Reflections and Confessions of a Pedagogue

In light of increasing levels of polarization between liberals and conservatives both in the classroom and in the wider culture, this article uses an introductory seminary course as a springboard for reflection upon pedagogical practices and assumptions to help address this divide. Special attention is given to the work of moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, as presented in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012). Haidt’s work seeks to enhance mutual understanding between persons on both sides of political and religious debates by showing that there are multiple legitimate foundations for making moral judgments. Although he does not frame his argument explicitly in terms of the mind-body problem, he consistently challenges the way western philosophy and psychology have privileged individual reason over the passions, social intuition, and other automatic processes associated with the body. He further challenges this age-old dualism by drawing upon body-related metaphors to make his case against moral monism and a narrow understanding of cognition restricted to conscious reasoning, exclusive of intuition and emotion as additional forms of information processing. Thus, the research of Haidt and other psychologists can contribute some “new directions” to the way we conceive of and teach in relationship to the “old connections” of body/mind and self/other (the theme of the 2012 Conference of the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology).