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

I have a confession to make. When everything moved online in the spring I detested everyone in every Zoom class and work meeting in which I participated. Okay, I didn’t quite detest my students and colleagues, but there was great resentment there. I hated working from home. Always have. My home is sacred space—a sanctuary from the difficulties of the world. A place to rest and play. But now all these people were invading my sacred space. I felt like I had turned my home into my classroom/office, and I wanted my home back. All the work-from-home experts talk about having designated areas and divisions. I tried to do that for myself and thought that students would do it for themselves as well. Then I had to design a week-long concentrated class that would meet synchronously on Zoom, and the idea that we would pretend that we were in a classroom separate from our home felt a bit silly for a class running from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day for a week. And while there is something to having a designated work space, my home office is still in my home. So instead of ignoring the fact that we were all in class at home, I incorporated the home. I started by asking myself two questions: What does it mean to invite a class into your home? In what ways is holistic learning enhanced when each person is in their individual sacred space? I now approach all Zoom classes as an additional way to teach to the whole person and now incorporate the home throughout the course. I begin by asking about the space they have welcomed me into. Many people spend time on their Zoom space as they normally would on their home space when guests are coming over. At the beginning of the class, I ask them to introduce us to their space, whether it be a virtual background or the corner of their home they have prepared for us to see. Backgrounds can also be used as a visual representation of a concept. For my adolescent spirituality class, I encouraged students to use virtual backgrounds of a place that represents spiritual significance. Most students removed the virtual backgrounds after presenting them, but then spoke about their kitchen in the background, which led to a conversation about eating as a spiritual practice. When discussing the china cabinet behind one student and how the china was passed down from various family members, a conversation began about the spiritual practice of connecting with ancestors—a powerful spiritual practice for many cultures. In my Administrative Leadership class we each choose a background that makes us feel like a leader. If students choose to keep their cameras off, they can pick a picture for us to see instead. These exercises allow us to explore a concept through visual representation. This is often done in physical classes through pictures. Why not do this in Zoom classrooms with backgrounds and homes? An educator can also incorporate their students’ homes by asking class participants to find something in their home that represents a particular concept or theory being discussed in class. Certainly, not everybody has the same things accessible to them in their homes and the goal is not to show off what one has, but since any understood concept can be explained by just about any symbol, students can deepen their understanding by articulating a concept using a symbol and learn the complexities of a concept or theory by hearing their classmates do the same. I also design activities that can be done with other people in students’ homes. This is a little trickier because of the variety of living situations; I certainly do not want to pry. So, I acknowledge the diversity and simply note assignments which students can do with other people if they so choose. Once I embraced the process, the opportunities to incorporate the home seem endless. The fact is, we are not divided beings. I always work from home even if that means coming up with an idea in the shower or discussing over dinner that interesting thing a student said. I am not a divided person, and neither are my students. Teaching to the whole person means incorporating the space where the teaching occurs. Teaching and learning are sacred wherever they occur, and the learning space is so much richer, fuller, and wonderfully complex when it is the space that individuals have spent lots of time designing, cultivating, and nurturing. I am truly grateful for the invitation.

Throughout the spring and summer, from my porch, and in the comfort of my rocking chair, I had noticed bats feeding on insects under the street light. Then, on Sunday night, a bat came into my house. Sitting up in bed, reading on my iPad, I was enjoying an uneventful evening.  Silently, a bat flew into my bedroom. I felt it enter before I saw it. I looked up from the iPad screen in time to see long flapping wings fly through, into the adjoining room, and out of sight. Startled and immediately panicked, my shrieks, calling on “JESUS!” “Jesus…. JESUS!!!” was what broke the silence. My fever pitched, full-throated summons for “JESUS!” continued as I jumped from the bed, ran to door the bat had just flown through and slammed it shut. Still shrieking, I realized there were two other doors in my bedroom which, to keep the bat from circling through again, must be closed.  I ran from door to door, slamming each door and commanding Jesus to save me.  By day break, I had barely slept. My heart was still racing.  I could not get myself out of panic.  I got dressed and waited for 7:00 AM – when Campus Services opened. Promptly at 7:00AM I emailed Campus Services.  It was a distress email – “Please come now! Bat in house! Hurry!”  At 7:10AM my doorbell rang. I ran down the stairs – fully expecting to be devoured by the silence shattering bat.  A campus facilities colleague, donning a face mask and holding a fishing net, entered my house.  The bat wrangler looked at me and asked, “Are you okay?” Meeting his gaze, I answered in a tone of defeat, “No.” I showed John upstairs to the scene of the incident. As we walked, he talked to me about the habits of bats.  As he talked, I decided his net was not big enough to capture the intruder. John said from my description, the bat in my house was a Brown Big – Eptesicus fuscus – a protected bat in the state of Indiana. They eat insects and only attack when threatened.  John’s information did not comfort me. After the inspection, John lingered in the kitchen chatting with me and waiting to see if the bat might move around again. Before leaving, he gave me his cell phone number so I could direct dial. The rest of the day I was skittish. I heard noises that were not there and saw bats in previously familiar shadows.  I creeped around my own house and dreaded nightfall. I considered going to a hotel, but talked myself out of it. The next day, campus facilities personnel returned with a professional bat remediator. The inspection began in the bedroom and carefully scoured the first and second floors, then both men went into the attic.  They found evidence of bat activity in my attic, but no roosting.  They said that was good news. I was unconvinced. They scheduled a time to return to repair possible places where bats might be entering the house and to clean up the evidence of bat activity.   The purpose of my bat report is not necessarily about the bat.  I am mostly reflecting upon my reaction to the bat.  Before the bat flew into my bedroom, I would have told you that I would not have panicked.  I would have said that I would have likely been startled, but I would not have thought that I would have shrieked and run around the room like a character in a cheap horror movie.  I have lived in the city, on dairy farms, and in suburbs.  I am accustomed to critters, inside and outside. What had happened?  Why was I so …. raw…. so… not myself …. so emotionally fragile?  A few days before the bat invasion (okay one bat might not be an invasion) the news broke that Chadwick Boseman had died. When I heard the news, I sat on my couch and wept as if a beloved family member had passed over.  What is happening?  Why am I so …. emotionally spent? As a clergy person, I know to be a non-anxious presence, especially in times of crisis, loss, and emergency.  I have experience sitting with families in emergency rooms, courthouses, and funeral homes to console and reassure. Even with my years of experience, nothing has prepared me for months of quarantine, months of re-organizing our programming, months of loss, uncertainty, grief, and anticipated terror – with no end in sight. My bat report is that I know first-hand that the cumulative stressors of 2020 can take a toll on body, mind and spirit. My sheer panic is evidence of the personal toll. We are exhausted. We have protest fatigue. We do not ask IF another Black person will be publicly killed by the police. We ask WHEN will another Black person be publicly executed by the police. Adding to the worry, the public protests organized by Black Lives Matter become more violent as unwelcomed agitators incite incidences of vandalism and cause significant harm. The presidential election season strains of acute disagreement, mud-slinging, and deep-seated ire. We dread election day, regardless of its outcome, for its promise of increased violence and national confusion. The death toll of COVID 19 signals the number of families grieving – we are nearing 200,000 grieving families in the United States and a million more grieving families around the world.  Schools are trying to figure out how to keep students, faculties and administrators safe by taking calculated health risks for which they have little medical guidance.  The surreal decision-making processes feel like roulette wheels and crap games in Las Vegas. We all know persons who have been furloughed, are unemployed, and continue to be underinsured.  Parents are home schooling, working from home, and trying to keep family together – all at the same time. Person’s who live alone are in seclusion and loneliness.  The exhaustion is palpable. For those of us who pay attention as the malaise of dis-ease, flagrant white supremacy, and uncouth violence rages on in daily life, a price is exacted from our bodies, minds, and spirits. How will our extorted souls find relief? When the bat flew into my bedroom, I freaked. Unbeknownst to me, I had reached my own psychic limit; I could not take one more thing and the bat was one more thing.  When I no longer felt safe in my own house, I became terrified. The year 2020 has us all living on the verge of some kind of madness. I applaud colleagues who routinely work with mental health needs. I suspect the mental health experts know what I learned, again and some more, over the last couple of days. A foil for stress, anxiety, loss, fear, and terror is kindness. When I freaked-out about the bat in my house, my colleagues, friends, and family were steadfast and caring. The facilities colleagues who immediately came to my house were kind to me.  No one told me that my fears were unfounded or that I should not have reached out for help.  The bat remediation man was considerate as I reenacted the bat flying into my bedroom genuinely trying to convey my terror, but undoubtedly looking ridiculous.  No one laughed at me or my fear. When I told family and friends about my panic, and chided myself for “over-reacting” – no one followed that line of conversation.  Their kindness to me was to tell me that I get to respond to a bat in my house anyway I need to respond. A beloved neighbor said that if it happens again, to please text him – no matter the time of night or day.  His concern for me made me tear-up. In 2020, gestures of kindness are not to be taken for granted. African American women are accustomed to being treated as invisible. Our distresses are typically ignored, belittled, or erased. Or, we are told we are strong and we can handle anything/everything – even our own terror. We are, by the metrics and actions of white supremacy and patriarchy, invisible or superhuman. Both are narratives meant for dehumanization and violence.  Even so, here is my bat report. In a world where Black bodies do not matter, and the distresses of Black women are oftentimes ignored, when my colleagues and friends rallied to help me, I was healed, at least a little bit. Their attentive responses and care were life giving and life affirming. In my fear, kindness made all the difference. As we wade into our classrooms and into the fall semester, let us take the power of kindness with us. Let us engage our students with care and genuine concern, as best as we can. Remember, they might have recently had their own version of a bat in their house.  Our classrooms are not separate from, or immune from, the loss, grief and panic which permeates our daily lives. Attempts at compartmentalization works against kindness, care, and a holistic understanding of why we come together to learn. During the multiple pandemics of 2020, we cannot pretend that classroom sessions (even on-line) are outside of this current, unrehearsed reality. If in our own panic, we cannot model calm for our students, let us not try to pretend. Know that the pretense and charade of normalcy will not form, but will de-form students. If/when you realize your strength and determination has wavered, do not be afraid to ask for care, help, and kindness. For easy access, several bat nets have been are placed around my house.  I think I have gathered myself enough so that next time I will not freak-out.  But if I do, I will not harshly judge myself as inadequate or lacking. I will call Jesus!, neighbors, and colleagues for help.

In Luke 1:20, an angel named Gabriel informs the priest Zechariah that he will remain mute during his wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Zechariah’s mistake was to doubt Gabriel’s announcement that they would have a child despite decades of infertility. Perhaps Gabriel made a mistake by reacting harshly to a question any reasonable human would have asked, but I have come to understand the priest’s silence as a prescription more than a punishment. I imagine a muted Zechariah growing spiritually and relationally as he listened more to Elizabeth, to their relative Mary, and to the Spirit who would guide and empower their son. I found myself identifying with Zechariah while participating as a learner in Dr. Mitzi J. Smith’s excellent course on African American Interpretation and the Gospel of Luke.[i] When we discussed my role prior to the course, Mitzi made it clear that I must not speak or write in ways that undermined her authority as the instructor. At her request I did not post any messages in the preliminary discussion forums in Moodle. One exception that Mitzi approved was a message explaining my relative silence and encouraging openness to womanist hermeneutics.[ii] When we transitioned to intensive sessions in Zoom, Mitzi sometimes asked my opinion, and she included me in breakout discussion groups. Even so, I remained one of the quietest learners in the class. Although I identified with Zechariah’s temporary silence, his privilege offers a more enduring analogy. My privilege has included a history of talking in class. My parents valued education highly and had resources to help me succeed, including my mother’s training and experience in early childhood education. With their encouragement, I became a precocious talker, quick to get teachers’ attention and give answers they wanted. Not all of my classmates were so advantaged. In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi describes the anger he felt at biased teaching in third grade. A white teacher regularly ignored raised non-white hands while engaging with favored white children.[iii] The flip side of similar biases enhanced my education in many respects, but there were drawbacks. I missed out on what others would have said if I had not taken so much “air time,” and my relationships were often better with adults than with peers. I was oblivious to the injustice. The skills and habits I learned as a child helped me compete for attention, grades, honors, and scholarships all the way through a PhD program. An MDiv program that emphasized collaboration taught me to dial back competition and seek the good of a whole class, but I still talked a lot. I continue to do so as a seminary professor. Extensive research has documented the impact of implicit bias on students’ achievement at all levels of education.[iv] There seem to be fewer studies focused on the impact of implicit bias on students’ perceptions of minoritized and women professors,[v] but I am learning from Mitzi and other colleagues that it is a serious problem. For many (but not all) students, my race and gender lend me added authority, whereas the same students may discount the authority of professors who are not white or male. For Mitzi these biases are headwinds that impede her teaching. Patriarchal biblical texts and interpretations have long supported to the silencing of women, and Luke-Acts has contributed to that injustice because most female characters model traditional silent roles. Mary’s prophetic hymn in Luke 1:67-79 is an important exception, but the overall impression remains. In relation to that tradition, Mitzi’s strong leadership and my relative silence constituted a small dose of justice. Most prescriptions come with warning labels, and so should silence. When privileged people remain comfortably silent in the face of oppression, we perpetuate injustice by refusing to add our voices and energies to movements for change. Silence can also be a symptom of passive-aggressive relationships, where resentments fester without being addressed in a timely way. Like fasting, silence is only healthy when it is temporary. It is best when chosen, not imposed, and when rooted in trust, not fear. In academic settings, silent students might be hiding a failure to prepare, or they might be afraid that voicing their thoughts will lead to negative judgments. My own motives for silence were mixed. I was willing to comply with Mitzi’s wishes and eager to hear what others had to say during each of the challenging and engaging sessions. I was also anxious not to fit the stereotype of a well-intentioned but clueless white guy. I abhor racism and sexism, but I also recognize that I am not entirely free from them. I did not want to say “the wrong thing.” Dr. Marcia Riggs has wisely suggested that intentional, interpersonal work on race and gender would have been valuable earlier in our collaboration.[vi] The course was not an appropriate space in which to do that work, but I hope to do more in the future. I also hope that my experience of “stereotype threat” will deepen my empathy and strengthen my planning for students who may be silent due to fear.[vii] Discernment of when to speak and when to remain silent is an essential skill for theological educators and for everyone who seeks justice. Zechariah’s silence prepares him to prophesy like Mary, and I hope to benefit from the same prescription. Notes [i] For more information about the course and the related Wabash Center grant project, search for previous posts by Drs. Mitzi J. Smith and Daniel W. Ulrich, beginning with “Learning Womanist Hermeneutics during Covid-19” at https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2020/07/learning-womanist-hermeneutics-during-covid-19/. [ii] Thanks to Mary Hess for suggesting this step. [iii] Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019), 44-55. [iv] See, for example, the studies summarized in Rachel E. Godsil et al., The Science of Equality, Volume 1: Addressing Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat in Education and Health Care (Perception Institute, 2014), accessed August 28, 2020, http://perception.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Science-of-Equality.pdf. [v] On the impact of race, see Bettye P. Smith, “Student Ratings of Teaching Effectiveness: An Analysis of End-of-Course Faculty Evaluations,” College Student Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 788–800. On age and gender see Alison F. Doubleday and Lisa M. J. Lee, “Dissecting the Voice: Health Professions Students’ Perceptions of Instructor Age and Gender in an Online Environment and the Impact on Evaluations for Faculty,” Anatomical Sciences Education 9 (2016): 537–44. [vi] Marcia Y. Riggs, “To Teach Collaboratively or Not?” [vii] “Stereotype threat” is fear of acting in ways that confirm a stereotype of a group to which one belongs. For research demonstrating its negative impact on learning, including in discussions of race, see Godsil, The Science of Equality, 31-33.

The first time that I taught a graduate-level class where anti-oppression work was a primary component of the learning, I made a major blunder. I structured the class with materials and exercises assuming that students understood that racism, sexism, and other forms of structural injustice based on identity categories and embodiment actually exist and had material, social, and intrapsychic impacts on the people who were most affected by them. At the time we were working on such concepts as how privilege functions in a variety of identity categories, understanding microaggressions, solidarity and co-conspirators, and other vocabulary and practices that would hopefully help students to work towards justice in their circles of influence in religious leadership. So the educational goals were about recognizing and intervening in situations where inequity and injustice are practiced in institutions, policies, and interpersonal interactions. We were a few weeks into the term before a brave student articulated what it turned out several other students were also thinking: namely, that racism and sexism had ended, and we were now in a post-racial age. So why were we spending so much time on what only a few bad people engaged in… on individual character flaws related to racism/homophobia/etc.? They personally were not racist (sexist, classist, or ableist). They were good people committed to social justice! But a significant number of the students in my classroom were convinced that meritocracy allowed hard work and good character to overcome any remaining barriers that might exist. Other students were familiar with how structural inequality worked in relation to their own targeted identity categories, but were less familiar with how this worked intersectionally or with other embodied experiences. Now, my hope is that in the more than a decade that has passed since this particular situation occurred, public protests and the increased access to perspectives beyond the mainstream have increased general awareness of ongoing racism and other forms of structural injustice. Certainly those with eyes to see and ears to hear should have had many examples in the day-to-day news of the last decade, where terms like misogynist and white fragility have begun to appear on major outlets such as National Public Radio, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and so on. Unfortunately, cultural polarization, the segregation of listening and reading practices, and the ways that online logarithms build echo chambers of like thinking means that some of our students have not been exposed to these kinds of conversations. Other networks and media outlets work to debunk the ideas of social inequality and define social justice not as a theological commitment but as a solely political term related to left-wing politics. Because of this, I still find that many students, particularly those raised in fairly homogenous white middle-class Christian communities and neighborhoods, have little nuanced awareness of the depth of structural inequality that is built into histories of policy, institutional legacies, economic pathways, educational access, and representation in media and leadership positions, and how these many arenas work together to ensure that this inequality replicates itself across generations. As a teacher in that moment, I quickly learned that simply asserting that structural inequality is a reality was not effective in challenging the common sense understandings of meritocracy and equality that students had heard all of their lives in their families, schools, churches, and other formative communities. Over the years, the many instructors of this first year class have developed a number of strategies to show, not tell, that structural inequality is very real and to help make connections across experiences where it manifests itself. Unfortunately, there is no quick solution to unlearning these “common sense” understandings, and learning the full interlocking force of inequality through a variety of contributing factors takes practice and careful attention over time for all of us, particularly when our identities do not force us to navigate those structures with attention. Here are some teaching resources that have been helpful in opening these conversations: Peggy McIntosh’s introductory piece “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack,” provides useful directness in its listicle format of naming everyday indications of white privilege, although it tends to focus on individual experiences, albeit as they are embedded in social realities.  This brief video about wealth inequality in the United States has initiated helpful conversations about our perceptions versus the realities of economic equity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&feature=youtu.be The video series Race: The Power of an Illusion by California Newsreel is particularly helpful in tracing complex relationships between FHA policy, redlining, urban development policy, and generational wealth difference, as well as exploring the history of defining race in Supreme Court decisions related to immigration and property ownership. https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/ Creating together a giant whiteboard-sized chart documenting historical events, legal changes/Supreme Court decisions, and strategies in the movement for full equality for LGBTQ+ persons. Looking decade by decade from the 1940s to the 2020s at interpersonal, institutional/communal, ideological/representational, and legal/policy changes over time (generally drawing on a range of websites that document the history of LGBTQ+ rights in the US), students begin to discern the depth of inequality built into these various levels of life for persons who are not heteronormative or living within gender binaries.

Throughout my twenty-five plus years of teaching I have most often declined opportunities to “team teach” (the terminology used in my institution) in the historically and predominantly white seminary I have spent the longest part of my teaching career. Why? Two primary reasons. First, I was the only full-time African American professor for a very long time. I had students questioning my qualifications because I was Black and female, so why would I place myself in a position to be judged worthy or not by students because my content and method differed radically from that of my white colleague? Second, I did not want to be patronized by a white colleague either defending my “right” to teach or “correcting” my position as That Womanist liberation ethicist. Some readers are perhaps wondering why I didn’t give my students and colleagues the benefit of the doubt? Well, I have spent most of my educational life as a student and teacher in historically white institutions. I have repeatedly been on the receiving end of well-meaning but white racially-biased surveillance and censoring by white students, professors, and faculty colleagues. Yes, I think that genuine mutual respect has developed now between me and my current colleagues. Still, implicit bias and racist socialization runs deep in ways with which my white colleagues are not yet ready to grapple. Thus, when Professor Mitzi Smith and Professor Dan Ulrich invited me to join them as a consultant (along with Dr. Mary Hess) for their project, “The Challenges of Effective Pedagogy of a Trans-Contextual Online Collaboration for an African American/Womanist Hermeneutics Course during COVID-19,” I was intrigued. The words “trans-contextual online collaboration” drew me to say yes. Given my reluctance to team teach in my context, I was impressed by my new colleague’s (Dr. Smith) willingness to teach with a white male colleague from another seminary while living into the learning curve for many of us in adapting to online teaching in response to the pandemic. Several questions came immediately to the forefront for me: Are Drs. Smith and Ulrich doing any pre-course race-gender-class work with each other? Or are they simply going to work through the inevitable race-gender-class tensions as they arise while the course is taught? How is “trans-contextual” to be understood? Is it an exchange across geographical borders and institutional boundaries and/or crossing dynamics of power between the two professors, between the professors and the students, between the different institutional norms for teaching and learning? This pedagogical decision of the course was ambitious: having an African American Womanist biblical scholar and teacher “out front,” while a white male biblical scholar was “a learning/teaching professor.” As a consultant, I worked hard to contribute helpful insights about the tensions that the two professors shared with us. Asking clarifying questions was my first way of engaging this. As both professors’ blogs revealed, they did honestly grapple with each other. My further questions were about whether students understood the roles and did not attempt to “force” a more familiar pattern of engaging the white male professor. After our last consultation, I remain convinced that it is necessary for professors to do race-gender-class work prior to and throughout trans-contextual or team teaching. In other words, teaching empathetically and justly with a colleague across race, gender, and class lines requires intentional dialogue to make explicit the race-gender-class assumptions of the teachers involved. This work must be as much a part of course preparation as learning the subject matter of the course from the perspectives and methodologies of each other. Most importantly, teaching collaboratively or team teaching adds a level of preparation and ongoing dialogue; reflecting with an African American woman and a white woman as consultants was a definite step in the right direction. COVID-19 necessitated teaching this course about homelessness online, and this created a barrier to direct engagement with persons who are homeless and with practitioners who work in solidarity with these persons. Professor Smith used pedagogical methods and reading assignments that created space for developing empathetic sensibilities for persons who are experiencing homelessness, rather than considering homelessness as solely a social justice issue. Likewise, she taught Womanist and African American biblical hermeneutical skills for teaching and preaching that can impact the lives of homeless persons through ministerial practice and can influence public policy. Lesson: Improvisation catalyzes online pedagogies, pandemic or not. To teach collaboratively, or not? I just might give it a chance, under the right conditions.

Regardless of how one may feel about online learning (now, during COVID-19, thrust upon us, the willing and unwilling), admittedly it is now a vital and critical academic and professional skill. Helping students become proficient in online learning has arguably become as important as mastering academic content in whatever discipline one teaches. One way to help students become more proficient at online learning is to actively assess their performance in online discussion forums. Most instructors at least provide a list of minimum expectations, something like: Post at least two entries for every forum; avoid non-substantive posts (“I agree”); post by a deadline for a session; cite references, respond to questions from the professor, etc. Some instructors place limits on word count. Some insist on complete sentences and proper grammar. In addition to assessing engagement with the course content (academic concepts and course texts, for example), and checking for adherence to minimum expectations as noted above, instructors can help students become more proficient online learners by assessing metacognition student performance, those transferable skills and competencies that will serve students well as they become lifelong online learners. Metacognitive assessment helps students become critically aware of themselves as thinkers and learners. Robert E. MacDonald refers to these as part of the “informal observations” [i] that instructors engage in as part of the evaluation of student learning. Here are examples of metacognition student performance in online discussion forums that you can look for, assess, and for which you can provide feedback to students: The consistency in the amount and quality of their posts. The quality and kinds of questions students ask during online discussions. The cooperative peer learning skills students demonstrate in discussion forums. The manner in which they receive directions and challenges from the instructor. The way students respond to questions from the professor and other students. Their ability to follow through on assignments and activities to completion. Their level of initiative in asking for help, seeking information, offering critique, and questioning assumptions. Their ability to uncover their own bias and prejudices. Their ability to recognize their misunderstanding and demonstrate corrective thinking. Their ability to come up with novel and original examples. The quality of their written skill in expressing and explaining ideas. Their ability to manage their time and participate in online discussion forums, as well as complete assignments, promptly. It is no longer enough to help our students master academic content related to our particular scholarship. Part of the work of teaching in this technological age is helping our students become better learners, and that includes becoming more adept at learning in online and virtual environments. Notes [i] Robert E. MacDonald,  A Handbook for Beginning Teachers: Facing the Challenge of Teaching in Today’s Schools (New York, NY: Pearson, 1999).

Since last fall, the theology department at my institution, St. Ambrose University, has been offering a new course called “Just Theology.” On the first day of class each semester, I like to poll the students to ask them what they think the title “Just Theology” means. Most of the students’ answers reveal that they assumed they had signed up for a basic theology class, one that covered religious principles only—without any math, science, or art mixed in. In actuality, the class is designed to introduce students to the study of Christian scripture and theology through the lens of justice. I’ve learned more from this first day activity than that my students are bad at puns. Many are surprised to learn that theology has anything to do with just action in the world. In an effort to analyze this trend more deeply and to see if the course is successful in teaching about the relationship between justice and theology, my department chair, Lisa Powell, developed a survey to distribute to our students on both the first and last day of class. The survey asks students to respond to five statements: (1) “Acting for justice is central to the Christian life”; (2) “Racial justice is an important part of the Christian message”; (3) “Christian teaching can have a liberating message for women”; (4) “Care for the earth is an important part of Christian teaching”; and (5) “The Bible shows God’s particular concern for the poor.” Students indicate their belief about each statement from the following options: “strongly disagree”; “disagree”; “agree”; “strongly agree”; and “I don’t know.” It surprises me each semester to learn that only about half of the students at the beginning of the semester select “agree” or “strongly agree” to each statement. In fact, around 25-30% select “strongly disagree.” I am always happy to see that nearly all the students select “agree” or “strongly agree” by the end of the semester. The surveys are helpful in gauging what my students’ preconceptions about religion and theology are, especially at the beginning of the semester, so I can identify the starting point for our conversations. This semester’s data was particularly noteworthy. To take just one example: only about 10% of my class indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Racial justice is an important part of the Christian message.” I asked the class, “Who has ever heard a sermon or homily that endorsed racial justice?” About 10% raised their hands. This was disturbing, particularly on the heels of a summer in which racial injustice and police brutality received heightened attention in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. I asked the students how many had attended a Black Lives Matter protest this summer: about 25% of them raised their hands. But when I asked how many did this from a religious or faith conviction, none raised their hands. About the same 25% of students raised their hands when I asked if they had watched Representative John Lewis’s funeral on television. Again, when I asked if anyone could give me an example of how his religious/faith convictions related to his social justice work, no one raised their hands. Of course, John Lewis’s life and funeral provides a heroic and exceptionally clear example of the relationship between God and just action in the world. But the students seemed to miss the connection. Instead, they told me that they understood his civic engagement (and civic disobedience) as stemming from his affiliation with the Democratic party. As a counterpoint and illustration of black liberation theology, I read the students this quote from President Obama’s eulogy: “Like John the Baptist preparing the way, like those Old Testament prophets speaking truth to kings, John Lewis did not hesitate—he kept on getting on board buses and sitting at lunch counters, got his mug shot taken again and again, marched again and again on a mission to change America.” [i] One student responded to the quote by mentioning that it was President Obama who delivered the eulogy. They seemed to be arguing that political party affiliations and values were more probable indicators of one’s work for social justice in the world than one’s theological commitments. This summer as I prepared for my classes, I knew this semester would be a complicated one for students in nearly every aspect. I revised syllabi and lesson plans to account for and to integrate the COVID - 19 pandemic and increased exposure to ongoing racial injustice, but I neglected to consider how deeply the pre-election, polarized political landscape would impact students’ assumptions about theology and justice. One student honestly explained to me that they responded “strongly disagree” on the survey because when they scroll through social media, they only see Christianity associated with injustice, and usually with the political “right.” Donald Trump’s photo op with the Bible in front of St. John’s Church offers a poignant example of such. After just one week of this fall semester, I’ve learned that I need to be more cognizant than ever before, about so many things—including students’ presuppositions about religion and politics, and theology and justice. Notes [i] “President Barack Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis: Full Transcript.” New York Times, July 30 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/obama-eulogy-john-lewis-full-transcript.html.  

A few weeks ago, I had to put down my cat of 14 years. She was very sick and there were no roads to recovery. Her name was Regan. I got her my first year of graduate school, when I had just started at the University of Virginia, and I was living in a basement apartment, in a not-so-safe part of town, on my own for the first time. I was in a doctoral program with a bunch of older, married men, and I was lonely. Regan was my first friend in Charlottesville. If you’ve ever had a pet die—or had to make the decision to end their life—you’ll know the grief and guilt that I felt, feel still. We’re in the middle of a “triple” pandemic, which I’ve watched killing hundreds of thousands of people and disproportionately affecting those who are already most vulnerable, and I’m also sad about my cat. On its own, Covid-19 is causing all sorts of problems—and not just sickness and death. People are suffering from mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression; job loss; homelessness and food scarcity; domestic violence; racial discrimination; you name it. But it’s not just that. We’re also all still experiencing whatever life would normally be throwing at us. Come fall, students will still be stressing out about projects and exams, still wanting to rush, still eating leftover pizza, still hooking up, still doing research, still missing their parents, still working out, still cracking jokes, still procrastinating, still singing in the shower, still praying, still volunteering, still playing ultimate Frisbee, still skipping class, still applying for jobs, still requesting accommodations, still sleeping in, still ending relationships, still feeling proud about their grades, still starting their own businesses, still asking for recommendation letters, still fighting with friends, still protesting, still driving with the windows down, still getting accepted into grad school, still cheating, still feeling like they don’t belong, still reading the news, still trying to earn money, still drinking, still shaving—still living, that is. And my life continues too. I’m still a mom. I still want to write and do research. I still want to support and uplift my colleagues. I’ve still got to create an online course for the fall. I have books to read, a stack of New Yorkers to finish. (One of my favorite bits on the show The Good Place is a conception of hell as “nothing but a growing stack of New Yorker magazines that will never be read.” I laughed a little too hard at this joke.) Dishes need to be washed, laundry needs to be folded, rent needs to be paid. My house could use a good dusting. I found out yesterday that I can go up early for promotion; there are a lot of forms to fill out, y’all! It’s my friend’s birthday today, I got the oil changed in my car this morning, and I have reservations at the local pool later on, if an afternoon thunderstorm doesn’t pass through. I wake up too early, I eat heirloom tomatoes with a shake of salt, and I don’t always put enough sunscreen on. I’m grateful, I’m cranky, I’m hormonal, I’m excited, I’m overwhelmed, I’m angry, I’m weary, I’m . . . . This is life, my life. And it’s, inexplicably, somehow, still going, amidst everything else. There will be some big stories in the fall—the pandemic, the presidential election, the Black Lives Matter protests, the federal arrests that are starting to seem more like kidnappings—and we must attend to them. They are devastating, deep rooted. We must not look away—or allow our students to look away. We can teach to these big stories, we can support one another through them. But our students will not stop having everyday concerns, needs, questions, and experiences, those seemingly “small” stories. We must allow for them too. After all, they will affect, as they always have, how our students learn, how motivated they are, how much time and energy they can or want to give to any academic pursuits, how they interact with us and their peers. We must hold the mundane and the massive together, in tension. For years now, I’ve kept a note in my wallet that my aunt wrote for me, for one of my graduations, I think it was. It’s frayed and faded, a quotation by author Grace Paley. I pulled it out recently, when I was grappling with the loss of my long-time feline companion . . . and so much more: “Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don’t stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.” Life sure don’t stop. Not for us and not for our students. We must remember this, come fall. Thanks to Andreas Broscheid for offering important feedback to earlier drafts of this blog post.

One of the reckonings I have had to make five months into a global pandemic is that the grounds upon which our classrooms stand continue to feel unstable, confusing, and ever shifting. Educators across the country are once again welcoming into learning spaces amalgamations of stories, experiences, memories—and trauma. Teachers and learners are resuming virtual classes with bodies that have experienced too much, too fast, and are likely to be overwhelmed even before the beginning of a new academic year. So how might the design of our classes and pedagogies grapple with and take into account the profound and collective shifts, disempowerment, and emotional and physical challenges that COVID-19 has imposed on us? How might we design experiences of presence and regard using a practice I call “a pedagogy of affection”? In an effort to answer these questions, I have been taking a closer look at classroom interactions between March and May of 2020. Looking back at my notes, I notice an important pattern: a more open naming of how our heightened instability aroused feelings of helplessness, anxiety, worry, withdrawal, grief, preoccupation. Students also asked for (and were granted) extensions on assignments, opportunities to process their response to the pandemic via check-ins, campus ministry, zoom happy hours, chapel services, and so on. Our conversations expanded beyond so-called disciplinary boundaries to include questions like “How is your breathing today?” and “What kind of insecurity are you dealing with in this moment? Did you have enough to eat? Did you have a restful sleep?” and even “How is your undivided unit of bodyspiritplacetime?” as Patrisia Gonzalez put it. Some of us may have asked our students how their bodies were metabolizing fear and anxiety, housing and food insecurities, whether they had a computer to work from, a stable enough shelter. We may have encouraged them to occupy institutional spaces to speak and write about how they were envisioning us showing up for them in the most meaningful and regard-filled ways. One of my student-teachers, Jacob Perez, asked in one of our institutional meetings whether we would be willing to stretch our “understanding of pedagogy beyond what happens when a zoom link goes live.” Having co-created together a special reading course on “Queering and Decolonizing Pedagogies,” Perez invited reflection on the power of implicit pedagogies, affirming that they “occur in the contexts and contours of how we come to the classroom.”[ii] In finding ways to navigate the spring of 2020, we began to ask how we could hold space for breath and feeling and truth telling; how we could mutually co-create spaces of presence, regard, and care, responding to the many urgencies named above. Some of us began to write love-lectures, began starting classes with breathing and stretching exercises or a more robust check-in where we could talk about anger, vulnerabilities, dissociations, isolation, the ongoing inability to concentrate, police brutality, anti-Blackness, grief. Some of us reconsidered dead-lines, exams, grades. Zebulon Hurst, for example, poeticized his longings through a publication co-authored with Perez, as well as this poetic piece, even before the uprisings began:“i wonder when my Black life will matter beyond a sign in the window/ i wonder when i will go home / i wonder where is home / i wonder if my aunties are safe i mean / i know they aren’t but / i wonder if anyone beyond the bonds of my genetic material cares about that. / i wonder if you love me the way you say you do.” This pandemic, the ensuing uprisings, the incapacity of governments to decently respond to the population’s most pressing needs interrupted our lives in unimaginable ways. We haven’t really recovered or adequately processed much of what happened in the first semester of 2020. And with that, a question haunts me: How are we to begin a new academic year integrating the overlay of stories and traumas that circulate in our bodies, histories, and memories? How are we to think about pedagogies of affection and presence with integrity instead of reinforcing pedagogies of cruelty and trauma response in minoritized students in higher education? A set of pedagogical choices that are trauma-informed may prove helpful in designing our fall courses as the global pandemic has barely subsided, our communities continue to be in danger, and as we brace ourselves for this year’s election cycle. A trauma-informed approach would not only affirm that suffering, pain, and distress is present among us but would also seek to actively mitigate or foresee potential challenges. In Pedagogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire reflected on his experience of trauma: a forced exile after the violent Brazilian coup d’état, which took place in 1964. His warning that trauma is not simply something to be lived through—but rather, is something to be felt, to be acknowledged, and to be suffered—is fundamental for our times.[iv] He also warned about the dangers of creating disjointed communities during times of crises where members interact with one another through a “functional” system and a set of transactional interactions. For Freire, the only way forward is one that implicates us in each other’s well-being, with presence, integrity, solidarity, emotional roots, and communion. In order to develop such bonds of affection, presence, and regard, we would have to apprehend the “tragedy of ruptures” while acknowledging our collective crises, all while maintaining a lively political-pedagogical response-ability and epistemological curiosity. With Freire’s pedagogical charge in mind, a fellow co-conspirator and faculty colleague at the Pacific School of Religion—Dr. Aizaiah Yong—and I designed a course on spiritual formation that is mindful of such pedagogies of the heart via embodied, spiritual, and artistic practices. One goal of the course is to co-construct with students a “covenant of presence and regard” through synchronous and asynchronous exercises such as contemplative practices, writing prompts, artmaking, and a “Spiritual Care Package.” The required “readings,” aside from a curated multivocal range of scholars, are experimental and will include poetry, podcasts, documentaries, and the visual arts, delineating an anatomy of learning that leans more into instability and unlearning than inflexibility and certitude, as Clelia Rodríguez puts it.[v] Our hope is that these pedagogical choices will continue to affirm an educational journey that not only resists “the worst muck of racialized, ableist heterocapital” settler-colonialism, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs names it, but that is aware of our heartaches, our indignation, our agonies, and our political rage, with all our capacity to be at once “problematic and prophetic.”[vi] As the academic year of 2020-21 draws near, I hope we can continue to commit to pedagogies of affection, presence, and regard that gather the dismembered pieces of our bodies, stories, cultures, and existences so we can continue to imagine and create with a tremendous capacity to intimate this world differently. Notes [i] Patrisia Gonzales, Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2012), xix [ii] Jacob Perez (he/his) is a Master of Theological Studies student at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and a Co-Chair of the Latinx Religions and Spiritualties Unit for the American Academy of Religion Western Region. Jacob also serves on the Board of Directors for the AARWR as the Student Representative of Northern California. He can be reached at jperez@ses.psr.edu. [iii] Zebulon B. Hurst (he/them) is a Master of Divinity student at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. His work weaves together queer intimacies, pleasurepain, somatics, and poetics. Their continued research explores manifestations of fissure, domination, and self-sublimation. Hurst authored a chapter in the 2017 volume edited by Anthony J. Nocella, II, and Erik Jeurgensmeyer, Fighting Academic Repression and Neoliberal Education: Resistance, Reclaiming, Organizing, and Black Lives Matter in Education (New York: Peter Lang). He can be reached at zhurst@ses.psr.edu. [iv] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart (New York: Continuum, 1997), 67. [v] Clelia Rodríguez, Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression, and Pain (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018), 1-2. [vi] Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 2.