Spirituality, Justice, and Pedagogy

*Presenters who have indicated AV needs must meet in the room 30 minutes before their session for an equipment/materials check.
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Nicholas Wolterstorff
Plenary 1
This presentation will discuss why justice is an important topic for Christians, how it can be one of the things for which we teach, and why it should also be one of the pervasive features of how we teach.
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Barbara Omolade
Plenary 2
This plenary session will describe and define intellectual racism and the challenges of creating an anti-racist and multicultural learning environment. Intellectual racism consists of educational policies, programs, and practices that promote racism. Each educator can either intentionally interrupt or continue racism. The presenter will provide more guidance and insight to educators about how to create a multicultural and non-racist educational classroom. Not every educator can teach everything and this is not an issue of political correctness, but an opportunity to gain wisdom from the insights and experiences of all of God's people. She will share information about her experiences teaching about race and ethnicity at the City College of New York.
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Adel Abadeer
Seeking Kingdom Diversity in Christian Institutions
This paper focuses on the significance of initiating and implementing in Christian institutions “Kingdom” diversity that is rooted in biblical teaching and foundations. The paper analyzes the major challenges and tensions that usually accompany the redemptive celebration of Kingdom diversity, and conclude with a set of warnings and recommendations.
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Sandra Altena
Justice in the Classroom through Connected Pedagogy
Connected pedagogy—based on the relational-cultural theory of development—not only fosters justice in the classroom but also promotes learning, nurtures spiritual transformation, enhances psychological well-being, and inspires activism in the Kingdom. This pedagogy thwarts traditional dominance patterns and encourages connection through growth-fostering relationships. It is particularly valuable for instructors teaching female students.
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Paul Aspan
Critical Pedagogy and the Study of Religious Violence and Terrorism: Academic Rigor and Pedagogical Praxis as a Means of Spiritual Health
Taught through the orientation of critical pedagogy, a course on religion, violence, and terrorism enables examination of how the study of violent religion has affected the attitudes of the students in their perception of those dissimilar to themselves, racially, religiously, and culturally.
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Martine Audéoud
Preparing Teachers for Their Prophetic Role?
This paper will look at community service in pre-service teacher education as an effective way to better prepare teachers to become a positive prophetic influence to promote justice according to the kingdom values outlined by Christ in what is generally called the Sermon on the Mount.
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Michelle J. Bartel
Openness to the Holy Spirit: The Work of God’s Justice Flowing Like a River through the Classroom Community
This paper will examine the opportunity for the teacher or professor to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in the classroom. This openness entails humility, discovery, and delight, which are part of the broader task of the Spirit’s work of justice flowing through the classroom and beyond.
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Jennifer Beatson
Challenging Student Attitudes toward U.S. Immigrants
This multimedia study of the U.S. immigrant population challenges student attitudes by examining Christian responses to the stranger and leading students to recognize the image of Christ in the Other. The interdisciplinary approach moves students beyond theory into agency, using their fields of study to show compassion toward the Other.
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Marilyn Bierling
The Immigrant in Our Midst
Issues of immigration, both legal and illegal, challenge teachers and learners to examine a complex and current facet of North American society. How can we fashion responses that demonstrate an understanding of the Christian call to do justice and to show hospitality to the stranger within our midst?
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Doug Blomberg
The Formation of Character: Spirituality Seeking Justice
Mass schooling favors verbal-logical understanding; virtue-based approaches highlight the significance of character. Protestant attitudes toward character education have been negative, but an integral view of creation and redemption sees spirituality as pervasive life-direction, properly in the service of justice, the realization of right relationships within a revelatory creation.
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Deborah Bowen
Literature and Shalom: Teaching Non-specialist First-Year Students
Wolterstorff’s argument for art as a form of action that enables us both to struggle with our fallenness and to anticipate shalom is tested out in a freshman non-specialist English class where the power of literature is covered by the power of prayer.
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James F. Caccamo
Necessary, Yes. But Sufficient? Spirituality, Individualism, and Pedagogy for Social Justice
The methods instructors use to engage students in learning about social justice often reinforce the very individualism they are trying to combat. Social justice pedagogy helps students develop some of the basic Christian habits of perceiving socially and acting communally.
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Carolyne Call
Intellectual Safety: The Creation of a Climate for Spiritual Growth
Intellectually safe classrooms are ones in which spiritual growth can occur. Students were surveyed about intellectual safety, and the responses were used to create a definition of the concept. Elements required for a safe classroom environment are presented. This environment is necessary for spiritual growth to occur, namely introspection, awareness, compassion, and humility.
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Lee Ann Carroll, Jeff Banks, and Maire Mullins
Only Connect: Creating a Learning Community to Foster Spirituality and Social Justice
Speakers will describe the Social Action and Justice Program at Pepperdine University, a four-course general education sequence that connects faculty members and 80 students in a learning community that examines social justice issues, works actively in local communities, and fosters spiritual growth. Speakers will focus on key factors in designing an effective program and gaining campus support for new courses. Syllabi and assessment instruments will be available online and as handouts. A workshop format allows time for discussion among participants.
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Jean Corey and Emerson Powery
Just Pedagogy: Spirit, Self, and the Other
Spirituality and justice should be an obvious connection for educators who take seriously the biblical tradition that love for God and love for neighbor are inseparable (Luke 10 and Micah 6:8). The truth is that spirituality far more often works against cultivating concerns for justice and liberation. Though we teach in a school that is rooted in the Pentecostal tradition, our students’ understanding of spirituality is more influenced by the theologically rooted paradigms Emerson and Smith attribute to white evangelicals than by a commitment to the educational implications of their pneumatological heritage. This paper explores our attempt to provide educational experiences that expand students’ vision of the work of the Spirit in their intellectual development, allowing them to embrace a spirituality that continually calls them into the struggle of justice.
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Martha Greene Eads
Teaching Literature with a Lab: The Work of Love
A curmudgeonly literature professor overcame her skepticism about “community learning” when she took her students to West Virginia coal country. As they interviewed people in the jobs their course novels featured, both teacher and students developed a deeper understanding of the course’s theme: vocation’s relationship to hope and justice.
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Timothy D. Epp
Christian Sociology and Critical Pedagogy
In this presentation I will examine ways for Christian sociologists to engage in recent discussion on critical pedagogy in the classroom, moving beyond a philosophy of individualism to an approach founded on love for God and for our neighbor, as we act as servants to further the kingdom of God.
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Benne Faber
Is Shalom Inclusive or Exclusive? The Covenant of Creation and Election in Reformed Pedagogy
Two starting points in Reformed philosophies of education are the covenant of creation and the covenant of election. This paper will consider the implications of the inclusive and exclusive covenantal perspectives for “educating for shalom” by exploring the covenantal nature of Christian education in Wolterstorff, A. Janse, and C. Van Til.
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Philip Fountain and Christopher D. Elisara
Being Is Believing? Out-of-the-Box (Subversive) Education
We present a case study of the Creation Care Study Program (CCSP) model of transformative education. We explore this through the rubrics of “creation,” “holism,” “subversiveness,” and “critical distance.” We argue that although being overseas/immersed in the field is not believing, there is a real value of “being there” for opening up intellectual, spiritual, and compassionate spaces.
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Louis B. Gallien Jr. and LaTrelle Jackson
Teaching a Counter-Narrative on the Development of Character and Justice in African American Communities
This presentation centers on the indigenous development of character among African American communities since the Diaspora. The authors believe that the pedagogy for this framework is centered on justice as juxtaposed to America’s meta-narrative principle of the inalienable rights of man. As a result, new curricular and pedagogical approaches are forwarded in order to achieve the desired result of effective character-building in black communities across the country.
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Jan Gormas
A Search for Intellectual, Relational, and Spiritual Integrity: Secondary Mathematics from a Christian Perspective
The richness of contextualized mathematics as a tool to model aspects of creation has been reduced to symbolic manipulation in most mathematics classrooms. The result is bondage to textbook explanations, exalting acquiescence and indifference. The author suggests that secondary mathematics be used to investigate the structural purposes of God's creation and to expose directional misuses that have contributed to lack of mathematical understandings and to the mishandling of various social contexts.
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Linda D. Grooms and Louis B. Gallien Jr.
A Call for Reaching the “Least of These”: A Conceptual Framework for Training Educators to Distinctively Reach the Marginalized Peoples of the World
This prophetic essay heralds the need for Christian leadership and teacher education programs to consider building their programs upon Christ’s mandate to reach out to “the least of these.” Integrating spirituality, justice, and pedagogy while proclaiming the need for a scripturally mandated and socially responsive model for ministering to the marginalized peoples of our global culture, the authors present a conceptual framework that is both biblically and educationally distinctive.
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Bradford S. Hadaway
Preparing the Way for Justice
Though moral educators cannot make their students virtuous, I argue that there are certain habits of learning, analogous to spiritual disciplines, that can dispose the soul toward the subsequent blossoming of lived justice. I develop Kant’s doctrine of virtue and Merton’s account of monastic spirituality to explain and defend this view.
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Debra Heath-Thornton
Restorative Justice Contributes to Spirituality in the Classroom
One true test of teaching as vocation is the ability to tackle transgressions in a way that leaves the dignity of all parties intact, and in a manner through which both learner and teacher can grow. While the pedagogical issues surrounding spiritual exploration are complex, this paper investigates delivering criminal justice curriculum through the restorative justice perspective and integrates discussion on student and teacher spiritual growth.
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Sandra F. Joireman
Thinking, Teaching, and Lobbying for Justice: On Being an Authentic Voice
There is an expansive literature on service-learning and experiential learning that suggests that it is an extraordinarily effective pedagogical method. However, it has rarely been suggested that political lobbying is an effective method of teaching justice. In this paper, political advocacy will be discussed as a model for the movement of a belief in justice to an active pursuit of justice. The lessons students learn from political lobbying as well as its limitations is terms of the pursuit of justice will both be considered.
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Clarence Joldersma
Spirituality of the Wilderness and a Social Justice Pedagogy: Reading Purpel’s “Educating in a Prophetic Voice” through DeBoer’s Reformed Spirituality
Jewish educator David Purpel articulates a six-article credo for education in a prophetic voice and offers a pedagogy of moral outrage. In this paper I examine Purpel’s prophetic credo in dialogue with a particular understanding of spirituality, as developed by the Reformed philosopher Theo DeBoer, to nudge Purpel in a particular direction.
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Cynthia Neal Kimball
Consciousness and Discomfort in the Face of Injustice
It is not possible for someone to become both comfortable and conscious at the same time. Therefore, I must cause discomfort in my students as they wrestle with critical justice issues and create a safe environment that will “hold” them in their struggle and discomfort. I will use my recent experiences in Rwanda to illustrate how my consciousness of the egregious injustice of the genocide challenged me and how that was translated to my students.
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Martha Ann Kirk
Ancient and Modern Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Women’s Voices Seeking Justice and Peace, Seeking the Holy One Who is Justice and Peace
Examples from a class 1) with online dialogue with women in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Ramallah through www.WomensGlobalConnection.org; 2) with the text Women of Bible Lands: A Pilgrimage to Compassion and Wisdom of stories of ancient women. Faith in the Holy One that sustained our ancient sisters gives strength to pursue justice today.
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Sharon L. Klassen
Using Theatre to Teach Students about Justice
Theatre has a unique ability to move the audience by bringing to life on stage the words of the oppressed. We will explore some of the ways educators can compel students to act to promote justice in the world by attending live performances, studying dramatic texts, and considering the way theatre uses empathy.
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Mark LaCelle-Peterson
Toward a Christian Spirituality of the Public Good in Education: A Proposal for a “Third Way” Curriculum Theory of Religion
Questions regarding the role of religious considerations in educational policy and practice are being debated with increasing volume and fervor today. This paper is framed around two questions: first, what is the responsibility of religiously committed educators to promote the public good; and second, what is the responsibility of all society’s schools to promote religion?
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Samson Makhado, Susan S. Hasseler, and Clarence W. Joldersma
Spirituality, Justice, and Schooling: An International Perspective
Spirituality is often seen as something separate from the social-cultural world while justice is often seen as situated in the social world, as a worldly answer to injustice. In this symposium we use different notions of spirituality and justice, ones that build on the concept of shalom. Instead of defining spirituality as otherworldly, Wolterstorff (2002, 2004) suggests that the road to justice is spiritual in character. Spirituality is aimed at justice for here and now, in society as we know it. This symposium will focus in particular on the role that faith-based K–12 schooling plays in society’s move toward justice by examining schooling in two very different settings: South Africa and North America. A dialogue between representatives of the two settings will focus on understanding how spirituality is self-defined in these schools and the ways those definitions help and hinder the pursuit of social justice.
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Taylor Mayer
The Efficacy of Integrating Mentoring and Spiritual Well-Being Services for Adolescents
This study investigated the efficacy of spiritual well-being mentoring services for adolescents in residential treatment. Children who participated in this program were counseled about spirituality and moral developmental issues from a Biblical perspective through the mentoring relationship. Involvement in spiritual mentoring was associated with quantitative improvement in psychological functioning.
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Monde Ndandani
Rural Village: Rural School and Access to Quality Education and Tertiary Institutions: A Case of a Learner from a Typical Rural Village in the North-West Province of South Africa
This paper, through the reflections of a rural village educator, examines fundamental issues of justice in the lives of rural village children in a rural school in post-1994 South Africa, addressing the issue of equal opportunities for learners in rural communities and small rural towns against the same opportunities for learners and students in peri-urban and suburban communities. The question is confronted, Are rural ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty responsible for the lack of access to justice with regards to quality education and entry to universities by rural youth of this country?
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Elliot Ratzman
Teaching Moral Saintliness as Justice Activism: A Proposal for Religious Ethics
The life of Paul Farmer, a public health activist based in Haiti, helps teach a variety of issues around “moral saintliness.” What would a truly good life look like? It is my contention that Farmer and other secular saints help explicate a variety of issues left out of most ethics curricula. A more sophisticated framework for moral activism is readily available for students of any political background and any faith commitment.
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Margaret J. Sampson Edgell
The Role of Faith in the Development of African College Students in America
This study takes a constructivist approach to explore the role of faith in the college experience of African students at Calvin College. Salient themes emerged from responses by five interviewees. Themes included: God’s plan, overcoming, growth in faith, the role of faith in the student’s life, identity, and African values.
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Glenn Sanders
Exposing Students to Intractable Problems: Christian Faith and Justice in a Course on the Middle East
“Middle East: Culture and Politics” provides students an opportunity to apply Christian ideals of justice to key political and cultural issues, including Israel’s foundation, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamism, oil wealth distribution, terrorism, and women’s rights. This paper considers my preparations, the course’s successes and failures, key questions outstanding, and relations between Christian spirituality and justice.
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Sally Schwer Canning
Incarnation and Hospitality: Teaching for Justice in Professional Psychology
If Christian pedagogy fosters a response to humanity’s wounds and promotes human flourishing, then professional psychology would seem a fertile ground upon which to cultivate these aims. The author discusses implications of incarnation and hospitality for the content, context, and methods of teaching for justice in this and other fields.
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Cynthia Slagter
Approaching Interpretive Justice through Reading Aloud
Justice is inextricably linked with kindness and humility (Micah 6:8). Students can learn interpretive justice by approaching a text with humility and reading it with loving attention. Reading aloud forces students to concentrate on the words and tone of texts, resulting in a more just and charitable understanding.
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David I. Smith
Ecologies of Delight? Justice, Spirituality, and the Construction of Language Pedagogy
Recent discussions of foreign and second language education advocate a shift from technical to ecological metaphors for language teaching processes. This paper considers how ecological metaphors functioned in the educational thinking of Comenius to connect a spiritually rooted concern for justice with language education.
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Thomas M. Smith, Todd Steen, and Steve VanderVeen
Doing Good and Doing Well: Shalom in Christian Business Education
As Christian business faculty members, we believe it is our purpose to prepare students to both “do good” and “do well.” We therefore offer in this paper: (1) definitions of “good” and “well” from a particular Christian worldview, (2) theoretical propositions that connect this purpose with educational outputs and inputs (among them, pedagogical strategies), and (3) specific pedagogical tactics for preparing students to do good and well.
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Julia K. Stronks
Teaching to Justice: A Community Works To Practice “Shalom”
Five years ago Whitworth College embarked on a multi-faceted plan to encourage our community to be agents of peace in a hurting world. The project we developed was inspired by the “Shalom” teaching of Nicholas Wolterstorff. We are now in the last year of the project and our assessment is in its final stages. This presentation and paper will give an overview of lessons learned along the way: (1) Description and assessment of the variety of pedagogies used in new courses (emphasis on experiential learning, pedagogy of the oppressed, application of critical pedagogy in a Christian college context); (2) Obstacles encountered; (3) Changing a campus ethos: what works best—money, administrative commitment, faculty engagement, or (surprise!) student demand?
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Douglas E. Thompson
Life on the Margins: First-Year Seminar Students Engage Economic Justice
This paper connects Mercer’s prophetic ethos, the experiences of first-year students, and cultural assumptions about poverty to show how the First-Year Seminar–Experiential program gets students to think about economic justice. By reading There Are No Children Here and tutoring at a Title I school, students confront the American Dream.
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A. Christian van Gorder
Pedagogy for the Children of the Oppressors: Fostering to the World’s Oppressed in American Christian Higher Education
North American Christian higher education is committed to the task of fostering both an academic foundation and the nurture of applicational skills toward the vital tasks of Christian discipleship. Ours is a world of tremendous social, economic, and political injustice. Using themes presented in Paulo Freire’s book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the focus of this paper will center on how North American Christian university students can move from a sense of ignorance, guilt, or remorse toward specific and positive meaningful interaction with the social injustices of our time.
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Steven H. VanderLeest
Justice and the Non-neutrality of Technology
Technology influences distribution of resources. Biases in technology can lead to inequitable allocation of essential resources, i.e., injustice. Thus, design norms such as justice ought to guide technology design. This paper examines teaching the non-neutrality of technology and justice issues in the design of technology (examples include computers and energy).
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Kurt Alan Ver Beek
Lessons from the Sapling: On "Teaching" Faith and Justice
A reflection on our nine years of teaching about faith and justice in Honduras, on the survey of our students, and on semester abroad and short-term missions literature will result in conclusions for our own and others' efforts to “teach” justice and faith.
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Hadley Wood
Teaching as Spiritual Work: Turning Classes into Communities
At its most spiritual, and most effective, teaching demands that the professor shape a class into a transformative space where students can experience mutually supportive, truly caring relationships moving toward a shared goal. This kind of transformative environment turns a class into a community and gives the student the opportunity to live out relationships that pursue justice more than “equality.”
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Kim D. Yúnez
Helping Students Make the Spirituality-Justice-Learning Connection through the Teaching of Plays from Latin America
How injustice and human malevolence are exposed in Latin American plays is a primary concern of two courses taught as part of the Spanish major at Messiah College. In order to achieve learning objectives related to this area, it necessary to address the following: the theme and focus of the course, play selection, identification with the characters, naming the varieties of evil and injustice, the construction of illusions and official stories, and connections with Christian resources. These areas will be fleshed out through an analysis of one Latin American play and through the presentation of how Messiah College students take this discussion of justice/injustice into the public arena.
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