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“Resisting cultured despair” is a phrase from feminist ethicist Sharon Welch that captured my imagination in graduate school. It is a phrase, or rather a disposition, that named for me my experience with the paralysis (and the privilege) that often prevent us from moving beyond critical description (what is going on) to responsive and responsible action in an unjust and messy world. For the past decade, resisting cultured despair has been an explicit feature of my teaching philosophy. It takes form in undergraduate, values-integrated seminars as well as in graduate servant leadership classes–courses designed to counter what religious education scholar Mary Elizabeth Moore decries as the “bifurcation of information and formation” in our pedagogies. In the end, I want the knowledge we generate together in the classroom to be catalytic rather than paralytic. I want my students to join the resistance, to become arc-benders in the moral universe. In its more common form, the initial despair sets in as the students grow in their awareness of the complex, long-standing, and interlocking nature of contemporary social ills–that is, as the students become “cultured.” So, conventional wisdom suggests we read together from the traditional canon of arc-benders. Yes, the challenges are daunting, the systems entrenched, but look at MLK! Ella Baker! Nelson Mandela! Dorothy Day! Cesar Chavez! to name just a few of the social change “saints” often invited into the curriculum. But herein lies the rub, and the less talked about but no less paralyzing dimension of cultured despair: the more we read of the moral virtuosos whose lives we count on to inspire our students (and, let’s be honest, ourselves), the easier it becomes to outsource our responsibility for changing the world to the luminaries, the set apart among us, the ones–certainly not me!–who by virtue of their extraordinary gifts and sacrifice can actually make a difference. As I continue to wrestle with transposing resistance to cultured despair from the soaring heights of a teaching philosophy to the grounded pedagogy of everyday teaching, I have found it helpful to adapt a strategy that has been effective in designing student writing assignments. One challenge familiar, I suspect, to most teachers is the student paper that tries, unsuccessfully, to emulate the style of and employ with earnest abandon the new vocabulary in the assigned course readings–the “try hards,” as my teenage daughter might say. My kneejerk response reflects this appellation: you are trying too hard, which, of course, is not helpful feedback. Whether crestfallen, contemptuous, or simply confused, student reactions to critiques of their writing include an implicit demand: ok, then show me what good writing that I am capable of looks like. So, we read the eloquent and professionally edited essays, speeches, and letters of the virtuosos for inspiration, and less for imitation. We pair these readings with review and discussion of a good (and sometimes a great) student paper from a past class. For me, forming students to resist cultured despair requires a similar approach. What this looks like in practice may vary, but for the past several semesters I have made an intentional effort to invite into the classroom recent alumni who are working in organizations that attend daily to the intersection of justice and care–organizations that amplify the leading causes of life in word and deed. The first-person stories of peers, like the reading of student writing, is a witness to a way of life as towards social justice, towards a life of “faithful service and ethical leadership,” as our university mission intimates. Their stories serve as tangible reference points throughout the semester, grounding our critical and conceptual analysis of issues threatening human flourishing. Three practical points to note: these conversations are shared, memorable, and easily adapted to flexible learning environments. These conversations with alumni ensure that we have a “shared text”–something that a required reading aspires to but often falls short of in practice. The shared, living texts prove easier to recall and work with in subsequent class sessions. And, as I discovered this year, the conversations can be hosted virtually in a way that, ironically, may enhance the “reality” of their stories. For example, alumni can give virtual tours of organizations we would never be able to visit in person during a class. There is, of course, nothing radical or new about bringing back alumni to tell their story–your alumni office will be thrilled to assist (and publicize). And as with any alumni “career talks,” the impact can be direct: the current student compelled to apply for a year of service with the organizations for whom the alumni work. But the pedagogical move, like so many, is not contingent on generating immediate, observable causal relationships. Rather, it is a recognition that in our classrooms, the invitation to change the world –as the most recent iteration of our (your?) university branding exhorts–cannot be delivered solely by those whose stories have been mythologized and anthologized. This has become increasingly clear in the current moment when the moral authority of past saints is simultaneously invoked and revoked by new voices demanding to be heard. Teaching resistance to cultured despair requires additional signposts and, likely, the identification of new paths. Partnering with recent alumni is a source of hope and accountability for me as I prepare to teach this fall, conscious of both the temptation to cultured despair and the rising culture of despair.

In Toward a Theory of Instruction, educator Jerome Bruner insists that a theory of development must be linked both to a theory of knowledge and to a theory of instruction, “or be doomed to triviality.” (Toward a Theory of Instruction, Jerome Bruner, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1974, 192 pages, ISBN 9780674897014, 21). I’ve long felt that this is partly the reason why so much of what passes for religious education and religious studies are at best benign, and at worst, risk a tendency to trivialize faith and religion. Being “interesting” may provide enough impetus to keep people coming back to participate in religious education and religious studies for a while, or to keep students engaged during a course, but ultimately, there are more “interesting” things in the world to capture and hold our attention if entertainment is our vehicle for retaining people’s participation in learning. An effective education program (1) must give rigorous attention to the developmental dynamics and processes of its subjects (learners), including motivation (which is based on “need” and not “interest”), (2) must hold to an epistemological philosophy of how learners learn, and, (3) must apply and practice a theory of learning related to how to teach, be it instruction, nurture, training, demonstration, tutorial, apprenticeship, etc. Bruner suggests that mental growth “is in very considerable measure dependent on growth from the outside in—a mastering of [the ways] that are embodied in the culture and that are passed on in a contingent dialogue by agents of the culture.” (Bruner, 21). He claims that this is the case when language and the symbolic systems of the culture are involved. Can we say the same about faith formation and development for ministerial and religious studies students? Perhaps it’s helpful to consider that while faith is a universal human potential, it is dependent on growth from the outside in “a mastering of the ways the practices of faith are embodied in the faith community’s culture that are passed on, as Bruner says, “in a contingent dialogue by agents of the culture.” That strikes me as a more helpful and promising start at understanding how faith develops than fuzzy devotional notions, individualistic or “magical thinking” related to how faith comes about and develops. Worse still, the temptation to make learning entertaining and interesting. Further, Bruner’s statement that ”much of the growth starts out by our turning around on our own traces and recoding in new forms, with the aid of adult tutors, what we have been doing or seeing, then going on to new modes of organization with the new products that have been formed by these recodings” (Bruner, 21) suggests three things. First, the necessity of a core curriculum structured in a spiral or holographic framework. This allows for intentionality in creating opportunity for re-tracing and “recoding in new forms” the fundamental concepts of faith (this may be a good rationale for the power of the observance of liturgical cycles in worship and educational programming). Second, it highlights the necessity of mediating relationships for growth in understanding—teachers, mentors, guides, spiritual friends. Third, the constructivist understanding of epistemology (knowing) through which the learner creates knowledge, insight, and meaning through the experiences of faith and relationships. Or, as Bruner puts it, ”the heart of the educational process consists of providing aids and dialogues for translating experience into more powerful systems of notation and ordering.“ (Bruner, 21).  

Killer Mike said, “I hope we find a way out of it, because I don’t have the answers. But I do know: we must plot, we must plan, we must strategize, we must organize, and mobilize.” In this moment of triple-pandemic, the story of the Wabash Center aligns with Killer Mike’s message for agency, imagination, and cunning, as we support faculty and administrators in religion and theology. I read the many, many statements, treaties, and proclamations written by school administrators, corporate chiefs, government officials, and preachers.  Each statement, in its own way, condemned the deplorable activities of racial injustice.  I suppose making a statement declaring one’s values in a moment of social strife is better than leaving us to guess about institutional commitments concerning racism. But, most statements, from my vantage, while noble, did not provide a clarion commitment to the work and sacrifice needed for sustainable change.  Killer Mike’s statement, simple and elegant, was a call to gather together and design the America which is dreamed about, but which goes unrealized. Michael Santiago Render, better known by his stage name Killer Mike, is an American rap artist, songwriter, actor and activist. He is also the son of an Atlanta police officer. Killer Mike was called to speak on camera the day after the social uprisings began in response to the public torture and execution of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. The tape of the police torturing and murdering George Floyd has gone viral and has ignited, again, the outrage of those of us who are against police brutality.  Police terrorism is one of the many forms of white supremacy which infest and infect the U.S. democracy and keep racism an integral part of capitalism.  Now, months after the day George Floyd was killed while calling upon the ancestors, the marches, protests and rebellions continue.  Additional police executions caught on camera since the murder of George Floyd has served to increase the anguish, fear, anger and terror which grips the USA people.  White America is coming to terms with what Black Americans have known and survived for 400 years, i.e. African American citizens, and other racially marginalized communities, are systemically terrorized by police forces in towns and cities all over the country as an accepted means of white supremacy and structural oppression. Ending this scourge will take all of us plotting, planning, strategizing, organizing and mobilizing for meaningful change to the infrastructures of America. We, all of us, are in the throes of reckoning with the exposed fissures of racism made vivid by the flagrant police terrorism caught on cameras. We are depending upon good-hearted white people to shed the flimsy veneer of “I did not know,” and work to redesign the social systems broken by white supremacy. Complicating this work, is the national economic upheaval for which we have no map and no solution. Beyond white supremacy and impending economic disaster, we, all of us, are grappling with a global pandemic caused by the novel corona virus for which we have no vaccine, no medicine cocktail, and little federal leadership.  The triple pandemic heightens the need for our best minds to collaborate, partner, and find new solutions for these mammoth problems. If we are to survive, we must plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize. While there has been emancipation in the USA, there is not yet freedom for all. It’s almost difficult to remember my job as director before the pandemic, before the rebellions, before the skyrocketing U.S. unemployment rate. I started my new job as director on January 1. Then, along with the faculty, administration, and students of Wabash College, the Wabash Center staff began working remotely on March 17. Orientation to my new responsibilities and role, new house, new town, and new staff colleagues quickly shifted to a kind of triage where we asked ourselves, in every way we knew how - What can the Wabash Center do to support faculty of religion and theology in this moment of confusion, remote learning, and economic uncertainty? The Wabash Center’s nimbleness, willingness to be flexible and tireless work ethic, girded-up in March when our work went remote. My blue-ribbon staff and I immediately made the following pivots to the Wabash Center programming: • all late spring and early summer activities went online or were rescheduled • produced topical podcasts and webinars – to date we have more than 4000 downloads • created Digital Salons for fall 2020 (See: https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/programs/digital-salons/) • spoke with more than four hundred workshop and colloquy participants for care and check-in • spoke with grant holders to extend deadlines of reports • created new resources for website on topics of remote teaching and racial justice • created the Teacher’s Art Corner for expressions in this moment We are currently in conversation with the colleagues of Lilly Endowment, Inc. to develop new programming for 2021 which will focus on issues directly related to the triple- pandemic. In this proposal, we would build partnerships with the Fund for Theological Exploration, In-Trust, Collegeville Institute and several Historically Black Colleges and Universities plus African American seminaries. A grace of this moment for the Wabash Center is that our story, since its inception, has been a story of justice, activism, and teaching toward equity. Twenty-five years ago, Raymond Williams proposed a center for teaching and learning to strengthen teaching by teachers of religion and theology in colleges, universities, and theological schools in the United States and Canada. Raymond, to this day, is on the frontlines fighting for issues of racial justice and equality.  Under the leadership of Lucinda Huffaker, the Wabash Center offered its first workshop in 2002 exclusively for African American faculty.  I was a participant of that workshop.  It is not an overstatement to say that that experience saved my career.  Colleagues in that workshop have served as Deans, Department Chairs, and Presidents for theological schools and universities.  Our contribution has been significant and I would like to think that Wabash Center had a part of our strivings. Dena Pence deepened and expanded the offering of support for racial/ethnic particularity. Dena expanded the grants for racial justice, created the Peer Mentoring Program, expanded the Consultants Program which, among many issues, sends colleagues to schools to discuss issues of diversity and inclusion. The programmatic archive of the Wabash Center speaks for our commitments to resisting racial oppression and the challenge of redesigning the higher education enterprise as a place of racial equity: Racial/Ethnic Diversity - Teaching Workshops and Colloquies 2019-2020 Colloquy on Race Critical Consciousness for Transformative Theological Education 2018-19 Teaching Against Islamophobia  2017-18 Asian/Pacific Islander Faculty 2015-16 Faculty of African Descent 2012-13 Workshop for Latino/a Faculty 2011-12 Asian/Asian North American Faculty 2009-10 Faculty of African Descent 2008-09 Colloquy for Latino/a Faculty 2006-07 Asian/Asian North American Faculty 2006-07 Fostering Effective Teaching and Learning in Racial/Cultural Diverse Classrooms 2004-05 Teaching in Racial/Cultural Diverse Classrooms 2002-03 African American Faculty 2019 Asian Theological Summer Institute Workshop on Teaching 2018 Hispanic Theological Initiative Workshop on Teaching 2017 Asian Theological Summer Institute Workshop on Teaching 2016 Hispanic Theological Initiative Workshop on Teaching 2015 Fund for Theological Exploration Workshop on Teaching Fund for Theological Exploration Workshop on Teaching 2014 Asian Theological Summer Institute Workshop on Teaching 2013 Hispanic Theological Initiative Workshop on Teaching 2012 Fund for Theological Exploration Workshop on Teaching Fund for Theological Exploration Workshop on Teaching 2011 Hispanic Theological Initiative Workshop on Teaching Beyond our programming, the Wabash Center has funded several hundred grants and fellowships supporting the work of racial ethnic scholars, as well as supporting projects which boost the scholarship of teaching for diversity, inclusion, and equity. The Wabash Center is uniquely positioned to respond in this peculiar and unprecedented time.  We, staying true to our own DNA, are working hard to assist with issues of remote teaching, stand with those who teach against white supremacy, and support schools who are in the throes of the economic downturn. This work is our mission, our legacy and will be our future.  Our greatest asset is our constituency. We are uniquely positioned to nurture sustained social change because of those scholars who have participated in our workshops, colloquies, conferences, podcast and webinars; those scholars who have received grants and fellowships; those who have written for the Journal on Teaching and received support and mentoring through a consultant’s visit - have created a vital network. 

In this time of urgent potential, higher education has a particular role and responsibility to re-frame and fully center our collective commitment around the well-being and thriving of Black and Brown people. Predominantly white institutions have long noted, but tolerated, racial disparities in rates of retention, persistence to graduation, and grade point average--all data that indicate students of color are being negatively impacted by hostile racial climates in so many of our institutions. Those of us who work within higher education, especially faculty, can and must transform our institutions by centering the experiences of Black and Brown students. Rev. Dr. Jennifer Harvey will speak to these issues, by sharing her journey as Faculty Director of the Crew Scholars Program at Drake University. Crew is an academic excellence and leadership development program for students of color at Drake. In its eight years of existence, among students in Crew, Drake has seen the gpa gap close, student of color retention rates soar, and Crew Scholars persistence to graduation outpace and outperform all other Drake students (including white students).

We can teach the ongoing struggle for civil rights by taking students to the current day struggle via Instagram and sacred sites.  Who on Instagram is doing the work that the great ancestral photographers like Mikki Ferrill, Louise Martin, Moneta Sleet Jr., John Shearer and Gordon Parks did?  One is Joshua Rashaad McFadden.  His Instagram is liberative in every way.  We can invite our student to share who they are following, while also inviting them to follow those doing the work of showing us the struggle.  What this does is show the students the power of photography in the liberation struggle yet lives as it did in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover it takes them out of the classroom and into the real world via a virtual photography feed.  The second step in this process is taking student to sacred sites that are living.  When you go to the field and experience the sites where the struggle occurred in your town or the town the student is living in, if they are taking the course online.  Go and see, feel and hear the power of the sacred sites where the struggle was and is being waged.  In the video below I take you to the sacred site where we in Atlanta honored the life of Rayshard Brooks. Rayshard Brooks was lynched by the Atlanta Police Department on June 12, 2020.  The Wendy’s where the lynching occurred has become a sacred site of remembrance and resistance. I take you there in this video and you hear from one the leading modern day civil rights photographers alive today.  Joshua Rashaad McFadden is someone you want to follow. May the videos speak for itself. http://www.joshuarashaad.com https://www.instagram.com/joshua_rashaad/ [su_youtube_advanced url="https://youtu.be/XpFNU0eKzwA"]

Too often when grading theology work, I find myself writing critical comments on students’ papers reminding them that their responses lack substance and need to be supported by scholarship. Their work is interesting but, at times, can drift between heresy and emoting. They mean well in making application in their essays to their personal relationship with a deity or critiquing such reality, but I remind them that theology class is an academic endeavor to which researchers, teachers, and practitioners have given their lives. There are other spaces that are more appropriate for disclosing feelings and discussing personal relationships with God. As we pivoted to remote learning and teaching, I found myself not being as severe in my demand for substantive support of their claims. In fact, in our section on social justice, I encouraged it. I wanted them to think deeply and broadly about justice. Justice demands a thorough critique of our present economic, social, political, and even religious realities. Our students need this in order to reimagine resources to meet the needs of tomorrow. Defining Justice Understanding justice can begin with an experience of injustice. I asked my students to reflect on an instance in their lives when they were slighted or scammed. Subsequent questions focused on areas where, historically, I have not gone: When did you first sense that you had been violated? What was the catalyst? Did anyone come to your aid? How did this experience make you feel? How did you know what you experienced was wrong? Did this experience lead you to recognize others also have been victims of the same heinous or did you believe you were the only one to suffer?  The example that I used is driving in New York City. Whether students drive or take public transportation, all them know motoring here is a horror show, and what subsequently happens, too often, only deepens the disgust. I will be in the midst of heavy traffic on the expressway with everyone sluggishly driving to more open areas when all of a sudden a new lane appears to open up. What has really happened is that someone is driving in the safety lane to bypass the rush-hour traffic. I am always astonished by this. How could anyone do this knowing that all the drivers are frustrated and eager to get to their destinations?  They violate a basic rule of justice we learn as children: You don’t cut the line.  I then asked the students to recall moments of injustice from these months of Covid-19 and began with the same question “Where have you been slighted or scammed?” They recalled some hard experiences when others they know, or they personally, were offended during this time. These moments made often exclaim, “That’s just wrong!” I urged my students not to be quiescent in the face of these injustices, but to think more deeply about what needs to be rectified in the “new normal.”  Imagining Justice Students admitted that in some instances people feel helpless, and, historically, many efforts to rectify injustice have failed. It is discouraging when perpetrators are not held responsible for their actions. They referenced my example of driving on that crowded road and the inevitability of others using the safety lane to bypass the traffic: “You can’t do anything about it. People are going to continue to do it. The police don’t even seem to care.”  Students are right. The police generally don’t get involved; they do not want to be stuck in traffic no less spend time writing moving violations. The other drivers and I could let it go, but we only would be contributing to a series of greater injustices. When people violate simple traffic rules on a regular basis, why do drivers tolerate such abase actions?  But, It is not enough to recognize an injustice. My response in traffic: pull to the side and block the line cutters from proceeding. It is a risky action. I admit that. But, perhaps, at an historical global pause when injustices, sadly, have multiplied, the human community needs to be more imaginative to offset economic, political, social, and religious abuse. The “new normal” does not have to be a return to business as usual and, as I remind my students, injustice is a failure of the moral imagination.