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emilie m. townes Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society Vanderbilt Divinity School The opening paragraph of the Vanderbilt University Statement of Commitments: The Divinity School is committed to the faith that brought the church into being, and it believes that one comes more authentically to grasp that faith by a critical and open examination of the Hebraic and Christian traditions. It understands this faith to have import for the common life of men and women in the world. Thus the school is committed to assisting its community in achieving a critical and.

Who or what is God? Words can only say so much about who God is or what God isn’t. Thankfully our thinking isn’t limited to words. Through Art Theology -- using the creative languages of the arts -- we can form new ideas, questions, and perceptions about God. Let the words go and think in color. Thinking back to the very first ideas of God you ever had, what color comes to mind? Gray... Gray was the color of the beard of the old man in the sky, the first image I had of God the Father. Gray was the color of the clouds he sat on. In painting this first idea, I used cold, dark, black grays illustrating the vast remoteness of this idea of God. I began incorporating yellows and whites and softening places within the gray, creating warmth in the painting. As I did so I recalled my childhood struggle to comprehend how this cold, dark, mysterious God also made me and loved me unconditionally. [caption id="attachment_247214" align="alignnone" width="467"] The Cloud of Unknowing Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   My concept of God changed when I was introduced to the idea of Jesus and the idea of God’s personal love. The gray remains but softens even more and I introduce an abstract brown line. God’s love expressed through Jesus felt so intimate and personal that I have at times a sense of knowing the nook of his neck, of having rested my head upon that shoulder line. Yet, I could not tell you what his eyes or nose look like. In some ways I do not know him at all. In other ways, that personal love of God is the most real thing in my experience. [caption id="attachment_247215" align="alignnone" width="390"] Personal Love Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   Stepping back and looking at the first two paintings I felt a new question arising. I was physically uncomfortable as I reflected on how masculinely gendered my ideas of God had been. No matter what we think and understand theologically about God language, we carry these memories in our bodies. I felt myself reaching for new colors and lines: purples, blues, gold, and undulating lines. This next painting incorporates my reflections on Shekinah. Both women and men are made in the image of God. The divine feminine reveals a love that conceives, gestates, labors, births, nurtures, and sustains. [caption id="attachment_247216" align="alignnone" width="467"] Shekinah Angela L. Hummel 11x14 Acrylic on Wood[/caption]   God is love. This love is mysterious, personal, intimate, boundaried, male, female, non-binary, fluid like water, beyond our comprehension. How can we reflect the love of God and learn to love in this dynamic way? Regardless of bodily function, all of us can learn to love more deeply by reflecting on how love conceives, gestates, labors, births, and sustains. The Christian focus on moral theology has led to judgmentalism that has caused some people to reject religion. Why don’t we devote as much attention to Christian love -- what this love is and how we live it? We need new ways of exploring this vast idea. We need Art Theology. Art Theology has helped me to move away from a monologic pedagogy into a dialogic way of teaching. When my students paint the colors and lines of their thinking about God they move into new ideas, questions, and dialogue that discursive reasoning alone could not take us into. The understandings that we have arrived at through this method have transformed my classroom into a dynamic place of collaboration where together we have learned to see God as truly other, for who God is, not constrained by our previous limited definitions and arguments.                                                                              Angela L. Hummel  

Elias Ortega-Aponte, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Afro-Latinos/a Religions and Cultural Studies Drew University As I geared up to teach two social justice themed courses this Fall, my summer preparations were disrupted by the news of two tragedies and the reflections they prompted. First was the death of Omar Abrego, beaten to death by police on August 2 in Los Angeles. Witness reports claim that Abrego was taken out of his car and beaten up by two police officers for at least 10 minutes, and left in a pool of blood. The father of three would die hours later in a

Before the quarantine caused seismic interruptions, a cloistered education was deemed by many as the better education. This longstanding approach to education meant that the student would sequester from the world, study undisturbed from the goings-on of the world, to then emerge and return to the world as a learned person. The time away from society, family, and many kinds of communal obligations was meant to provide time for intellectual maturation, contemplation, and some say, an extended adolescence. The students would be free to read, write, and think while under the watchful eye of a teacher. In the cloistered model of education, the degree taken (wrestled and snatched) afforded the recipient a select spot in the ranks of the higher echelons of society. The focus of education as secluded and separate from society is evident in the language of students. Students talk about the classroom as being “in here” while their lives are “out there.” Students, in rebuffing some ideas, comment “that won’t work in the real world” or “that’s nice to discuss, but in the real-world people will not go for that.” The classroom, for these students, is not the real, while life in society, in community, with family obligations and responsibilities is the real. Students also signal that what is taught in many classrooms has little relevance to the problems and pain of their people. Or what they learn requires a great deal of translation, interpretation, and adaptation to be relevant to the suffering of their people. The primary aim of cloistered teaching is to insulate student and teacher until which time that the student has met the disconnected standards of the faculty. In this time of shifting models of education,  these kinds of new questions abound:   Suppose the aim of education is not to hide from the world in order to emerge as an educated person, but instead the better aim is to prepare to meet the needs of the world as education? Could this moment be forcing us to a collective realization that the better aim of education is to engage in the world as education and thus change the world? What is the relationship between communities of learning and social change? What is the influence of the world upon classroom teaching? Moving forward, what will be the relationship between communities of learning and the world? What will be the relationship between schools and the very neighborhoods, towns, and cities they occupy? What if the world is the classroom? What practices of communities of learning are needed for social innovation? What meaning-making practices, understandings and joys of the world are needed to facilitate vibrant learning in schools? Yes, many schools have forms of internships, field education, supervised vocational experiences, elaborate field trips, or study abroad while in a degree program. Most of these programs are auxiliary to the degree program and if not auxiliary the experiences which keep students in the world or send students into new worlds are not the spine of the curriculum. The primary presumption of current models of higher education is that student’s first learn theory in a classroom (cloistered), then are sent out into the workplace to practice. There is still a separation and privileging of theory over practice. Howard Thurman informed us years ago that theory and practice are each sides of the same coin. What would it mean to create approaches to education which do not separate theory from practice or student from community? A small start to answering this critical question has to do with the mindset of the students while in a degree program. The identities and social locations of my students has always been a significant factor in my teaching. I wanted my students to come to class and bring with them into the course conversation the joys, suffering, trouble, practices, learnings and know-hows of their people, their communities. I believed that students, to have agency in their own learning, must not leave their families nor society for education, but they must reflect critically and imaginatively on the struggles of their community looking for new and needed solutions. To facilitate this approach, I designed this learning exercise for my introductory course: During the second session of the course, I asked students to reflect upon these questions: (a) Who are your people? (b) What sacrifices did your people make for you to be in this educational experience? (c) What problems plague your people? What problems have their backs against the wall? Once these questions were engaged, I would instruct them to draw a metaphor or simile to depict your people and their current social situation. I chided them not to reduce the complexity of the situation, but to use a metaphor which depicted the complexity. I gave them time to think and draw. Finally, I asked these questions for further reflection and preparation for our semester long conversation: (a) What kind of leader will you need to become to assist your people and relieve their suffering? (b) What leaders will you join for the thriving of your people? Using their drawings and prose we created a gallery wall in the classroom. I encouraged them to, for the entirety of the semester, keep their families, churches, neighborhoods at the center of their experience in this degree program. Throughout the course I insisted that they not think generically nor individualistically as if they were at school alone or disconnected from the world. Throughout the semester I led them in other learning activities and assignments where they had to continue to consider the specific problems, troubles, challenges, and attributes of their people and ways our study informed those troubles and fostered their leadership formation in their own context. We do not have the luxury of disconnecting our best minds from the troubles and support of their families and neighborhoods while undertaking higher education. We need models of education which nurture interconnection, understands community and promotes a sense of belonging as a necessity to healthy society.