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The seminary professor, a man of color, just walked out of the academic dean’s office. He had been teaching at the mainline Protestant theological institution for eleven years. The academic dean, a white woman, called him into her office to…
Continue readingMy family spent a lot of time this summer traveling in our car. As we drove up and down several eastern and southern states, with stops in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the thing we dreaded…
Continue readingA tense moment in my classroom captured some of the changing dynamics at my seminary. We were learning about the rise of higher criticism within the history of biblical interpretation in the United States. As we were analyzing a lecture…
Continue readingThe following axiom is often met with solemn nods, sad sighs, and knowing looks of empathy and understanding: “Church hurt is the worst hurt.” At every seminary, there are students with deep wounds from the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual…
Continue readingBefore the pandemic, one of the most pressing subjects for discussion and debate in my context, teaching at a freestanding seminary, was the transition to online education. I recall lively conversations engaging the merits and challenges of “moving online” in…
Continue readingRecently, I was sharing with my children that one of the first purchases I made when moving to a new city or state was a map. In the not-so-distant past (circa 1995), obtaining a map was of utmost importance for…
Continue readingHow does my teaching connect the learning in my seminary classroom with congregations? As an historian of Christianity in the United States, I am aware that theological education has primarily adopted a trickle-down approach to answering this question—a trickle that…
Continue readingFor the past twelve months, I have made several pivots in my teaching to meet what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. identified in his 1967 speech on the war in Vietnam at The Riverside Church in New York City as…
Continue readingI am often asked some version of the following question: “How has it been teaching online now?” For those of us who teach at schools with in-person learning, I imagine this is a common query from friends, family members, and…
Continue readingIn Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen finds several problems with how slavery is taught in high schools across the United States. Loewen observes that white Americans remain perpetually startled at…
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