Notes on philosophy, religion, theology, pedagogy, "and so on and so on"
For those attending the session this morning, and for those who can’t be there, here’s my paper:
Here’s an example of the semester assignment where I assessed my students’ abilities as regards critically engaging websites:
If you have insights or ideas you’d like to share to make this a better project (I’ll try it again in December), please leave a comment letting me know.
The two main books I engaged were the following (hyperlinked to Amazon.com):
Yesterday I arrived in Irving, TX, for the 2020 Southwest Commission on Religious Studies. I left my suit coats at home, and needed to go buy at least one replacement, so I missed early registration last night. Otherwise, it was a smooth Day 1.
Happily, I saw that there are quite a few book sellers here. That’s always important for a good conference!
Today, I intend on attending the SBL-Hebrew Bible session (Theme: Genesis) in the morning; the SBL-Second Temple Judaism session (Theme: Religion in Crisis: Colonization and Lament) in the early afternoon; and the SBL-New Testament session (Theme: Reading Romans with Beverly Gaventa) in the late afternoon.
Sunday, my options are limited, because I’m presenting (!) during the SBL-New Testament session (Theme: Biblical Studies in the Bible Belt: Pedagogy and Best Practices) during the morning session. I’ll post my paper on this blog later today or early tomorrow.
Last week I wrote my greatest footnote, ever. Teachers, you’ll understand:
This may come to a surprise to some people but I really enjoy something produced by The History Channel. No, not ancient aliens, or one of their other tabloid-esque shows. ‘Jesus: His Life’ is something they did very, very well.
As a teacher of high school-aged students, I need visuals to pair with my various lessons. ‘Jesus: His Life’ is a docudrama, so there’s acting, but unlike some Bible-related films and TV miniseries, it’s good acting. Also, since it has a documentary aspect to it, there’s talking heads that provide useful insights. In a move I applaud, they mix critical scholarship with the views of pastors, priests, bishops, and serious authors. Some of the talking heads include scholars such as Robert Cargill (U. of Iowa), Mark Goodacre (Duke U.), Shivley Smith (Boston U.), Candida Moss (U. of Birmingham), Michael Peppard (Forham U.), Nicola Denzey Lewis (Claremont Graduate School), Ben Witherington III (Ashbury Theological Seminary), Kimberly Majeski (Anderson U.); and Christina Cleveland (Duke U.); pastors, priests, and bishops such as Otis Moss III, Joel Osteen, Fr. James Martin, and Bishop Michael Curry; and authors such as Simon Sebag Montefiore.
If you’re looking for a good balance of entertainment and information, they got it right with this series which looks at Jesus through the lens of key characters from the Gospels: Joseph, Mary, Peter, Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist. Anyway, I highly recommend it.
Tonight I was researching the concept of ‘lateral reading’ and happily discovered that Crash Course has put together a series of videos on ‘Navigating Digital Information’ that includes videos on lateral reading, knowing what can be trusted online, using Wikipedia, evaluating photos and videos, etc. Very cool!
Here’s the video on lateral reading:
This week my students will begin engaging the Gospels. To prepare them for this—as well as their brief encounter with the Book of Acts and week or so studying the Pauline Epistles—I’ve created a Guess Who?-style game that focuses on characters from these writings.
Unlike the original game, I don’t focus on the physical features of my characters, but some central aspects of how they’re presented. I had tried a version of this a couple years ago that was a bit clunky so I went back to the drawing board and decided to modify it. Here’s the product if you’re interested:
And yes, the name is a nod to Jesus Among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus and the Gospels edited by Chris Keith and the late Larry Hurtado.
This is something I’ve been pondering this year:
Along with my colleagues and our school’s administration we changed the title of our Biblical Studies classes for next year. ‘Old Testament’ will be ‘The Hebrew Scriptures’ and ‘New Testament’ will be ‘The Christian Scriptures’.
Obviously, these titles aren’t without their problems. The Hebrew Scriptures could be called ‘The Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures’ (but that would be weird). The Christian Scriptures could be called ‘The Greek Scriptures’. There’s a lack of symmetry: The Christian Scriptures maybe could be balanced better by the title ‘The Jewish Scriptures’. But at the end of the day, here was my logic for the proposal:
The good news? Whether or not we got it right I think we fixed some misconceptions and I’ve had a colleague ask me about the change giving me a chance to explain my thinking. If the name change gets teachers, students, and parents thinking about how the Hebrew Scriptures relate to Jews, Christians, and others, then educating is happening, and that’s a win!
The past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing my students for our engagement with the Gospels by discussing topics such as the geography of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee; the theology of first-century Jews; the role of the Temple, the priesthood, and the cult; the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures; the emergence of apocalyptic thought; the the diversity of Judaisms in the first-century (e.g., Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes). I’m in the midst of teaching about the relationship between the Jews and Greeks (Hellenization) and the Jews and the Romans (Latinization) then late next week I’ll introduce them to Messianism.
As a way of bringing together the complexities of Jewish religion, culture, and politics in the first-century, I derived a role play game for my students. Those who survive to the end win bonus points (and who doesn’t like that?), so that gets them immediately invested, but as the game moves along the mysteriousness of it makes it fun. I don’t tell my students what it is about or why I had them play the game until it’s finished.
The following pictures are of the Google Slides that I use to instruct them along with my commentary:
My ‘Religion in the United States’ class has been an interesting experiment. It’s in its second year now. The first year went splendidly, in part, because I have some upperclassmen who were (1) very invested in the topics we studied; (2) opinionated and ready to talk. In addition, one was a senior who was taking or had taken my colleagues class on government.
This year’s off to a bit of a slower start. The class is larger but the engagement hasn’t been as strong (which might correlate). It’s not been bad, just not as lively. In part, I wonder how much this has to do with my students sense of familiarity with the context of the class. Last year I had underclassmen—freshmen and sophomores—who wouldn’t have taken many classes exploring United States history, so I might be wrong about this.
In short, I created this course to be a genealogy and not a history. What do I mean by this? It’s an idea I got somewhere else but I’m struggling to remember the source. In short, a history is an overarching narrative constructed to make sense of events that appear to be related. A genealogy is a series of related snapshots where a similar topic is examined but not necessarily in a way that organizes them around an extended narrative. Both tend to be held together by a common theme or themes but a genealogy connects one point to the other much more loosely than a history.
To teach a genealogy, you have to assume that students can place the snapshots in relation to a history—or, at least this seems to help. Last year, a senior, whom I’ll refer to by his initials, W.G., was like a teacher’s aide. He contributed a ton of knowledge. He filled in the blanks with his observations. I think this helped other students. This year I don’t have someone like W.G.
So, what to do? Well, I’ll have sometime to think about this before teaching it again in spring 2021. Presently, I’m considering:
Today I mentioned Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue to my ‘Religion in the United States’ students and I’m happy to see that The National Constitution Center’s We The People Podcast has an episode on it already: ‘School Choice and the Separation of Church and State’. For those who haven’t heard about this case that has gone before the Supreme Court, the gist is this: ‘The lawsuit asks whether Montana violated the federal constitution when it terminated a program that gave tax breaks to people who donated to a scholarship fund, which was used by students attending both religious and secular private schools.’ The ruling ‘may have major implications for the free exercise of religion and the future of school choice and public education.’
The blog of Brian LePort 