Knowing God: Revelation and theological education

Religious Education, Summer 2001 by Seymour, Jack

But we also need religious practices and a curricula of public life; we need doctrines and stories that help us learn to live and work together in the midst of the pandemonium; and we need a religious education that offers an identity and a character committed to building community in the midst of difference. This is, I believe, the premier task and responsibility of religious education.

We learn this challenge over and over again as we listen to real people seeking to know God in daily living. How do we, can we, practice the disciplines of religious identity and difference and, at the same time, hear the public life-giving word of the God we believe parented the universe, loves us all as children, and wants us to live in justice and community? The education and politics of identity must partner with the education and politics of the public if we are to faithful to the vision of God of creation and a common destiny of earth and humans. This is a vital agenda and a faithful agenda for a religious education that believes in a living God who seeks to build communities of care that nurture people and their interrelationships and that bond us to the creation from which we draw our common life.

REFERENCES

Moynihan, D. P. 1993. Pandaemonium. New York: Oxford University Press.

Song, C. S. 2000. Fight globalization, theologian tells the churches. Christian Century 117 (24): 858-59.

Jack Seymour

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Jack Seymour is Academic Dean and Professor of Religious Education at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He is currently President of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education.