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Writer's pictureLisa Magdalena Hess

Catering to Fear or Leading to Wonder?

[Apologies for any repeats -- problems 'publishing', it would seem]


Having learned how easy it seems (at least so far) to self-publish on Amazon, I’m actually considering writing a text-book for my masters-level seminary course, Christian Interreligious & Intercultural Encounter. I’ve been teaching this material in some fashion for the last ten years, but this past summer has given me new appreciation for how relevant the material is alongside the utter inability of incoming students to receive it in the framework of ‘critical thinking.’ This is probably heresy for the academic I am, but here we are. I am reorganizing the material of the course to prioritize Christian, which feels a bit like catering to students’ fears, but which may be honoring that learning needs to begin where they are. I don’t know. It’s hard to provide observation without evaluation, as non-violent communication standards would encourage, but I will try. 


If/as I am to continue in a seminary teaching vocation, I am committed to holding the best learning/teaching space for all incoming students, even if/when it requires me to relinquish my academic truisms, like critical thinking. I’m committed to the deepening of spiritual maturity more than the liberal project of a debate of ideas, so on the one hand, it’s not too hard to be where I am. And yet…


One or two students arrived with a refusal to even wonder or get curious about new things outside their own understandings of Christianity. One was in his early 20’s, so is being somewhat babied by the dean because of self-identifying with this fellow’s youthful zealotry. The other student, probably reactively pushed inwardly because of this young male student’s contempt, is in her late forties or early fifties (I’ll guess, given her life-experiences named in her final paper, which was excellent, if wounded and defensive). Both perceived the course and the online classroom as an actively anti-Christian space, with their fears projected largely onto me as the professor. No skin off my nose, at this point, because I have tended my mandate to them faithfully. I need not have any further interaction with them at all. (Well, one has been involved in leading worship at United, so there are some awkward energies, but for the most part, I can let both of them be in the grace of Godde, with nothing more required of me). Blessedly.


Yet if this is a sign of things to come, I am going to need to learn how best to hold space for rigidity to become curious without fear, it would seem. How does one do that amidst our fear-drenched settings today? I have a conversation scheduled with the dean, simply to get his ‘take’ on creating learning spaces for such students, regardless of age. I’m mostly curious about his own depth of commitment to the both-ands he and I supposedly share. 


For instance, I read through an Evangelical Confession shared with me from a Substack writer I enjoy–Karen Swallow Prior, an Evangelical woman who has been basically ostracized by her increasingly extremist colleagues in Baptist etc. circles–and realized I could actually sign it with integrity. It comes at a time when some Evangelicals are differentiating from the Trumpist Trance (as I call it), which I respect. I stand within such ‘specs’ in that intention, but not only within such specs. I am glad they are making the statement, in other words, even if my nearly 50 years in this theological world would bring serious challenge to Scripture–as it is used–and things like “only” or “never” or “always.” 


My father had sent me a “Confession of Progressive Christianity” from his church, that really does NOT nourish him, though he is a member of the congregation. I could see what the Progressive leaders (in Portland, OR) were attempting to name, but it had no teeth, no historical grounding in what I consider significant–life, death, bodily resurrection of Jesus. I could sign onto what they were trying to point to, that our world needs so badly. 


What I realize is that while I could fully stand behind the intentions & proclamations within each ‘statement,’ I doubt my spirit-friend, the dean, would be able to. Non-dualistic thinking, trusting the divine order of things, surrendering into the Spirit’s moment-by-moment movement…I get to do that in my vocation of seminary teaching. They (and many pastors) do NOT have that freedom. Or do they, but they refuse, so to hold onto what they already know? Again, I do not know.


Which mostly means I’m a better person to teach the course I’m teaching at the seminary than the dean or any pastor today would probably be. But it doesn’t protect me from the rigidities and projections of fear-drenched students, lashing out with contempt and disdain of any other side but their own. Once again, I land in the question that has motivated my entire life, actually: how do you love the fundamentalist as family while refusing their (what you experience as) narrow-mindedness and fear to de-form your own wonder, curiosity, love of mystery and scandalous abundance invited in Godde’s grace?


More important to my post…how might I write a textbook for congregationally-shaped, good-hearted Christians, regardless of location? Is that even possible? I wonder…

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Hess Condensed

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