Interfaith Grit - Stephanie L. Varnon-Hughes

Скачать книгу

learning requires movement, over time, through several ways of being; this theory of development is described both formally by inter-religious scholar educators and by voices in our participant interviews. For example, imagine the time involved in practicing and becoming more masterful at the kinds of learning Judith Berling describes, writing, “Learning in a diverse world requires not merely mastering some set of information but also learning to understand and negotiate areas of human difference, envisioning new ways of being and new possibilities.”16 To learn how interfaith education actually happened—and to identify best practices—I interviewed ten practitioners in higher education settings across the United States. I asked them to reflect upon the qualities they saw in themselves and their students, and to describe interfaith learning at its best. While at least one interview participant noted that, at some level, her role does require her to give students enough new information—particularly about new traditions or religions—mastering mere information takes some time. Learning to understand difference can be for many of us a life-long practice, and becoming visionary in the way one regards conflict and possibilities may rarely be possible in academic time parcels.

      In fact, each one of these categories of learning can be broken apart into smaller tasks or realizations that inter-religious educators try to facilitate. F. is a Jewish professor of religion in both a rabbinical school and a large public university; he also serves on several large inter-religious non-profits and facilitates Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim adult educational events. F. describes the kind of beginning reflective work that students and participants often encounter earlier in their learning processes. He began by asserting that initial introductory knowledge about other traditions should lead to more substantial developments. When asked about the outcomes of one of his classes, he began by stating,

      A student is able to—there are a couple of different levels I think—the student is able to be literate in some of the concepts, practices, and language and vocabulary of the other religious traditions (and we are talking only about three and that is, right? We are talking about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.) So people, everyone who leaves the class has to know, because I ask them on a quiz, on a midterm or a final what—they have to know the words “Surah” and “Hadith” and “Ayat” and what this “Quran” actually means.

      What does “Islam” mean? And I don’t—these are just real basics, but they have to know that, same thing about “Torah,” “Talmud,” stuff like that. It is a little bit less problematic in the Christian world because we live in such a Christianized culture, that kind of vocabulary and assumption is there.

      So there is that—another outcome is a, I think, is a deeper respect for a scripture and [the] religious sensibilities of another religious, at least two other religious communities with the expectation of the hope that transfers beyond . . . creates a kind of attitudinal development.17

      After a pause, F. moved to describing a kind of “learning to negotiate human difference” continuing,

      And flexibility in thinking that is really important, we spend a lot of time on reading, what is the reading process, when we read things, not just words on a page but when we read people, when we read people’s clothing, when we read architecture, how are we actually processing the information that we are getting, how much are we looking objectively of the material and to what extent are we inserting our own history into our processing, all of that is really, we are very content about that, we are very, what is the word for it?18

      F. was encouraged with a question prompting, “But it’s deliberate,” and F. affirmed, “Deliberate, we are deliberate.”19 When asked about challenges to students making that move from learning content to learning practice, he answered,

      I think the overwhelming one is getting beyond the—, and [then to] acknowledge stereotypes, I think that is the issue because it creates, I think, real barriers from the very beginning that people aren’t really aware of, it’s a kind of preconceived notion, prejudices, pre-judgments that we have that we are really unaware of . . . They are not intentional—that color our ability to see the phenomenon that we are looking at in a way that is, I don’t want to use the word “positive” but in a way that is more real, right.

      Or a way that that phenomenon is associated with something, a phenomenon that is associated with, let’s say religion or culture—where the observer sees it in the way the presenter would like it to be seen or sees it himself or herself.20

      By identifying the ability of a learner to see from her co-learner’s point of view, F. echoes here classic foreparents of inter-religious dialogue, including Raimon Pannikar, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Leonard Swidler; interfaith theologian Judith Berling also captures this interpretive process when she declares,

      Unraveling, naming, and describing the threads of the learning process offer an interpretation of that process. The five threads are 1) encountering difference or entering another world; 2) one’s initial response . . . ;21 3) conversation and dialogue on several levels; 4) living out what has been learned; and 5) internalizing the process.22

      Again, we see that what can be phrased succinctly can take years of practice and engagement. For those who see inter-religious dialogue as personally spiritually enriching (for example, à la Paul Knitter’s Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, or countless mono-religious adult education earnest endeavors to understand neighbors), part of the reason spiritual development happens is that inter-religious encounter can take time—giving reflective practice time a chance to connect to spiritual and emotional practices, new habits, the time to take chances and try new ways of engaging, and time to build relationships. In the next section, relationship building particularly will be related to resilience; let us keep in mind that relationships also take time to build, another reason resilience to withstand new encounters is beneficial for longer-lasting inter-religious engagement.

      Ingrid Schoon explores the idea of “adaptation” as a key part of resilience in her Risk and Resilience: Adaptations in Changing Times. Schoon is more interested in the “ordinary23 adaptive processes”24 as a dynamic, ongoing process than in what might inoculate an individual from the impact of her surroundings. For Schoon, adaptation is part of a life-long process and individuals are intimately connected through their relationships with others; both of these influence how and why one might be resilient in a given situation. As we review Schoon’s emphasis on inter-connectedness and the dynamic construction of life course, let us keep in mind possible features that might be mapped onto inter-religious education.

      Schoon articulates five principles as part of the concept of “life-course” in competency; she enumerates the following:

      1. Human development is a life-long process.

      2. Individuals construct their own life course through choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances, a principle also referred to as human agency.

      3. The life course is embedded and shaped by social structures and the historical times and places experienced by individuals over their lifetime.

      4. The developmental antecedents and consequences of life transitions, events and behaviour [sic] patterns vary according to their timing in a person’s life.

      5. Lives are lived interdependently, and social and historical influences bear on this network of linked lives.25

      While these concepts are connected to resilience as understood by Garmezy, for example, we see that Schoon has definitively moved beyond thinking about flaws that need to be addressed, or disordered individuals that might be studied. Instead, she has moved into considering interdependent relationships and how these “networks of shared relationships”26 surround individual development. As Schoon puts it, “resilience is a multidimensional phenomenon.”27 All five of Schoon’s life-course aspects coordinate with the work of educators, and can be included in inter-religious pedagogy. Indeed, Schoon takes a kind of holistic approach to understanding how and when individuals are resilient, and how they can both learn from their own experiences and help teach others in their “network of linked lives.” This is the stuff of both religious education and inter-religious education. Is it possible to leverage this network to foster resilient practices? Are religious or inter-religious communities

Скачать книгу