Dear Colleagues and Friends,
In a postmodern and pluralistic world, are religious educators—and practical theologians—working toward greater simplicity or complexity in our students’ thinking? I’ve been wondering about this since reading John Swinton and Harriet Mowat’s Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (SCM Press, 2006). In it they state that doing practical theology requires “complexifying” life situations so as to illuminate them more deeply (13-16)—raising critical and interpretive questions that open up new avenues of faith, thought and action.. They go even further and cite Poling and Mudge to the effect that such reflection is “unnatural” (from Formation and Reflection: The Promise of Practical Theology [Fortress, 1987], no page given). It tends to occur at times of crisis, or when some intentional process—perhaps an educational process?—is initiated.
What do you think?
· Is this “practice” of complexification in practical theology also characteristic of religious education? Is it appropriate for our goals? Aren’t we instead supposed to be fostering some level of clarity through education, rather than potentially rendering it more confusing?
· Is such complexification “unnatural”? If so, is it desirable?
· What theological assumptions underlie such attempts at complexification, especially assumptions about God, God’s activity in the world, and our response to such activity?
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Maureen
ReplyDeleteThe push toward simplicity surfaces in different arenas. Tom Rainer and Eric Geiger, in "Simple Church" argue for simplicity (or simplification) of the discipleship/education process for congregations. My hunch is they are pushing against an undue reliance upon organizational busyness, but their theme may spill over into a tendency to see simplicity as a removal of perspectives. I see this as problematic in a world that appears all too complex.
I remember a text by Raimundo Panikkar titled "Blessed Simplicity: The Monk as Universal Archetype" Pannikar asserted that the monastic tradition of the past sought a blessed simplicity. However, Pannikar claims our pluralistic world now calls for a vision of blessed "harmony." Perhaps a notion of harmony (or even resonance) might provide a metaphor that embraces complexity but with a sense of underlying connectedness and flow. Of course, such a view might tend toward reductionism if we think there is just one "harmony." I tend to embrace Phillip Scragg's notion of "transversal" that asserts there are intersections between different phenomena or explanatory theories that assist us in finding metaphors or patterns among complex systems. At any rate perhaps there are ways of holding certain approaches to complexity and simplicity in tension for mutual engagement.
Dean,
ReplyDeleteGreat reflections! Panikkar's work sounds interesting. I get the sense from some congregational educators that they think the best we can hope to offer to any age level is "the basics" of our own (Catholic, in this case) beliefs. This implies a preference for "simplicity" and, I fear, the assumption that we can and ought to forgo the "complexified" teaching and learning that takes pluralism into account. Interesting to hear about the drive for simplification in your circles as well, if for different reasons.
Thanks, Maureen
My opening question is: By what methodological means may religious education bring clarity to teaching and learning that takes age/stage, cultural and religious pluralism into account? As an invitation to our thoughts on the question, I want to begin with a particular story.
ReplyDeleteDuring a cross-denominational pan-African youth group's guided story-sharing and discussion on meanings of hope in the throes of their lives as teens, one teen who had been sitting quietly with head bowed and arms folded, raised her head and spoke out: "Let me tell you what I think! Maybe there isn't such a thing as hope. My situation at home never changes for the better. I can't do anything about it. And, I don't see God changing it either! Sure, you can say that the Bible gives us some answers. I heard the scripture about God's plans for our good and not for harm; and I heard what was said about it. (Ref. Jeremiah 29:11). But, change for good? I don't see it! Has God left me out?" These words of one teen re-opened an entirely new collaborative interchange with like and different stories from the one shared by the youth. It led to and the group's deep theological reflection on and answers to the dilemma of God's activity in the realities of life raised in the question, "Has God left me out?"
Whether with participants and leaders in the youth theology program I lead, or in seminary classroom, church school class, or in lay or pastors' study groups across denominations, I have noted that a narrative method to religious education becomes a significant means of entering into what I call a IDEA pedagogy of engagement or deep faith Inquiry,Discovery, futher Exploration, and Application. It becomes a way of framing religious education as a pratical theological endeavor in which tough questions and answers to life and faith are probed.
The work of Groome (1980, 1999), Gilmour (1997), Shaw (1999), and my own work (1994, 2005), for example, place narrative at the center of the practical theological task of religious education. Of course, Mary Elizabeth Moore (Teaching From the Heart, 1991, 1998) is correct in her statement that "Teaching narratively is more than a set of techniques that can be thrown into an eclectic bag of tricks. Narrative is a significant mode of human communication, a bearer and critic of culture, and a potentially profound and far-reaching educational method." (132-133) I would also suggest that narrative helps us bring into focus "theology-in-action" where persons are in their social location and across the plural circumstances of persons' lives.
But, is it also possible for narrative methodologies to to invite responses to additional questions: What kinds of narrative methods are needed for what we might consider helpful theological reflection? To what ends or for what outcomes do we see as important for narrative as practical theological method in religious education? Indeed, we might well consider the question: How important is the use of narrative in religious education as a practical theological endeavor?
Thanks Anne - for a great question and for introducing the theme of narrative by way of an approach to doing religious education and/or practical theology. Your story of the young woman asking, "did God leave me out" suggests precisely a pedagogical move that must be integral to a narrative approach. Let me say first what the "move" is not!
ReplyDeleteA narrative approach is not simply about telling stories as if people are to passively accept and then repeat them - as if now their own. Instead, the narrative approach, besides inviting people "into" the story to recognize themselves and their lives somehow, must then encourage what I have awkwardly called a "dialectical hermeneutics" toward the story.
In planer language, the listeners must be prompted to "do" precisely what that young woman in your example did; not to submit to the story but to enter into conversation with it, agreeing, disagreeing, adding to it (from their own story), and eventually making the story their own but not as a replica of the teacher's version of it but by their own personal appropriation of its wisdom. Without this "give and take" with the story (Plato's understanding of dialectics as conversation - not Marx's violent misinterpretation of it), narrative can become simply an imposition upon people rather than a resource for their liberation and empowerment in faith.
Best blessings to all
Tom Groome
I, too, appreciate the narrative approach -- no more so than in the contemporary contexts we inhabit, given how much of our media surround is embedded in story, and shapes and shares stories. But I also can't help wondering: how do we build authority for the stories we are sharing? Its not enough to simply state them. Similarly, what do we do with the narratives we build together? Is building them enough? I think the desire for simplicity may stem in part from the vast number of competing narratives that float around us, and our inability to figure out how to mediate amongst them...
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