The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, First Edition. Edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 28

Religious Education

Carol Lakey Hess

Existence itself [is] an act of questioning. Paulo Freire

Religious education and religious formation are sometimes understood as processes for transmitting the central beliefs and practices of a religious tradition. This is espe-

cially true with certain “ religious instruction ” models of religious education. Religious education is, in my view, however, the re - asking and re - engagement of the depth ques-tions a religious tradition has asked.

The term religious , as used in this chapter, refers to that which asks the depth ques-tions of life. The term education , correspondingly, indicates the process of remembering and re - asking the questions that are central to a particular religious tradition. Theology is refl ection on how God relates to depth questions, and it includes the hard questions surrounding theodicy. 1 Practical theology is the process of placing theology and cultural wisdom into a mutually critical and mutually enhancing conversation with one another for the purpose of evoking and probing depth questions as most clearly articulated by systematic theologian David Tracy (1981) . Along with practical theologian Don Browning (1991) , I also contend that all authentic Christian theology is governed by practical interests. But I believe those practical interests are fundamental existential questions. The richest religious traditions – and there are many rich religions – are those that ask and wrestle with hard questions arising out of the human condition. This chapter explores the nature and methods of religious education as a practical theological enterprise dedicated to preserving this practice of re - asking the questions.

1 Theodicy refers to attempts to justify God when the logic of theism is at risk: (1) God is omnipo-tent; (2) God is all good; (3) there is evil. Theodicy tries to hold all three together and explain how (1) and (2) are still true even in the presence of (3).

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Traditions Still in the Making

Barbara Kingsolver ’ s novel The Lacuna rather ambitiously sweeps through major twentieth - century world events from the 1930s to the 1950s. Kingsolver takes readers back into the McCarthy era, which saw investigations and prosecutions for “ anti - American ” activities (activities that could in any way be linked with – or even inter-preted as – socialism, communism, or acquaintance with those so linked). In Kingsolver ’ s book, a bicultural Mexican American writer, Shepherd Harrison, who was a cook and scribe for the prominent Mexican artist Diego Rivera, is called up on such charges. He discusses these charges with his lawyer, Arthur Gold.

“ You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It ’ s what these guys have decided to call America . They have the audacity to say, ‘ There . . . don ’ t lay a fi nger on it. That is a fi nished product! ’ ”

“ But any country is still in the making. Always. That ’ s just history, people have to see that. ”

Suddenly he [Arthur Gold] looked weary. “ You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fi xing what ’ s broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it ’ s broken, you are automatically disqualifi ed. ” (Kingsolver 2009 : 425)

A tradition is always “ still in the making, ” and it stays alive by carefully and tenaciously protecting the question mark .

Unfortunately, traditions sometimes do “ auction off the question mark, ” so to speak. Traditions can become vulnerable to what Christian historian Jaroslav Pelikan called “ traditionalism, ” a static, homogenized, and rigid understanding of the faith of those who came before us that can lead to a closed and dead faith. Yet, the traditioning process itself can be continuous and creative – a making and remaking rather than a declaring of being fi nished. Or, as Pelikan put it, “ tradition is the living faith of the dead; tradi-tionalism is the dead faith of the living ” ( 1984 : 65). Tradition lives in conversation with the past, but it is a conversation that looks to the questions and issues of the present situation. It is a conversation that requires decision and not simply the receiving of a deposited wisdom. Traditionalism supposes that all that is needed to respond to the present situation is to discern a supposedly unanimous testimony of a homogenized tradition.

Education as a Space for Questioning and Reinventing

This understanding of education is indebted to Paulo Freire ’ s philosophy of liberatory education. An innovative theorist of critical pedagogy, Freire argues that education should begin with the questions that learners ask rather than the answers at which experts have arrived or that teachers have received. In their book Learning to Question , Freire and Antonio Faundez carry on a dialogue about education, urging that educa-tion begin with curiosity, existential questions, and the risk to rethink and reinvent

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existing answers. Faundez remarks: “ knowledge begins with asking questions. And only when we begin with questions, should we go in search of answers, and not the other way around. ” Freire argues that in much education there is a “ castration of curiosity ” in which the educational movement is from one direction. “ There is no come - back, and there is not even any searching. The educator, generally, produces answers without having been asked anything ” (Freire and Faundez 1989 : 35). The “ pedagogy of answers, ” which Freire also calls a “ pedagogy of adaptation, ” hinders creativity and genuine problem solving (40). The only way for a people to act and change, and thus fi x what is in the land, is to be open to surprise, questioning, and risk.

To use Kingsolver ’ s image, Freire fi ercely protects the question mark. He even visual-izes and produces his own “ method. ” He contends that the only way anyone can apply any of the suggestions he has made in their situation is precisely by redoing what he has done. “ In order to follow me it is essential not to follow me! ” (Freire and Faundez 1989 : 30).

Questioning and Wrestling

The basic approach to education that I encourage in congregations and religious com-munities, taught and studied as a discipline in the academy, is what I call “ Q and W ” – a “ questioning and wrestling ” with what has come before us for our reinterpretation and reconstruction (see Hess 2003 ). Although provisional responses to “ what is broken in the land ” will follow from this wrestling, the responses will be recognized as part of a tradition “ still in the making. ” I suggest that religious education involves:

• engaging questions asked and/or implied in biblical texts and traditional sources; • listening for questions lurking in the margins; • joining with those from other religious traditions to grapple with common reli-

gious questions (interreligious education); • correlating the questions of tradition and culture.

This approach follows other hermeneutical approaches to religious education in practi-cal theology that engage experience and create a dialogue between culture and tradi-tion. The leading contemporary religious educator in this tradition is Thomas Groome (1980) , whose “ shared praxis approach ” has been an important infl uence.

Engaging Direct or Implied Questions: Reader - Response Theory

Many depth questions are asked directly in a tradition ’ s sacred texts. “ How long O Lord? ” (Ps. 13:1; NRSV). “ What does the Lord require of you? ” (Mic. 6:8). “ Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? ” (John 9:2). More often than not, however, the questions that motivated the tradition are implied or embedded – and rereading sacred texts recreates the question in us. We can lose the vital role that the

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tradition plays in recreating the questions for each generation by focusing on the con-clusions of a text rather than on its originating questions.

In arguing that the sources of tradition not only ask but also indirectly generate depth questions about life, I draw on a formal reader - response analysis (see Hess 2009 , to which this section is indebted). A basic premise of various reader - response theories is that meaning is an interaction between text and reader. Furthermore, meaning is an event that is based on what the text does in readers. Or, as US literary theorist Stanley Fish states it, a sentence, a paragraph, or full narrative, “ is an action made upon a reader ” rather than “ a container from which a reader extracts a message ” ( 1980 : 23). More than that, reading “ is an experience; it occurs; it does something; it makes us do something ” (Fish 1980 : 32).

The formal analysis of texts that Fish offers looks carefully at the mental processes produced by the text. The question for interpreters is not “ What does this sentence mean? ” but rather “ What does this sentence do to the reader? ” (Fish 1980 : 25). The text ’ s meaning does not consist of the conclusions we draw about what the text says . Rather the meaning consists of our experience of what the text does . Thus, meaning is not “ extracted ” from a text but rather “ participated ” in during the event of reading. This process of interpretation has obvious appeal to anyone invested in practical theol-ogy and religious education as disciplines focused on lived faith.

According to Fish, the text is “ no longer an object, a thing - in - itself, but an event, something that happens to, and with the participation of, the reader ” ( 1980 : 25). It is this event that is the meaning of the sentence. Fish, in fact, refers to literature as a “ kinetic art ” that does not lend itself to a static interpretation or to the illusion of objectivity. The sentence of a paragraph or story “ refuses to stay still and doesn ’ t let you stay still either ” (43). The basic method or approach is the asking of the question. What does this word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, chapter, novel, play, poem do in and to the reader?

Religious education, when it uses sacred texts and traditional sources, can be con-ceived as a series of literary events that produce depth questions about life, including the hard questions about God ’ s presence in the midst of suffering and evil. Biblical nar-ratives would be read as “ events ” – specifi cally, events that engage human depth ques-tions. The responses to these questions can thus be refl ected on as part of a range of proximate responses – always pointing to the unending need to re - ask the question. Thus, the point of reading a biblical narrative in the context of religious education would not be to decipher what the text “ says, ” even if this is often the aim of biblical scholars. Rather, the objective is to consider what goes on in the readers as they engage in the event of reading. In many instances, we quickly pass from the questions to the offered answers, and we lose sight of the event occurring in the reader. But many bibli-cal texts are both born out of and produce questions. When tragic biblical narratives are understood as events, we do not just look for a static interpretation of the story, but read and engage the whole of what is going on in the reader. In many cases, some of which we will consider, traces of the questions remain in the biblical narrative.

This kind of reading is especially important when the tradition ’ s answer is troubling or in some cases actually to be resisted. For instance, many of the prophetic texts pro-claim that God directly intervenes in history to punish people for unrighteousness or

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injustice (for instance, Amos). There is an important question behind these texts: What does God care about? We may not be convinced that God is as involved in historical punishings as the prophet claims, and we may have a strong negative reaction to the claims made for how God acts; but we want to affi rm that, however we understand it, God cares deeply about injustice.

Sometimes a text re - asks a question, argues with a former answer, but still leaves us asking. For instance, in John ’ s account of the man born blind (chapter 9 ), the disciples directly ask whose fault it was. “ His disciples asked him, ‘ Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? ’ Jesus answered, ‘ Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God ’ s works might be revealed in him ’ ” (John 9:2 – 3). The deeper question is: Why do people suffer? Jesus argues that it is no one ’ s fault, but that the man was born blind so that God could be glorifi ed. It is helpful to participate in this event of arguing with an older tradition (which assumed natural tragedies were punishments of some kind). If we stay with the question we continue to argue.

Consider Genesis 18: 20 – 32, the report of Abraham ’ s insistence that the Lord not slay innocent persons in his anger at the wicked. “ Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, ” says Abraham. In this passage, Abraham repeats this phrase twice, and he speaks up to the Lord a total of six times. He insists that “ the Judge of all the earth do what is just, ” and when he is not fully satisfi ed with the response he dares to speak to the Lord and press his concern. There are two questions embedded in the text: Does God care about, or perhaps even cause, innocent suffering? Is it okay to confront and even to quarrel with God?

What does this text do ? What is the nature of the event of reading this narrative? This narrative, with its spotlight on Abraham ’ s compassion, invites readers to think about persons who seem off the divine radar. Furthermore, it shows a man who is “ but dust and ashes ” pressing God and not resting until he gets a satisfying response. The narrative works in us to move us to join with Abraham and raise questions of justice to God. The narrative “ refuses to stay still ” and does not let the reader stay still either.

This text is a text that invites struggle with God. Abraham is expressing the “ just ” view and seems to doubt that God ’ s attention is in the right place. He provides an exem-plar for one who argues with God and for one who is not satisfi ed that God ignore justice. As John Roth, a leading fi gure in genocide studies and protest theologies, states, “ a religious perspective that allows room for quarrelsome protest against God can, in fact, be an asset and not a hindrance to moral commitments ” ( 2001 : 35).

Listening for Questions Lurking in the Margins

Sometimes repressed questions, as distinct from direct or implied questions, lurk within sacred texts and traditions without a space for wrestling. When such questions build to a certain level of discomfort, they either create costly repression or they cause people, adults as well as teenagers, to leave a tradition.

In the middle of Anne Tyler ’ s novel Saint Maybe , a precocious pre - adolescent Agatha tells her guardian Ian that she does not want to go to church any longer. She is troubled

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into disbelief by a number of Bible stories that in her view describe an unfair and unreasonable God. “ Take that business of the fi g tree . . . Jesus cursing the fi g tree. ” Agatha continues, “ Jesus decides He wants fi gs . . . Of course, it ’ s not fi g season , but Jesus wants fi gs anyhow. So up He walks to this fi g tree, but naturally all He fi nds is leaves. And what does He do? Puts a curse on the poor little tree. ” “ Or Abraham and Isaac. That one really ticks me off. God asks Abraham to kill his own son. And Abraham says, ‘ Okay. ’ Can you believe it? And then at the very last minute God says, ‘ Only testing. Ha - ha. ’ Boy, I ’ d like to know what Isaac thought. All the rest of his life, any time his father so much as looked in his direction Isaac would think – . . . ” (Tyler 1991 : 217 – 219).

By paying attention to the questions that children and strangers ask, we can raise what is repressed to consciousness. Agatha is, of course, not the fi rst person to notice such repressed questions. Abraham ’ s action in particular has been a source of fi erce debate for centuries. Religious education picks up this long - standing tradition, often exemplifi ed in Jewish scriptural interpretation and Midrash, in which scripture is seen not as a permanent fi xture but as unfi nished and ever evolving. Religious education can be an opportunity where asking the seemingly unaskable is permitted and even encouraged.

Joining Other Religious Traditions to Ask Common Questions: Interreligious Education

Most religious traditions grew out of and center around the depth questions of life. The various responses to those questions often cause confl ict within and between religions. But perhaps some of this could be alleviated if diverse religious persons gathered around the table to refl ect on the questions that energize their resulting commitments. An approach to religious education that focuses on the enduring questions of traditions lends itself readily to interreligious conversation and dialogue. Rather than comparing beliefs, interreligious conversations can focus on bringing common questions to the dialogue and joining together to wrestle with those questions.

Feminist process theologian Marjorie Suchocki ’ s “ call and response ” theology of creation is helpful here. In Suchocki ’ s process view of the development of religions, God “ calls ” and creation, with individual distinctiveness, “ responds. ” “ God then responds to the creation ’ s response, and building upon it, calls yet again. Through call and response, the creation comes into being as world. It is incremental, gradual, with the creation participating in its own becoming ” ( 2003 : 29). God is in relation to and responds to particularity “ rather than to the conglomerate as a whole ” (31). “ God responds to the world, evaluating and integrating what the world has done with the last call into the divine self. God then calls a new form into existence, with this new form made possible by the last response ” (28).

A view of creation as individual and gradual necessarily implies religious diversity and historical development. It is often the case that in response to a sense of the divine, a community of people responds with deep questions about life. The process may be more of call and question with a groping toward response. Both the question and the

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provisional response depend on the particularities of persons and communities. The more a community continues to question, the more it can hone its sense of what is needed for itself and the world. Thus each thread of call and response probes in a par-ticular way. The value of religions joining together to wrestle with the hard questions they have asked is that each tradition has a unique contribution to make to the conver-sation and also has lacunae that can be addressed by other traditions.

Practical Theology: Correlating the Deepest Questions

Mid - twentieth - century neo - orthodox theologian Paul Tillich, whose correlation method has had a strong impact on practical theology, suggests that the theological task is to answer the questions implied in the human situation. In his method, he fi rst assesses the human situation and its existential questions and suggests how the Christian symbols answer those questions (Tillich 1951 – 1963 : 1.62). Tillich considers his theol-ogy an “ answering theology ” which responds to questions implied in the human condi-tion: “ A help in answering questions: this is exactly the purpose of this theological system ” (viii). The purpose of theology is for people to “ understand the Christian message as the answer to the questions implied in their own and in every human situation ” (8).

In contrast to both Tillich and Tracy, however, I have suggested in this chapter that the Christian sources, traditions, and message have the great questions of the human condition embedded in the message(s). And it is in fact the questions themselves rather than the answers that are at the very heart of tradition. To repeat, the questions more than the answers are the center of religious traditions . The important correlation, in my view, is not between the questions of culture and the answers of the Christian message; it is rather within the questions themselves. In terms of correlation with culture, our task is to put questions from culture and tradition alongside each other and look at the way that different sources respond to those questions.

I suggest that, in contrast to scholars in other theological areas, it is the practical theologian ’ s distinctive task to generate a “ questioning theology, ” and it is the religious educator ’ s task to uncover and re - ask the questions that are the very pulse of a tradi-tion. Following in the spirit of Tillich and Tracy, I suggest a correlation with culture. But, rather than correlate culture ’ s questions with theology ’ s answers, I want to cor-relate questions from both sources. Looking at sources from culture can help identify and deepen the asking of central life questions. We can put questions alongside each other and look at the way that different sources respond to those questions. Tracy ’ s articulation of the mutually critical relationship between theology and culture is still helpful here. As he acknowledges, sometimes the questions that emerge from culture deepen or even critique the questions theology asks.

Fiction, especially social realist and tragic fi ction, can be a source for this correlation of questions. In describing the common characteristics of a collection of short stories he edited, US author Tobias Wolff wrote of the depth - seeking and truth - telling that motivate fi ction writers. “ They write about fear of death, fear of life, the feelings that bring people together and force them apart, the costs of intimacy. They remind us

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that our house is built on sand. They are, every one of them, interested in what it means to be human. ” I argue elsewhere that fi ction can and should play a central role in reli-gious education because good fi ction produces truth (Hess 2009 ). Drawing on Northrop Frye, a leading literary critic in the twentieth century, I focus on realist and tragic fi ction – that is, fi ction that narrates the fl awed world of loss and defeat rather than an ideal world of innocence and triumph (Frye 2000 [1957]). Rigorous questions about God and suffering often come late in our theological work; theodicy often seems like a mop - up task when the grime and grit of life leave tracks all over our polished abstract theological presuppositions. Fiction can challenge this academic theological temptation and provide a vital source for producing the questions that theology needs to address fi rst rather than last. Realist fi ction writers are engrossed with the human condition, and so they take us step by step into the deep places of life. Furthermore, fi ction writers do not have the task of justifying God. So they lead us to re - ask the questions that justi-fi ers of God have too tidily answered.

Fiction can be a crucial source for education, and a robust reader response can be a critical lens for the event of engaging learners. We can read novels together in religious communities and ask ourselves: What is going on within us as we read these stories? What questions seem to drive the author? What questions do these stories pose that theology ought to take account of? Religious education can become a space for critically engaging realist and tragic fi ction that narrates depth issues and questions in life, including questions of suffering and evil. This kind of education contributes to moral expansion, but it does so without being moralistic or reduced to a particular moral vision (see Hess 2009 ).

Sometimes good stories raise good questions without offering specifi c answers; sometimes good stories deconstruct conventional answers; sometimes good stories engage us in deep paradoxes whose confl ict we must live. For example, Flannery O ’ Connor ’ s story “ Revelation ” continually raises in the reader the question: “ Who is good? ” And O ’ Connor rather untidily deconstructs most of the conventional answers. Ruby Turpin, a self - assessed “ good woman ” who “ never spared herself when she found somebody in need, whether they were white or black, trash or decent, ” habitually sizes up every person she meets, and locates that person very quickly on a convoluted moral - social status spectrum. A lot of people end up in her “ trashy ” category, which seems to be lowest on her scale. At the end of the story, Ruby has a vision of “ souls rumbling toward heaven. ” At the front were “ whole companies of white - trash clean for the fi rst time in their lives, ” and “ bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God - given wit to use it right. ” Signifi cantly, even though the latter group was shocked, the entire convoy was shouting hallelujah (O ’ Connor 1984 ).

I want to conclude with a statement from the poet W. H. Auden on the nature of art:

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more effi cient: I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more diffi cult to deceive, which is why, perhaps, all totalitarian theories of the

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State, from Plato ’ s downwards, have deeply mistrusted the arts. They notice and say too much, and the neighbors start talking. ( 1988 : 371)

Religious education that provides a space to grapple with tragic narrative enlarges the moral imagination; it does not, however, produce a fi nished moral vision to be transmit-ted to others. To return to Fish, the moral imagination, like the good literature that enlarges it, is kinetic. It moves. It does not bring with it the illusion of objectivity. The moral imagination “ refuses to stay still and doesn ’ t let you stay still either ” (Fish 1980 : 43). And that is the way it should be for traditions still in the making.

References

Auden , W. H. ( 1988 ). The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927 – 1939 , ed. Edward Mendelson . London : Faber & Faber .

Browning , Don ( 1991 ). A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals . Philadelphia : Fortress Press .

Fish , Stanley ( 1980 ). Is There a Text in This Class: The Authority of Interpretive Communities . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Freire , Paulo ( 2000 ). Pedagogy of the Oppressed . New York : Continuum . Freire , Paulo , and Faundez , Antonio ( 1989 ). Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation . New

York : Continuum . Frye , Northrop ( 2000 ). The Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays . Princeton : Princeton University

Press . Groome , Thomas ( 1980 ). Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision . San Francisco :

Harper & Row . Hess , Carol Lakey ( 2003 ). “ Echo ’ s Lament: Teaching, Mentoring, and the Dangers of Narcissistic

Pedagogy . ” Teaching Theology and Religion 6 ( 3 ): 127 – 137 . Hess , Carol Lakey ( 2009 ). “ ‘ Come Here Jesus . . . Wonder What God Had in Mind ’ : Toni Morrison

and F. Scott Fitzgerald as Narrators of (Anti - )Theodicy . ” Religious Education 104 ( 1 ): 354 – 376 .

Kingsolver , Barbara ( 2009 ). The Lacuna . New York : HarperCollins . O ’ Connor , Flannery ( 1984 ). The Complete Stories [1946] . New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux . Pelikan , J. ( 1984 ). The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities . New

Haven : Yale University Press . Roth , John K. ( 2001 ). “ A Theodicy of Protest . ” In Stephen T. Davis , ed., Encountering Evil: Live

Options in Theodicy . Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press , pp. 1 – 37 . Suchocki , Marjorie Hewitt ( 2003 ). Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affi rmation of Religious

Pluralism . Nashville : Abingdon Press . Tillich , Paul ( 1951 – 1963 ). Systematic Theology , 3 vols. Chicago : University of Chicago Press . Tracy , David ( 1981 ). The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism .

New York : Crossroad . Tyler , Anne ( 1991 ). Saint Maybe . New York : Ballantine Books .