagues who feel always like a “guest,” never quite at home? In my current research, I am asking: what does it mean to offer to and receive food from a deity in Hindu (particularly Vaishnava) and Christian contexts?  I am investigating the dynamics of offering puja (worship) and receiving prasada (blessed food) in Vaishnava practice, in comparison with the giving and receiving of food in Christian eucharist. In both cases, the guest/host dynamic is complex: for Vaishnavas, Vishnu is treated explicitly as guest, offered water and food and clothing to be comfortable and welcome.  Devotees treat Vishnu as a guest so that he feels loved and cared for. Yet underlying this treatment is the understanding that Vishnu is also the creator of all things, the one who is ultimate Host. On the Christian side, there is more emphasis on Christ as host at the table (thus the very term “Lord’s Supper” as one name for the eucharist).  God in Christ offers life, offers food to us, as the host of the feast.  Yet in the gospel narratives of his life, Jesus is always a guest in other people’s homes, and narratives like Luke 24:13-35 explicitly present Jesus as guest who becomes host.  In both cases, worshipers play the role of host, but not in an ultimate way. In both cases there is a delicious reversal of expectation of who is guest and who is host. How might such role reversals also be instructive?  After all, just as we need to learn to be good hosts, so also we need to learn to be good guests. In her poem “Sakhi” (“close friend” or “bosom friend”), Indian Dalit poet Hira Bansode describes her initial delight at hosting a high-caste friend for dinner. However, her guest “smirks” at the food on the plate and complains that Bansode failed to serve buttermilk or yogurt at the end of the meal as expected. “I was sad then numb,” says Bansode. “But the next moment I came back to life. / A stone dropped in the water stirs up things on the bottom.” Bansode tells her “friend,” “You know in my childhood we didn’t even have milk for tea much less yoghurt or buttermilk / My mother cooked on sawdust she brought from the lumberyard wiping away the smoke from her eyes.” She defiantly concludes, ‘Are you going to tell me my mistakes?” Being a guest (and learning to be a good guest) has also informed my reflections on being a teacher. In the classroom, I am usually the “host,” setting the environment and the plan for the learners. But if being a guest can bring discomfort, how might this also be true for students?  Does Vishnu, and does Jesus, offer wisdom in modeling what it means to be a good guest, allowing others to live into their roles as hosts? Perhaps this is exactly what collaborative learning processes help us to practice: taking turns being host and being guest in the classroom, so that all may feel truly welcome.

Disclaimer: We are human. All of our actions are imperfect. So, chisme is imperfect as is every form of human communication. Yes. Chisme can be harmful and sinful. However, I ask that while reading and engaging this call and response, please spend some time imagining and listening to the possibilities of what attention to chisme can teach us about God-talk. Before moralizing chisme and discounting it as only sinful, join me in examining how chisme can function in the creation of wisdom through its messy, interwoven, and affective existence. I invite us to embrace that which “Enlarge the Space of Your Tent: Working Document for the Continental Stage, Synod 2021 -2024,” page 102 has asked of us: “The free and gratuitous attention to the other, which is the basis of listening, is not a limited resource to be jealously guarded, but an overflowing source that does not run out, but grows the more we draw from it.”   OK. Now, I am going to share some chisme... We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Humans only know through our bodies. As embryos grow in the womb and organs begin to develop, those organs begin to function. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Newborns recognize voices they hear regularly. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] The movement and swaying of dancing in womb, in arms, on one’s own can be understood as a form of teaching into our traditions. For some this teaching happens in all of these places and spaces. For others, this form of teaching happens only in womb or in arms or on one’s own. However, in these places and spaces, our bodies attain wisdom. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Our bodies learn. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Our bodies also know when someone has mistreated us or when we have experienced the mistreatment of others. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Many Christians believe in creation as Imago Dei – created in the image and likeness of God. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] And that image of God is three persons one God which we call the Trinity. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] We believe that God chooses to experience life as fully human so the second person of the Trinity, the Word becomes Incarnate. We believe that this Incarnate Word was conceived and born by Mary and did not just drop into earth as an adult. Although, as Sor María Anna Águeda de San Ignacio reminds us that God could have chosen salvation history to occur in any way. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] The Greek word for God is Theós Θεός  [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Logos is Greek for both Word and reason. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] We can then build on the wisdom of Diana Hayes and say that theology is God-talk. It is also a nod to the Incarnate Word. It is also a nod to how we as humans grow wise – reason – in relationship with God. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] So, if theology is God-talk and the way we grow in wisdom and knowledge of God as scriptures say about the infant Jesus, then our ways of communicating are directly linked to our own incarnations, our own fleshly existence, our own human bodies. AND… [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Sure. Professional theologians study for many years to write and publish theology. But, everyone who engages in thinking about and communicating with the divine engages in God-talk, and in what I am calling theological languages. We engage theological languages through our own incarnations and with every difference and particularity which makes each one of us unique because… [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] We are people of God in places of God – el pueblo de Díos. Theological languages, therefore, exist in and through el pueblo de Díos. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] One of these theological languages is chisme. Chisme contends with Truth from an experiential perspective. Chisme is incarnational and can be found in Christian scriptures. Chisme is a language of lo cotidiano. Chisme is its own contextualized form of communication related to gossip and the T. Chisme related to gossip has historically religious significance. Chisme related to the T critically contends with structures of power. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know! [CALL] Phrases like “spilling the T”, “pouring the T”, and “the T is hot” connect our knowledge with many times unspoken truths known by our bodies. [RESPONSE] We, like Jesus, are incarnated and our bodies know!