Resources

Over the past several weeks, we have seen over and over again violence against people, mostly women of color, presumed to be Muslim. The attackers have been white men who targeted their victims based on the victim’s presumed religion. Some of the increase in these hate crimes can be attributed to a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric from political leaders which emboldens those with xenophobic views to be more public. However, the lack of a large public outcry against such crimes comes from long held racist assumptions rooted in Orientalism about Muslims which are reinforced by the media, popular culture, government narratives, and, too often, by some non-Muslim religious narratives. The question for any religious studies teacher in these times has to be: what can I do to help counter these assumptions, attitudes, and false narratives? Taking such a question seriously is not without risk, but teaching about religion is not a politically neutral endeavor. Talking about religion, teaching about religion, is political. My entire teaching career has been motivated by how narratives create our reality. This is not something new. After all, bell hooks, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Paul Ricoeur, Judith Plaskow, Dwight Hopkins, Sheila Davaney, and many, many others have pressed for decades about representation and the creation of narratives. However, in our current cultural and political climate I often find myself pausing to consider the narrative, or better, the counter-narrative that needs to be told. Our assumptions about other people are shaped by the information we possess. In many instances, the information we possess is limited at best and ill-informed at worst. This understanding informs how I think about teaching religion. When teaching my “Introduction to Religious Studies” classes I have two goals in mind. First, I want to raise the students’ awareness of the relationships between religion and politics. Religious language is used to justify violence by non-state groups who claim religious identities. Religious language is also used to justify laws and policies about abortion, the death penalty, military strikes, violence, human rights, women’s rights, LBGTQ rights, etc., etc. Second, I hope to raise the level of students’ religious literacy. If our assumptions about other people are shaped by our knowledge, then introducing students to the commonly held beliefs and narratives of various religious communities should result in students having a better understanding about others. When I teach religious studies courses I use a human centered approach. As often as possible, I try to expose students to different practitioners within and among religious traditions. The challenge is always finding the balance between giving students general information about religious beliefs without generalizing and essentializing an entire tradition based on the beliefs of individual practitioners. The larger point is to humanize religious beliefs and practices. When students hear the stories of others, students find ways to connect with folks on a human level. Making a human connection then allows for a different kind of conversation about the interplay between religion and politics. The stereotypes and ill-informed assumptions start to be replaced by new knowledge. As students begin to think differently about human beings and the practices of religion, they also begin to ask critical questions. One of the questions students often ask is about the media’s and popular culture’s engagement with religion. Many students notice that religion is mostly presented as conservative, damaging, and/or violent with very little attention given to religious people who are working to create positive social change rooted in justice. It is during these moments that I am able to introduce to students groups and individuals who might be labeled “prophetic activists.” The idea of prophetic activism is as old as religion itself, but the term as I am using it comes from Helene Slessarev-Jamir. Slessarey-Jamir defines prophetic activism as “religion [that] is being used to frame progressive politics that prophetically calls for justice, peace, and the healing of the world.”[1] Some of the groups I tend to introduce in class include: Jewish Voices for Peace, SpiritHouse Project, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Muslim Advocates, and Four Winds American Indian Council. For example, Jewish Voices for Peace has consistently spoken out against anti-Muslim hate, be it a Chanukah ceremony to overcome racism and Islamaphobia or showing up at airport protest against the “Muslim Travel Ban.” It is prophetic activist groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace that help provide a counter-narrative of justice and nonviolent social change rooted in religion. I started out asking how religious studies teachers can help counter the racist and xenophobic assumptions, attitudes, and narratives that lead to violence and/or silence. My suggestions include a human-centered approach to teaching religion, to make the connections between religion and politics overt, and to provide counter-narratives that are rooted in justice and nonviolent social change. Most importantly, I think it is up to those of us who teach about religion to provide opportunities to change, confront assumptions, and to call out violence done in the name of religion or because of religion.   [1] Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Prophetic Activism: Progressive Religious Justice Movements in Contemporary America (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 4.

Higher education is a by-the-book, highly structured reality. From syllabus design (written for students as well as for administrators) to navigating the tenure track process; from classroom lesson planning to student assessments; as well as the preconceived even contrived ways articles and books are selected for publication – those of us who teach in the academic world participate in a rigid reality.     For a scant few colleagues, this rigorous reality creates spaces for thriving and the production of new knowledge. It is the promise of this constructed reality.  Dangerously, the same austere reality creates ease and opportunity for those who are harbingers of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism to have tremendous platforms of harm against colleagues and students of color.  The strata of oppressive, hegemonic forces in the larger politic of U.S. society are duplicated in the reality of higher education with too few opportunities for checks-and-balances of justice and equity.  Subtle and blatant acts of dehumanization go unchallenged. Gestures of ignorance and insensitivity are commonplace.  Those colleagues who routinely wield their biases, prejudices, ill wills, and ignorance toward people of color and non-white cultures are too often gatekeepers in this reality.  Challenged to navigate this strange reality and stymied to negotiate with persons who would see us fail, there is little sanctuary for us unless we create it for ourselves.  While scholarship is my passion and joy, I never feel at home. My experience of displacement/up-rootedness is neither unique nor rare.  For African American women and other colleagues who are othered and systemically marginalized, the reality of education is designed so that we remain strangers, even in the familiarity of academic spaces.  Our outsider status is galvanized by the white feminist patriarchs, also known as patriarchs-in-drag, who refuse to do critical reflection on relationships with othered women and people of color. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza dubbed this experience of oppression in its many forms as kyriarchy. While naming the experience does not alleviate the circumstance, it does make me feel oriented…known. To never be at home is to contend with the accusations that we cannot do “classical” scholarship while at the same time reeling from the critique that our ethnic/cultural approaches are quaint, interesting…exotic.  Our work and scholarship is othered along with our personhood.  This constant confusion sends firm messages that we are not safe, not welcomed to be authentic or real.  In the midst of this zero-sum experience of hostility, we are expected to be grateful for posts designed for occupation by white men.  In this environment students quickly clue into those who are unwelcomed and deemed to be without authority, making our classrooms spaces unnecessarily conflictual and contentious.  We are not at home.  I have often heard othered colleagues describe this reality as the experience of being erased.  Surely, as those who are Imago Dei, made in the image and likeness of God, we cannot be summarily negated. I am not sure when I started this habit, but it helps me survive/cope.  Each spring, after commencement, I bring a laundry basket to my campus office.  I gather up those personal items that adorn my office.  I pack up the family photos, artwork, cards, and gifts given by students and friends throughout that year.  I pack up my coffee mug, teapot, and the snacks in my desk.  I balance my potted plants on the very top so they do not get damaged or squished.  With heaping laundry basket in-hand, I move out of my office.  Once at home with my laundry basket, I incorporate those items into the décor of my home.  My office plants are nestled among the other plants in my living room, home office, and bedroom.  The artwork and other items find a place on the shelves and in the bookcases.  Then, in late summer, as the fall semester approaches, I make the decision to move back into my office – or not.  If I move back in, I go around my house picking and choosing those art pieces that will adorn my campus office and assist my work in the coming year.  I discuss with my plants and ask for volunteers to come to my campus office.    Once back in my office, I carefully place the photos, paintings, sculptures, and plants. I move back in, only for the year.  Knowing I will move out gives me strength and courage.  Each year, this ritual helps me navigate the death-dealing space that is the academy. It reminds me of my choice and my freedom.  This ritual rekindles my own agency and intrinsic power.  I move back in because of my own choice and not out of obligation, confinement, nor to stave off erasure by these institutions.  Those political practices designed to divide and conquer, which are meant to keep us feeling unwelcomed, are weakened when I exercise this agency.  Moving out of my office each spring lets me know I am free to leave the institutions that do not nurture me or my kind.  Knowing I have a choice helps me keep my rage in check. Moving into and out of my office reminds me that I am not homeless.   The confusion, disarray, and disturbance that would reasonably result from being unwelcomed has little sting and warrants only momentary guile when I remember that our particularity is our gift to the world from the Divine.   We are a people for whom this racist, sexist, homophobic, kyriarachal academic world is a reality that requires the skills of ornery-ness and imaginative cunning—skills for which we are quite adept. The knowledge and belief that the love, sacrifice, and values of our ancestors and wisdom-kin are steadfast provides hope. Audre Lorde wrote, “In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction” (Oberlin College Commencement Speech, 1985).  A Luta Continua.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul. -Leonard Cohen[1] I still remember vividly the fear and frenzy swirling around my graduate school the days and weeks after September 11, 2001. As the blizzard of physical and spiritual violence and their inevitable outcome of war blew around campus, classes went on. Sitting in a classroom for two hours at a time and listening to lectures on systematic theology seemed--to me, at least--pointless. I can remember only two of my professors mentioning in class the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. One professor stormed into the classroom the morning of September 12, in a fury, declaring: “We need to bomb ‘em!” He then uttered something about holy wrath. When the US eventually did bomb Afghanistan on October 7, another one of my professors openly wept in class. She was concerned, as was I, about the number of innocent lives that would be lost in the ensuing war. In a move deemed controversial around the Theology Department, she hung a poster on her office door entitled “Death Toll,” which she updated daily to reflect the current count. It was to her office hours I went when I was trying to find my way through the storm of confusing thoughts and emotions. So many people around me were indifferent to the suffering of others. So many seemed to be separated from their souls. “What’s the point of going to class anymore?” I remember asking her. I had been thinking that my time would be better spent dropping out of school and becoming an activist. Actually, I had a similar crisis of conscience during my undergraduate studies, I told her when I almost quit school for what seemed like a nobler cause. Now a professor myself, when I reflect back on these difficult moments during my student years, I can identify what annoyed me so much about so many of my theology classes: they were irrelevant and disengaged from the serious events surrounding us; their aim was to transfer content. No one seemed to care, except for the one professor from whom I sought guidance, about teaching us to apply the knowledge we learned to the context around us. That education entails not just knowledge, but also attitudes, skills, and practices may seem to be a universal pedagogical value. But, if it is, it is not universally carried out. For example, in the Catholic neck of the woods in which I teach, formation is understood to entail four pillars: intellectual, spiritual, pastoral, and human. Seminarians, permanent diaconate candidates, and lay students preparing for ministry are to be formed across these pillars in order to emerge from graduate theological programs as integrated, healthy ministers in their churches and communities. So often though, these pillars operate as mutually exclusive silos. In many programs, I have seen, for instance, theology professors are responsible for intellectual formation, while field educators and priests are in charge of the other three pillars. Sometimes little to no conversation happens across those responsible for each pillar. The student moving through such a program is the sole agent of integration between the four pillars. As I know from my student days, this doesn’t work very well. The soul feels separated from the intellect and the conscience, and the feeling of disintegration is heightened, and becomes too much to bear, when living in times of war, amidst racial and economic injustice, ecological ruin, political deceit, and greed, etc. The importance of integration and integrity have been made clear enough in the current US presidency. To take just one example: consider the foolishness of the POTUS (President of the United States) delivering a speech on the responsibility of Twitter to millennials during his visit to Saudi Arabia. When our world leaders act in such a way, demonstrating a separation between intellect and soul, or a wholescale overturning of “the order of the soul,” to use Cohen’s words again, we need to help the students in our classrooms make their way through “the blizzard of the world,” lest they be lost, too, in the madness. Course syllabi and outlines need to be revised. Term assignments need to be rethought. Discussions in class need to be redirected. All of this needs to happen so that we give students the time and space in our classes to learn how to apply knowledge to context and practice. In a brainstorming session of my “Classics of Christian Spirituality” course I taught last semester, I was edified deeply when one of my students had the idea to apply the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola that we had read for class that day to a community night of reflection for peace and discernment during politically turbulent times. I have also learned that students need the chance to receive feedback on their efforts because it is far more difficult to apply the information they learn in class than it is to memorize it and regurgitate it back to a teacher on a test or in paper. Giving them opportunities to act across the four pillars, or simply place their knowledge in the service of praxis, is critical for their formation as engaged citizens in church and society. If we are concerned about the declining registration rates in theological and religious education programs in North America, we might need to step up our game in terms of formation. If it weren’t for the teacher I had in the Fall of 2001 who kept things real and relevant for me, I doubt I would have registered for any more classes either. [1] Leonard Cohen, “The Future” © 1992 by Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.

Like many teachers, I was trained to expect student’s participation in the classroom to be many things at once:  prepared, right on the issue at stake, ready to offer deep insights and if possible, be passionate. I also was trained to exclude the needs and subjective experiences of my students, expecting them to bracket their suffering, their sorrows, and their traumas, at least during class time. Oh, and I was trained to expect students to be as text-based as I am, even though reading habits have changed. I still resent it when the connections made in class are not related to the texts. After a while, it is so easy to catch students who are just pretending that they have read or make a comment based on a line on page 78 without having actually read the text. I get really frustrated when students don’t read the assigned texts or when they are not fully present, having their hearts and minds elsewhere. All of these forms of participation in class demand practical responses from the professors that are not as clear as we might hope. Let me give an example: one day a student offered a harsh critique of the book we were reading. I asked him to name what in the book he didn’t like. After 3 attempts to continue with his critique, it was clear he didn’t read a thing. What do I do? Call him out in front of everyone? Talk to him in private? Wait until the end of the semester? Other forms of participation, or non-participation, are part of the experience of the class. Students who “participate” by sleeping in class, or using their phones and computers. There is the gaze of the one who is checking emails and looking at Facebook. And there are the smiles, facial reactions, and even laughter when they are texting. All this is why I tend not to let students use computers or phones during class. But how to do that when the readings are on their computers, or when the cares of the world are (often) more compelling than what our students find in our classrooms? When we have only their bodies, and not their minds and hearts and spirits, passions and convictions, strong yesses and necessary nos, then what? Maybe we have to be open to the possibility that some of our students are part of conversations they cannot tell us unless we ask and are open to what we will hear.  Besides the objective forms of grading participation regarding reading texts, there is so much more that is at stake when our students are in the classroom. I had a student who would sleep every day in my class. For a long while, I thought about sending him an email saying he couldn’t make this class his bedroom. But then, I decided to talk to him personally. We met and he then told me that life had been very difficult for him, that he was working overtime to take care of his unemployed mother, his little brother, and teenage sister. He apologized. What do I do? Tell him if he continues this way he cannot pass? Find ways to help him when I don’t have time to help? Keep him in the class for as long as I can until he resolves his problems? Another student was quiet all the time. Couldn’t speak. Talking to her I learned she was going through very difficult personal times, but couldn’t say what it was. She kept quiet. What to do? Flunk her? After the semester was over she decided to talk to me and told me she had become pregnant but had lost the baby. She could not make sense of her life, and the only places she found some sort of sustenance, relief and perhaps even coherence was the classes she took that semester, including mine. Another student received the news that his mother was terminally ill. He missed more classes than he was allowed in order to pass this class. What was I supposed to do? Objectively speaking, knowledge is a composition of several issues. Knowledge is not only about the present of abstract thinking but also by what is around us, with its feelings and emotions, the composition of social classes, objects and images used, sensations around expectations, fears and hopes, general conditions of life. The best forms of learning are the ones that can integrate all these aspects of life in direct and/or transversal ways. But for students in crisis, the ‘best forms of learning’ may require each teacher to bend a bit, to listen a little longer, to walk with the student an extra mile as she is able. Does that mean that every teacher needs to be a therapist or a chaplain? Yes and no. Perhaps more yes than no? Well, yes because when we teach we are teaching about the whole life and not only about the specifics of a certain discipline/knowledge. Even the specifics of a certain knowledge influences the whole way of living. And no, absolutely no, since we are not professionals in these areas, and we do not have the required formation, and cannot offer the appropriate care. In classrooms, there are so many borders to negotiate and fundamental boundaries that must be kept and honored. To deal with each case that arises in our classrooms is always so difficult to discern. But if I am unwilling to listen, or if I am captive to my objective model of learning, I may be injuring my students while professing rigor, standards, and policies. How teachers and students learn together is a wonder for me! How we survive a whole time together is a mystery to me! And when we witness transformed lives is a miracle to me! These truths are sometimes too much for me. For you, too?

On election night last year when Donald Trump won the presidential election, I was traveling in Greece visiting the historical and religious sites. Several days before the election, I visited the Acropolis and climbed up Mars Hill where Paul delivered his sermon to the Athenians (Acts 17:22-31). The fact that I was in Athens, the cradle of Western democracy, prompted me to think about the development of democratic institutions and their relationships to an empire. The word “democracy” in Greek combines the elements dêmos and krátos, and means literally, “people power.” However, only adult male citizens who owned land could participate in Athenian democracy. Women, slaves, children, and lower-class people were excluded. Athens once had the strongest military power among the Greek city-states and harbored imperialistic impulses. The Delian League, created by the Athenians in the 5th century BCE, captured cities, colonized and enslaved peoples. Athens suppressed revolts among the League’s members and collected dues from them in exchange for protection. In our modern day, democracy has not prevented countries from turning into imperialistic powers. The British once ruled an empire so vast that the sun never set on the empire. While British subjects enjoyed democracy at home, colonized subjects did not have self-autonomy and had to obey British rule and laws. In the US, Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” appealed to deep-seated American imperialistic desire, especially among non-college educated white men. I began teaching a class on liberation theology shortly after Trump’s inauguration. My reflection on the relationship between democracy and empire prompted me to find ways to heighten my students’ consciousness about the image of the US and the impact of American policies abroad. During our first class, we discussed the changing political and social contexts in which we studied liberation theology. There were a significant number of international students from Asia and Africa in the class. I invited them to share reactions to Trump’s election from news reports from their countries. I also asked them to share their thoughts on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” A number of them said that the US is already the most powerful country and has a major effect in their own countries. They were concerned about how Trump’s presidency would affect global stability and foreign policies. After Hillary Clinton lost the election, some commentators discussed what Clinton’s loss would mean for the future of feminism. Others wondered why her coalition of women, racial and ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people could not pull off a win. I discussed with students Columbia University professor Mark Lilla’s widely read essay “The End of Identity Liberalism.”[1] He warns that American liberalism has focused too much on identity politics and diversity issues, such as race, gender, and sexuality. This focus is disastrous for democratic politics for it fails to provide a unifying principle. Instead, he argues that we have to engage more in conversations about class, war, political economy, and the common good. Lilla’s essay has created a lot of debates, and some said that “identity politics” addresses real problems of discrimination. In our class discussion, I helped students to see two important points. First, we have to take an intersectional approach and see the various forms of oppression as mutually constitutive. Second, we have to avoid the tendency of focusing too narrowly on identity issues in the US, without paying attention to larger social, economic, and political forces shaping the world at the macro-level. Commentators outside of the US have taken the election of Donald Trump and raised it up as an example of how democracy can become dysfunctional. Some of my students were shocked when Trump was elected, and his first 100 days in office have created chaos and presented us with “alternative truths.” When my students felt depressed by the current political situation, I reminded them that democracy is a project and it requires vigilance in protecting it. We should not think that American democracy is the best institution, for it has been polluted by big money and big donors. Trump said during his campaign that he was free from Wall Street’s influences. But his cabinet and close advisors include many billionaires and people from Goldman Sachs. His currently proposed health care policy and tax reforms will benefit the rich and take away from the elderly, the sick, and the poor. I reminded students that democracy has been used as an ideology to further the cause of empire. In the 19th century, the spread of Christianity was part and parcel of the “civilizing mission” of the West. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the protection of democracy has been given as a reason for military intervention and regime change. In the name of democracy, the U.S. has supported military coups, toppled governments, and created regional animosity and instability. Democracy has taken several centuries to develop in Western countries, and cannot be superimposed by power and might from without. Within the course of one week, Trump ordered a military strike in Syria and the U.S. dropped a 22,000-pound bomb on ISIS forces in Afghanistan. It is vitally important to educate students to become global citizens who understand the consequences of US actions in the wider context of the world. A good beginning is to understand how democracy and populism can be used to serve imperial interests. [1] Mark Lilla, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” New York Times, November 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html.

I am convinced that all eurocentric philosophical thought and movements – yes all – are oppressive to those who come from colonized spaces. When I contemplate every philosophical contribution made by the so-called Age of Enlightenment, it becomes obvious that the French Revolution’s battle cry for Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité was never meant for her future colonies in Vietnam or Algiers. Hegel’s entire endeavor for a historical truths rests on the presupposition of the superiority of the Europeans and the inferiority of non-whites. In his 1824 book, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Northern Europe - specifically the German Spirit - is the Spirit of the new World whose aim becomes the realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of Freedom, a Freedom which has as its own absolute form itself as its purport (341). Such a Freedom was never meant for the “inferior” in need of civilization and Christianization. Even the U.S. rhetorical end to our daily oath of “liberty and justice for all” was never meant to include those from African descent, nor their neighbors south of the border. The “all” in eurocentric philosophical thought just meant whites, definitely not her colonies or those among the colonized who followed their stolen raw material and cheap labor to the center of Empires. Abstract philosophical thought must be constructed to reconcile the quest for liberty and equality among whites with their purposeful exclusion of those whom they colonized. The issue is not so much hypocrisy on the part of the colonizer spewing rhetoric about liberty; but rather, philosophically justifying oppression through freedom-based language. The move to the abstract serves the crucial purpose of obscuring the economic need of dispossessing and disenfranchising the colonized and their descendants. Universal eurocentric celestial concepts of rights blinds the oppressed to the concrete feet-on-the-ground reality of oppression at the hands of such freedom loving whites.  Over 125 years ago, José Martí saw the danger of adopting a eurocentric worldview detrimental to the existential intellectual space occupied by the colonized. He called the oppressed of the world to create a new way of thinking based on our indigeneity. To make our wine out of bananas (“Nuestro vino de plátano”) means such a wine would naturally be sweet. But if we instead make our wine out of the fruits of Europe and it becomes sour (“y si es agrio”), then we are stuck with it (“es nuestro vino”). Eurocentric philosophical thought not only sours our wine but also our teaching. To build liberative edifices on eurocentric philosophical foundations reproduces the same consequences as pouring new wines into old skins. Even our beloved liberation theological movements have, more often than not, looked toward their oppressors for means of expression. How much richer would our liberative thinking have been if we looked to our own original thinkers like Martí rather than the European liberal thinkers of the time? When those of us seeking a liberative pedagogical methodology rest upon eurocentric philosophical paradigms, we construct resistance on shifting sand, contributing to our own oppression. And worse, when we teach in our classrooms our resistance to eurocentric thought, regardless of how loud, fearless, and passionate we may be, we are undermining our students’ ability to bring about subsistent change. The difficult task before us who call ourselves liberative scholar-activists is how do we think new thoughts that are less a response, and more an indigenous radical worldview different from the normative philosophies which have historically justified our subservient place within society. True, we must learn the Eurocentric canon if we hope to obtain PhDs and be considered learned, even though our white colleagues need not bother with the discourses occurring on their margins. But rather than looking at the esteemed eurocentric thinkers who have historically written philosophies to remove us from humanity and the fruits of liberation, what would happen if we possessed the dexterity to teach what the children of the colonizers legitimized and normalized as well as a different worldview based on lo cotidiano - the every day of those purposely written off Hegel’s metaphysical dialectical history. To teach from the margins disabuses the regurgitation of foreign and deadly philosophical paradigms in favor of those which resonates with the least of these. Not solely to understand the world – as important as this may be, but also for its transformation.

As an anthropologist of religion, I have advocated that the skills one develops in an ethnographic setting are necessarily translated to the classroom. I’m a proponent of creating a space for students to serve as experts and to speak to their own experiences—especially when addressing contemporary political movements and events. Active listening and collaborative learning with our students are key means through which we, as James Bielo notes, are able to be “ethnographers in, of, and for all the courses we teach.”[1] I like to joke with other anthropologists that we were the children who didn’t fit in; we sat on the sidelines watching the more popular children play, drawing rudimentary theories about their social dynamics and interactions. One of the first things one learns in the field is to drop all assumptions. We learn to ask questions to which we think we already know the answer and, more often than not, we uncover something altogether unexpected. This is my approach in my course on Religion and Society – a course that looks at the manifestations of religion in the contemporary world read through a lens and a critique of the social forces that dominate modern Western democracies. As has become almost canon among RS professors, I use the example of the American flag to illustrate Durkheim’s discussion of the totem and the distinctions between sacred and profane. As a Canadian living in the United States, I have the added benefit that I am able to feign ignorance. Holding a paper version of the American flag, I ask my students to reflect on what it stands for. “I didn’t grow up here,” I tell my students. “I don’t know what any of this means. Tell me abo-out it” (all semester long, I put the extended emphasis on my ‘u’s in preparation for this performance of difference). I pretend to be confused as they explain, yes, it’s a piece of paper, but really it means more: freedom, justice, liberty, etc. It’s a great conversation – one that is not original to me – and makes for a strong teaching exercise in an introductory religion class. Not only does it illustrate Durkheim’s theory of the totem, collective effervescence, and American civil religion, but it is also an excellent vehicle to get students comfortable with debate and disagreement in the classroom. Usually, the students respond well. They are acquainted with controversies surrounding the American flag; they quickly draw connections to such social issues as debates over the Confederate flag and Colin Kaepernick. In my experience, it is a topic that matters to them and they are already familiar with both sides of the argument and have already drawn their own conclusions. Because they are more or less set in their opinions, it serves as a good topic to practice respectful listening. Sometimes it is easier to listen openly to an opposing argument when you know that you’re not going to change your perspective.[2] And at an early stage in both the semester and in their college careers, learning to listen and practicing disagreement are key. I am unable to stop at this point. The exercise helps students learn to disagree from a shared starting point (American identity) but leaves me dissatisfied because it doesn’t attend to the experiences of dual nationalism of myself and many of my immigrant students. Canadians hold a form of national pride invested in our self-perception as the underdog. The first time I taught this lesson in the United States I followed the American flag with the Canadian one. I don’t know what I thought my students would say when asked about the national qualities and values associated with The Maple Leaf. But the responses of “hockey, Justin Bieber, bacon, and polar bears” were strikingly in contrast to the discussion of the core values signified by the American flag, for which many claimed they would willingly sacrifice their lives. I now take seriously collaborative learning experiences where some students’ lack of expertise might be highlighted. It is one that purposely redefines who counts as an expert and displaces my American-born students. A clarification about context is necessary. Middle Tennessee State University is the largest public institution in the state. It caters mostly to students from the Middle Tennessee area, many of whom are first-generation college students. Because of the wide availability of manufacturing jobs, low cost of living, and its identification by the American government as a refugee resettlement region, Middle Tennessee is more international than one might expect for a region that regularly boasts to be the ‘Buckle of the Bible Belt.’ In addition to significant Hispanic and Southeast Asian immigrant communities, the region has the largest Kurdish population in North America, a significant Laotian community who have been in the region for several decades, and a recent increase in immigrants from Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Eretria, and Bhutan.[3] On the first day of every semester, I have students fill out an information form that—along with relevant questions asking about students’ majors/minors, preferred gender pronouns, previous courses in religious studies, etc.—asks what their hometown is. With this information in hand, I bring images of the national flags of their countries of origins and ask them to speak to their conceptions of their own flag.[4] Sometimes this exercise works and sometimes it falls flat. For the most part, my students who were born in another country immigrated to the United States with their families as children and have become naturalized citizens. Unlike myself, they have a sense of themselves as Americans. “What about this flag? What does it signify?” I wait patiently for Farrah, who immigrated to the United States as a child fourteen years ago to look up. Farrah looks up and laughs. “That’s the Egyptian flag,” she says excitedly. She begins to explain the symbolism of the colors and their revolutionary importance. She speaks proudly about the struggle to overcome oppression and how the white band symbolizes a peaceful exchange of power. “But it’s more than that,” she continues. “Egypt is the cradle of culture, the oldest continuing civilization. You wouldn’t have the developments in Europe or America if it hadn’t been for us. Or at least that’s what we learn in school. We’re taught that we are history.” At this point, I usually attempt to pick up a common theme between their form of nationalism and my own. With Farrah, it was easy to draw connections between the emphasis placed on a perceived bloodless transition of power in the national myths of Canada and Egypt. It doesn’t always work well. Farrah’s family moved to the US fifteen years ago, but they return regularly to Cairo to spend time with family. They are proud of their Egyptian roots. Often my Egyptian students, particularly those who are Coptic, are more critical of the national mythos. This past semester a student from Monaco rejected my attempts at a shared identity and instead placed me with the Americans observing, “Europeans just don’t care about these symbols the way you North Americans do.” I like this exercise because it displaces the students in a way for which they are not prepared. Their rehearsed points about the flag, which are perceptive and important, are all of a sudden lost in the context of a different national mythos. They are smart enough to know that the Justin Bieber jokes don’t cut it, and as Farrah lays claim to her country as the origins of history, she discursively moves the American-born students to the margins. If anyone understands displacement, it’s immigrants—from lines in airports and government forms to media rhetoric and misplaced cultural cues, feeling out of place is par for the course. It is my hope that this exercise serves as a place to begin larger conversations about religion, politics, and social issues and realigns our assumptions about who counts as an insider and who counts as an outsider. These are conversations that many of us are having both inside and outside of the classroom in consideration of gender, sex, abilities, race, ethnicity, and, of course, religion. But I’ve found the rhetoric about immigration, citizenship and nationality lacking. I am hesitant about language that in a spirit of inclusivity too quickly overlooks the lived experiences of our dual-national students. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’d like to use this blog as a forum to think publically about it. I hope that you will join me in this conversation regardless of your nationality. [1] Bielo, James S. 2012. “Religion Matters: Reflections from an AAA Teaching Workshop.” Religion and Society: Advances in Research 3: 203–208. [2] A recent New Yorker article argues that changing one’s mind is even more difficult than we think:  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds. [3] http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/05/17/nashville-welcoming-immigrants/27479183/ [4] At the beginning of every semester, I have every student enrolled in this introductory course meet with me for a short one-on-one interview to get to know them, to talk about any early concerns they might have, and to emphasize my expectations about their responsibilities as students. I ask my immigrant students during this interview if they are comfortable speaking in class about their experience growing up in or coming from another country. Especially, given recent political developments, it would be inappropriate to ‘out’ them without permission.

The car service arrived at my house. I grabbed my purse, suitcase, and briefcase and hurried out the door making sure it was locked behind me. As scheduled, we stopped to pick up a colleague who was also attending the conference in Toronto, Canada. Driving east on Highway 78 and almost to Newark International Airport, I gasped. My passport was still at home. My colleague asked if I wanted to go back and get it. I looked at my watch and said, “No.” Going back would likely mean we both would miss the flight. Once at the ticket counter, I handed the gate agent my ticket and driver’s license. I told him I was on my way to Toronto. He looked at my ticket to confirm an international destination. He asked me for my passport. I told him, in my most contrite voice, that I had left my passport on my dining room table. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes, but a faint sigh of annoyance slipped through his otherwise professional demeanor. Still, in a mode of apology, I asked, “Surely there is some other identification that I can use to cross the border . . .  . Not everybody has a passport!” Without looking up from his terminal, he informed me he would accept a U.S. Voter Identification Card. “EUREKA!” I thought and “EEEEEeeeee!!!!!” came out of my mouth. I gleefully reached into my purse, found my wallet, located my voter registration card, and with the pride of the ancestors, I extended my arm to hand it to the ticketing agent. My flurry of emotion had gotten his attention, and he looked up from his terminal and at me. When I handed him the card, he stared in disbelief. Slowly he reached for the worn card, examined it suspiciously, and was flabbergasted. He went from doubt to shock with the reading of the card. He raised my card above his head and called to his left and then to his right—to the other agents at neighboring terminals—“Someone has it!  Someone actually has a voter registration card!” The other agents reacted with nods of approval and surprise. The African-American gentleman processed my ticket and gave me a boarding pass. He said to me while handing back my voter card, “Nobody ever has these.” I thanked him for telling me of the alternative ID and asked if I would have any trouble getting back into the USA from Canada with only a voter registration card as ID. He said, “It’s the law. They have to let you back home.”  My voter registration card has been in my wallet since 1980 – age 18. I carry the card as a symbol of ancestral work and sacrifice that created the democratic republic, the United States of America. The free labor of my African enslaved people provided ease in the creation of a democracy for those white men who reaped untold financial benefits and whose families still benefit from this legacy of blood and dehumanization. I carry my card to mark the progress of Black women. Through the leadership of such women as Barbara Jordan, Sojourner Truth, and Madam C. J. Walker, we are surviving. The card reminds me that in 1994, the brothers and sisters in South Africa seized democratic rights. I cried when after a three-day journey by wheel barrel—with grandchildren taking turns pushing—the grandmother cast her vote for Nelson Mandela as president. I cried because so many grand-women did not have wheel barrels for transportation to the polls. Lest my repletion become hollow romantic recollection and foolish sentimentality, I admit that I would have, even in 2002, known that my voter ID would allow me to cross the US/Canada border. Welding the power of democracy means knowledge of my rights as well as voicing my dissent when my rights and the rights of others are challenged, and even taken. The politicians and the system that benefits from my not knowing my rights must be challenged and dismantled. Undoubtedly, the recent executive orders by the newly elected president that would have banned Muslim brothers and sisters from entering the United States was stopped by mobilized voters. Unquestionably, the House and House Leader Paul Ryan, on March 24th, canceled their vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act due to the pressure of grassroots efforts by churches, synagogues, and mosques; by grassroots advocacy organizations like Black Lives Matter and Indivisible; and by those Republicans, likely voters for President Trump, who felt betrayed when the bill would shrink Medicaid. With widespread acts of protest and resistance in the first hundred days of the presidency of #45, the complacency of the American voter has been shed. It is, for voters, an exciting and dangerous time in democracy. We are coming to the realization (again!) that liberty depends upon a voiced constituency. Without a voiced constituency, we have only ourselves to blame for the creation of a dictator as president. Democracy is not in the DNA of the United States. Instead, democracy is one of the most powerful ideas on earth and each generation must make the decision to doggedly pursue this profound belief or not. Classrooms hold the possibility of being the invaluable spaces where the idea of democracy is re-inscribed on every generation. While I do not believe classrooms are in-and-of-themselves democratic spaces, I do subscribe to the view that classrooms are training grounds for learning to use the spectrum of voices needed for our flourishing democracy. Our students must become border-crossing sojourners able to discern what is right and just. The classroom is where informed and thoughtful citizens should be shaped, constituted, and inspired for the work of justice. Classrooms are the spaces to cultivate the voices that would challenge the oppressions that have a stranglehold on our democracy. What are the rights of students in your institution?  By what means are the rights of students known and owned by students? How do these rights enter into the course design for formation and accountability?  What would it mean to discuss the rights of students in the classroom, and then juxtapose those rights and responsibilities with those of the local and national democratic system? In what ways does a banking system approach to teaching truncate citizenship? In what ways does a banking system approach contribute to a voiceless democratic constituency? Which pedagogies prepare students for full participation in democracy?  What would it mean to assess all introductory courses to discover the kinds of voice students are expected to develop and utilize through class participation and assignments? What would it take to expand the repertoire of voices developed across the introductory courses? What would it mean to raise the awareness of faculty concerning the ways the U.S. democratic system affects international students and recently immigrated students? In what ways can faculty better support international students and recent immigrants through their course design?

Allow me to be honest. There are few things in my job that I dislike more than having a conversation with someone who is feigning objectivity or neutrality. I call it academic pretense. I cherish conversations when people speak from their hearts, even if I disagree with them. This holds true as well in my collaborative learning gatherings (aka co-learning gatherings, aka the classroom). Over the years, I have learned to face a reality in my own life, namely, there are few areas in which I have no opinions or, at least, have no leanings. If you tell me you are different, no offense, but if you are a fully engaged person I probably won’t believe you. Try as we may to be neutral, as engaged educators who regularly integrate our subjects of expertise with everything occurring around us, we all have leanings and assumptions concerning a wide-range of topics. Professing to be neutral, when in fact, we are not, endangers us by moving difficult conversations to the abstract and impersonal world of the ethereal, often leading to conversations that lack personal investment. How well can we learn if we are not invested in an honest process? I have found that most learning experiences “stick” best when we bring not just knowledge, but our own truth and experience to the conversation. The type of conversation I am suggesting is risky business in the sense that when we put ourselves “out on a limb,” mistakes will be made, feelings can be hurt, and positions may inevitably need to be re-directed and corrected--even if that corrective trajectory reaches farther in the future than we envision. Dangerous, yes. But, I think opportunities for real education are worth the risks. How did I come to a place of partiality for “risky conversations?” My own rough, street-wise childhood taught me to observe everything around me carefully; to assess present threats/concerns and size-up what is really happening underneath the surface of any given conversation. Where I grew up, the dangers of not trusting my own instincts could have grave, unforgiving and intractable consequences. But, as much as I trust my gut instinct, life has also taught me that I can be wrong. Having begun my teaching career later in life, I often found myself asking, “How do I use these skills in an organic discussion setting that will benefit the whole academic learning process?” And, more importantly, how will this discussion make us all better human beings? Early on in my teaching career, I had to re-teach myself to trust my instincts. What I discovered was that those life skills learned on the streets and in the course of my life can work for me in the classroom. Why? Allowing myself to move freely with what I see happening around me organically shifts the classroom zeitgeist from a theoretical, abstract reality to a more organically-real, shared reality--achieving a deeper level of honesty. Contributive-learners (aka co-learners, aka students) respect and even desire the level of honesty I am suggesting. Even when discussions don’t work out as planned, co-learners respect my honest regrets and my apologies. In the meantime, whether the discussion was a “once-in-a-lifetime” hit or a “write-off,” I am still modeling a paradigm that is teaching them to trust their instincts and go with the organic, sacred moment. Hopefully, I am also modeling humility. I realize there is a great deal of valid concern over co-learning gathering safeness. Perhaps I view it differently than some of my colleagues. In my experience, safeness has nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. But rather, safeness is primarily about our respect for the sacredness of how we handle the conversation. With social norms changing at a rapid pace, especially in the current political climate, I am discovering that people are afraid to talk honestly with one another, although many, including myself at times, are willing to talk at one another. This type of climate only promotes isolationism, binary position taking, and we/they attitudes. Education is about people learning from each other. How can we learn if we cannot talk with one another honestly? Obviously, we can’t. But, back to the danger.  What if it goes too far? More than once in our discussions, co-learners have taken their polemic too far and hurt another person’s feelings. At that point, if another co-learner does not stop the process, I stop the conversation and I do a check. Together as a group, we take two deep breaths and have a moment of silence. I then ask if we are still committed to the values of truth-seeking, mutual respect and the sacredness of the moment we are in?* Invariably, the person who crossed the line apologizes for their inability to express their thoughts without getting personal. Also, and this always surprises me, the offended person sometimes apologizes for taking it too personally. I encourage the group to share any thoughts about the process and then ask if we are ready to go further in the conversation or come back at another time? In many of our Native American traditions, we have a prayer that goes something like, “have pity/understanding on me Creator and remember I am just a human being.” The idea behind this prayer is that perfection is the enemy of attainment. We are all simply human beings, imperfect, but learning from our mistakes. Those mistakes make us human. And, being human, by “climbing out on a limb” in order to reach others, is the most spiritual state of being in which we may find ourselves. I wish I could say I have these sacred moments in every co-learning gathering, I do not. But, I do encourage those moments through risky honest conversations. And when those special moments come, the whole room feels like we have experienced something together that is truly sacred. Perhaps promoting knowledge among my co-learners in an atmosphere of sacred space, is the most important role I have as a scholar and a spiritual leader. *This exercise requires pre-teaching and mutual commitment to the process.

What do you know to be true now that you used to think was false? What do you know to be false now that you used to think was true? What is something you’ve always thought true that remains true?  I once heard a conference presenter ask a version of these questions and now I occasionally use them in my teaching. Such questions suggest that the status of knowing grows and changes, shifts and turns over time. This is good news for teachers and students everywhere!  The pliable character of knowledge is also a political matter. Libraries and lives are filled with stories about the politics of teaching and learning, particularly around matters of deeply held faith convictions and religious practices embodied in various histories, bodies, and communities today.  Learning itself evokes a kind of devotional practice in which the desire to learn and to unlearn are political acts of room-making in the mind, heart, body, soul for more than this moment’s capacity. Deep learning is often accompanied by a desire to be moved, even an expansive desire that surprises us in the learning process.  In and beyond my seminary teaching and learning experiences in middle America in this political climate, I am seeing a troubling divergence around the changing status of knowledge: is learning now less or more important than ever? Do expectations of room-making lean toward being moved or rather thirst for antagonistic encounters? With the striking contrast of embracing the urgency of deepening learning around current social issues such as #syllabi devoted to blacklivesmatter, sanctuary cities, women’s health, islamophobia, refugees, and more on one hand, and abandoning intellectualism in favor of relentless questioning sources of expertise or even verifiable facts on the other, how do we teach into a political moment that threatens the status of learning itself?  Five Threats to Syllabi “It’s in the syllabus” is the punch line to many an academic riddle. Syllabi are blueprints, detailed instructions for shared learning experiences. Syllabi outline plans for the way in, through, and out of the course of study. The best syllabi align student learning outcomes, assignments, and learning activities in clear and compelling ways.  A syllabus can also be open to change and can never be totally locked in from the start if it intends to guide a living, breathing classroom.  Many syllabi thus include a caveat somewhere that goes something like this: “instructor reserves the right to amend the syllabus for the sake of deepening student learning, but not to add unexpected work.” I usually write a version of the first part on my syllabi and discuss the second part in class because change is work, even and especially change for the better amid threats to learning. In this highly charged political moment that pit bodies and communities against each other, I am seeing an increase in five interconnected syllabi threats: (1) Rejecting Close Reading: I’ve noticed increased charges of irrelevance of reading that takes time in favor of a formula such as “I used to believe that doing the assigned reading before every class was important, but now I see that it doesn’t make a difference.” Discourse includes more and more references to headlines and skimmed resources. (2) Retreating from Deep Connections across Difference: As the political moment threatens to recode inclusion as political correctness, the allure of unrestrained exclusion is appearing in class discussions in relation to readings, to other students, to contemporary figures that appear in a posture of “I don’t have anything to learn from you.” I have heard this disturbing phrase uttered in the classroom directly twice recently. (3) Receding Horizon of Moral Imagination: While I think it’s a mistake to see empathy as perfectly achievable, the act of considering the consequences of my words and actions for other people and places is critical. Therefore, I welcome many voices from texts read to voices represented in the class to perspectives notably absent from any class. Learning in conversation with many voices requires sustained willingness to consider familiar and unfamiliar perspectives – a requirement that appears less compelling in much public discourse today as relationships between texts, persons, and ideas lean far toward the antagonistic pole rather than a desire to be moved. (4) Pressuring Quick Undisciplined Performance: It can take more time to write more succinctly, yet the pace of twitter both models and encourages quick, undisciplined performance. Respond now! The pressure is on to shortchange the discipline of public discourse for rapid response. There is an art to brevity and real-time public debate that can be learned, but right now time-pressure is relentless.  (5) Acting Out Around Power: Power always flows through teaching and learning, sometimes in more subtle and sometimes in more obvious ways. This political moment is evidencing more blatant efforts of grasping, hiding, pushing, and pulling people and ideas out of the way for the sake of accumulating power.  These five threats aren’t unique to the moment, but also describe predictable patterns of dehumanization that we can trace over time through resurgences of oppression that depend on these kinds of threats.[i] All five of these threats to learning were sharply evident in the classes I taught during the 2016 US Presidential election.  This semester, several of the same students enrolled in a different seminar class.  What’s a teacher to do to support pedagogical response to these syllabus threats to the promise of becoming?  How could I respond to these threats pedagogically, helping to transform my teaching plans into a syllabus of becoming?  As a scholar discerning which organizations and conferences to attend, writing projects to adopt, I often ask myself, “to what extent does this support my learning and becoming?” A syllabus of becoming opens this question in the arena of teaching and learning: does this assignment, set of texts, teaching practice invite becoming? A moving syllabus transforms predictable threats into invitations of becoming. I am experimenting with the following responses to the above threats to learning: A Syllabus of Becoming (1) Reading More: In my seminar this semester we are reading fewer texts, but more closely. There is much to read. And sometimes, the very texts needed to translate careful study into prophetic and pastoral speech in today’s contexts are not yet written.  So we are also creating original texts that are not eliminating, but beautifully and quite unexpectedly responding to the above threats. (2) Connecting to a Sacred Third Text: Every week, the seminar shares in common assigned reading of published texts and reading of the class itself.[ii]  In addition, I invited each student to choose a third text that they consider sacred in their context. Across the first half of the semester, students have engaged lectionary readings, other Bible texts, a musician’s canon, music in general, visual art, photography, and poetry.  Assigning a search for the sacred without predetermining the form has opened unexpected depth this semester. (3) Imagining Publics, Remembering What’s at Stake: In crafting the short weekly writing assignment, I left open the possibility that the set of texts we produce, or a subset of them, could be assembled as a devotional resource for a larger public within and/or beyond the seminary. Reading the first half of Patrick B. Reyes’s new book Nobody Cries When We Die[iii] early in the semester has provided language for remembering the real lives and loves at stake in reading and writing about human suffering and healing. An imaginary public also joins the room when each student reads their reflection aloud during class each week.  (4) Practicing Every Week: Even though the pace of reading, writing, and conversation is deliberately slowed down with less reading and shorter writing assignments, I am amazed how class time flies by. Instead of the increased resistance and fatigue with many of the same students last semester in which I decided to scale back on practice in class (we were all exhausted and shocked albeit for many reasons), in this seminar, energy is sustained at a high register. Weekly practice with each other is creating room for mutual invitation, calling out profound connections between texts and students. (5) Sharing Voice and Power: Instead of coordinated turn-taking across the arc of the semester with different student presentations different weeks, I am trying a model where everyone shares their brief reflection or summary of it every week. Instead of power-grabbing, there are palpable and powerful moments of power-sharing every week.  Politics are interwoven with personality and it doesn’t escape me that every class is its own microcosm so that what works in one class can be less successful in another and vice versa. However, I am astonished that structuring a syllabus of becoming has not only tempered palpable threats of the contemporary moment, but also made room for invitations of becoming.  When discouraged at the very real threats to learning at this historical moment, I am reminded of the power and promise of a syllabus moving toward room-making. What have you found moving in your teaching and learning in such a time as this?   [i] To interrogate this point with my students, we are reading Beverly Eileen Miltchell’s Plantations and Death Camps: Religion, Ideology, and Human Dignity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009).  While Mitchell makes plain patterns of threat that contribute to the violence of dehumanization, books like Angela D. Sims, Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016) reminds us how taxing remembering these patterns can be, especially for more made-vulnerable communities.   [ii] The field of pastoral theology uses the metaphor of “the living human document” to point to how humans can learn to read (and misread) each other on par with published texts about human experiences.  For a brief overview of this metaphor, see Robert Dykstra’s Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005) or a more recent postcolonial interpretation in my “Literacies of Listening: Postcolonial Pastoral Leadership in Practice(s),” in Postcolonial Practice of Ministry: Leadership, Liturgy, and Interfaith Engagement, eds. Kwok Pui-lan and Stephen Burns (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2016). [iii] Patrick B. Reyes, Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2016).