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
I came to religious education from teaching religion in a Catholic high school. As a member of the teaching order of Christian Brothers, one taught a daily religion class. I was given the opportunity to go to any university of my choice to study for a doctorate in religious education. I chose to go to
MY FORMATION AS A RELIGIOUS EDUCATOR, OR HOW I ENTERED THE HOUSEHOLD OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION (a la Browning and Foster) Preamble re identity and context: I write as a member of that part of the Christian community known as Reformed/Protestant that employs a terminology of “Christian Education” and that asserts the centrality of the [Christian]
Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng Read More »
I began in Christian Education before I was 6 months old when my mother took me in a basket to teach her Sunday school class and I continued there until I became the minister of a congregation where I had to stay in church to preach the sermon each Sunday in 1996. As my sermons
As a child, when asked what I “wanted to be when I grew up,” I would usually answer, “a teacher.” I practiced by playing school with my siblings, and in real school, by developing a passion for learning every sort of subject. Spending my entire pre-college educational years in public schools in rural Pennsylvania, my
I probably owe my passion for religious education to my sister – she is nine years my senior and a religious of the Sisters of St. Joseph. In the early ‘60s she was studying at Catholic University and I can remember her telling me about the Adam and Eve story. I was in my early
If you happen to be in the Cambridge, MA area on March 24th from 6 – 8:30 pm, step over to the Harvard Divinity School for a forum on “Transforming Racialized Divides in the US: Insights from the African-European American Experience” featuring Leah Gunning-Francis and David Anderson Hooker. The event is free and open to
Forum: Transforming Racialized Divides Read More »
The January-February 2017 issue of Religious Education seeks papers for a special issue critically exploring religious education in relation to race, racism, and anti-racism. What is the role of religious education in addressing racism today? Around the globe racism’s presence and effects manifest themselves in situations as varied as acts of racially motivated violence in
CFP for special issue on RE and Racism Read More »
Reflecting on how I have been formed as a religious educator has confirmed what the southern author Eudora Welty (1909-2001) once wrote: “Wherever you go, you meet part of your story.” Consistent with Horace Bushnell’s maxim, my upbringing in a devout Christian (Baptist) home, I never knew myself to be other than – by some
