Teaching And Christian Practices

In Teaching and Christian Practices several university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether allowing spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, employing table fellowship and shared meals to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or using Christian hermeneutical practices to interpret data in an economics course, these teacher-authors envision ways of teaching and learning that are rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices, as together they reconceive classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth.

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David I. Smith shows how faith can and should play a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learning experience.

Preachings most able practitioners gather in this book to explore and explain the idea that preaching is a practice that can be taught and learned. Arguing that preaching is a living practice with a long tradition, an identifiable shape, and a broad set of norms and desired outcomes, these noted scholars propose that teachers initiate students into the larger practice of preaching, in ways somewhat like other students are initiated into the practice of medicine or law. The book concludes with designs for a basic preaching course and addresses the question of how preaching courses fit into the larger patterns of seminary curricula.

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David I. Smith shows how faith can and should play a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learning experience.

In Faith and Violence, Thomas Merton offers concrete and pungent social criticisms grounded in prophetic faith about such issues as Vietnam, racism, violence, and war.

In this new edition of his popular book, Craig Dykstra explores the contributions of the traditions, education, worship practices, and disciplines of the Reformed Christian community in helping people grow in faith. In doing so, he makes the case that the Christian church, in its own traditions, has a wealth of wisdom about satisfying spiritual hunger and the desire to know God deeply--wisdom that offers coherent, thoughtful guidance in such diverse settings as congregational life, families, youth groups, and higher education.

Principles and Practices of Christian Education shows teachers how they can use two important principles that stand behind all evangelical practices to make their education program stand out from all the others in its nurture of students. First, evangelical Christian education recognizes the need for conversion-personal and corporate transformation that reconnects people to their Creator. Second, evangelical Christian education strives for connection-making contact with people as unique individuals who live in a particular society and who need to know more about scripture. In this book Christian education students learn that the work for which they prepare is a partnership with God to transform people. Their central task is worship, but through it and other activities they lead others to faith, commitment, and transformation of communities.

Challenging the central place that "practices" have recently held in Christian theology, Lauren Winner explores the damages these practices have inflicted over the centuries Sometimes, beloved and treasured Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. In this bracing book, Lauren Winner provocatively challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue and that can't be answerable to their histories. Is there, for instance, an account of prayer that has anything useful to say about a slave-owning woman's praying for her slaves' obedience? Is there a robustly theological account of the Eucharist that connects the Eucharist's goods to the sacrament's central role in medieval Christian murder of Jews? Arguing that practices are deformed in ways that are characteristic of and intrinsic to the practices themselves, Winner proposes that the register in which Christians might best think about the Eucharist, prayer, and baptism is that of "damaged gift." Christians go on with these practices because, though blighted by sin, they remain gifts from God.