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The idea of Art Theology raises the question(s): what is art and what is theology? We live within this incredible moment of decolonization where people are interrogating the ideas of the academy and its gatekeepers. Inspired by the decolonizing work so many are engaged in, Art Theology seeks to create something new.  There are wonderful conversations going on. Beyond what art is, who decides what “great art” is?  Who is a “great artist”? Where should “great art” be held?  And who is privileged to view it? The old gatekeepers of “art” were many of the same gatekeepers of the academy. The academy, built by free white men who created the method of research.  We teach college students to write research papers that argue a thesis.  If they want to succeed in the academy, they have to learn to write this way:      arguing      judging      defining      using propositions      being technical      always reaching for “objective truth” I wanted a method built on and towards connection rather than argument. I have learned that the first step is to remove judgement. Get rid of the word great and tell me what it is to make art. I often engage my students in peer reviews, whether they are writing a research paper or making art. Before they meet with their partners, I ask them to write out their feedback by first summarizing the piece, then describing strengths of the piece, and finally offering questions or suggestion, (they only offer suggestions if they are sure they have understood their peer's intent in the piece). The thing they have to be sure of—and that I review in their feedback before they share it with each other—is that they remove all judgement.  They struggle at first wanting to write, “I like your conclusion” or “This is great…” I invite them to remove like and great and say something more. This encourages them to go back and look more closely, read more closely, in order to reimagine the sentence to something like: “Your thesis is so clear from the very beginning of your paper through to the end. You keep returning to the thesis like a spiral throughout, it is this clear throughline reaching into the conclusion. When you restate your thesis in your conclusion it really it holds the paper in a very satisfying way.”  Removing judgement not only helps them read more closely, it removes the fear that they often feel going into peer review. Once judgement is removed, we are free to make new things.  Our focus shifts toward making art in order to engage in visual-thinking that creates new theological insights and understandings.  What is theology really?  The exploration of ideas and understandings of God? Knowledge of God? But, I do not just know things in my mind—I know them in my body. I also know them through making.  Art Theology uses visual-thinking, seeing, and making to explore questions and ideas about God.  In the abstracting grace series I created for the Wabash Center, I made my way into new questions and ideas about grace through painting and poetry. For example, in making, Is it like air? as I painted I somatically realized I had been unconsciously carrying an idea that grace was arbitrarily given. I didn’t know why Mary had been “full of grace” and I wasn’t.  I reviewed what the academy had taught me about grace and saw that it was all bound up with sin and the idea of gift. Which made me wonder, if it is a gift how is it given? As I dipped my paintbrush into the white acrylic and made a swooping line I thought, maybe it is like air…all around us, all the time, and it is us who decide how we breathe it in.  This insight had me revisiting Duns Scotus’ idea of the will and how it is the will that makes us human, not our intellect. Scotus said our will is where our capacity to love resides. This is the greatest gift we have been given, and it is all around us. We choose how mindfully we breathe. Through making art theology, a new rich understanding of grace came into being.  A new understanding that discursive reasoning alone could not, and had not, given me. 

As an educator, I seek to structure learning spaces that are caring, hospitable, and collaborative, nurturing a community of learners in search of truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Effective education involves concepts to be shared and critiqued (lectures, readings), cases to be solved (examples, case studies, supervised practice) and values-perspectives to be formed (dialogue, genuine conversations). We teach who we are, and a clear sense of identity in Christ is pivotal. My goal for the programs I lead is to equip pastors and educational leaders for teaching, discipleship, and missional church (Mt. 28: 18-20; Eph. 4: 11-16; Col. 1: 28).[1] Curriculum Theory & Teaching Implications “To teach is to have some content and a plan and some strategies and skills, to be sure. But to teach is also to make choices about how time and space are used, what interactions will take place, what rules and rhythms will govern them, what will be offered as nourishment and used to build shared imagination, and what patterns will be laid out for students to move among.” David I. Smith.[2] While many view curriculum as a predetermined list of subjects, Elliot Eisner defines it as a series of planned events with educational consequences.[3] Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin emphasize the significance of "persons," "experience," and "situation" in curriculum. They consider the "teacher" as crucial because curriculum planning hinges on "teacher thinking" and "teacher doing." The teacher's role in orchestrating the interaction between learners and subject matter within a specific context is pivotal. For them, curriculum is something experienced in a particular situation (Fig. 1).[4] Allan Ornstein and Francis Hunkins view curriculum as comprising four common elements, which corresponds to Connelly and Clandinin. They are: (1) Objectives (outcomes); (2) Content (subject matter); (3) Learning experiences (dynamic interactions between teacher, learner, and subject matter); (4) Evaluation (quality of experience; achievement of outcomes). They emphasized that how these parts are arranged are never neutral.[5] Teaching as Structuring Learning Space and Developing Engaging Experiences Before I review the syllabus and requirements, I begin every course with a lecture, “Covenant, community and a culture of learning,” which outlines the values that structure my learning space, some basic educational theories, and need for active learning.[6] My values are as follows: (1) Care; (2) Hospitality; and (3) Community.[7] Care - Students begin by sharing their backgrounds, concerns, and hopes for the course. They use name cards for personalized interactions. [8] In online classes, students complete “our learning community" forum. I offer a personal welcome and use this information for weekly prayers for students. I also have a forum for prayer requests. Hospitality - Students are encouraged to be open to new ideas from readings, lectures, and group discussions. They are to listen to one another, promoting “genuine conversation.” [9] Community - I emphasize collaboration, not competition. I have invited each class to my home for a community meal since 2001 (until Covid-19 restrictions).[10] At the end of the course, students reflect on the values that structured their learning spaces and shaped their practices. My question is, are these educationally and theologically sound?[11] Learning as Participation in a Community of Truth “In its briefest form, the model asks teachers to consider how to see anew, choose engagement, and reshape practice” (author’s emphasis). David I. Smith.[12] “The hallmark of the community of truth is in its claim that reality is a web of communal relationships, and that we can know reality only by being in community with it” (author’s emphasis). Parker Palmer.[13] Mortimer Adler's Paideia Proposal consists of three key elements: didactic instruction for acquiring organized knowledge, coaching to develop critical thinking skills through problem-solving, and Socratic dialogue for deeper understanding through active discussions.[14] Parker Palmer critiques the "objectivist myth of knowing" and advocates for a "community of truth" where both experts and amateurs gather around a subject, guided by shared rules of observation and interpretation. Rather than absolutism or relativism, he encourages openness to transcendence with the practice of "educational virtues."[15] Some things I do in my classes: Introduce concepts through didactic instruction, with Socratic dialogue to illuminate the frameworks of understanding within which students operate. Jesus practiced both in his teaching ministry.[16] Facilitate and invite diverse viewpoints; encourage students to ‘embrace ambiguity.’ Often, the result is more questions than answers, but part of my work is to challenge the ‘objectivist myth of knowing.’[17] I adopt the “constructivist model” in teaching, which according to Mayes and Freitas, is most suited to seminary education (see endnote 15).[18] Case studies often spark good conversations, revealing the complexity of ministry. In INTD 0701: Internship, students present cases and we reflect biblically and theologically together in “ministry reflection seminars.” Assignments match learning outcomes, and encourage critical engagement with key texts and articles, with thoughtful applications. Carefully curate a “resource” section on Moodle for every course so students can explore related and updated research for further learning. Person of the Teacher & Teaching as Spiritual Act The goal of theological education is “the acquisition of a wisdom of God and the ways of God fashioned from intellectual, affective, and behavioral understanding and evidenced by spiritual and moral maturity, relational integrity, knowledge of the Scripture and tradition, and the capacity to exercise religious leadership.” Daniel Aleshire.[19] This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher (author’s emphasis). Parker Palmer.[20] Jesus condemned the religious teachers for their hypocrisy (Mt. 23: 1-36). In this context, Jesus cautioned against accepting undue accolades (v8) or putting teachers on “pedestals” (v9). God is our only Father; the Messiah is our only teacher (vs 9,10). James cautioned that not all should be teachers because teachers would face stricter judgment (Jas. 3:1-2). As I endeavor to form pastors and ministry leaders not just with the wisdom of God, but with spiritual, moral, and relational integrity, here are some things I emphasize: Each class begins with a short Bible meditation; the class responds with sharing and prayer. Convinced that transformation is ultimately the work of the Spirit, I pray for my students as I prepare for class each week. I have a lecture entitled: “The person of the teacher and teaching as a creative, spiritual act” in CHED 0552: Learning to Teach; Teaching to Disciple. Since curriculum planning rests largely on “teacher thinking” and “teacher doing,” students present their “teacher chronicles” in CHED 0652: Curriculum Design for Learning & Discipleship to better understand their education and discipleship values.[21] We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:13-16; Eph. 2:10). We should know our gifts (and limits), and the dangers of ministering out of a “false self.” I also emphasize the crucial role self-care holds in ministry.[22] Palmer notes: “Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.”[23] I am vulnerable to share both “joys and failures” in ministry, and constantly seek to “join self, and subject and students in the fabric of life.”[24]     Notes and Bibliography [1] Graham Cray notes that “… a church is a ‘future in advance’ community … modeling and ministering an imperfect foretaste of the new heaven and new earth.” Quoted in Alison Morgan, Following Jesus (2015), 159. Edie and Lamport provides a succinct vision for Christian Education: “… [T]he preeminent task of Christian educators is to assist persons with (re)establishing their relationship to divine love, to connect biblical truth to life, to participate intimately in a community of faith, to examine their cultural surroundings in light of kingdom values, to embrace the call to obedience and sacrifice, and to critically reflect about God in the world, and in doing … to discover blessing in ‘the tie that binds’ to God, neighbor, and creation.” Fred P. Edie and Mark A. Lamport, Nurturing Faith: A Practical Theology for Educating Christians (Eerdmans, 2021, p. 24) [2] David I. Smith, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. E. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018), 19. [3] Elliott W. Eisner. The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluating of School Programs, 3rd edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2002), p. 31. [4] F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean Clandinin, Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives of Experience (Toronto/New York: OISE and Teachers College Press, 1988), 6-10. [5]Allan Ornstein and Francis Hunkins, Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues. 7th edition (Pearson Education, 2017), 161. For example, depending on teachers’ views of learners (“receptacles” or “critical inquirers”), teachers would adopt different teaching approaches. [6] Eisner speaks of three curricula: “explicit, implicit and null.” While the “explicit curriculum” is the conscious intentions in the syllabus, the “null” is what is left out in a course. The “implicit curriculum” is a teacher’s values that determine educational procedures and create distinct classroom cultures. Eisner notes that this is often overlooked, but impacts learning significantly. Eisner, Op. cit., chapter 4. [7] Yau Man Siew, “Fostering community and a culture of learning in seminary classrooms: a personal journey,” Christian Education Journal, 3,1 (2006), 79-91. Since this publication, I have revised my lecture “Learning Covenant, rev. 2023” with updated research. [8] Carol Holstead asked 80 students in an open-ended survey what made them feel that a professor was invested in them and in their academic success. The number 1 response was “when the professor learned their names.” Carol Holstead, “Want to Improve Your Teaching? Start With the Basics: Learn Students’ Names,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 11, 2019. It is interesting that these “softer elements” are gaining attention in higher education. See John P. Miller, Love and Compassion: Exploring Their Role in Education (University of Toronto, 2018). [9] David Tracy notes that theological study involves “genuine conversation,” and the “hard rules” of genuine conversation require us “to say only what you mean; say it as accurately as you can; listen to and respect what the other says, however different or other; be willing to correct or defend your opinions if challenged by the conversation partner; be willing to argue if necessary, to confront if demanded, to endure necessary conflict, to change your mind if the evidence suggests it.” David Tracy, Plurality & Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (Harper & Row, 1987), chapter 1. Stephen Brookfield highlights that because adult cognition involves embedded logic, dialectic thinking, and epistemic cognition, it is imperative to create safe and hospitable spaces for them to share their experience, engage in critical reflection and debate. For adult learners, difference is good, even desirable. Stephen D. Brookfield, The Skillful Teacher, 3rd edition (Jossey-Bass, 2015). [10] Since the church is the body of Christ, we practice “community” now. In Summer 2023, I taught an intensive, in-person course and invited 19 students home for a community meal. The impact on student dynamics was significant. David I. Smith notes: “I suspect that one of the most important Christian practices that might sustain Christian teaching and learning is intentional community, learning continually with others and from others how to live out our vocation to be the body of Christ.” David I. Smith, Op. cit., 158. [11] David K. A. Smith notes that “behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology.” David K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2009), 27-28. Also, David K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love (Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2016), 126-128. David I. Smith encourages us to reflect on “how our faith might shape pedagogy demands that we see our classrooms anew, letting a Christian imagination supplant mere devotion to technique” (author’s emphasis). David I. Smith, Op. cit., 149. [12] David I. Smith, Opt. cit., 82. Smith discuss these three aspects in detail, with many helpful examples in chapters 7-10. [13] Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 20th anniversary edition (San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass, 2017), 97. [14] Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal (Touchstone, 1998). It is interesting that Adler’s Paideia has similarities to the three models proposed by Mayes and Freitas: The “associationist model” (learning as the gradual building of patterns of associations or skill components through memorization, drill and practice), the “situative model” (placing learners within “communities of practice” where experienced peers help novices acquire habits, values, attitudes and skills) and the “constructivist” model (teachers help learners construct a cognitive framework so they can evaluate competing claims to truth and defend their intellectual commitments). Mayes & S. de Freitas, “Technology enhanced learning: The role of theory” in Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age, Editors. H. Beetham & R. Sharpe (Routledge, 2013), chapters 1, 13. [15] These virtues include welcoming diversity, embracing ambiguity, creative conflict, practice of honesty, humility, and freedom. Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 20th anniversary edition (San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass, 2017), 102-111. Paolo Freire calls the “banking” model oppressive and violent; instead, he calls for “problem-posing” education where instructor and learners are “co-investigators” engaged in critical thinking in a quest for mutual humanization. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970), 73. [16] While Jesus taught formally (Mt. 5:1-2; Lk. 7:28-29), his common method was informal with question & answer, dialogue, debate, observation, and reflection amid life. His parables were deliberately puzzling and opaque, demanding his hearers to make the mental effort to penetrate the surface to get deeper, spiritual meaning and find their place in the story. Keith Ferdinando, “Jesus, the Theological Educator,” Themelios 38, issue 3 (Nov. 2013). [17] Once at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, two NT professors debated “the place of women in the church.” They argued using the same passages but came to different conclusions. [18] While I adopt the “constructivist model,” I am eclectic in my educational philosophy. In a “Find your educational philosophy” test in David M. Sadker & Karen Zittleman, Teachers, Schools & Society, 5th edition (McGraw-Hill College, 2017), I scored high in “perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, social reconstructionism.” For a helpful overview of these philosophies, see Tables 1.1 and 1.2 in Allan C. Ornstein, Edward F. Pajak, and Stacey B. Ornstein, Contemporary Issues in Curriculum, 5th edition (Pearson, 2011), 6-7. In CHED 0551/CHRI 2213: Educational History & Philosophy and CHED 0652, I highlight strengths in each philosophy, critique them from a theological perspective, with implications for education in the church and academy. [19] Daniel Aleshire, Beyond Profession: The Next Future of Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2021), 73. [20] Palmer, Op. cit., 10. [21] Since the person of the teacher is most important in curriculum planning, Connelly and Clandinin encourage teachers to develop their “teacher chronicles,” narratives of key influences which shaped their teaching values. Connelly likely learned this from his doctoral mentor, Joseph Schwab at the University of Chicago. Cheryl Craig, "Joseph Schwab, self-study of teaching and teacher education practices proponent? A personal perspective," Teacher & Teacher Education 24 (2008), 1993-2001. [22] To better understand “false self vs. true self,” see James Martin, S.J., Becoming Who You Are (HiddenSpring, 2006). For self-care in ministry, see Matt Bloom, “Building Vibrant Ecologies for Pastoral Wellbeing,” Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry (May 2022), 7-20. [23] Palmer, Op. cit., 11. [24] Palmer, Op. cit., 11

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke Technology appears to be a magic wand. It is not a magic wand. For those of us who have worked with technology for more than two weeks this seems obvious. It is not obvious. Technology continues to fool us all the time. I’ve been involved in library technology for thirty years and I am still fooled. Things that I have thought over the years include:      “This new system will solve our information finding needs.”      “This software patch will fix our problems.”      “Google will replace libraries,” (actually, a college provost told me this once).      “VR will replace libraries.” You get the picture. My first class in library school, back in the dark ages (pre web!) was with Herbert White, the legendary Dean of Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science (now a part of the School of Informatics). I probably remember more from that class than any other. Herb told us that technology isn’t a way to save money; it’s a way to do new things. New things drive society forward and often improve our lives. But the temptation to think it will be cheaper or “magical” persists. The ability to do new things means that we must learn how to manage those things. Higher education now includes—and indeed cannot seem to do without—Student Information Systems, Learning Management Systems, WiFi, Firewalls, and people to run them. Asking “What have we lost along the way?” is almost meaningless. We’ll never know. We do know that education is different from five years ago, much less thirty.   “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” We have a plethora of measurement and assessment tools but still struggle to understand what those mean (perhaps it’s a quantum physics problem). An analogy might be useful: baseball has become increasingly driven by statistics. The book Money Ball shows how a small market team without much money was able to find a way to be competitive while being relatively cheap. For those of you who don’t know, they did it through using advanced statistical methods (“Sabermetrics”) and ignoring the gut feelings of grizzled scouts. Technology is great at keeping statistics. In baseball and elsewhere, it’s now often called “analytics” and has replaced ERA’s and batting averages with a player’s WAR (“Wins Above Replacement,” of which there are three types!). It can analyze pitching and hitting patterns more reliably than any human ever has. It has come to dominate the major league game. Similarly in libraries, we can now instantly see how many chapters, articles, and books have been downloaded. We can thus analyze the CPU (cost per use), realign our budgets and buying habits, and take some of the guess work out of collection development. These are not bad things. But it does tend to replace the “gut” or human aspects of baseball, librarianship, and other human endeavors. Why is that? I guess it partly means no one is responsible for choices (it’s the numbers boss!). I’ll let someone else, who probably never saw a baseball game, summarize this: The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity. (Carl Jung) I think at least some of the motivation toward overreliance on statistics is based in fear. “The numbers show…,” “we ran an assessment of the data and…,” etc. We need to justify what we’ve done or are about to do to those with the power and money. This is not necessarily a bad thing! I think it’s merely incomplete.   Old Man Yells at Cloud I know this is how this might come across. It’s my version of Don Quixote I guess: to tilt at the windmill of postmodern life. Hear me out. Everyone has examples of technological failure. For example, Amazon music doesn’t seem to understand that there are TWO Eric Johnsons who do very different types of music. The same with Chris Knight. I recently got two tech giants, Amazon and Google, to fail simultaneously! My google cell phone slowed my data plan and it caused my Amazon Music app to drop, fast-forward, and reverse songs mid-stream. Ah, the future; It’s glorious! Information Technology can’t create meaning; it can deliver the tools for meaning to be created. IT can do many things more efficiently than manual processes: PCs were first adopted in business environments to be numerical ledgers (aka spreadsheets). IBM was called International Business Machines, after all. Computers as we know them replaced human “computers,” who carried out the arithmetic work in physics/engineering/insurance. Information technology is akin to Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rain Man, an autistic man with savant syndrome. He could do astonishing mental feats of memory, but had seemingly no idea of what it all meant. This is what makes humans different from parrots or bears, who can be trained to memorize things and patterns. Meaning is what education is all about. Or more specifically, the creation of meaning in the mind of a person. Herbert White used Peter Drucker’s work in his teaching quite a bit. Drucker, the seminal business management guru, has probably been taught in more MBA courses than any other person. This quote has stuck with me: The ‘non-profit’ institution neither supplies goods or services nor controls. Its ‘product’ is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their ‘product’ is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether. (Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices) Drucker was no dreamy-eyed academic and knew that education is fundamentally different than other fields. It’s different than manufacturing or baseball. It can create meaning.   Feelin’ UI-sed User Interface (UI) is a whole… thing. I was recently eating lunch with a colleague and we were discussing the dysfunction of much modern tech. “I refuse to use the self-ordering kiosk at McDonald’s! It’s too confusing!” I agreed and contrasted it with the Costco food court order kiosks. The McDonald’s design ethos seems to be that huge flashy animation is better. By contrast, Costco has opted for small and simple (granted they have a much more restricted menu). Costco’s works pretty well! McDonald’s looks great (35-inch screen in portrait mode) but the user interface is a nightmare. Wait you want a DRINK? New menu. Go back. Where is the actual order? Good luck on your food journey. (I have unkind thoughts about Marcos Pizza’s Android app as well, but will spare you my hunger-induced rage). My point is that the underlying tech is ahead of the interface design WAY too often. Perhaps they are designing these for people younger than me, but I see a lot of boomers and genXers in McDonalds. We all have gray hair and confused expressions on our faces. The electronic menu behind the counter, where no one is standing anymore, now rotates out every five seconds. How much is a double cheeseburger? No one, literally no one, knows. It was there a second ago. Now it’s part of the ether. Oh wait, it’s back. $2.85. Fries are… gone again.   The Attention Economy Gentle reader, I know that it feels like there is nothing we can do in the face of these forces but cope. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. True enough. However, I’m arguing, in a meandering way, for us to come to grips with what we can control versus what we can’t. We can control, albeit with difficulty, our attention to what’s important. The statistics can in fact help us focus on what’s important by showing us what we’re missing. If people are downloading a book that we have, that’s important data! There is a wonderful biblical scholar on TikTok (Dan McClellan) who wears a shirt that says “Data > Dogma.” It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. My worry, though, is that Data has become the new Dogma and has become too much of a focus of our attention. Use your stats to inform your UI, your collections and signage, not to replace your sense of what’s important to your users. The users are where the meaning happens. We may not have a magic wand, but we do have our abilities as humans to engage and empathize with our communities. The results, creating meaning and changing lives, are worth it.

The religious imagery in the movie Blue Beetle is arguably the most overt I have seen in a superhero movie.[i] This is so interesting because religious imagery is almost non-existent in the comic book series. One of my favorite parts of this movie arises in the character of Nana (who I would call Welita in my life – yes with a “W”) and others may call abuela. For years I have claimed that I am an abuelita theologian in training. I have taken the attributes of my own grandmothers as well as other elders who have mentored me and combined them into a nebulous image of what that means. Nana Reyes in the movie Blue Beetle is incredibly close to my imaginative conjuring. Yara González-Justiniano lists the grandmother trope as a “Feminist Theme” and claims, “The cultural and ethnic representation hint[s] at the untold stories of Latinx in US mainstream history, specifically, around military opposition and revolutionary movements. In the movie there is a breaking of the sweet abuela trope, … adding texture to the matriarchs that build these families and the layered histories of relationship to the US and Latin American countries of origin.”[ii] Twice before in the movie when other characters mention fighting, Nana calmly, quietly, with her trenzas raised, says it is not time. She comes across as a passive and unknowing grandmother. She is quietly sewing and listening to her Walkman when the scarab chooses Jaime and begins to transform him. However, when Jaime is most in need and it seems that the Blue Beetle superhero has lost all hope, the matriarch warrior nod to the adelitas Nana drops her trenzas and says this important phrase, “We have turned both cheeks. Now we fight.” This is a direct allusion to Matthew 5:39--“But I say to you, Do not resist the evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Biblical scholars claim that the author of the Gospel of Matthew is using hyperbole in this entire passage, which reads You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (5:38-42) In reading this passage as hyperbole one sees a power play, in that turning the other cheek is an unexpected move from the aggressor’s perspective. Up to this point in the movie, Jaime has used these unexpected moves when he is resisting the scarab’s desire to kill and Jaime’s freewill overtakes the power of both the aggressor and the scarab. In Nana’s phrase, “We have turned both cheeks. Now we fight,” an interpretation can be seen from the Gospel of Matthew’s use of the word “you” in this passage, “But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” To be honest, every time I have heard or read this passage in Matthew prior to watching Blue Beetle, I have always imagined an individual aggressor slapping an individual person, humiliating and dehumanizing them. However, Nana says, “WE.” “We have turned both cheeks.” Woah! What? Que? Como? Que cambio aquí? We? She mentions a collective. In her warrior, militant, fighter-against-injustice mode, Nana foregrounds the collective. In highlighting the collective, she is not only underscoring the fight of the family to save Jaime, she engulfs all of the injustices perpetuated against her peoples for centuries – genocide, culturecide, epistemocide, lingocide, colonization, servitude, enslavement, racism, sexism…. Nana’s words are not a simple allusion to the Gospel of Matthew but a response as a rally call to live out the Gospel. To fight for justice. Nana’s words marshal us to work collectively for a greater possibility. She does not romanticize anything either. Her son was killed in an earlier scene in the movie. The family has lived in a perpetual state of fear due to documentation status unrecognized by the imagined national government. Their drive home includes a left turn on El Paso street in front of a series of pink crosses, a nod of remembrance of the 23 killed and 22 injured in the El Paso massacre of 2019. Wooden crosses such as these exist across the country remembering those who have died too young. Some of these crosses include those placed for migrants who have died in the path toward a better life, crosses placed for farm workers who have died too young from chemical sprays and brutal work, and so many more. The color pink of the crosses seems to be simply so they stand out behind the street sign. The sociocentric pueblo on a journey open to the Spirit synodal call of Nana can also be seen in another phrase repeated through the movie: “Animo.” It sometimes appears alone like the Milagros’ beautiful street art on the front of the Blue Beetle ship. It also appears in the phrase, “Animo. WE can do this!” Here you could make a bit of a Marianist leap to Mary’s “Yes.” The Marianist Charism has a strong basis in Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel’s invitation to play a particular role in the Incarnation of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus. I do recognize that I am taking a little creative license, jumping Gospels to make my point. Yet, let’s think for a moment that in the phrase “Animo, We can do this!” not only has the family heard Nana’s response to the Gospel of Matthew as a rally call, they have also responded with mutual affirmation to their collective yes responses. Speaking of Mary, the imagery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is rampant. The largest of the many shrines in the Reyes house is one dedicated to La Guadalupana. This image literally takes center screen when Jaime is morphing into Blue Beetle and aligns eyes with the Guadalupan image. Much has been said about the eyes of Guadalupe, including what seems to be a reflection of Juan Diego and the bishop in her cornea. I do wonder about the use of this image to point to questions of mestizaje. Could the connection between Jaime’s and Guadalupe’s eyes be a recognition of the complexities of the blendings and intermixings of humans which carry a colonial violence, as is the case with the scarab taking over Jaime’s body? The voice of the beetle appearing just as Jaime is recognizing what is happening to him makes me ponder the different ways of interpreting this scene. Could this scene be pointing to large issues between religion and science which are often read as being diametrically opposed? Tío Rudy is both comedic trope and nerd. He is a new embodiment of the chapulín while also creating his own chapulín. He wavers between being a conspiracy theorist and truth-teller. So many of us have a Tío Rudy. My Tío Rudy’s name is José Pepe Joe Melendez. He was my mom’s youngest brother. He died in May of this year at far too young of an age. He spent his life as a semi-truck driver, a gadget collector, and a fiddler with many things electronic and mechanical. When I was young, his room at my grandmother/Godmother’s house looked like a mix between Radio Shack and a pawn shop. I remember him driving up to our house with that same la cucaracha horn! Rest in power, Uncle Joe! Tío Rudy also has a Guadalupe tattoo and is the wisdom leader and knowledge-bearer. He informs the younger generation of the history of El Chapulin and Blue Beetle as well as includes the references to Lucha Libre. Oh, the multiple masks of Mexicans and Mexican American imaginations![iii] Speaking of truth, Milagros declaration to her family – “He’s had his tacos, let him have the truth” – stood out to me, as someone who was the first in her giant extended family to go away to college, to this very beautiful place of St. Mary’s University. All of the way through my education, my family withheld information from me so I would not worry and do poorly in my courses. I saw this movie for the first time with my parents in El Paso this summer, and saw it again the very next day just with my dad. When Millie said this line, I let out a “MMMHMM” so loud in the almost-empty theater that the little girl sitting behind us asked her mom if she heard me. In this scene, Jaime had his taste of home literally in his tacos and figuratively with the entire return. Is it cultural to withhold the truth? Is the truth something to be shared only in certain spaces and places? Might there be an intimacy associated with sharing the truth which distance makes difficult? The family’s last name stands out as a religious symbol – Reyes. Of course this name is plural. It points to the reyes magos (and their camel, like the ones outside of Blume library). Various characters wear jackets with this name. It is the name of the family garage. The reyes magos are the gift bearers in the infancy narrative of Matthew. They are also the protectors. In a dream they learn of Herod’s evil plan and return home a different way so as not to disclose the Holy Family’s location. Also, Christians are baptized as priest, prophet, and king. Finally, because the name is a last name in Blue Beetle, not the singular Rey, it is also gender neutral.[iv] [caption id="attachment_252724" align="alignleft" width="362"] Nana Reyes[/caption] The gentle ebb and flow the movie uses to raise very difficult issues is among the reasons I have seen this movie at least five times. One theme which arises repeatedly can be extrapolated from the quote, “My name is not Sanchez...” This simple quote infers the theme of higher education mixed with all Latinx as being alike. An unspoken understanding exists that diversity includes one person of every racialized category on the US Census and maybe one of those falls under the umbrella of “Hispanic,” which I have been told (when someone has committed the sin of omission against this generic collective created by the same government), is not a race. Once that quota has been met, diversity has reached the level of excellence. And since everyone is the same within any given category, they must all have the same name – or those in power do not need to learn their name. Such is the case with el Doctor José Francisco Morales Rivera de la Cruz. Please note his name ends with “of the cross.” He is clearly a cross-bearer in making the difficult choices of using his education to better himself and probably the expectation of communal raising. He helps the villainous weapon manufacturer through his own research and knowledge, contributing to necropolitical systems which keep him employed and fed. I love that the family uses la bendición throughout the movie. My parents are living with us for the next couple of months. Dad had a stroke followed by a brain hemorrhage in May. They came to stay so we can work more collectively between jobs, housework, and therapy. We have all known that he and Mom would be with us these months. What I did not factor into the equation was the cross they would place on my forehead on Tuesday, blessing me for a safe trip and wisdom to share. I am forty-nine years old and my parents still give me la bendición. It’s a sign of care as well as of collectivity. My travels, work, sharing, and caring are an extension of them and of my community. Every time I used to leave El Paso for college, my grandmother/Godmother would make me get on my knees to give me a blessing. She would recite a litany off the top of her head that seemed to invoke the entire communion of saints. She would include as many of our ancestors as she could name and invoke her mother, aunts, and grandmother. I would begin to laugh, which was partially her goal – to turn a bitter moment to bittersweet. That bendición means I may go far and away but I do not go alone. It reminds me not to fear because I stand on the shoulders of giants, of generations of matriarchs and women leaders. ANIMO! WE CAN DO THIS!   [i] Thank you to Sudabée Lotfian-Mena for the research assistance. For more on the music of the movie Blue Beetle see “Soundtracking ‘Blue Beetle,’” by Sudabée Lotfian-Mena, Hispanic Theological Initiative Open Plaza, November 13, 2023, https://www.htiopenplaza.org/content/sountracking-blue-beetle. [ii] Yara González-Justiniano, “The Blue Beetle: ‘¡No contaban con mi astucia!’” Feminism and Religion, August 8, 2023, https://feminismandreligion.com/2023/08/24/the-blue-beetle-no-contaban-con-mi-astucia-by-yara-gonzalez-justiniano/. [iii] As a little side note, I found the connection between the bugs interesting – la cucaracha, el chapulin Colorado, and the Blue Beetle. I actually spent hours doing deep research on this topic and possible connections. For more, see: Ana María Quiceno Vélez, “De Barthes al Chapulín Colorado. Una Lectura de Los Héroes y Antihéroes Como Configuraciones Míticas,” Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2010, https://repository.javeriana.edu.co/bitstream/handle/10554/5525/tesis537.pdf ?sequence=1; Rodrigo Cervantes, “What Do ‘Blue Beetle,’ Quetzalcóatl, and Chapulín Colorado Have in Common?” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-08-14/blue-beetle-love-mythical-Heroes; “From Satire to Folk Music, the Symbolism Behind ‘La Cucaracha,’” Nuestro Stories, December 1, 2023. https://nuestrostories.com/2022/09/from-satire-to-folk-music-the-symbolism-behind-la-cucaracha; Víctor Monserrat, “Los Artrópodos En La Mitología, Las Creencias, La Ciencia y El Arte Del Antiguo Egipto,” Boletín de La Sociedad Entomológica Aragonesa, no. 52 (2013): 373–437. [iv] The rejas – the iron rod designs on the window of the family home are shaped in the Sankofa. This Adinkra symbol of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana is the heart shape seen in the wrought iron all over San Antonio, New Orleans, and many other parts of the lands we now call America. This symbol is often understood as a bird and interpreted as “Look to the Past to Understand the Present.” Scholars in Louisiana have found in their research that West African enslaved peoples many times interwove these designs into the wrought iron in New Orleans and other cities. Some claim these designs were a means of communication for the enslaved peoples. Most of these people were not paid for their labor and were considered property, often traded within the same streets where they worked and created their wrought iron messages. For more, see: Kaleena Sales, “Beyond the Bauhaus: West African Adinkra Symbols,” AIGA Design Educators Community, https://educators.aiga.org/beyond-the-bauhaus-west-african-adinkra-symbols/; Marcus Christian, Negro Ironworkers of Louisiana: 1718-1900 (Gretna: Pelican, 2002); Sidney Holmes, “Who Built New Orleans?: The Untold Story of Black Blacksmiths,” Very Local, March 4, 2022; Morgan Randall, “The Storytelling Ironwork of New Orleans,” Atlas Obscura, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ironwork-new-orleans-french-quarter-pontalba-adinkra; Christel N. Temple, “The Emergence of Sankofa Practice in the United States: A Modern History,” Journal of Black Studies 41, no. 1 (2010): 127–50, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25704098; Kim Marie Vaz, The “Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2013).

Many of us are familiar with the scripture from Jeremiah 1:5: “before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you” (NIV). It reminds us of the immortal aspect of our human spirit.  In the context of West African cosmologies, it is our spiritual essence that is with the Creator before we become human. That is to say, the aspects of our personhood which are in alignment with the cosmic design for harmony, justice, reciprocity, and balance.  There are specific rituals that emphasize this immortal aspect of our being. Some of these rituals are commonplace in cultural expressions, like when we decide to name a child after a loved one who has passed away; remarking on that immortal aspect of that life that lives on and honors the family. So, we say to folks as ritual: “Say your name and say the names of the ones who named you!”  This is a ritual of introduction. We see it in the South African ritual of greeting, “Sawubona,” which means I see you. I see you, your spiritual essence and all those in your lineage who carry this same essence.  Libation is another ritual we find in the Bible and in multiple cultural traditions where the immortal aspect of our human spirit is recalled, elevated, and remembered as good for those who are in the present. In a libation, we invoke their name as a way of calling upon that immortal aspect of our being. We can construct rituals that remind us that we all come here with an immortal character.  A way of being that is not contingent upon where we live, our social or economic status, our physical abilities nor our ethnic or gender identity. Nothing about our social location was “known” by our Creator to determine our Divine Consecrated Identity. Surely, we can consider this when we think about the social location of Hagar or the young brother Joseph, Mary, or Paul. Our social location can affect our consecrated self, but it does not determine it. Ritual can remind us of who we are when our social location attempts to derail us. Ritual calls forth our consecrated identity, the divine self before we were in our mother’s womb. 

The conversation goes like this: “I saw you having class outside today.” “Yep! Great day!” “Don’t students get distracted outside?” Or … “I would do that, but I have PowerPoints.” Or… “I would, but I have 35 students.” Or… “What do you do with students who don’t want to?” I have this conversation at least twice a week. More when the weather is nice. So, for those of you who are intrigued by the idea, but have your own questions, I offer a practical guide to teaching outdoors. For context, I teach at a small liberal arts school where most of my classes are 30 students. I have taken classes of 38 outdoors, and yes, 12 or even 20 is easier, but it works with more, too. First, to the “I would, but I use PowerPoints” (or other technology), my answer is blunt. I don’t use them. I encourage you to allow the limit (not being able to use plug-in-able technology) and the new space (outdoors) to engender your creativity. How could your classroom be more active? Do you really need that one picture, or can you describe a thing to your students? This might be something my discipline allows for more than others: I don’t need diagrams unless I’m teaching Origen’s theology of the fall of souls. There are times I want a whiteboard, but even then, I find that if I tell students, “If I had a board I’d be writing this down,” they begin writing in their notebooks as if I had. I might spell a word or two that I would normally write, and I repeat myself more outdoors, making sure they catch the main ideas. It actually makes me a more attentive teacher. Some students do not want to go outdoors, or are allergic to grass, and many students do not like wet butts from dewy lawns. If it is borderline too cold, I give them the option and let them vote. Otherwise, on the first day of class in the fall and the first nice day in the spring I inform students that we will be outside and they should come prepared—bring something to sit on, layers and sunscreen. I recommend black pants in case the grass is still wet with dew or sprinklers so no one will be able to tell they are wet. I myself wear black pants for this reason, though like Elizabeth Bennett I don’t care if I have grass stains when I forget. Usually when it is nice the majority of the class wants to be outside, so I have no problem. No one has ever voiced serious hatred or concern. The question of accessibility is real. I have not yet had a student in a wheelchair, but I have had students on crutches and students allergic to grass. Wherever we are going to be, we have taken an accessible sidewalk to get there, so I simply position us close enough to the sidewalk so that students who want or need to sit on the sidewalk instead of the grass may do so. Often there are small walls or benches I can choose to be near if a student can’t get all the way to the ground. And always I tell students they are welcome to stand rather than sit for class. The other major accessibility consideration is hearing. It can be harder to hear outdoors because of ambient noises or simply the fact that they may sit farther away and my voice not carry as far in the open air. To be honest, there are times students have trouble hearing because lawn mowers decide that is the best time to mow the section of the quad next to where we are sitting. I joke about the lawn mowers so students know I am aware of the issue but continue teaching. They are never so close for so long that I cannot hold a lesson. If mowers get really close, I have students talk in small groups for a bit so they can be near and hear each other. For general hearing considerations, I stand rather than sit with them if it’s going to be an issue. If there is a particular disability, I make sure to sit or stand close to that student and make sure they can see my lips. I also repeat student questions and comments when students are not themselves loud enough during whole-class discussion. Additionally, I remind students to sit close together outside. They tend to spread out farther than they do in the classroom, and a simple reminder helps. Finally, the big question: Do students get distracted outside? Yes. But they get distracted inside, too. At least outside they are distracted by more interesting things. I find I am less bothered by it, at least. And in the end, the conversations, exams, and papers show that they are learning just fine. Because they’re doing it with a breeze in their hair, I think they’re learning more than fine.

To My Beloveds, What they don’t tell you about being neither-this-nor-that is that it’s problematic. You are always living in the in-betweenness of things. That means you’re suspect, you’re shifty, you can’t be trusted. People want you to pick one thing, to be one thing, like in a game of five-card draw and you can just trade up. It’s actually like Texas hold ‘em—there are no choices. You can only work with the cards you are dealt. What they don’t tell you is that this is all most people can handle when it comes to race, for example. Otherwise, you get questions like, “So, what are you?” I usually take a deep breath before responding, “I’m biracial. My dad was Puerto Rican, and my mom was Italian.” If their face registers further perplexion, I add, “My spouse is Moroccan [and Muslim, depending on the crowd]. That’s the ‘Hajbi’ part of my name.” Finally, a look of relief creeps over their face—that look like, “Oh, now I see. Now I get you.” What they don’t tell you is that this state of forever in-betweenness doesn’t quite fit into the essentialisms about how one should properly embody identity. Early on in my ministerial formation, I had white church members tell me things like, “I don’t see you as a person of color” and “You speak very well [for your racial background].” They, of course, offered these sentiments as compliments. I believe these presentations and affects that church members experienced in me are likely the ones that make white students increasingly receptive to some of the more challenging content that I teach in my courses. Yet, some of these students might remain suspicious of whether I am too “biased” to be teaching about certain topics focused on systemic injustice and colonialism. Conversely, my Latinidad creates a shared identity with students of color—Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and international students—because we harbor and endure similar subaltern experiences in/of the world. This is not to equate our experiences, however, as my light skin affords me great privileges in many respects. Moreover, among some Latinx students, not being a fluent Spanish speaker has relegated me to the edges. Similar looks of perplexion arise when people ask, “¿Hablas español?” and I respond, “No…poquito.” There are generational histories of trauma and assimilation behind this response, but I can’t explain that in the moment. The silence following our brief exchanges speaks volumes. What they don’t tell you is that all of higher education, including theological education, is meant to be a practice of training people to be one thing, not many things. Previous generations of multiracial and multiethnic students and scholars alike were sometimes forced by these systems to either assimilate completely (if they had the privilege of “passing” as white or white-adjacent in some way) or to play into the role of the “other” within their institutions, relinquishing any whiteness altogether in favor of a different kind of power that came with being a representation of diversity for the whole. Neither option was/is ideal, simple, or always binary. These folks have had to “keep their hand” close to their chests. What they don’t tell you is that this extends to other areas of identity and to academic disciplines themselves. One can be a biblical scholar, or a theologian, or a homiletician, or an ethicist, or a historian, and so on. To be more than one of these is to not be considered a true “expert.” But such disciplines, just like racial and other categories of identity, are modern constructions that constrain the realities of multiplicitous being and belonging. Being “interdisciplinary” is certainly cool these days, except when it’s not and can become a barrier to gaining respect and access to opportunities within the academy. Ultimately, what they don’t tell you is that you are actually both-this-and-that. That you possess a superpower to hold within yourself more than one thing—more than one identity, more than one set of perspectives, more than one disciplinary area of knowledge/skill, more than one culture and all that such entails. That this in-betweenness attracts others who also exist within the liminal realms of being and makes it acceptable within the system to live more fully into their both-this-and-thatness. That this superpower held by many breaks open the systems themselves toward imagining new ways of being and doing. In reality, what they don’t tell you about being both-this-and-that is that those who uphold such notions are just like you, even if they don’t feel it quite like you do. Perhaps your existence gives permission for these individuals to dismantle the silos, the only-one-thingness within themselves. Peace and Love/Paz y Amor, A Multiracial, Multiethnic, Interdisciplinary (and So Many Other Things) Teacher-Scholar

All storms are not the same. A light summer rain is not a category five hurricane. You must learn, in your context, to identify those storms that can be refreshing, and even enjoyable, and those storms that are life threatening and require you to batten down the hatches or evacuate. My Uncle Frank was a loving and unconventional man. He stood about 6’4” tall. He had a medium build. He was bald on the top of his head with a hair-ring around the sides. He wore a size 15 shoe and an extra-large hat. Uncle Frank was light-hearted and laughed often. He and my parents had grown up together in Cleveland, Tennessee. The Meridiths, the Bullocks, and the Westfields had known each other for many generations. By the time my brother and I were born, Uncle Frank and Aunt Emma, with their four children, lived in Philadelphia – near our family. My father treated Uncle Frank with the respect given an older brother. Our families were family to each other. Uncle Frank worked for a company that would buy out the local amusement park for its employees the Sunday of each Memorial Day weekend. Frank would accept the five tickets given each employee, then barter, negotiate, and acquire twenty or thirty more tickets so he could host a grand picnic for the extended family. My birthday is May 28; we would celebrate at the amusement park. Every year Uncle Frank would tell me the picnic was for my birthday. I loved Uncle Frank and Uncle Frank loved me. Uncle Frank would reserve a pavilion in the picnic section of the park just for his guests. The annual event felt like a family reunion. Upon arrival at the pavilion, each family would claim two or three picnic tables and set-up their spot. Each family brought food and beverages, more than enough to share.  The picnic was a grand feast with all-day rides, card playing (spades, bid whist, pinochle), lots of laughter, and being together. It was a day of excitement and fun. I have fond recollections of all my amusement park picnics, but there was one that was the most remarkable.  It was a sunny Sunday. Our family arrived at the park about 10am. We parked in the parking lot, then hauled our food and picnic supplies from the parking lot to the reserved pavilion. After greeting everyone, my brother, father, and I left my mom to set up our picnic tables. We went to ride the rides promising to return in two hours for lunch. We started with a ride on the Wild Mouse--the wooden roller coaster. Then the bumper cars, Ferris wheel and then the teacups. It happened when we were in line for a second ride on the roller coaster. Without warning--the wind whipped up with prolonged gusts. The sky darkened.  It began to drizzle. The drizzle turned to downpour. My dad told us we needed to go back to the pavilion. My brother complained because he wanted to ride, even if it was raining. Dad grabbed my hand, told my brother to move quickly and pointed in the direction of the pavilion. With a pout, my brother trotted ahead of us.  The downpour increased. As we jogged, it seemed as if everyone in the park was running - looking for shelter from the storm. It was pandemonium. By the time dad, brother and I got near to the pavilion the rain was teeming from the skies. The thick rain made it difficult to see. The winds were erratic. My mother was standing at the edge of the pavilion watching for us and, no doubt, praying. When Mom saw us at a distance, she began to call my father’s name and wave her arms. Dad picked me up, grabbed my brother by the hand and jetted to my mother. Everyone in the pavilion was packing up. My mom dried us off with an extra tablecloth and paper towels. As if out of nowhere, Uncle Frank ran into the pavilion and hollered, “Don’t leave!” Hearing Frank’s voice, people paused. Everything but the rain and the wind stopped to listen. Frank said, “Don’t go! The storm is not going to last long. Don’t go!” Several families ignored him – packed quickly and launched out into the mean weather headed back to the parking lot to drive home. Uncle Frank came over to my parents and repeated, “The storm will not last long. We are safer here than on the road.” My parents hesitated. They did not know what to do. Uncle Frank collapsed a card table, leaned it against a pavilion wall and instructed me and my brother to go under. We did. Frank covered the table with a tablecloth and made sure there were no exposed edges to be caught by the wind. Uncle Frank instructed us, “Stay there until we call you out!” The storm lasted another thirty or forty minutes. They were long and frightening minutes. Then, as abruptly as the storm had started--it stopped. With the stillness, my brother and I peeked out from behind the table. My father said, “Come on out, it’s over.” We crawled out and I looked around the pavilion. The only folks who had stayed were Uncle Frank, Aunt Emma, their four kids, our family, the Conway Family, and the Simmons Family. Anything uncovered in the pavilion was soggy or drenched, but no one was hurt. As if by magic, the thick black clouds continued to part, and the blue sky returned. The sun shone bright, again. The winds were gone. Together we cleaned up the pavilion and reestablished our picnic. Families had left covered dishes, coolers, and lawn chairs. Dad and Frank organized items they would return in coming days. My mom and Aunt Emma took inventory of the food and reset one large table of food and a beverage station for everyone. Mercifully, my birthday cake was unharmed. In about thirty minutes we heard the amusement park rides restarting. And here’s the best part--for the rest of the day there were no lines for any rides! Since most of the people in the park had fled during the storm, those of us who had braved the storm were now free to ride any ride without having to wait in line.  That day, I rode the roller coaster twenty-seven times! That day I rode every ride in West Point Park! That day was one of the best ever! Years later, I asked Uncle Frank how he knew we should stay at the pavilion during the storm. He said, “All storms aren’t the same. Even bad storms aren’t the same kind of bad. That storm came up so fast and unexpectedly, I knew it was going to move through just as quickly. I also knew driving in that kind of weather would have been more dangerous than hunkering down in that pavilion.” With a wry smile, Uncle Frank continued, “And, it was your birthday – we had not cut the cake!” Friends, storms in our careers are like this. Ask yourself, which storms are simply part of the ecology of faculty life, and which storms are potentially life threatening or cataclysmic? Negotiating the processes of hire, tenure, renewed contract and promotion is distinctly different from navigating in an institution that is restructuring or has filed for financial exigency. Learning to advise students, lead faculty committees, and find a suitable publisher can be challenging, but all are elements of the academic landscape.  How do you come to know what is usual and what is dangerous? We all need an Uncle Frank who can tell us if we should hunker down or run! Thank you, Uncle Frank.

I think every theological educator asks themselves some form of the following question: What is the raison d’être for my teaching? Sometimes this reflection manifests in a functional way amid the immediacy of constructing a syllabus as we interrogate our learning objectives. But there are also moments where we take a step back and think about the ultimate aims of our vocation. We render for ourselves an accounting of dreams fulfilled, deferred, and denied. I teach at a denominational seminary with an increasingly diverse student population such that there are many ecclesial and social contexts represented in my classroom. One context is the “purple church.” The simplest definition of the purple church is a congregation in the United States with red Republicans and blue Democrats worshiping together. Other articulations extend the metaphor beyond political polarization to encompass a community of faith with Christians who disagree on a variety of social issues, theological matters, and worship styles. Some believe that a necessity for pastoring in a purple church is the capacity to simultaneously exercise pastoral care and prophetic leadership. One interpretation of purple church ministry finds the “pastoral” focus addresses the personal needs of congregants and the “prophetic” focus seeks to inform congregants on how to faithfully engage their civic responsibilities. Yet even clergy themselves concede that effective ministry in this context requires biting one’s tongue sometimes and purposefully steering clear of some societal injustices. As an historian of Christianity in the United States, I encourage my students to examine the fullness of the past in all its wonders, horrors, complexities, and contradictions. In thinking about the purple church now, I want us to discern what it meant to pastor such a congregation then. In 1961, Jimmy Gene Peck, a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary (where I teach today), accepted a call to serve as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Enterprise, Alabama. At that time, every graduate was a white man and most were in their twenties and thirties. Peck was born in 1934 and enrolled at Columbia in 1958 upon completion of his undergraduate degree from Presbyterian College. The town of Enterprise in southeastern Alabama had roughly 13,000 residents and First Presbyterian Church drew members from the town and from the military community at nearby Fort Novosel (formerly Fort Rucker). Prior to Peck’s arrival, the church had split as several members departed over their frustrations with what they viewed as the leadership’s lack of attention to military families. Peck therefore began his ministry feeling the deep wounds of division and promised to pursue a “healing ministry in Enterprise.” But there were other pains and divisions in Enterprise, a town in which thirty percent of the residents were Black, and the young pastor could not ignore the realities of anti-Black discrimination and white opposition to integration. On February 10, 1962, eight months into his ministry, Peck preached on racism. He selected several passages from the New Testament about Jews and Samaritans. He explained how Jesus conversed with a Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:9 and observed how opponents of Jesus in John 8:48 derisively called him a “Samaritan.” Peck compared the usage of Samaritan in the latter scriptural verse to “our popular terms of disrespect” – “nigger” and “nigger lover” – and hoped that white Christians would cease uttering these hateful racial slurs. He continued with a few words about the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-37 and an exposition of the risen Christ’s promise in Acts 1:8 that the message of God’s love will spread across Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Peck’s seminary professors surely would have been proud of his skillful deployment of the Bible to compellingly connect how Jesus addressed enmity between Jews and Samaritans in the first-century Greco-Roman world to the twentieth-century context of Black and white Americans in Alabama. Peck was also careful to balance the pastoral alongside the prophetic in his sermon. He shared that he did not “speak excessively on the race question” from the pulpit because he too was wary of freshly minted seminary graduates who aspire “to redeem the world before the ink of his diploma is dry.” And Peck understood how the congregation was still hurting from the trauma of painful infighting. Yet he did not see how he could remain silent about the “race question” because it was omnipresent in schools, restaurants, newspapers, and everyday conversations. Peck desired to lovingly help prepare his congregants for civic engagement with gospel instruction: “Hard days are ahead, and God is counting on the church to lead society, not to lag behind it. May God grant us convictions which honor Christ, and grant us the courage of our convictions.” The quandary Peck encountered was that the convictions of some of his congregants as well as other local white Christians did not align with his. In an era before the internet and social media, the “Letters to the Editor” section within printed newspapers was a significant avenue for public discourse. After reading a letter from a segregationist Presbyterian minister in the Montgomery Advertiser, Peck submitted his own letter to express that he and some other white clergy supported integration. He noted that he did not speak for his congregation and did not wish to express political opinions. Rather, Peck simply wanted readers to know about the existence of white pastors who believed segregation was antithetical to the Christian gospel. Though Peck was cautious in his writing, the Montgomery Advertiser made an editorial decision that led to the demise of his ministry in Enterprise. When publishing Peck’s letter in 1963, the newspaper included its own title for the letter, “Christians Should Speak Out,” in bold print. The newspaper subsequently published an angry response to Peck. Annie Laurie Reaves, a white woman from Eufaula, criticized Peck for misconstruing the “plain teachings of the Bible,” which endorsed “the separation barriers between the races,” and admonished the pastor for deficient theological training: “I urge him, as his sister in Christ, to attend a better school, one where he can be taught of Holy Spirit.” Word spread about Peck’s letter, especially the backlash to it, and created the conditions of whatever the equivalent of going viral today was in the 1960s. After eighteen months of tumult in the church, which included lay leaders advising Peck to cease speaking about race, Peck submitted his resignation and asked the East Alabama Presbytery in 1964 to dissolve the pastoral relationship between him and the congregation. As a theological educator today, I wrestle with the lessons to be learned from Peck’s experience as a young pastor. Peck and other white clergy certainly ministered in a challenging context of intense political polarization and pressing societal injustices. It is clear to me that Peck’s ministry simultaneously reveals a shining example of individual courage and a searing condemnation of institutional sinfulness within the broader white Church. Yet I also wonder if some of my students treat Peck as a cautionary tale more than an imitable witness. More than a few clergy colleagues have recommended to me that Columbia and other seminaries like it must do better about educating students for leadership in purple churches. I am aware that one potential application, in view of the purple church, is to explore with my students what Peck might have done differently. But the more obvious lesson to me from this history is that the problem is less about the pastor’s capacities and more about the purple church’s limitations.

My first year at Fuller Theological Seminary, teaching Introduction to Black Theology, I failed myself and my students. I opened the class with a twenty-one minute clip of the most brutal scene  from the television mini-series Roots, which aired in January of 1977. The clip showed Kunta Kinte, brutally beaten with a whip, being hung from a post while other Africans were made to watch. He was beaten near to death and made to renounce his African name and refer to himself as Toby. With every lash of the whip the students squirmed in their seats. The lights were out in the room, I knew something was happening but I couldn’t see, literally and figuratively.  When I cut the lights on after the clip had played, the students were crying. One student got up and ran out of the room, wailing. The clip had traumatized my students. The students were not prepared for the clip. I had not expected this response. I had not prepared them. They were a mess. The classroom was in disarray and I was paralyzed. I was not prepared to handle this level of emotion. I stood in front of the class stunned, and feeling like an incompetent professor. How did I allow this to happen? Why didn’t I know better and do better? What now? What do I do? I don’t know. I stood helpless, in silence as the students wept, wiped their eyes, sniffled and sat. Sat, still yet squirming, and I couldn’t move. I looked at them, with no direction or leadership to offer. No words of comfort. No instruction. We sat together. As we set listening to the sounds of our emotions, there was an eerie feeling that came over the room. A feeling I couldn’t name. It was in the silence that we found our way. We wept together in this moment. This moment, pregnant with failure, birthed a new beginning. Not the beginning for the class I had anticipated, but something else. We sat in that moment, talked about our feelings. We felt in that moment and it opened a door. A door I didn’t see and could not predict.  The door was a new opening to what teaching could be. Teaching could be emotional. The door of the classroom as a space of embodied experiences. Students and professors gather in the sacred space of the classroom not to be taught, but to experience the presence of the Spirit. The classroom is not just a place we experience in our minds. It is a space to be embodied, to be felt in our hearts, our emotions, our cries, our tears our love. Our love for those whose stories we revisit that shape our own. This is my story; a story I pray I never forget. What is your story of failure? A failure that led to a breakthrough.