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Editorial |
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Written by David I. Smith and John Shortt
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DEBORAH BOWEN OPENS this issue with an exploration of how a view of literature as practice, as a “participation in life,” connects with the moral and spiritual growth of her students. Drawing upon examples of student responses to literature, Bowen shows how students connect their reading with their understanding of how to seek shalom in the world. Students describe the ways in which their literary experience has helped them to reflect on otherness, identity, respect, and compassion; however, Bowen notes that literature cannot itself produce the radical conversion that empowers actual enacting of shalom. For this reason, she closes her account with reflection on the role of classroom prayer as a way of opening learning up to God’s Spirit. |
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Read more...
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Literature and Shalom: Teaching Freshman Students to Read |
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Written by Deborah C. Bowen
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WOLTERSTORFF’S ARGUMENT FOR art as a form of action that enables us to anticipate shalom and Ricoeur’s concept of the narrative intelligence developed in the reader of stories are tested out in a freshman non-specialist English class where the interpretation of literature, covered by the power of prayer, fosters both intellectual and moral virtues.
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The Relationship Between Denominational Affiliation and Spiritual Health ... |
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Written by Leslie J. Francis and Mandy Robbins
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THIS PAPER DRAWS on John Fisher’s formative definition of spiritual health as comprising good relationships within four domains (the personal, the communal, the environmental and the transcendental) and uses the operationalization of these constructs proposed by Francis and Robbins (2005). Comparisons are made between the responses of five groups of 13- to 15-year-olds who report weekly church attendance: 1,549 Anglicans, 1,458 Roman Catholics, 830 members of one of the Free Churches, 212 members of one of the Pentecostal churches, and 212 Jehovah’s Witnesses. The data demonstrate significant variations in the levels of spiritual health reported by weekly churchgoers according to denominational affiliation. The conclusion is drawn that denominational affiliation needs to be taken into account alongside frequency of church attendance in constructing a view of the relationship between Christian practice and spiritual health during the adolescent years. |
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Why We Should Discard "the Integration of Faith and Learning" |
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Written by Perry L. Glanzer
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DISCUSSION ABOUT THE integration of faith and learning has become a common theme among Christian colleges and universities. Although it has fostered a robust academic dialogue, I contend the language of “integration of faith and learning” needs to be discarded. My conclusion, however, stems not from recent critiques of the integration model. Instead, I am more concerned with the habits of thinking that the language fosters than with the overall integration model (which I will largely defend). I will suggest and defend an alternative language that captures the important theological mission of Christian scholars and retains and expands a basic integration paradigm, while also directly addressing some recent critiques. |
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Discovering a Theology for the Christian Teacher Today |
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Written by Clare Watkins
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THIS PAPER AIMS to offer a ‘liveable’ theology for the Christian teacher; that is, it seeks to articulate a theology of teaching in contemporary contexts which can serve the spiritual and faith development of Christian teachers in their vocation. A first section gives some brief account of ‘teaching’ in the Christian theological tradition, highlighting certain distinctive features of Christian teaching. In order better to read this tradition in our present contexts, a second section discusses the particular questions facing teaching in late modernity. In the light of what has gone before, a final part to the paper seeks to suggest ways forward for the development of a living theology for the Christian teacher. Here the theologies of baptism and lay vocation, of grace and of evangelization are drawn to the reader’s attention as significant theological themes for Christian teaching today.
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Volume 12 (2008) 