Considerations for an Inclusive Global Theological Education

This article considers the role of theological education in developing the ministry of the church and the need for it to be relevant to the realities and needs of the people it is to serve. The article considers three factors – racism, imperialism, and tribalism – that influence theological education in different ways. It then turns to a consideration of African‐American womanist theology and African women's theology – as reflected in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians – and the similarities between these two approaches as expressions of liberation theology and their relevance for inclusive global theological education.     

Major Challenges for African Women Theologians in Theological Education (1989–2008)

The paper reflects on the major challenges for African women theologians in theological education as presented and experienced in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (“Circle”) which was launched in Ghana in 1989 as a community of African women theologians who come together to reflect on what it means to them to be women of faith within their experiences of religion, culture, politics and social‐economic structures in Africa. Four major challenges are identified that African women theologians have had to contend with and which are still present, namely (1) re‐defining the identity of African women theologians; (2) promoting more women to study theology and be on permanent staff; (3) inclusion of African women's theology in the theological curriculum; and (4) collaboration with male theologians.     

The Challenge and Urgency of Gender Inclusion in Theological Education

Twenty years after the conclusion of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, this article considers the development and the need for inclusion of gender in the sphere of theological reflection and education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Rather than a historical account, it proposes an approach that works toward thinking about and developing a new form of relationship between women and men, and between them and today's society and church.     

Caribbean Women's Empowerment

This article focuses on the necessity for theological education and theological participation for women in the Caribbean to be formally trained to participate in the restructuring and developing of any institutional programmes and training regarding theological education.     

Sisters of the Heart Along the Way: The Power of the Female Mentoring Relationship

Women's mentoring relationships with other women can have powerful effects on professional development and enrich the lives of both mentor and protégée. Women psychology students and early career psychologists are tasked with integrating their personal and professional identities and overcoming gender-related barriers to professional growth and career success. Mentors provide assistance negotiating these and other challenges to the junior professional's development. The author shares her experience as a woman student and early career psychologist in the context of her relationship with her woman mentor. She discusses her reconciliation of stereotyped beliefs about being a woman and a professional psychologist; processes significantly influenced by powerful characteristics of her mentoring relationship such as supportive encouragement, modeling, transparency, and spiritual connectedness. The author then explores the link between the relational qualities in the mentoring relationship and an enhanced overall approach to clinical work with patients. Last, the benefits of women's intimate relationships are discussed, followed by references that explore benefits and challenges, and models and strategies for women mentoring women. The author concludes that as a sister of the heart relationship, the mentoring bond between women can be a healing and empowering attachment.     

Race and the gift of lament

A close look at historical narratives can help us understand how intractable racial injustice is, both in society and in the church. Progress toward racial equity requires us to recognize ourselves as actors in history, and also as those influenced by and acted upon by the forces of history. In addition, lament can help us move toward the theological work of repentance. This article is adapted from The Gift of Lament: Moving from Diversity to Racial Equity in the ELCA, 2018 MDiv Thesis, Wartburg Theological Seminary. Portions of this article were also presented at the June 2019 Convocation of Teaching Theologians.     

The locus theologicus of U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a Theology and its implications for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) curriculum development

The author examines the history of theological method based on the term locus theologicus, the refinement of this method by Liberation Theologians and U. S. Hispanic/Latino/a Theologians, and describes one experience of using contextual theology to develop curriculum for Second-Year Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Residents.     

Evangelism as Discipleship

This article gives attention to the challenges that the missional and conversational relationship of the church poses in the intercourse between evangelism, discipleship, theological education and leadership formation in its ministry and mission. This multi‐faceted and complex process brings together competing interests with different agendas that, in a number of contexts, have resulted in mis‐evangelization. This has called into question issues about human dignity and respect and the need for reciprocity to inform all missional response of the churches. The article argues that an appropriate model of theological education is needed to equip leaders for effective witness to the gospel. This necessitates the recruitment and mentoring of emerging leaders who have had a life‐changing encounter with the life‐giving Spirit of Jesus that controls their identity, vocation and witness. Some experiences of formal and informal theological education and formation within the Anglo‐Caribbean context were identified that disconnected and disorientated leaders from the Church's missional task of bearing effective witness to the gospel. This article calls for an overhaul of seminary‐ and university‐based theological education careerism, because they serve as an encumbrance to nurturing effective contextual witness of churches. The article argues that if Jesus calls and makes us into his disciples, then faithfulness in discipleship necessitates that (1) authentic evangelism must be grounded in humility and respect for all, (2) leadership formation must be infectiously relational, and (3) the gospel must be communicated through genuine interpersonal and community‐affirming relationships. The article ends with an invitation to all churches to embrace a missional model of witnessing that invests in living with, learning from and sharing with people in communities depending on the Spirit of God in Christ to lead and bear fruit in God's time.     

Enhancing Theological Education for Women in Africa

This paper highlights the models that are being used by African women theologians and the All Africa Conference of Churches to increase women's chances in theological education, hence ensuring equal participation of women and men in church leadership.     

Hidden Treasures in Theological Education: The Writing Tutor,the Spiritual Director,and Practices of Academic and Spiritual Mentoring

Mentoring is an important but often overlooked resource in theological education and students' academic and spiritual formation. This essay profiles the mentoring practices and postures of the writing tutor and the spiritual director as exemplars of academic and spiritual mentoring. An extended probe of this analogy affirms the integration of academic and spiritual formation as a core value in theological education; identifies mentoring in theological education as a hidden treasure fostering this integration and warranting attention as a theological practice; and re‐envisions the theological practice of mentoring under the traditional rubric of the “care of souls,” embracing the relational, educational, formational, spiritual, and rhetorical dimensions of this practice.     

The Christianization of African Traditional Religions

In studies of the historical growth and spread of Christianity in Africa, the focus has been too much on Christianizing African social and religious institutions and structures, and not enough on African traditional religion itself, which needs to be addressed by Christianity. This article addresses the core – that is, the theology and worldview – of the African traditional religion. It argues that this core needs to be Christianized and shows how this can be done. In order to achieve this task, the article uses a new theological method, a “systematic theology” of African traditional religion, as the basis for a theological method of engagement and interaction of religions and worldview. This new method explains in practical terms how Christianity can effectively Christianize African traditional religions and worldviews.     

Pan‐African Women's Voices across Borders

This article is structured from the epistemological vantage point of framing theological education within the context of Pan‐African women's experiences of migration, where theological education is defined in the widest sense of creating knowledge, ethos, and practices from within different versions of Christian tradition, as opposed to transmitting a static corpus of knowledge. It begins by examining the deconstructive potential of Pan‐African female migrants, particularly with regard to gendered patterns and projections of theological education. It then describes and analyzes the impact of Pan‐African female migrants on the project of contextual theological education as an act of birthing and bringing to life the dimensions of seeing and interpreting the one life‐giving story through the lenses of the lamenting, celebrating, and transforming stories of many. The article concludes by presenting Pan‐African female migration as an opportunity to revisit theological education as a creative, ecumenical, and intercultural enterprise, seeing the empirical location of Pan‐African female migrants as a paradigmatic lens for revisiting theological education as intercultural enterprise, and not (exclusively) as a contextual – and hence exceptional – historic experience.     

UPHOLDING THE HUMANUM: SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY'S FOUNDATIONAL CHARACTER1

Theologians in the liberal tradition have developed the distinctive method of critically correlating Christian revelation with critical interpretations of history, texts and social realities. Non‐foundationalists react to this stance by developing theological anthropologies for which interdisciplinary correlation is deemed unnecessary. In response, this paper argues for a retrieval of a philosophical anthropology that address the advances made in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology, though aware of the secularizing failings of theological liberalism. In contrast to the anti‐religious materialism of scientists such as Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, human freedom needs to be argued on the basis of complexity science and the emergent systems it explains. Both correlationist and non‐foundationalist theological strategies are unable to respond to the threat to human freedom posed by scientific materialism. The science of emergent complex structures is the most plausible research programme for constructing a viable theological anthropology. To uphold the humanum is to uphold human freedom based on a scature. This leads me to suggest that theology is best characterized as foundationalist in the general sense of its universal scope.     

Perceived Mentoring Fairness: Relationships with Gender,Mentoring Type,Mentoring Experience,and Mentoring Needs

While mentoring is often recommended as a careerenhancement strategy for men and women, this studyexamines perceptions of the fairness of mentoringrelationships. In this experiment, a total of 124 male and female participants provided dataconcerning their fairness perceptions in reaction tomentoring scenarios presented to them. A total of 49% ofthe sample were male and 51% were female and 82% were Caucasian, 12% were Asian American, 3% wereLatino American, and 3% were African American. Severalindividual factors such as past mentoring experiencesand having met mentoring needs as well as interactions with gender (by mentoring type, mentoringreceived, and met needs) were related to ratings offairness. In addition, past mentoring received andperceived fairness of mentoring were related to reportsof how much mentoring participants reported theyhad given others.     

Discovering Jesus Anew

In light of the political and ritual abuse of religion in India today, this article underlines the importance of Christian women’s engagement with women of all faiths to resist discrimination and violence. The Indian Christian Women’s Movement draws on Jesus’ liberative practice and teaching as women find creative and subversive ways to strengthen Christian women’s solidarity with women of other faiths. While all faith traditions carry embedded patriarchal biases that have been used to legitimize the second-class status of women, they also have streams of liberation motifs. The article employs a feminist epistemology to reconstruct dominant theological motifs and assumptions based on an ethic of care, compassion, and mutuality in relationships.     

Divine Omniscience: Is God's Foreknowledge at Risk in the Context of Contemporary Science?

Abstract

Does quantum indeterminacy threaten the classical theological doctrine of divine omniscience? Certain popular interpretations of quantum physics have challenged conventional ways of thinking about time and space, being and becoming. Consequently, the traditional doctrine that God knows all things, including future contingent events, has recently come under debate. This paper explores how the way we think about time affects the way we think about God's relation to time. Theologians need to be careful when appropriating scientific theories in their theological reflections because interpretations of those theories often bring along unnecessary metaphysical presuppositions. Using an interpretation of special relativity that focuses on the Lorentz transformation, this paper shows that modern physics does not truly challenge the doctrine of divine foreknowledge. In fact, modern physical theories can actually deepen theological reflection on the classical doctrine of divine omniscience.     

Empirical Theology: inter‐ or intra‐disciplinary?

This article seeks to reflect on the methodology of what has come to be called ‘empirical theology’. In particular it considers the question of how theology might relate to the social sciences. The more established expression is what is called the ‘inter‐disciplinary’ approach. This has been advocated by both sociologists and religious educationalists. In contrast, Johannes van der Ven, Professor of Practical Theology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, advocates an ‘intra‐disciplinary’ approach. This approach is innovative in seeking to incorporate social science methods within a theological framework. The contention of the article is that while some forms of inter‐disciplinary approaches are potentially more rigorous they are not without difficulty. Theologians, however, have been given a valuable model of how theology might relate to the social sciences by means of van der Ven's approach. It now remains for the practical theological community of scholars to assess it.     

Multiple Mentoring with Single Mothers

This article describes the use of multiple mentoring as a technique to help single mothers. The mentoring process and the use of multiple mentoring for preentry-level women are reported. Practical considerations are given for counselors using such a model.     

Checking Out the Future: A Perspective from African Theological Education

This article refers to the Global Survey on Theological Education, conducted between 2011 and 2013, to provide sub‐Saharan African critical reflection on the future of theological education in the continent. It considers the many contextual factors and shifting world views shaping Africa today, including the demographic shift of the heartlands of Christianity from the North to the South. It summarizes and analyzes seven critical responses from the survey findings, concluding that issues such as accreditation, accountability, integrity of leaders, viability of vision, and collaboration must be perceived in their interdependence and addressed systematically and comprehensively for the future of theological education in African Christianity. 1     

The Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network in the Caribbean

The context of theological formation in the Caribbean is the diversity and crucible of cultures and in which women have played a great role and made a great impact.