The concept of practice helps us better understand how preaching works, as well as how we can teach that practice more effectively. This essay develops a compact but wide-ranging view of practices, reflecting the current scholarly discussion. It also argues that preaching is a particular instance of this larger concept of practices. Understanding…

At the November 2008 meeting of the American Academy of Religion, the History of Christianity section sponsored a panel around the question: "What are the key challenges, opportunities, and goals in the History of Christianity classroom today and how best should teachers respond to them?" Beginning with brief sketches of institutional context and…

Can one uphold a call from an ecclesiastical body while teaching in a college classroom? This paper will argue that the dual roles of pastor and professor can be integrated by the adoption of faith development as a learning goal. This goal seems to stand at odds with three important aspects of academic teaching: the demographic reality of…

The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion is a place of hospitality and its staff the epitome of the "good host." This essay explores the meaning of hospitality, including its problematic dimensions, drawing on a number of voices and texts: Jacques Derrida's "Of Hospitality"; Henri M. Nouwen's "Reaching Out: The Three…

The article begins with two brief theoretical descriptions of a pedagogy of desire vis-a-vis the Christian Bible. The first of these is a poem; the second summarizes the conversation constituted by four quite different books: the "Confessions" by Augustine of Hippo, "Freud & Philosophy" by Paul Ricoeur, "Pedagogy of…

This classroom note describes the lessons I learned from the use of formal debates during the two semesters I taught "Paul and Early Christianity" to undergraduates at a liberal arts college in Ohio. The purpose of the course was primarily to give students the exegetical skills to understand Paul in his own context. The secondary purpose…

Discussions on teaching and learning within theological seminaries often center on the question of student diversity, focused primarily upon issues of race, gender, and ethnicity. At the same time that seminaries are challenged to deal with a multitude of pedagogical suppositions emerging from increasingly diverse learning goals, seminaries must…

This paper asserts that training Christian leaders for faithful and effective leadership in religious communities, which is responsive to the reality of the diverse religious experiences of this country, requires that they learn the skills of integration, specifically the ability to integrate formation into a community within the context of a…

This article is a presentation and discussion of a seminary course on the Corinthian Correspondence. The pedagogical model for this course was structured to parallel the pattern of Paul's pastoral care from a distance as he relates to the Corinthian congregation by personal visits, delegations from and to the congregation, letters from and to the…

Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor once characterized the South as Christ-haunted, and having taught in the South for eight years now, I have come to appreciate O'Connor's evaluation. Most of the students I encounter understand one predominant way to practice Christian faith: assent to propositional theology. Most of them either accept this…

This paper asserts that Continuing Education aimed at equipping Christian leaders (lay and ordained) to carry out their ministries in the midst of America's increasing religious diversity in a way that views this diversity positively must be two-pronged: (1) it must provide accurate information about the beliefs and practices of the neighbors, and…

Service learning pedagogy often assumes a variety of forms when connected with classroom teaching. Through a creative use of service learning pedagogy, the author constructs learning designs that foster student engagement with course content and prompts interrelated connections between the subjects and their own service learning experiences. The…

In this essay the authors describe how four seminary educators pedagogically engage students in practices of interpretation and explore how the variations in their teaching practices shape the critical thinking they seek to cultivate in their students. The piece is excerpted from an ethnographic study of Jewish and Christian seminary educator…

When it came time to reevaluate and restructure the introductory year in Christian history and theology, I decided to use a roundtable of student consultants to help me in that work. Our research and reflection focused on the impact of postmodern thinking and learning, feedback from pastors in ministry, a desire to bring appropriate praxis into…

In a brief essay originally presented as part of a panel discussion with Christian and Muslim teachers of Islam in the university setting, the author describes the distinctive characteristics of the Islamic Studies Program at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, Minnesota). While the program allows Islamic studies "majors" to earn a degree (M.A. or M.Th.)…