“Transformational Travel for Seminarians: Reading James in Haiti”

How will we teach the Bible in the twenty-first century? This essay is intended to contribute to that larger discussion in three ways: after a brief introduction, I will, first, state some general working assumptions about the present situation of the church and about teaching the New Testament in the context of a seminary or divinity school; second, I will describe the course "Reading James in Haiti" which I designed and taught in the Spring of 2002; finally, and much more briefly, I will comment on the implications of transformational travel experiences like this one for the ability of seminarians to understand New Testament texts more deeply than the classroom setting allows.