Resources

This reflection is on the teaching philosophy of James H. Cone (1938-2018). It connects Cone’s personal journey towards self-realization as a black theologian to his deeply held commitment to helping his students find and cultivate their own theological voice. The essay shares best practices from Cone’s methods within the classroom. It also describes his passion for teaching and love of his students. This is one of several short essays presented by recent students at a public forum at Union Theological Seminary after his death in 2018.

This short essay reflects on James Cone’s transformational impact as a teacher inside the classroom and through his voluminous writings. This is one of several short essays presented by recent students at a public forum at Union Theological Seminary after his death in 2018.

Beyond his academic contribution of Black Liberation Theology to the church and academy at large, James Cone should be remembered on a personal level as one who prioritized the task of teaching his students, placed the student perspective and the development of independent student voices at the center of his pedagogy, pushed his students to take classroom learning out into the world, maintained exemplary standards of consistency in his theological work and moral character, and contributed to the legacy of his home institution Union Theological Seminary in immeasurable ways. This is one of several short essays presented by recent students at a public forum at Union Theological Seminary after his death in 2018.

In this essay, I reflect on Dr. James H. Cone’s legacy as a teacher and mentor who generously invested in multiple generations of students—including white students like me. This is one of several short essays presented by recent students at a public forum at Union Theological Seminary after his death in 2018.

This Conversation was recorded during the final weekend meeting of the participants in the Wabash Center’s Colloquy on Writing the Scholarship of Teaching (2017-2018). Over the previous year, each of the Colloquy participants had been developing their own essay on a topic in the scholarship of teaching religion and theology. The conversation begins with reflections on the scholarly peer review process, but quickly expands to debates about the contours of the scholarship on teaching and the value of this literature—both as an author and a reader—to cultivating a successful teaching practice.

This essay reflects on a critical incident that occurred during a seminar discussion about the age of Aishah at the time of her marriage to the prophet Muhammed. I take students’ discomfort with the material and their expression of emotions—especially their desire to love Islam—as an opening to think about the opportunities and challenges of working with students’ emotions in the classroom. I begin by problematizing love (or the want of it) as an Islamophilic response to students’ awareness of the dangers of Islamophobia. I then go on to entertain the possibility of embracing love as a ‘productive’ emotion that offers insights into the study of Islam and Muslims. While I caution against the traps of Islamophilia, I take love as an important and perhaps overlooked dimension of pedagogy. This is one of three essays published together in a special topic section of this journal on critical incidents in the classroom.

Teaching and learning a biblical language such as Greek can pose a set of pedagogical challenges in a multicultural classroom where the instructor and students have different cultural assumptions about language learning. Reflecting on her encounter with a student’s question regarding why ancient Greek grammar operates the way it does, the author explores how this critical incident helped her recognize the cultural diversity in the classroom and develop a new pedagogical toolkit. In particular, the author employed multi-sensory activities using music and visuals to foster the students’ motivation and bridge the gaps between different cultural assumptions. This experience eventually led the author to another pedagogical insight: Teaching and learning Greek at a seminary are critical to building much-needed intercultural competency for informed ministry in the twenty-first century. This is one of three essays published together in a special topic section of this journal on critical incidents in the classroom.

When one angry student refused to follow my discussion structure in a class on diverse Christian views of gender and sexuality, I was unable to keep other students in the room safe from his harmful tirade. After this student refused to apologize in aggressively disrespectful language to me in a private meeting, I petitioned for university sanction. The student responded to my request for a disciplinary hearing by launching a social media campaign to discredit me and my reasons for requesting this hearing. This awful class and the subsequent related events, including the administrative response to the social media outrage, have led me to a deeper understanding of what it means to embrace responsibility while at the same time recognizing and accepting that I am not in control. This is one of three essays published together in a special topic section of this journal on critical incidents in the classroom.

As of 2017, the Association of Theological Schools had seen an increase in online course enrollment of 200 percent over ten years. It is therefore worth exploring in some depth the potential challenges and strengths of online and hybrid programs. This article describes one hybrid online-residential program, the Alternative Clergy Training at Sewanee (ACTS) program at the School of Theology at the University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee. Based on the experience of this program and contemporary research on the strengths of online and hybrid programs, it is argued that hybrid learning has significant advantages in its own right, perhaps especially for those who may be considered “hybrid clergy,” the deacons and bivocational priests for whom the program was designed.

This paper reflects upon the collaborative work between a professor and a librarian who constructed a course on religious communes in the United States implementing the seven elements of metaliteracy as put forth by Jacobson and Mackey (2013). The shifting terrain of information literacy is hard enough for librarians to traverse, but it can feel insurmountable for professors in the classroom. Working side by side with a librarian can be one of the most fruitful ways for professors to advance in this field. The seed for this project was a collective intent to create lifelong learners with strong habits of inquiry rather than merely teaching students discrete search strategies and skills. By using technology and team-based learning, the collaborators hoped to open up the students to a critical yet empathetic understanding of religion and to help them develop as informed users and creators on the internet.