Last summer, eighteen faculty, staff, and students of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, participated in a travel study seminar to visit churches, seminaries, and Christian organizations in China. We visited the seminaries at Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing and discussed the vision and challenges of theological education with the faculty and students. We were delighted to find out that some of the seminaries used books written by our faculty members. Visiting professors from Europe and North America have taught at seminaries in China, while several Chinese faculty members are pursuing advanced degrees abroad.
Through travel abroad seminars, short-term immersions, faculty and student exchanges, visiting appointments, and institutional partnerships, many divinity schools and seminaries in North America have established relationships with theological schools in other parts of the world. Some schools also have cross-cultural competency requirements. These developments have taken place in the larger conversation of globalization and theological education since the 1980s.1 In 1999, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in the United States and Canada adopted its "Guidelines for Evaluating Globalization in Commission Schools."
With Christian demographics shifting to the Global South, many theological educators recognize the need to broaden their students’ horizons and educate future leaders of faith communities who will be prepared to lead in a globalized world. Yet a closer look at the theological curriculum at many schools clearly indicates that the European and Euro-American traditions are privileged over others. Despite the increasing diversity among our students and in Christian congregations, the teaching of theology has not changed to catch up with the new global situation.
For example, a review of the eighteen syllabi posted in the Syllabus Project of the Wabash Center and the AAR in the category Theology (Christian) shows that except for the course on “Jesus across Cultures,” the other syllabi indicate: (1) there is little emphasis on the global nature of theology and the growing body of literature on the subject, (2) the majority of required texts are written by white European and Euro-American male theologians, (3) no required text or, at best, one required text is by a theologian outside North America, usually from Latin America, such as Gustavo Gutierrez or Leonardo Boff, and (4) there is minimal acknowledgment of the contribution of the work of racial and ethnic minority scholars in North America.
In order to address how the teaching of theology needs to change, Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago, William Dyrness of Fuller Theological Seminary, and I have brought together a small group of theologians and scholars representing the Catholic, Protestant Mainline, and Evangelical traditions for a series of dialogues, partially funded by the Wabash Center. The group organized a workshop on “Teaching Theology in the Globalized and Transnational World” at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2013, which drew over 100 participants including a significant number of international attendees. This was the first time, in my memory, that the AAR has had such a lively discussion on the teaching of theology across denominational, national, racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious differences. The papers from the workshop and from other contributors will be published as a book by Baylor University Press. The group has also set up a blog at http://teachingtheology.blogspot.com.
In our discussion, we identified several important challenges and concerns of teaching theology in a global context:
In order to the address some of the challenges and concerns mentioned above, the group shared strategies and pedagogies they have used in their teaching. They have found Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress (1994) helpful to think through some of the issues in the classroom. Several members of the group have taught in different parts of the world and offered helpful insights in cross-cultural pedagogies. We need to rethink both the content and process in teaching theology with fresh eyes.
During the general discussion at the workshop, participants asked some critical questions. One participant raised a question concerning class and theological education. The assumptions and ethos of theological education, to a large extent, is shaped by middle-class culture. Working class students often find themselves alienated because they may not have the vocabulary and cultural competence to succeed in a theological setting. Most academic theology, whether written for the church, academia, or the public square, has been written by middle-class professionals.
Although Latin American liberation theology has talked a lot about class issues, its influences in the US have been curtailed because of the rise of neo-conservatives and the power of some right-winged religious leaders. But in recent years, several theologians have begun to address the issue of class more intentionally. For example, Joerg Rieger and I interviewed people who have participated in the Occupy movement to write Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). Rieger also edited the newly released volume Theology, Religion, and Class: Fresh Engagements after Long Silence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Another participant wanted to know how people teaching outside the US look at the issue of teaching theology in a global and transnational world. Colleagues from other parts of the world live and work in social, cultural, and political contexts very different from those in the US. A Chinese professor teaching theology in Hong Kong, for example, would likely need to discuss the long history of Christianity in China and theological developments as China responded to imperialism, communism, and the recent da guo jue qi (rise of the big nation).
I hope we will continue the conversation and bring more international participants into the dialogue. Our students who belong to the millennial generation have grown up in a world of the Internet, text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media. They are the most globally connected generation we have taught. We have to create a learning environment that meets the challenges of an interconnected and transnational world.
1 The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada published four issues on globalization and theological education in its journal Theological Education from 1986–1993.
2 William A. Dyrness, “Why Don’t We Hear Much from the Global Church?” Teaching Theology in a Global and Transnational World, http://teachingtheology.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-dont-we-hear-much-from-global.html (accessed February 1, 2014).
Kwok Pui-lan is the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, and the 2011 president of the American Academy of Religion. Her recent books are Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude, coauthored with Joerg Rieger (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) and Anglican Women on Church and Mission (Church Publishing, 2013).