Towards a Non‐Essentialist Pedagogy of “Islam”

Abstract. Traversing a rock‐strewn terrain of essentialist methodologies historically employed for teaching Islam, the author espouses a non‐Essentialist pedagogy that combines critical reflection, analysis of historical methods, and development of an appreciation for alternative notions about Islam and global interdependence. In this essay the author contends that teaching Islam ought to avoid our and their language and instead aim at helping students think in critically reflective, creative, and relational ways so that they might learn to “think of civilizations as transformative, reflexive, and fluid entities.”     

While We Wait: The Foolishness of Scarcity,the “Devalued Other,” and Pedagogies of “Becoming”

This article considers how Christian women leaders might, in the absence of global economic equality for women, reframe theological dialogue that affirms the work and worth of the “devalued other” – 21st‐century women living in economic insecurity – and to declare that Jesus' eschatological hope is in the feminization of abundance. The article engages the parable of the wise and foolish virgins as a messianic requirement to deconstruct the barriers that keep the devalued other from seeing her full potential and to challenge the foolishness of scarcity that has taken hold of the daughters of privilege. It seeks to engage an African feminist hermeneutic as the primary methodology and to craft an emerging pedagogy of “becoming” that speaks to the cosmic shift to strengthen the agency of women as we await the coming Parousia.     

Pedagogy and Theology in Cyberspace: “All That We Can’t Leave Behind. . .”

The questions raised by the integration of digital technologies into theology and pedagogy are broader than simple questions of how to use a particular tool. Instead, this integration raises cultural questions that require cultural interventions in response. Shweder's notion of “thinking through others” provides an evocative framework for envisioning more complex pedagogical responses. This essay is based on a presentation delivered to the first annual conference on Theology and Pedagogy in Cyberspace, held in Evanston, Illinois on 19–20 April 2001.     

The “Place” of Place‐Based Pedagogy in Teaching Religion: Brooklyn and Its Religions

Place‐based pedagogy offers students a distinctive way to be attentive to a particular expression of a given religion while enabling them to minimize generalizations on the basis of that experience. Place‐based pedagogies decenter the traditional classroom as the sole locus of learning and emphasize the value of learning within varied spatial frameworks including undeveloped natural environments and built environments in rural, suburban, or urban communities. This article, set in Brooklyn, New York, is a case study of place‐based teaching in an urban context. “Brooklyn and Its Religions” is a course that provides students with a place to explore diverse expressions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The article describes the course and analyzes students' field reports in two settings to demonstrate the value of place‐based learning for studying religion in Brooklyn.     

“Talking Race” in the College Classroom: The Role of Social Structures and Social Factors in Race Pedagogy

This article examines the role of race in the college classroom. Two types of college institutions in which the author has had personal teaching experience are examined. It is argued that educators should tailor a particular pedagogy on the basis of the unique contexts in which they teach. Este artículo examina el rol que tiene la raza en la clase universitaria. Se analisan dos tipos de instituciones universitarias en las cuales el autor ha tenido experiencia pedagógica. El planteamiento es que los instructores deben adaptar una pedagogía a base de los contextos particulares en los que enseñan.     

V. M. BEKHTEREV IN RUSSIAN CHILD SCIENCE, 1900S–1920S: “OBJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY”/“REFLEXOLOGY” AS A SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT

In the early 20^th century the child population became a major focus of scientific, professional and public interest. This led to the crystallization of a dynamic field of child science, encompassing developmental and educational psychology, child psychiatry and special education, school hygiene and mental testing, juvenile criminology and the anthropology of childhood. This article discusses the role played in child science by the eminent Russian neurologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev. The latter's name is associated with a distinctive program for transforming the human sciences in general and psychology in particular that he in the 1900s labelled “objective psychology” and from the 1910s renamed “reflexology.” The article examines the equivocal place that Bekhterev's “objective psychology” and “reflexology” occupied in Russian/Soviet child science in the first three decades of the 20^th century. While Bekhterev's prominence in this field is beyond doubt, analysis shows that “objective psychology” and “reflexology” had much less success in mobilizing support within it than certain other movements in this arena (for example, “experimental pedagogy” in the pre‐revolutionary era); it also found it difficult to compete with the variety of rival programs that arose within Soviet “pedology” during the 1920s. However, this article also demonstrates that the study of child development played a pivotal role in Bekhterev's program for the transformation of the human sciences: it was especially important to his efforts to ground in empirical phenomena and in concrete research practices a new ontology of the psychological, which, the article argues, underpinned “objective psychology”/“reflexology” as a transformative scientific movement.     

“PURE” VERSUS “PRACTICAL” EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

Abstract: In this article I distinguish a type of justification that is “epistemic” in pertaining to the grounds of one's belief, and “practical” in its connection to what act(s) one may undertake, based on that belief. Such justification, on the proposed account, depends mainly on the proportioning of “inner epistemic virtue” to the “outer risks” implied by one's act. The resulting conception strikes a balance between the unduly moralistic conception of William Clifford and contemporary naturalist virtue theories.     

The Evolving “D” in “BASIC ID”

The multimodal counseling model is based on the notion that a client's concerns can be dealt with most successfully when the counselor or therapist treats several aspects of a client's functioning. The multimodal model uses the acronym BASIC ID to identify the areas of client functioning that frequently need to be treated. These areas include behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relations, and drugs. The D mode, which represents drugs, is a misunderstood aspect of the BASIC ID partly because it does not seem to parallel other aspects of the model. Over the past few years the D mode has been expanded to include more than drugs, in particular, to include diet and other physiological factors. This article describes the evolution of the D mode and attempts to show the importance of a physiological dimension to the multimodal counseling approach.     

“SECOND-GUESSING”

Messages received from other social actors cannot always be taken at face value. When people have reason to question such messages, it is hypothesized that they engage in a cognitive process called “second-guessing,” wherein they reevaluate the literal interpretation of the message to determine its veridicality. Should they determine that it is not veridical, they generate an alternative, potentially more plausible interpretation. We assessed the frequency and importance of situations that might provoke reinterpretation of messages. Such situations were seen as occurring frequently and were of some importance. Social actors revealed sophisticated knowledge concerning the strengths and weaknesses of information obtained about people or events outside their direct experience. They also claimed to be able to “debias”such information, winnowing a “correct” interpretation from one judged to be “incorrect.” Preliminary data suggest that naive social actors are quite good at delecting scientifically documented sources of bias and making reasonable adjustments in their judgments to correct for those biases when plausibly present.     

ECONOMY OF “INVISIBLE DEBT” AND ETHICS OF “RADICAL HOSPITALITY”: Toward a Paradigm Change of Hospitality from “Gift” to “Forgiveness”

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a Christian theology of “hospitality” through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as through an in‐depth biblical and theological reflection on the ethics of hospitality. Out of this reconstructive investigation, I propose a new Christian ethics of hospitality as a radical kind. As a new paradigm, this radical hospitality is distinguished from other types in that it is no longer conceived on the model of “gift”. The new Christian ethics of hospitality is rather reconstructed on the model of “forgiveness” by critically appropriating the concept of “invisible debt” that lies between the hosting citizens and the migrants in the senses of “you owe us your presence” and “I owe you my security and success.” While the hospitality of the gift defines the relationship between the hosting citizens and the migrants as givers and givees, the new paradigm of hospitality identifies this relationship as between creditors and debtors. In this regard, a new Christian hospitality called for unto citizens of the hosting society is a radical kind that challenges them to transcend the creditor‐debtor consciousness.     

“Equal Discipleship”

Feminist theology is known for its various critical principles and methods of biblical interpretation. In the process of doing feminist biblical interpretation, feminist theologians have started to build their theological frameworks. This article takes the feminist biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and her construction of the New Testament as an example. In her book Discipleship of Equals, Schüssler Fiorenza put forward the important viewpoint of “equal discipleship.” This viewpoint provides a dialogue between Schüssler Fiorenza and the theological concerns of women in China. Like Schüssler Fiorenza, Chinese theologians have also noted the testimonies of Chinese women Christians in the development of the church. These can help female Christians realize who they are and the significance of being a member of the church. Christian Chinese traditional culture still influences the understanding of women's identity. This will be a significant challenge and task in practising Chinese feminist theology.     

“SECRET TESTS”

The current study was undertaken to develop a typology of “secret tests,”—that is, social strategies that people use to acquire knowledge about the state of their opposite-sex relationships. Furthermore, the influences of relationship type and respondent sex on strategy use were assessed. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed with data obtained from a total of 181 respondents. Findings suggest 14 basic categories of “secret tests” that comprise 7 cluster types in a two-dimensional spatial representation. Passive, active, and interactive strategy types were evident. Females reported more secret test strategies than did males, and people in opposite-sex relationships that were in transition from platonic to romantic reported more strategies than people in either platonic cross-sex or romantic cross-sex relationships. Differences were found as well in the type of secret test most likely to be employed as a function of respondent sex and relationship type.     

Educating American Muslim Leadership (Men and Women) for the Twenty‐First Century

Abstract. Educating and training Muslim men and women leaders who are capable of effectively navigating the multi‐ethnic and multi‐religious terrain in America – particularly in the post 9–11 milieu – requires the development of a new critical American Muslim pedagogy. This new pedagogy, centered in Islamic epistemology and ontology, should selectively appropriate the best of traditional Muslim educational paradigms and modalities used over time. However, the traditional Muslim model must not be reified, but rather be subjected to a sharp critique which maintains the richness of its spiritual and intellectual legacy but rejects teachings and interpretations used to create false dichotomies resulting in binary constructs, particularly those which pit Muslims against the west. Finally, the new critical American Muslim pedagogy must embrace all of the best discursive practices (e.g., pedagogies of Freire and others) that engage us in a critical analysis of the way in which power and privilege, even in religious communities, operate to marginalize and suppress women, minorities, and people of color.     

“SCIENCE,” “RELIGION,” AND “SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION” IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Many intellectuals wrote texts on the relations between Islam and science in the nineteenth‐century Ottoman Empire. These texts not only addressed the massive social and cultural changes the Empire was going through, but responded to European authors’ claims about the extent to which Islam was compatible with the modern world. Focusing on several texts written in the second half of the nineteenth century by the influential Muslim Ottoman authors Namik Kemal, Ahmed Midhat, and ?emseddin Sami, this article shows the influence of these exigencies on arguments on Islam and science. In order to represent Islam as a respectable religion in harmony with science, these intellectuals defined a “pure Islam” that was a set of basic principles that could be found in the Qur'an. Rather than an embedded way of life, Islam in these texts was an objectified, delimitable entity that could be imagined as having relations with other entities, such as science.     

THE “NEGATIVE” AND “POSITIVE” ARGUMENTS OF MORAL MODERATES

According to Shelly Kagan, “ordinary” or “moderate” moralists must establish the existence of “options.” Kagan considers a “negative” and a “positive” argument, which he regards as the most promising means by which moral moderates might establish their position. He offers objections to both, and he concludes that the moderate position is indefensible. I argue that Kagan fails in his attempt to discredit the negative argument. I also argue that the positive argument is so implausible that Kagan's elaborate criticism of it is unnecessary. The positive argument is interesting nevertheless, because of why it cannot serve the moderate's purposes.     

“Cyber” Barth

This article describes a study of the theology of Karl Barth carried out by four students at Memphis Theological Seminary who used the Internet and e-mail in addition to other means for learning. Dr. Donald K. McKim taught the class and here describes the way in which the class was structured, how students used the World Wide Web, a Newsgroup in which students participated, and their use of e-mail to amplify discussion. McKim indicates the advantage of using these resources which introduced students to a “new world” of media and unique resources, linked them with others throughout the world who also had an interest in Barth, and provided an enhanced means of communication for the students with each other and with the professor. He also provides further reflections about the experience in relation to seminary teaching.     

“Never Again War”

This essay addresses the complexities of the Roman Catholic position on war by evaluating recent documentary evidence, attending to the contemporary challenges of terrorism and humanitarian interventions. It presents two arguments. First, attending to traditional Catholic resources for assessing war, papal criticism of recent military action, and debates about a recent shift in Catholic just war logic, this essay argues that Catholic teaching on war has undergone a repositioning in a pacifist direction. Second, it contends that recent critiques of this shift in position by scholars such as George Weigel and James Turner Johnson, however, are wrong to categorize this a “functional pacifism.” Though a development from within just war theory and pacifist reasoning, the Church's new stance does not operate as a type of pacifism, allowing too many possibilities for justified armed conflict to be labeled as “functional” pacifism. The essay concludes by examining the traditional Catholic theological commitments that place limits on any movement toward pacifism, precluding even a functionally pacifist position.