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

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

Going to the local art supply store was something one of my cousins and I used to love to do as kids. I remember how she used to walk up and down every aisle looking carefully at all the different kinds of paints, brushes, and pencils. I could almost see her thinking about how she would use each one to improve her next project. While I liked going to the store, I never really used to think of myself as an artist. But I do now. I view teaching as an art. It involves carefully designing syllabi, assignments, classroom activities, and more. And I love to shop for new tools to improve this craft. I remember acquiring a simple but extremely helpful tool about ten years ago, during a Wabash Center Workshop for Pre-Tenure Theology Faculty. A member of the leadership team, Rolf Jacobson, encouraged us to read at least two books on teaching each year. Since then, I’ve adopted this advice as discipline. If I haven’t read my two books by the end of the academic year, I read them during the summer. I’ve found that reading about teaching not only keeps me up-to-date in the field, but it often prompts me to revise my syllabi or classroom assignments, which, at the very least, reenergizes my classroom presence and practice. I’ve also picked up another helpful tool from Wabash—probably the most useful one I’ve found to date: writing about teaching. I began this practice on a regular basis when I was first asked to contribute to a Wabash blog series back in 2014. I was given a schedule of deadlines for my contributions (around five over the period of a year or two). I found that the schedule encouraged a helpful rhythm for me throughout the academic year. Every few months I had to set aside some time to really reflect on my teaching and articulate it to others. I have the benefit of working in a department in which all of the faculty members are both collegial and dedicated to teaching. While we often chat about classroom experiences and things that either work or don’t work in our classes, these conversations are usually brief because we are all just so busy. Setting aside the time to write about my teaching, whether for a blog or in a journal, gives me extra space for processing and reflection. Sometimes this extra space is a necessity. Like the time when I fell down on the first day of class (!), or during the last several years when teaching during multiple pandemics and traumatic current events. In these instances, writing about teaching has helped me to discover, articulate, and distill lessons about myself as a pedagogue and ways to facilitate more engaged learning for students. Other times, I’ve found that writing about teaching has elicited valuable advice and feedback from others. Several years ago I reflected on whether or not it is helpful to display emotions in the classroom while talking about difficult topics like racism. I now understand that, as a white teacher, I was not seeing my own privilege in even asking the question. Comments and feedback on this blog helped me to grow. Receiving viewpoints different from my own allow this to happen. As is the case with research articles and manuscripts, writing and publishing about teaching puts my work out there for others to see. While this sometimes feels vulnerable, the critiques I receive often help me to come to a fuller, more accurate view of the topic or what I could be doing better. In other cases, I write about teaching because something beautiful happened! This happens when I see a “light-bulb” click on for one of my students, or when a classroom conversation takes on a life of its own and results in a moment of organic learning. Sometimes I see the Spirit move in unexpected ways in the classroom or I find that an assignment I designed worked well. Sometimes all of these things happen at the same time. These are moments of beauty. I write about them and read about how other teachers have experienced them in their own classrooms, so we can all appreciate the beauty. Like when my cousin uses a good paintbrush, I use writing about teaching to ultimately enhance the beauty of my craft.

While teaching a mystical text is deeply enriching to the classroom, I find colleagues have two primary trepidations about teaching The Conference of the Birds: (1) presenting mysticism – a subject undergraduates and nonexperts alike often find impenetrable – in a coherent, lucid manner, and (2) accurately and responsibly discussing its specific Islamic context and dimensions (ʻAṭṭār 1984). Indeed, teaching undergraduates a mystical text requires a strong mastery of dense material and the ability to communicate ideas simply to so students understand their value for exploring identity. Thus, I have developed a set of strategies for elucidating mysticism to my students that I share with my colleagues who are not trained in mysticism. Along with my tips for teaching mysticism, I give recommendations for reliable sources for further reading on the Islamic context. Though readers of these blog posts may be experts in Sufism themselves or feel comfortable teaching mystical texts, I will address the concerns of complete beginners to both mystical texts and Sufi texts more specifically. When introducing The Conference of the Birds, I first ask students to reflect on the fact that ʻAṭṭār seems to struggle to express himself. Students typically admit frustration with the text, calling it “confusing,” noting that ʻAṭṭār frequently contradicts himself or says that something is impossible to write about (followed by a lengthy attempt to write about it). I affirm this observation, noting that mystical texts are full of paradox and confusing language. I then ask students why ʻAṭṭār might have so much trouble expressing himself. This question generally leads to several theories: he is unsure of what he is talking about and working through the idea, he is a bad writer, and the subject matter (God) is particularly hard to describe. Each idea opens a great avenue for discussing the self – is it helpful to write when thinking through challenging ideas? What does this writing look like? What does “good” writing look like? Must it be neat and tidy? Is good writing interesting or productive writing? And finally, I ask students, “Can you think of anything that you know how to do, but would find hard to describe?” or “What is important to you that you would struggle to explain to someone else?” Inevitably, this question leads students to reflect on matters of faith, emotion, and embodied knowledge. We discuss ideas of mystical “unsaying” (as described by Michael Sells [1994]), and Kevin Corrigan’s argument that paradoxical language is “the only thinkable and reasonable language” one can use to describe ultimate reality (2005, 169). By framing “confusing language” in these terms, I help students to understand how the ineffable – which permeates The Conference of the Birds and most mystical texts – is not only relevant to their lives, but essential. The conversation reveals that some of their most profound knowledge of self (i.e., emotional, embodied) is ineffable. With this conversation in place, we discuss the notion of elite or intense spiritual practices and what type of person pursues such practices. To help students understand this concept, I give a silly metaphor. I tell my students that mystics are the marathon runners of religion. Just as nobody has to run a marathon, nobody has to be a mystic. Though one can be a casual runner and still find value in the practice, some people feel compelled to do more, and some feel the drive to do something extreme. We discuss what motivates people to run marathons, what value they find in training for and ultimately completing such an arduous task. This metaphor, though vastly oversimplified, helps first-year students to reflect on the nature of an intense journey and whether or not they are the kind of person who pursues such tasks. It also helps the poem feel more present. Before using the marathon metaphor, students would comment on how “unrealistic” the mystical path was and how it might have been okay “back then,” but that nobody would do such a thing now (even after being told that the poem is still read in devotional contexts and that Sufi practice is very much alive and well). When I frame the mystical path with the marathon example, students are more likely to consider why they are not the type of person who would pursue the path advocated by ʻAṭṭār rather than dismiss those who are. Moreover, the marathon comparison is useful for reflecting on the elite nature of mystical journeys throughout our reading of The Conference of the Birds. For example, students are often struck by how few birds survive at the end of the poem, a metaphor for reaching divine union. ʻAṭṭār claims that of the hundreds of thousands that set out, only thirty reach the Simorgh (1984, 235). At this point in the poem, many students are incredulous; why, they ask, would anyone endure such a difficult journey with the odds of success being so low? Here, we return to metaphor; I ask students to brainstorm about careers and goals that have a very low success rate. Over the years, students have thought up many things including: being a professional athlete, winning an Olympic gold medal, earning a spot in the New York City Ballet, and becoming the president. Such a conversation again gives space for reflection: do I have any ambitions that are this elite? Why or why not? Am I too afraid to fail and cutting myself short? Is there a level of satisfaction that people who achieve something with long odds feel that I cannot? Conversely, we challenge the reverence for such paths. Recently, we discussed Simone Biles’s decision not to compete at an elite level due to the strain it placed on her mental health, and how pursuing such goals might damage one’s relationships and sense of wellbeing. Connected with the reflection on difficult journeys, the rhetoric of The Conference of the Birds offers a rich opportunity to help students consider their fears of letting go of the self. When discussing the valleys (which represent the stages of the Sufi path), I ask students to reflect on their emotional reactions. This has two functions. First, students seem more willing to engage in difficult reading when asked to reflect on their emotional reaction rather than more traditional analysis (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, and Perry 2002). Second, it generally surfaces that students feel anxious and fearful when reading about the loss of self. Yet when we engage in close reading, they observe that ʻAṭṭār uses tranquil language to describe loss of identity. This leads to reflection on why they feel so anxious about this idea when it is being presented beneficially. I ask: What if losing the self is a good thing? What changes about your perception of your identity if ʻAṭṭār is right? Connected to this question, our discussion of the valleys includes debating whether or not hardship and trial are necessary or destructive to identity. With the pervasive notion that hardship makes a person stronger, we talk about how to respond to difficulty in a way that builds strength. Inversely, I invite students to reflect on the notion that trauma, hardship, and “tough love” may ultimately damage self-development and identity. While the mystical path and the type of person who pursues it can be presented with metaphor and well understood by undergraduates, I typically allow the discussion of divine union to remain more opaque. The final section of the poem describes the birds meeting the Simorgh as a metaphor for the notion of loss of self within God. This section is vivid and fascinating, but ultimately quite difficult for students to feel they fully understand. Here, it is helpful that we have already discussed how paradox may be the only appropriate language for such a concept, and that sometimes the most important knowledge is hard to explain to others. It is also a fruitful moment to discuss the question of embodied knowledge. I frequently ask my students: Are there any experiences that you do not fully understand if you have not had them? Examples that have come up have included childbirth, sexual experiences, seeing certain landscapes, and similar intense, embodied states. This conversation allows for reflection on what having such an experience means to one’s sense of self and relationship with others. The discussion of divine union also allows us to consider the possibility of universal human experience and transcending social, cultural, linguistic, and other barriers to reach a collective understanding of identity. When discussing the notion of a shared experience in my Augustine and Culture seminar (ACS), I simply ask students: Do you think all the birds experience the same thing when they meet the Simorgh? Why or why not? While at first many seem to believe in a different experience, when we discuss the concept of a universal experience, students often realize that their focus on the fixedness of social constraints makes them reluctant to believe such an experience is possible. Moreover, we discuss how the mediating factors that currently come to mind – typically race, gender, sexuality, and so forth – are likely not the social constraints that ʻAṭṭār imagined overcoming. The ideas discussed above would work well with a number of mystical texts, but since these blog posts focus on The Conference of the Birds, I would like to offer a few remarks on some of the challenges a person may face teaching poems that are specific to the Islamic context. Because ACS is not focused on Islam, I typically offer the minimum context necessary to understand the text, but my colleagues have noted anxiety about properly situating it within its Islamic Sufi context. In his article on teaching Sufism, David Cook affirms such an anxiety, noting that Sufism is “a vast and complicated subject” that “requires a thorough knowledge and appreciation of Islamic culture” (2011, 96). Cook further comments on how the shortcomings of many popular introductions to Sufism present another obstacle to teaching Sufi texts well. The difficulty of the subject matter may leave a nonexpert feeling ill-equipped to discuss The Conference of the Birds with students. However, my colleagues have become more comfortable by combining the approaches of introductory texts on Sufism. Since ACS is centered on primary-sources, my colleagues typically read this material for background and bring it into conversation in the classroom. In a religious studies or theology course where one assigns secondary literature, one could assign excerpts from the following texts either in advance of or alongside The Conference of the Birds. For background on Sufi theology and practice, and a discussion of the history of the academic study of Sufism, I point colleagues to Carl Ernst’s Shambhala Guide to Sufism. For historical overviews, I suggest Ahmet Karamustafa’s Sufism in the Formative Period and Nile Green’s Sufism: A Global Introduction. Each book is reasonably short, easily accessible to nonspecialists, and works well in classroom discussion. I typically caution colleagues against using William Chittick’s Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide and Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s The Garden of Truth because their commitments to a theoretical approach known as Traditionalism make them misleading for a nonexpert. The historian Mark Sedgwick has argued that Traditionalist scholars present their worldview as facts about Islam rather than as a theoretical framework or mode of interpretation. Sedgwick believes that the primary harm of this approach is done to nonspecialists, for whom “neither the origin nor the questionable nature of [Traditionalist] interpretations is evident” (2004, 169). Even with a greater familiarity with Sufism in place, the nonexpert may feel reticent to teach a Sufi text out of worry about its reception among contemporary Muslim students. In his classic work The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, Carl Ernst notes that when he tells his students that he studies Sufism, he is generally met with one of two reactions: either an assertion that Sufism is not “real” Islam, or delight and family stories about a Sufi grandfather (1997, xi). This comment is affirmed by Cook, who discusses responding to students who have asserted that Sufism is “not Islam” (2011, 98). Another possible reception is a Muslim student who is completely unfamiliar with Sufism, and thus does not recognize it as a part of their own tradition. I have also encountered Muslim students who challenged the legitimacy of Sufism in the classroom, and when I have shared this fact with colleagues, they often express trepidation about how to handle such a moment. I let them know that while many Muslim students will love the opportunity to read a Sufi text, it is important to be prepared for the possibility of Muslim students questioning the authenticity of Sufism. Many colleagues find it reassuring to know some historical background and potential discussion questions that can turn “gotcha” moments into opportunities to reflect on religious identity. First, it is helpful to know that though Sufism emerges early in Islamic history at the center of theological orthodoxy, its legitimacy has been challenged from its inception. Anti-Sufi attitudes were revived following the colonial period in Muslim-majority countries, and early academic literature on the subject cast Sufism as a liberal sect contrary to “rigid” orthodox Islam (Schimmel 1975, 10-11). Criticisms have been both that Sufism is not Islamic enough (as seen in early critiques and the influence of contemporary Wahhabi Islam), but also that it is not modern enough (from Muhammad ‘Abduh and others). Given this history, it is often surprising for Muslim students to learn that in certain times and places in the medieval period, Sufism was considered fully orthodox Islam, and major theologians such as al-Ghazālī were practicing Sufis. Discussing the historical roots of modern critiques of Sufism is a powerful way to invite Muslim students who hold anti-Sufi biases to consider the source of such biases. The historical context described above is covered by Ernst (1997), but for a more thorough overview, I recommend Elizabeth Sirriyeh’s Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defense, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World. Because our goal is to reflect on identity rather than imparting a historical knowledge of Islam and Sufism, we typically only bring in this background if directly challenged in class. However, rather than simply telling a student that Sufism is “real” Islam, I find moments like this to be a great opportunity for all students to reflect on what they consider “real” iterations of whatever religion they practice. Connected to this question, I ask: Who has the authority to make this designation? Who benefits from their faith being affirmed, and what are the consequences if your approach to religion is deemed inauthentic? Thus, if a student challenges the Islamic bone fides of The Conference of the Birds, I remind students of the historical background of the poem described above, briefly mention the history of anti-Sufi critiques in the twentieth century, and then open a discussion about how we categorize religious practice as legitimate or illegitimate. If a student persists, that is another opportunity for reflection on identity, and how identity extends to the collective – to consider one’s personal understanding of religion versus the lived experience of other members of one’s faith who practice differently.   Notes & Bibliography ʻAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, Dick Davis, and Afkham Darbandi. The Conference of the Birds. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1984. Cook, David. 2011. “Teaching Islam, Teaching Islamic Mysticism. Teaching Mysticism. Edited by William B. Parsons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 88-102. Corrigan, Kevin. 2005. Reading Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Ernst, Carl. 1997. Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala. Green, Nile. 2012. Sufism: A Global History. Oxford: Wiley and Sons. Karamustafa, Ahmet T. 2007. Sufism: The Formative Period. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pekrun, Reinhard, Thomas Goetz, Wolfram Titz & Raymond P. Perry. 2002. “Academic Emotions in Students' Self-Regulated Learning and Achievement: A Program of Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” Educational Psychologist. 37:2, 91-105. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Sedgwick, Mark. 2004. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sells, Michael. 1994. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. 1999. Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defense, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World. London: Curzon Press.

Originally, this paper was presented at the Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee and Academic Relations Committee panel of the American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2023, San Antonio. The theme of the panel was: Contingent Faculty, Just Labor, and the Ethics of Care. I. Paradigm Shifts New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth, They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth. James Russell Lowell wrote these words in the 1840s in a poem called “The Present Crisis, criticizing the United States’ war with Mexico.” In this extraordinary and timeless turn of phrase, Lowell reminds us that the world is always changing. In dramatic alignment with Lowell’s sentiment, humanity is only twenty-three years into the twenty-first century. We are a society who has only recently moved from an analogue mindset to a digital universe.  We are only barely acquainted with the rapid-paced technological age. The implications and ramifications of the digital age and the changes in life and lifestyle have just begun to unfold.  This might be especially true in higher education. Grappling in this new time and landscape has caused a wide variety of industries to undergo minor and major shifts in labor paradigms – either by plan or by reaction. Higher Education, as a societal industry, is no different. Higher education is traversing this new landscape.  The needed adaptations and changes have been a tremendous challenge that, at times, defeats us. The decision to shift the labor paradigm of faculty in higher education feels like it was done on an ad hoc basis. Even so, the decision is pervasive. This decision to shrink the pool of tenured and tenure-track faculty and increase the number of adjunct faculty has changed higher education – is changing higher education – will continue to change higher education. School administrators, often out of financial desperation, decided full-time contract faculty would be cheaper than tenured faculty. This strategy was undertaken without anticipating that, or planning for, the toxic environments which have been created. As a result of these decisions, many schools now operate with a permanent under-caste in the faculty. II.Wabash Center The mission of the Wabash Center is to support and strengthen teaching and the teaching life in theological and religious education. Our project has been in operation for 28 years and is solely funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Wabash Center, in serving entire faculties and individual scholars, has an unique vantage point for hearing the stories of faculty in religion and theology. Each summer Wabash Center gathers more than fifty faculty from approximately fifty schools. These gatherings allow me, and other faculty leaders, to hear first-hand the stories and the concerns of teaching and the teaching life. The shift from tenure-track and tenured faculty to the hire of full time adjunct-ing faculty has created in a great many schools a two-tier faculty. The adjunct-ing faculty are treated as “less than,” while the tenured faculty are deemed as being superior. The workplace environments are described as being toxic by the contingent faculty. III. Stories of Toxic Work Environments We hear stories of exploitation, incivility, bullying, intimidation, ostracization, and subjugation. Many contingent colleagues tell stories of being invisible-d, silenced, and relegated to the bottom or margins of the institution. Many contracted faculty are seen as expendable while also being over-worked and demoralized. Colleagues self-report feeling unwell, depressed, anxious, fatigued, and taken advantage of. We hear stories of long work hours, impossible workloads, unhealthy life-work balance, demeaning bosses and colleagues, climates that are super competitive, and normalized behaviors of disrespect and disregard. Colleagues report experiences of sabotage and feelings of being targeted. Many contracted colleagues have a sense of shame for not having a tenure-track or tenured job. Many have a sense of betrayal because, while they earned the requisite terminal degree, they are not treated with dignity, decency, or care as contract faculty. Many feel trapped in dead-end jobs. The stories tell that schools have started a kind of academic segregation in faculties. Academic ghettos have been created. We know that the politics of segregation, when institutionalized, is cruel, brutal, and inhumane. There is no such thing as “nice” dehumanization. While it might be typical to hear tenured faculty with similar criticisms, the clear difference is that tenure-track and tenured colleagues have health plans, retirement benefits, access to professional development opportunities, office supplies, and administrative support. Upward mobility is possible. There is, for some, an agreed upon career pathway in the institution. Most contingent faculty have few or none of these institutional benefits. I suspect, like the toxic environments in corporate workplaces, administrative colleagues, for the most part, are unaware of the severe environment of their own schools. I suspect they are also unaware, or naïve, concerning the legal ramifications for work environments where harassment, bullying, and dehumanization is the norm. An irony is that I suspect the shift in labor patterns has eroded teaching. Oppressed colleagues do not teach well or even adequately. The shift has resulted in a weakening of teaching and the teaching life. Education has been diminished. The problem is not the colleagues who are employed as contingency faculty. The problem is the way institutions are treating people – by that I mean – institutions are treating people without dignity and without respect.  All faculty, tenure or contract, are worthy of honor. A healthy workplace recognizes all employees as being valuable, worthwhile, useful, and meaningful to the organization and treats them as such. Too many schools are unhealthy and doing harm to faculty. IV. Given the Current Mammoth Challenge The shift in the labor force is not without cause. Schools are faced with low student enrollment and the forecast is that the available desirable pools of students will not return. This is compounded by the fact that most schools operate on a business model dependent upon tuition dollars and the related monies of having students on campus. These are critical dollars without which schools are doomed. Endowments require expertise in investment strategies in the roller coaster of the stock market. Some schools have been quite successful while other schools have been hit hard. Shrinking dollars results in withering schools. Initially, many schools made the reactionary decision to shift to contingency faculty to close a shortfall in the budget while thinking this decision would be temporary. This temporary measure has now expanded into a paradigm shift in the labor force of higher education and theological education. We are now living with the repercussions of a short-sighted fix for a very complex problem while we are in crisis. In this time of crisis, how do we navigate the seemingly unsolvable? V. Think Tank Needed Most scholars of religion and theology, in their brilliance, are not able to do organizational problem solving on a large scale. While they are experts in their academic fields, experts in their chosen research area – able to critique, able to deconstruct and analyze – they are not trained in paradigm shifts. Given our current crisis, we do not have the luxury of deconstruction without re-construction. We cannot discuss our crisis as a rhetorical exercise. Lives and livelihoods are at stake. We need minds who can problem solve, strategize, ideate, design, and develop sustainable systems to meet the current needs and available resources. Where are our think tanks? A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues, ideas, or problems.  Think tanks are charged with engaging problems from a multi-faceted approach considering social issues, public policy, economic trends, political strategy, culture, and technology. A think tank can be charged with advocacy, design, and education concerning the problems for which their research, dialogue and development is aimed. Some think tanks have laboratories for experimentation, internships, and apprenticeships. Given the magnitude of our challenges - where is the think tank for theological and religious education? Who is convening scholars beyond religion and theology for their expertise on our crisis? What needs to be turned over to the Think Tank? What is dignity and respect in the workplace for shifting faculties? What is the aim of education in the 21st century? What is the worth and value of formal study of religion and theology for? What sustainable business models might educational institutions pivot toward? What is the role and necessity of tenure? Why have tenure? What are the effects of diversifying faculties? What does it mean to convene a diverse faculty that is healthy for all and not just some? How can doctoral programs better prepare scholars to be administrators for nimble organizations? Or – what is the formation process for school administrators who will be prepared for crisis and problem solving? Other stuff, given the newness and complexity of our time, I have not thought about! VI. Conclusion The work of creating new paradigms, new business models, new models for teaching is confounding, but vitally necessary. I do not believe our future is collapsed nor foreclosed. I do not believe that our passions for education and teaching are pointless.  We must convene our best minds. What is the way forward? The truth is – we do not know, but together it is likely we can create what is needed.