RE636: Religious Education and Our Ecological Context
Instructor: Jennifer R. Ayres
Candler School of Theology
Spring
404-727-6329
Class Meeting Information
Friday 8:00 – 11:00
RARB 549
Course Description
In this course, we will develop a theological framework for understanding the ecological dimensions of Christian life and vocation, and examine educational practices and theories that contribute to the formation of an ecological faith. We will test the theological, theoretical, and practical approaches to these questions in living communities, your field sites.
The course is built around a moral commitment that Christian faith, in our time, requires attention to how our way of life is embedded in, accountable to, and given meaning in the context of God’s creation. What does it mean to be a human—and a human community—in relationship to the creating and sustaining God, in light of our ecological context? As Larry Rasmussen has said, taking a cue from James Baldwin, we must “do our first works over,” meaning that those of us in the fields of theological studies must re-imagine the foundational principles that guide our work, taking into account our identity as members of creation. Certainly, the re-examination has deep implications for the theory and practice of religious education.
In recent years, we also have heard a related challenge from the field of environmental education, in that real ecological learning should elicit “not just a comprehension of how the world works, but, in the light of that knowledge, a life lived accordingly” (David Orr, Ecological Literacy, 87). This challenge resonates in the field of religious education, where we examine the contours of the “Christian life,” and the kind of formation and education that contributes to its dimensions of moral and religious commitment.
To these ends, the course incorporates literature from environmental education, ecotheology, social ethics, biblical studies, engaged pedagogical theory, and practical theology. The course relies on models of engaged pedagogy, whereby students’ experience in field sites and critical engagement thereof will serve as the starting point, engagement and observation of ecological practices will contextualize the theoretical work, and the formation of ecologically-committed theological knowing will serve as the primary learning goal.
Course Values
Our work together in this course is framed by four core values:
- This course has an ambitious and impractical goal: It is meant to trouble and enrich Christian vocation so that a Christian life can hardly be imagined without a sense for its “situatedness” in the midst of God’s whole ecology. Many of the readings for this course will make plain the spiritual and vocational dimensions of the needed ecological transformation, and you will be challenged to reimagine a model of religious leadership that names as a central component the formation of an ecological faith.
- As a religious education course, the content and assignments will broaden and deepen your understandings of theories and processes of teaching and learning; identity formation; and the formation of moral/theological imagination. You also should leave the course with at least introductory expertise for ecological ministry and leadership.
- The readings for this course engage the bible, our core text in the Christian tradition; as well as contemporary theological perspectives on divine creativity, providence, and eschatology in light of our ecological context. We will both re-examine traditional religious practices (such as meal and pilgrimage) and imagine new practices with regard to their ecological implications.
- In an effort to complicate simplistic interpretations of eco-theology, we will engage the scholarship and stories of diverse persons and communities from around the world. In course readings and assignments, you will be expected to attend to issues of social location and context.
Learning Outcomes
Guided by these broader course values, upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Articulate a vision of ecotheology grounded in Christian tradition, practice, and ecology;
- Theorize the goals, foundations, and methods of ecological religious education;
- Describe the contextual characteristics that shape an ecological faith in relationship to a particular place and community; and
- Design and evaluate educational programs that are contextually, theologically, and practically appropriate responses to the ecological question before people of faith.
Expectations and Evaluation
In order to work towards this ambitious goal—to change the very foundations of how we understand Christian life and vocation, in light of our ecological context—we will seek to create a community of learning in which we all are accountable to one another.
Disabilities Statement
If a student is registered with Emory office of Access, Disability Services, and Resources (ADSR), accommodations are effective when the student presents (in person) the accommodation letter to the instructor and discusses necessary course accommodations.
Your grade in the course will be determined according to your investment and performance on a number of assignments. The semester’s assignments, along with a brief description, appear below. More detailed instructions for each assignment will be posted to Canvas.
Pre-Class Discussion (15%): Each week, we’ll set the stage for our in-class work with a conversation on our Canvas site. We’ll set up the discussions in the first class. Each of you will be responsible for starting the conversation once during the semester, and you will respond to your colleagues on at least eight weeks over the course of the semester. Your posts will be brief (200-400 words) and responses should be 100 words or less. Blog posts must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. on the Wednesday before class meets, and responses by the beginning of class.
Digital Storytelling Project and Reflection on Place (15%): Place-based learning begins with the question, “Where am I?” Religious education for ecological faith begins in deep attention to the places in which we become who we are: “Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are.” (José Ortega y Gassett) Many of our readings in this course are built upon this core assumption. Each student will produce a micro-documentary that tells one story about a place that tells you who you are. More information will be posted to the course website. We’ll screen these on the last day of class – invite your friends!
Major Class Project (Total 50%): This project creates a theologically, pedagogically, and practically-informed plan to cultivate ecological faith in your field site. We’ll work on this project bit by bit, over the course of the semester. At the end of the term, you will resubmit the first four parts (contextual analysis, ecotheology paper, educational theory outline, and educational event design), as one broad ecological educational plan, along with an assessment of the implementation of the plan. You may revise these first four components in response to feedback and to account for any new observations or challenges to your theology and theory that emerged as you designed and implemented your events. The point of submitting these elements together is to invite you to think broadly, deeply, and with specificity about how we might shape educational ministry that contributes to the formation of ecological faith and vocation. Due at the end of the term.
Reading the Context (10%): The first step in ecological faith is knowing, precisely, where we are. Please describe your field site, with particular attention to three themes: (1) Practices that the site already engages that you would describe as “ecological” in some way; (2) Issues that you see in the site’s ecological context that demand our attention; and (3) Challenges that make ecological attention difficult in this setting. This paper should be about 750 words. Due January.
Ecotheology Paper (10%): In conversation with the readings from the first eight weeks of the semester, you each will write a brief paper that outlines the theological framework that shapes how you understand Christian life in our ecological context. The paper, 1000-1200 words in length, will serve as a framework for the event you will design in the second half of the course. Due February.
Educational Theory Outline (10%): In conversation with your ecotheology paper and the readings on engaged pedagogy, environmental education, and ecological literacy, this paper (750 words), outlines the context, foundations, goals and practices of religious ecological education. It will address questions like: What is the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation that religious education should inspire and sustain? What are the primary models of teaching and learning that might do this? And what virtues do you imagine being cultivated in this model of education? Due March.
Educational Event Design (10%): In the second half of the semester, you will design and implement an educational event that contributes to the formation of ecological faith in your field site. It might be an explicitly educational event, like a class or retreat. At the same time, Candler professor emeritus Charles Foster argued that everything that the community of faith does, “teaches.” In light of that commitment, and with the assumption that formation in ecological faith happens in less “explicit” learning events, you might also conceptualize, refine, and design an event that contributes more broadly to the formation of ecological faith. Such events might include worship, fellowship, political advocacy, etc. The event should grow out of the work you have already done in reading of the context and developing your ecotheology and educational theory, and will be assessed according to three criteria:
- 50% of your grade will be determined by the design of the event, clearly and substantively expressed in a written plan and accompanying materials;
- 50% of your grade will be determined by your accompanying commentary, a 500 word essay that shows how the event is designed in conversation with your foundational work on analyzing the context, developing an ecotheology, and identifying core educational principles.
You’ll submit your design via Blackboard by a specified date in March, and implement the design between Easter and the end of the semester. This gives you about a five-week window in which to do this. Please plan accordingly and get this on the calendar early!
Assessment (10%): Once you have implemented your educational event, take some time to write a reflection, no more than 1000 words, on the experience and its reception. Please answer the following four questions, and submit with any revisions of the first three parts of your project when you present your event designs during the exam period:
- How did participants experience this event? (Use the five-question questionnaire developed by Stephen Brookfield to gather feedback from two participants)
- Where did you feel most engaged in the process of developing the foundation for, designing, and implementing the event?
- Was this event appropriate to the context of your field site? How so, or how might it have been more appropriate?
- How has your theory of ecological religious education been affirmed and/or challenge in the implementation of your plan?
Attendance and Participation (20%): Please see the attendance policy above, under course expectations. Although attendance and participation are only 20% of your grade, you cannot pass the course if you miss more than nine hours of class, except in the most unusual of circumstances. Punctuality is also taken into account in the attendance and participation grade.
Books For Purchase
hooks, bell. Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Judson, Gillian. A New Approach to Ecological Education: Engaging Students’ Imaginations in Their World. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2010.
McDuff, Mallory. Natural Saints: How People of Faith Are Working to Save God’s Earth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Orr, David W. Hope Is an Imperative: The Essential David Orr. Washington: Island Press, 2011.
Recommended Books (Significant Portions Assigned)
Berry, Wendell. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2002.
Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Pope Francis. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2015.
Shorter Assignments Posted to eReserves (E)
Bass, Dorothy C., and Craig R. Dykstra. “A Theological Understanding of Christian Practices.” In Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life, edited by MIroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass, 13-32. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002.
Boff, Leonardo. “Liberation Theology and Ecology,” in Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, 104-114. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.
Boff, Leonardo. “Reclaiming the Dignity of Earth,” in Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, 115-139. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.
Carson, Rachel. “Help Your Child to Wonder.” Woman’s Home Companion (July 1956): 24-27, 46-48.
Daloz, Laurent A. Parks. “Transformative Learning for Bioregional Citizenship.” In Learning toward an Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative Practices, edited by Edmund V. O’Sullivan and Marilyn M. Taylor, 29-45. New York: Palgrave MacMIllan, 2004.
Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.
Hiebert, Theodore “The Human Vocation: Origins and Transformations in Christian Traditions ” In Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans, edited by Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, 135-154. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Moore, Mary Elizabeth Mullino. “Sacred Teaching: Education as Sacrament.” In Teaching as a Sacramental Act, 15-39. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2004.
Patterson, Barbara A.B. . “Performative Pedagogies: Religion and Ecology, Wilderness Spirituality.” Religious Studies News (2011).
Rasmussen, Larry L. “The Creatures We Are.” In Earth-Honoring Faith: Religion in a New Key. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
Shulman, Lee S. “Making Differences: A Table of Learning.” Change 34, no. 6 (2002): 36-44.
United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 1975. The Belgrade Charter: A Framework for Environmental Education. Adopted by the UNESCO/United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Workshop on Environmental Education, October 22, 1975. Belgrade, Yugoslavia. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0001/000177/017772eb.pdf (accessed January 10, 2015).
United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 1977. Tbilisi Declaration. Adopted by the UNESCO/United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, October 26, 1977. Tbilisi, Georgia, USSR. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000327/032763eo.pdf (accessed January 10, 2016).