Fall 2016 INTRODUCTION Jack Seymour Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary In the late spring, Robert O’Gorman suggested a process for those of us in the senior scholar task force to prepare for our meeting at the November 2016 Religious Education Association. Bob suggested the following: one of us in the senior scholar task force would write a […]
I believe that my earliest formation came from my Bubbe and Zeide (Grandparents) and the Rabbi Marcus Bregar and Cantor Maurice Falkow (Hazzan) of my Synagogue in Tucson, Arizona. I loved being in synagogue, listening to the melodies and chanting and the sermons. I loved the Jewish camping experience and youth groups. I loved learning
I went to PSCE to work on a graduate degree in religious education immediately after college. Having majored in Bible at Rhodes College and taken a course in the history of the field I went with the goal of studying with Dr. Sarah Little. I can remember sitting in class watching her teach and my heart
Elizabeth Caldwell Read More »
I grew up in a family that went to church, but didn’t make a fuss about it. My parents primarily sought a place with an excellent music program and literate preaching. They also were in full flight from the high-pressure evangelism they had known as children. They were the progressives of their day. I went
Margaret Ann Crain Read More »
When I was eleven my father died suddenly of a heart attack; within a week my mother moved my 14-year-old sister and me from Des Moines to Mason City, Iowa. There a pastor and a welcoming congregation brought us to Church, Sunday School, confirmation classes, and often to someone’s home for Sunday dinner. We didn’t
Norma Cook Everist Read More »
A metaphor of John Steinbeck’s captures for me the formative power of communities of faith and public life. Why, he asks, should we be surprised when formed in Christian community we have the shape of a cross? Given my history, why should anyone also be surprised I became a religious educator? My religious formation began
Early in my decade long career in secondary education when I taught both English and Religion, some of my students who I had for both subjects told me I was teaching the same thing in both classes. At first I thought their comments typical of adolescent bantering. After all, I prepared carefully for my classes,
As a very young theology student in an old Irish seminary, I was reading the then recently published documents of the Second Vatican Council (circa 1966). I hit upon the statement in Gaudium et Spes that the greatest error of our age is “the gap that Christians maintain between the lives they live and the
As a young child I spent Sundays in Sunday School and worship in a dignified tall steeple Protestant church. The theological emphasis at the time was finding God in nature, and I learned to experience the Divine in the rocks and trees around me. At the age of ten my family and I moved and
Judith Johnson-Siebold Read More »
I felt a call to the Christian ministry by the end of my Senior year in high school, and I was influenced at Wesleyan University by John Darr and Bill Spurrier, who were chaplains, led services, taught courses, and provided leadership in the Christian Association and the pre-ministerial club. Since I was intending to go
