Resources

Effective pedagogy in the capstone course or integrative seminar — a 1000 word response to a Call for Papers.

Effective pedagogy in the capstone course or integrative seminar — a 1000 word response to a Call for Papers.

Tomoko Masuzawa and a number of other contemporary scholars have recently problematized the categories of “religion” and “world religions” and, in some cases, called for its abandonment altogether as a discipline of scholarly study. In this collaborative essay, we respond to this critique by highlighting three attempts to teach world religions without teaching “world religions.” That is, we attempt to promote student engagement with the empirical study of a plurality of religious traditions without engaging in the rhetoric of pluralism or the reification of the category “religion.” The first two essays focus on topical courses taught at the undergraduate level in self-consciously Christian settings: the online course “Women and Religion” at Georgian Court University and the service-learning course “Interreligious Dialogue and Practice” at St. Michael's College, in the University of Toronto. The final essay discusses the integration of texts and traditions from diverse traditions into the graduate theology curriculum more broadly, in this case at Loyola Marymount University. Such confessional settings can, we suggest, offer particularly suitable – if somewhat counter-intuitive – contexts for bringing the otherwise covert agendas of the world religions discourse to light and subjecting them to a searching inquiry in the religion classroom.

One page Teaching Tactic: a free write exercise helps students reflect on and articulate their values.

One page Teaching Tactic: using an acronym to help students remember basic biblical chronology and plot outline.

One page Teaching Tactic: students memorize and recite a selection from another tradition's scripture.

Theological educators are now fostering dialogues, projects, and practices that are designed to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities resulting from the shifting racial and ethnic demographic climate in the U.S. and Canada. As well-intentioned as these efforts are, most of the scholarship focuses on the contemporary experiences of underrepresented minorities, current institutional concerns, or practical classroom scenarios, leaving Scripture courses, which have long been the backbone of theological education, beyond the scope of critical engagement. In this article I argue that the existing scholarship on teaching and learning in general, and among biblical scholars in particular, does not adequately address the specific challenges that arise when questions about race and ethnicity are exposed in Scripture courses. Therefore, based on my own classroom experiences, I develop a pedagogy of (Emb)Racing the Bible that seeks to bridge the gap between theoretical readings and practical applications of ancient and contemporary discourses about race and ethnicity.

In this paper, I suggest that community-based learning can act as a “public space” for the exchange of religious and non-religious identities. By providing a space for the collaboration between religiously-affiliated Universities and non-religiously affiliated community partners, community-based learning offers the opportunity for the negotiation of what civic engagement means in a pluralistic society. This exchange can inform the conversation on the public role of religion by offering an example of how religious and secular communities can discover a common language through the realization of shared interests.

Although the study of the Synoptic Problem has been the focus of scholarly attention for over two hundred years, the social learning theory known as Communities of Practice is a relatively recent phenomenon. This article describes a communities of practice approach to the study of the Synoptic Problem in an upper-division undergraduate course at a private, liberal arts college. Students with little or no prior knowledge of the Synoptic Problem were introduced to the salient issues of the Synoptic Problem as well as a theoretical framework in which to interpret them. Data were collected using a variety of mixed methods, including pre- and post-treatment tests, written survey questions, interviews, field notes, and focus group sessions. The results of this study suggest that a communities of practice approach can enhance students' knowledge of the Synoptic Problem and also foster an awareness of scholarly and personal presuppositions that influence the interpretation of the gospels.