BOOK REVIEWS
HOW TO DO PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION?
VISIONS OF JEWISH EDUCATION. By Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, and
Daniel Marom, eds. Cambridge University Press. 2003.
TEXTUAL KNOWLEDGE: TEACHING THE BIBLE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
By Barry Holtz. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
2003.
TREE OF LIFE, TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE TORAH.
By Michael Rosenak. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 2001.
In a classic essay in philosophy of education, W.D. Hudson posed
the question “Is religious education possible?” (Hudson 1973). In pursuing this inquiry, Hudson wanted to construct a philosophical account
of what it could mean to educate in a religious tradition, or towards
religious ideas—an account that is both internally coherent and, in
particular, defensible in light of concerns about indoctrination and irrationality. Note that Hudson did not actually argue for religious education of any particular sort or within any particular tradition. Instead,
his argument was general and theoretical, defending the possibility
of a legitimate religious education, rather than any actual example
of it.
Hudson’s effort represents one tried-and-true model of what it
means to do philosophy of religious education: bringing the tools of
analytic philosophy to bear on aspects of religious education, asking
conceptual questions in abstraction from real religious communities
and real religious lives. We have much to learn from this philosophical
approach, and many of the questions are as challenging today as they
were thirty years ago. But those involved in the practice of religious
education are invariably pursuing education in or towards a particular religion. So must philosophy of religious education remain this
abstract, this general, this distant from actual religious traditions, in order to wear the mantle of philosophy? Is there a way to do philosophy
of religious education that emerges from particular religious settings
and is enriched by particular religious ideas? In order to answer this
question in the affirmative, we need models of what philosophy of
Religious Education
Vol. 100 No. 1 Winter 2005
90
C The Religious Education Association
Copyright ISSN: 0034–4087 print
DOI: 10.1080/00344080590904725
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religious education can be, models that serve to demarcate the genre
or its subgenres. To our great fortune, we have three such models,
all recently published, each focused on Jewish education and each
presenting a different possibility for philosophy of religious education. The following review essay engages critically with each of these
books, with particular attention to the way in which they might serve
as models for the field.
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One of the common critiques of analytic philosophy of education
in the 1960s and 1970s is that it obsessed over the analysis of educational concepts while losing sight of the larger and deeper human
questions that have characterized philosophy since its classical origins.
No doubt this was sometimes the case, but it is equally true that conceptual analysis was often the tool used to pursue precisely those larger
and deeper questions. An example is the tradition of reflection on the
“educated person” which, at its best, presented compelling arguments
for the difference between education and training in a skill, and between education and the mere possession of facts (see, e.g., Peters
1972). The philosophical question of the nature of “educated person”
served, in at least some respects, to clarify a vision of the ultimate goal
of educational institutions and endeavors.
What the “educated person” tradition failed to do, however, was
to confront adequately the way in which real individuals are never educated people, in general, but rather always people educated within
particular cultural or religious traditions. Conversely, in some traditions, the question of the ultimate goal of religious education has not
been pursued with sufficient seriousness and rigor. Too often, it seems,
the assumption is that the religion itself dictates a perspective on the
educated person that requires no examination, no elaboration, as if
disembodied “tradition” presents a position and the religious educator
merely offers assent or dissent. To the extent that religious educators
accept this assumption, the education that they practice is thoughtless
and rote, lacking what we might fairly call a “vision.”
It is precisely this situation that prompted the Mandel Foundation to embark on a project initially called “the Educated Jew Project,”
and subsequently re-titled “the Visions Project.” Visions of Jewish Education (Fox et al., 2003), the first fruit of that project, is an effort
to generate “a serious conversation among proponents of variant conceptions of Jewish life and their attendant visions of Jewish education” (p. 13). At its core, the volume contains a series of essays by
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four eminent scholars of Jewish studies—Isadore Twersky, Menachem
Brinker, Moshe Greenberg, and Michael Meyer—in which each articulates a distinct vision. The volume also includes a Supplement to each
essay, sometimes to clarify ideas in the light of the scholar’s other work
and sometimes to add material gleaned from the scholar’s responses
to groups of educators and others with whom drafts of the essays were
shared in dozens of seminars over the years. In addition, the volume
also includes contributions from Michael Rosenak and Israel Scheffler
that provide critical and constructive perspectives on the project (each
of which also receives an interpretive Supplement). Finally, the volume also includes introductory chapters articulating the rationale for
the project and explaining its history, and a concluding section with
two further essays by Seymour Fox and Daniel Marom, focused on
aspects of the implementation of visions in practice.
The essays, individually and collectively, are exquisite examples
of the kind of serious inquiry into the purposes of Jewish education
that emerges, and can only emerge, from the depths of intellectual
and spiritual involvement in Jewish history, literature, and thought.
The volume thus represents a model for philosophy of religious education as an effort to ask fundamental, foundational questions about
the purposes and goals of education from deep within a particular religious tradition. And as such, it may well find an appreciative audience
outside of the Jewish community as well as within it, for it is easy to
imagine religious educators of any tradition finding themselves not
only interested in but indeed challenged by the questions presented
here.
The volume is also broadly philosophical in terms of the contributors’ answers to those questions, which are presented with a degree of
precision in the presentation of normative conceptions that one associates with philosophical work. But in addition to these aspects of philosophy of religious education, one of the hallmarks of the field ought to
be an engagement with other relevant philosophical literature, either
from philosophy of religion, or philosophy of education, or contemporary philosophical inquiry within the religious tradition itself. On this
measure, the Visions Project has yet to fulfill its promise. These particular scholars—so deeply immersed in the classical sources of Jewish
tradition, and so focused on developing their own conceptions—do
not develop the relationships between their ideas and contemporary
philosophical traditions, either Jewish or general.
As an example, consider the way in which Brinker’s vision demands a central place for the autonomy of the student, what he calls
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educating “to freedom” rather than “for compliance” (pp. 98–99). This
is surely an important issue, but the discussion would be richer and
deeper if it were to refer to the rather extensive literature in philosophy of education on this very topic. In another example, Meyer
approaches the dilemma of teaching a normative tradition, while preserving the possibility of critique and autonomous choice, by suggesting that students ought to be helped to analyze the tradition “from
within the circle . . . of commitment” (p. 154). But as potentially rich as
this image is, Meyer’s argument would have benefited from a nuanced
engagement with the relevant literature on tradition and critique in
philosophical hermeneutics. These observations point to one way that
the Visions Project as a whole may be carried forward. By expanding the circle of respondents and interlocutors to include scholars of
modern philosophy and modern Jewish thought, the project might not
only chart connections, and not only articulate similarities and differences, but might emerge with sharper and more nuanced positions as a
result.
But regardless of these prospects, it is clear that Visions of Jewish
Education offers a distinct model of how to do philosophy of religious
education—of pursuing basic questions about fundamental purposes
with responsibility and rigor. And on my reading of this volume, the critique offered here is fully consonant with the editors’ deepest desires—
namely, that rather than offering a menu of fixed solutions, the project
might “initiate a continuing process of reflection and . . . stimulate a
discourse on alternative visions of Jewish education” (p. 8).
∗
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∗
It would be a mistake, however, to restrict philosophy of religious
education to comprehensive visions of the ideal educated religious
person. As important as such visions may be for the intelligent pursuit
of educational aims, another model for philosophy of religious education is also available, an alternative that is a step closer to educational
practice and that may inform and deepen the thinking of practitioners not just about their purposes but about their practices as well.
Just as before we noted and called upon the “educated person” tradition within philosophy of education, we may also call upon a tradition
that Israel Scheffler has called “philosophy-of” (Scheffler 1973), that is,
philosophical reflections on the foundations of particular disciplines or
fields of study. Scheffler recalls that his students, prospective teachers,
were usually unaware of the existence of the philosophy of their chosen teaching subjects—philosophies of science, or art, or history—and
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were often quite enthralled to discover it. The second volume under
review, Barry Holtz’s Textual Knowledge: Teaching the Bible in Theory
and Practice (2003), is not exactly a work in philosophy of Bible, but
has the potential to play that role for teachers of Bible, particularly
within Jewish educational settings.
Holtz, Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, frames his study as an effort to ask, “How shall
we think about the subject matters we teach?” (p. 2). The question
signals his desire to resist the relentless pressure to be practical in
the narrow sense, i.e., to provide pedagogic solutions and educational
techniques for teachers to mimic. On the other hand, he embraces
practicality in its broadest sense, i.e., the sense in which practice and
theory are not opposed but interdependent precisely because teaching
is an intellectual practice in which theory is always present implicitly
or explicitly. “If I don’t explore the theoretical dimensions of my work,”
he writes, “my attempt to work on my practice is likely to fail” (p. 4).
The pervasive influence on the book is Pam Grossman’s empirical
work on the teaching of literature (see e.g. Grossman 1991a, 1991b),
which demonstrated the profound differences among a set of competent teachers of English literature in their approach to their practice
and their understanding of its goals. Grossman’s term for these distinct approaches is “orientations,” a term which she uses to signify not
pedagogical methods or strategies but rather the whole complex of
understandings that a teacher holds about her subject and uses as a
basis for pedagogic decision-making. Holtz’s affinity for Grossman is
not surprising; his training as a scholar of literature is readily apparent,
and his passion for Dante and Wallace Stevens is almost as strong as his
passion for biblical texts. His agenda in this work is to bring Grossman’s
critical lens to the teaching of Bible, developing several conceptions
of the purpose of teaching Bible, several orientations. Taken together,
these orientations—he lists nine altogether—constitute what he calls
a “map of the teaching of Bible.”
Along the way, Holtz offers discussions of the difficulty of teaching Bible in the context of contemporary American culture, of four
theoretical options for interpreting biblical texts in the light of a dissenting culture, and of the ways in which the teaching of Bible is both
similar to and distinct from the teaching of other kinds of literature.
Drawing on a variety of philosophers and literary theorists from HansGeorg Gadamer to Martha Nussbaum to Richard Rorty, he probes
the idea that the Bible is true, in the specific literary sense of speaking to individuals in compelling ways. Finally, his last chapter offers
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an excellent discussion of contemporary research on teacher knowledge, demonstrating through the example of particular biblical texts
the intellectual complexity of the range of teaching decisions that all
too often go unnoticed.
Earlier I called Holtz’s book “not exactly a work in philosophy of
Bible,” but since Bible is not a discipline, in itself (but rather a field organized around a text), a better characterization would be “philosophy
of Bible education.” And one might even add the adjective “Jewish” to
identify the way that Holtz, while attuned to general issues, embraces
the particular context of Jewish education. But thinking about such a title also raises my most general concern about the book, namely, Holtz’s
penchant for categorization and description when a good philosophical argument is called for. Maps and lists can sometimes conceal as
much as they reveal, when they obscure issues of philosophical debate
by turning the various positions into items on the list.
One place where this seems to occur is in Holtz’s presentation of
four alternative ways of dealing with conflicts—moral, cosmological,
or otherwise—between a text and the contemporary interpretive milieu (pp. 15–20). One possibility is to rewrite the text unconsciously,
without recognizing the way in which one’s interpretation smooths
out the problems in the text. The second possibility is to rewrite selfconsciously. Alternatively, one might deny that texts have determinate
meaning, employing certain kinds of literary theory in the service of
an approach that allows for open reinterpretation without concern for
putative “original meanings” (Holtz actually discusses this option first).
Or, finally, one might simply reject the text in question.
These four options have a kind of at-first-glance plausibility, and
teachers of biblical texts may well find them to be a useful heuristic for
understanding their own practice or that of others. But in what sense
are they really options? The first option, to re-write the text unconsciously, is clearly not an option in the full sense; one can choose to be
unconscious only through an act of self-deception. In the case of the
last option, the rejection of a text is more properly understood in terms
of the failure of interpretation: one only rejects a text (assuming that
one has some reason to attempt an interpretation) when one’s interpretive options have run out. And the second and third options hinge
on the question of whether texts have fixed meanings. But this is an
argument in philosophical hermeneutics, and the various positions are
properly understood as claims about the phenomenon of interpretation that occurs regardless of the interpretive choices that we make. If
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this is correct, then there is some confusion here between theoretical
options that philosophers of interpretation may (and do) take up, on
the one hand, and practical options that are available to interpreters
themselves, on the other.
Something similar seems to happen with Holtz’s central contribution, the map of orientations itself. Here, too, Holtz’s categories serve
a heuristic purpose, articulating different approaches in a way that
may well be helpful to those—including especially teachers—trying
to understand the various options open to them, or to understand the
options that they have already chosen with less-than-full consciousness. I am quite certain that Jewish teachers of Bible nod knowingly
when reviewing Holtz’s orientations; they recognize their own practice
and that of their peers. But the categories often seem to overlap, and
as Holtz is the first to acknowledge, are not based on clear conceptual
distinctions (see, e.g., pp. 47–48). The result is a list of know-it-whenI-see-it options that may not withstand close scrutiny.
For example, while the reader may recognize that some approaches (the “contextual orientation”) emphasize the way that the
Bible was understood in its original context, while others (the “literary orientation”) emphasize the literary qualities of the text, surely the
literary qualities are themselves an important part of how it was understood in its original context. Or again, while the reader may recognize
the prominence within Jewish educational settings of an approach that
emphasizes the engagement with classical Jewish commentaries (“the
Jewish interpretive orientation”), surely the commentators in question may themselves be characterized as literary readers, or allegorical
readers, or even historical readers. Or again, while the reader may
recognize an approach that emphasizes “what the Bible means to me”
(the “personalization orientation”), sometimes to the detriment of patient and careful analysis, surely literary and historical scholars are also
engaged in an effort to articulate—in a subtler way—what the Bible
means to them.
Holtz’s orientations, then, are not quite as neat as the metaphor
of a map suggests; they are not all of the same size and shape with
clearly demarcated borders. It’s as if some are the names of counties
and some are towns and some are unofficial names for overlapping
regions. From a philosophical perspective, this is unfortunate, because
it undermines the reader’s ability to critique or make judgments among
them, or to make sense of the field as a conceptual whole. At the same
time, however, it is worth emphasizing that from the practitioner’s
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perspective, the heuristic approach that he takes does begin to open up
the field of Bible education by showing possibilities; it does enable the
reader to begin to ask important questions, such as those about what
kinds of knowledge are important or essential for teachers of Bible to
have; and it paves new ground in the field of Bible education. And by
focusing on a key subject area within a particular religious tradition—
by treating it without defensiveness as an academic subject, compared
to and contrasted with so-called “secular” subjects, and by examining
it within a particular (i.e., Jewish) religious educational context, rather
than fleeing to generality and supposed neutrality—Textual Knowledge
offers a distinct model for philosophy of religious education.
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Michael Rosenak’s Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge: Conversations
with the Torah (2001) presents a different and more surprising model
of philosophy of religious education that pushes the boundaries of the
genre. In each of the previous cases, I called upon a well-established
tradition in philosophy of education in which to situate the book—
and, implicitly, to justify its project—but in this case, no such tradition is available. Each of the previous books, while concerned with
the particular setting of Jewish education, clearly speaks the language
of the academy. This book speaks the language of Jewish tradition.
It is not a book with one continuous argument; it is, rather, more
like one continuous project, where that project is commentary on
Torah.
While written in the language of Jewish tradition, the book is not
inherently inaccessible to those outside that tradition. Quite the contrary. Rosenak, Emeritus Mandel Professor of Jewish Education,1 is
as comfortable engaging with contemporary philosophy of education
as with Jewish philosophy or traditional texts; in his first chapter, for
1
Readers will recall that Rosenak is one of the contributors to Visions of Jewish
Education, although not among the four core contributors. Nor does the interrelationship among the works under review end there. Rosenak’s chair is named for
the same Mandel whose foundation supports the Visions Project. Moreover, Holtz is
a consultant to the Mandel Foundation, as well as to the Mandel Center for Studies
in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, which the foundation supports. Israel
Scheffler, one of the editors of Visions of Jewish Education and Thomas Professor
of Education and Philosophy at Harvard, Emeritus, currently serves as scholar-inresidence at the Mandel Center. And the Mandel Center is also the employer of the
present author. These connections are hardly unusual in the small world of academic
study of Jewish education, but they are important to document in the interest of full
disclosure.
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example, Nel Noddings’s ethic of care is as central as the competing
conceptions of Maimonides and Judah Halevi. He is careful to explain
potentially unfamiliar terms and texts. And in general, he adopts a
conversational tone, in accord with the subtitle of the book. Tree of
Life offers bite-sized philosophical discussions, woven together with
classical Jewish texts, with each chapter presented as a stand-alone
essay.
The book might fairly be characterized as a kind of philosophical
commentary, not in the sense of an engagement with a sequential series of narratives of the Torah but in the looser sense of a wide-ranging
engagement with all of Torah. Rosenak picks and chooses Biblical passages from here and there—and various midrashic commentaries on
those passages—as they suit the purpose of his discussions of the issues in philosophy of education with which he has been concerned for
decades: balancing the weight of tradition with the demand for autonomy, the imperative to transmit a culture with respect for the dignity of
the learner, what he calls in one place “norms and spontaneity” (p. x).
The work is organized in four parts, each with 4–5 chapters. The
first part deals with education within the parent-child relationship, for
example (in chapter 5) examining the episode of the Israelites at the
Red Sea in order to develop insight into education for responsibility.
The second part moves to a more communal perspective, including
for example (in chapter 8) a discussion of halakha (Jewish law) and the
challenge of individuality and conformism. The common theme of the
third part is the question of separation and integration, parochialism
and openness to other cultures. Finally, the last part of the book focuses
on issues of self-education, of self-knowledge and the confrontation
with death and the elusive nature of knowledge for its own sake.
But why, one might fairly wonder, would a philosopher of religious education adopt this particular genre in order to present his
ideas? One reason has to do with audience. Rosenak recounts that,
throughout his career as a teacher of teachers, he has “attempted to
show how . . . universal concerns arise within the Jewish religious and
cultural traditions” (p. x). He admits that he has not always been successful, sometimes lapsing into sermonizing and sometimes alienating
(Jewish but) non-religious students. And there are thorny questions
here about whether Rosenak is translating general truths into particular language or whether particular language generates its own truths.
Nevertheless, his effort represents an intuition that—for at least some
people—general philosophical ideas are best understood in a local and
particular idiom. Whereas Commandments and Concerns (1987) was
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a book written for insiders to the tradition of Western philosophy of
education, Tree of Life is written for educators and lay people who are
insiders to the Jewish tradition.
A second reason to adopt this genre is to call into question the
assumption that philosophy can only be done in one way. In Roads to
the Palace (1996), he writes that “I intend to demonstrate that out of the
textual tradition of Judaism, philosophy of education may be mined”
(p. xiv), a demonstration made necessary by (the author’s belief in)
the sharply contrasting natures of the Jewish and Western traditions.
Rosenak—equally at home in both traditions—is in a unique position
to do so. Roads to the Palace offers the beginning steps towards such
a demonstration, but Tree of Life presents it in every chapter. At the
same time, it’s important to recognize that Rosenak never subverts
philosophical inquiry by citing “what Judaism says” about this or that.
Instead of calling upon the tradition as an argumentative trump card,
he always uses it to give language to problems, opening up inquiries
that generate insight rather than shutting them down.
Beyond the instrumental purpose of addressing a particular audience, however, and beyond Rosenak’s concern to demonstrate the
way that the Jewish tradition may be mined for philosophical insight,
there is another reason that Rosenak adopts the particular mode of
engaging with classical sources. In Roads to the Palace, Rosenak introduced a pair of conceptual terms, borrowed from Michael Oakeshott
and Richard Stanley Peters, into the lexicon of philosophy of Jewish
education: the concepts of “language” and “literature.” “Language,”
he wrote, “gives us our collective identity, our stores of what is selfunderstood among us, our forms of articulation and communication”
(1996: 19). In the present work, he writes that “language is a network
of paradigms,” a set of basic understandings of the physical and spiritual world, “a way of seeing and doing things” (2001: 4). Literature,
on the other hand, is what one does with language, how language is
presented in the world. “Literature . . . tells us what can be said in the
language, how it can be articulated, interpreted, expanded” (p. 5).
This may still seem rather woolly. What’s Rosenak getting at? On
my reading, there are three points about these terms worth emphasizing. First, the language-literature distinction helps in making sense
of the way that traditions grow and change over time, while at the
same time making sense of their rootedness, their connection back
to something stable. When we judge certain interpretations or practices to be authentic, we are implicitly affirming that connection, in
effect saying that, yes, this is a legitimate use of the language, this is a
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work of literature that conforms to its particular syntactical rules and
to its substantive spirit. Second (and already implied), the distinction
represents a repudiation of the anti-interpretive stance promoted by
some traditionalists, the idea that one need not interpret a tradition
but only apply its eternal truths to any and all situations. Rosenak, that
is, often seems to be looking over his right shoulder, at traditionalists
who may be threatened by his emphasis on personal autonomy and
his insistence on the unavoidable tension between values. And third,
the language-literature distinction offers a framework for pluralism,
since one language may—indeed must—generate multiple literatures
rather than merely one authoritative expression.
However, Rosenak’s use of the terms is metaphorical rather than
literal; the language that he has in mind is not any particular language,
such as Hebrew. Indeed, he blurs the lines between the two terms
when writing about foundational literature, that literature (sometimes
called “sacred”) that is not merely an expression of the language but
that shapes the modes of thought that constitute the language and
therefore that is “culturally and normatively indistinguishable from
the language itself” (p. 5). Specifically, Torah, as a written expression
of ideas, is literature, but as the foundation for further literature, it is
also language. And so, to come back to the point about why Rosenak
has written the book in the way that he did: in Tree of Life, he has taken
up his own challenge, and instead of contributing to the literature of
Western philosophy, he has instead written literature in the language
of Torah.
I confess that I have concerns about the language-literature distinction and how it operates. I just noted that Rosenak himself blurs
the line in the case of foundational literature, but I think one could go
further. After all, to the extent that any text of the tradition serves as
the basis for commentary or interpretation, that text functions (not just
as literature but also) as language. Conversely, while Rosenak affirms
that we only know a language through its literature, he sometimes
slips and writes about teaching languages directly (e.g., 1996: 22)—as
if we might have unmediated access to a language itself, fixed and pristine, alongside the rich literature written in that language. The image
seems to suggest that Jewish educators should teach both Torah and
the literature of (i.e., commentaries on) Torah, as if that would somehow guarantee the authenticity of the literature that the students write
on their own (since they will become fluent in the language), and in
order to accommodate pluralism without fragmentation (since the literatures are all, in the end, commentaries on the same text). But alas,
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no such guarantees are available. There is no unmediated language,
but only literatures, and the language is not fixed but always changing
in light of the literatures that are written in it. Even the apparently
simple idea that Torah serves as the common language of the entire
Jewish community evaporates once one tries to articulate just what that
Torah is. The language-literature distinction, therefore, is relative—
certain texts function as foundational for certain purposes—but never
absolute.
As a metaphor for the models of philosophy of religious education,
however, the terms are helpful. Rosenak’s book is written in a different
idiom, a different language, using different modes of argument and
paradigms. But his philosophical questions are central not only
to Jewish education but to religious education in general. Visions
of Jewish Education and Textual Knowledge, too, have their own
distinctive languages, so that while each deals specifically with Jewish
education—and while each unabashedly embraces the commitment
to pursue philosophy of religious education in a particular context
rather than a general one—they collectively present three different
sub-genres of literature. In the article already cited above, Israel
Scheffler wrote that “in the linking of philosophy and education
there are numerous directions to be explored . . . no single program
ought to dominate such an effort” (Scheffler 1973: 33). Philosophy of
religious education, too, has room for multiple programs, and in the
case of Jewish education, the three volumes considered here represent a diverse and collectively encouraging outburst of creative activity.
Jon A. Levisohn
Brandeis University
Works Cited
Hudson, W. D. 1973. Is religious education possible? In New Essays in the Philosophy of Education, eds. Glenn Langford and D.J. O’Connor. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Grossman, Pamela. 1991a. The Making of a Teacher: Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Grossman, Pamela. 1991b. What are we talking about anyhow? Subject-matter knowledge of
English teachers. In Advances in Research on Teaching, ed. J. Brophy. JAI.
Peters, Richard Stanley. 1972. Education and the educated man. In Dearden, RC et al., eds.,
Education and the Development of Reason. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Rosenak, Michael. 1987. Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular
Society. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Rosenak, Michael. 1996. Roads to the Palace: Jewish Texts and Teaching. Providence: Bergahn
Books.
Scheffler, Israel. 1973. Philosophy and the curriculum. In Reason and Teaching. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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CONSUMING FAITH: INTEGRATING WHO WE ARE WITH WHAT WE BUY.
By Tom Beaudoin. Sheed & Ward. 2003.
Though it’s just over one hundred pages long, Consuming Faith
offers a number of resources for religious educators on the secondary
and post-secondary level. In this book, Tom Beaudoin analyzes the
branding economy in which we all participate, asks what makes it so
compelling, and meditates on “integration of faith and economy.” Offering textual resources from the biblical to the popular, theological reflections, and practical suggestions for congregations and individuals,
Beaudoin brings spirituality, humor, and compassion to daily economic
life.
Beaudoin is not the first person to point out that much of the
Bible focuses on “economic spirituality,” but he draws together various approaches to economic spirituality in an original way. His argument starts with the observation that the brands that we consume
depend on our ignoring the circumstances under which branded products are produced. Inspired by Naomi Klein’s book No Logo, Beaudoin called the headquarters of his favorite brands to find out where
and how their products are produced, only to be foiled at every turn.
These corporations distanced themselves from the actual production
of their goods through middlemen and secrecy, but what little information is available indicates that workers often must submit to inhumane conditions. Although we may choose to buy certain brands
primarily to do identity work—to send messages to other people
about who we conceive ourselves to be—Beaudoin argues that our
choices about what we buy advocate a particular kind of economic
arrangement. “Trying to become a Christian,” he says, means being
exquisitely conscious of what one is supporting with one’s economic
choices.
“Spirituality thus starts and ends not with ethereal doctrines, but
with our experiences of everyday life, especially the experience of our
relationships,” writes Beaudoin (19). As spiritual economists, we have
to ask ourselves whether the relationships we enter into as consumers
of goods with the distant and poorly paid workers who produce them
really represent what we believe. In a way, Beaudoin says, the Christian tradition has set a precedent for ignoring these relationships by
ignoring the body. Beaudoin argues that we have a tendency toward
docetism, a sense that the body is not really real and does not matter,
in our economic lives as well as in scripture. But, economic goods are
produced by bodies, and consumed by bodies—the body is very much
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a part of economic life. Being a spiritual economist means maintaining
consciousness of the various bodies and relationships involved in our
economic lives.
So how might we undertake such a vast spiritual and economic
consciousness-raising? Questioning and analysis of our brand consumption and the values that we aspire to live are the first steps.
Opting out of the brand economy is not a workable or even desirable path for many people, but Beaudoin offers some suggestions for
becoming more economically spiritual in a more indirect fashion. For
example, congregations can become more conscious of how churches
themselves treat their employees and what kinds of products churches
buy, and they can consider what the church ought to teach about material wealth. One of Beaudoin’s most intriguing ideas, and one that
might play well for religious educators, is that “we can undertake media
fasts,” in which we would abstain from using television or the Internet
for a specific period of time in order to distance ourselves from their
influence.
Consuming Faith offers a persuasive argument for affording our
economic relationships a central place in our spirituality. Although
many of the textual resources that he uses to support his arguments
come from Catholic and more generally Christian resources, Jewish
and non-denominational religious educators could make use of
Beaudoin’s insights and suggestions equally well.
Jennifer Thompson
Emory University
UNDERSTANDING OTHER RELIGIOUS WORLDS: A GUIDE TO INTERRELIGIOUS EDUCATION. By Judith A. Berling. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
2004.
This eminently practical guide is designed to help Christians “learn
other religions.” It does not seek to resolve theological issues or recommend what should be taught about other religions; rather it deals
with what is entailed in the process of coming to understand other
religions. Learning theory and educational processes form the framework of the book, with significant value for anyone teaching in higher
education and/or religious education and for anyone concerned with
teaching across differences. The book is designed primarily for faculty
and students in theological education and leaders in parish education
settings; both audiences are very well served with chapters designed
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to address their specific issues and contexts. Judith Berling is an East
Asian religions scholar; she served for several years as Dean and Vice
President of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, where
she is now Professor of Chinese and Comparative Religions. As comes
clear in this volume, she also has extensive experience in adult education in parish settings.
The book begins with an overview of the religious diversity in
the United States and the responsibilities of Christians in this reality.
Theological issues and problems of relating to other religions are summarized briefly, acknowledged, and then put to one side. Berling does
not begin with theological understanding but with the calling “to live
out our Christian faith in a diverse world by means of respectful relationships with persons of other religions, however much we may still
struggle with the theological issues raised by those relationships” (17).
The understanding that comes from these relationships is a very significant aspect of what Berling consistently refers to as “learning other
religions.” In comments on the usual inadequacy of survey courses
(83), she states that “knowing about” other religions usually entails
information about facts, dates, and concepts, but this “transmission
of information” approach to education certainly does not lead to understanding. Learning other religions is much more, involving many
threads, relationships, and dialogue—which together may well help
create a stronger foundation from which to address the theological
problems of relating to other religions.
Chapters two, three, and four contain the book’s conceptual frameworks in learning theory, the study of religions, and theological education. All educators, whatever their fields of study and teaching, will find
both challenge and encouragement in these concise, carefully crafted
pages—from approaches to teaching and understanding learning in
diverse classrooms to the importance of context and particularity in
learning religions and a review of North American theological education and the reality of religious pluralism. Each chapter is tied explicitly to the theoretical strands of the others in order to form a clear
framework for the processes and models specifically related to learning
religions set out in the remainder of the book. In these chapters readers will find summaries of major figures and approaches, presented in
a manner that is quite accessible to the non-specialist. I found especially helpful the review of Kenneth Bruffee’s work on collaborative
learning and authority in the classroom. “The authority of professors
as scholars in their disciplines lies in their mastery of the discipline’s
central discourse, but their authority as teachers lies in their skill at
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the boundaries between their disciplines and the many worlds from
which their students come” (32).
The five “threads” of the process of learning another religion are
set out in chapter five and form the center of the book. The first two
threads are presented as a pair: the first requires entering the other
world of that religion across boundaries of significant difference—
through engagement with an adherent and experience of texts and
other expressions of the religion. As the learner cannot become the
other, the entering is partial, but it can be informed by an immersion
in the tradition that challenges old ways of thinking and seeing. The
second thread is the response and interpretation from the learner’s
own religious tradition. These two represent the two major poles (and
frequent tension) of a Christian learning another religion: (1) understanding the other religion as completely and faithfully as possible, and
(2) reappropriating Christian tradition in light of the understanding
gained of the other. For the Christian (Berling is absolutely consistent
in presenting the location of the learning as Christian), learning another religion does not end with understanding the other; there must
also be rethinking and reflection about the impact on one’s own understanding of Christianity. “In the process of learning another religion,
the theological learner starts out from and constantly circles back to
her stance or location as a Christian, asking herself how her own location shapes her understanding of the other tradition but, equally
important, how her understanding of the other tradition shapes her as
a Christian” (75).
The other threads follow: the third thread entails dialogue with
voices of the other religion and with other Christians. As throughout
the book, practical advice is included: “Both parties to such conversations must be mutually respectful and attentive to the voice of the
other, always wary of superficial or easy agreement” (74). The fourth
thread puts the learning thus far into practice by developing new relationships and otherwise living out the new understanding. Thread five
has the learner internalizing the process, learning the process, so that
it becomes part of the way she understands and lives in the world.
Chapters six and seven consider learning other religions in and
beyond the higher education classroom, with substantial, at times
provocative, advice for educators. Faculty members will find themselves and their students in the chapter on classroom learning, with its
forthright analysis of methods (the survey course, the add-on within
a course, etc.) and resources (textbooks, film, site visits, etc.) that are
regularly used in teaching other religions. Berling’s years as dean of
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the GTU are evident and valuable here, both for her knowledge of
the inner workings of a seminary as well as the advice on how to move
forward in specific situations. There is also a section describing completely new ways of learning other religions.
The last chapter moves beyond the classroom to church and adult
education settings, with many models and practical suggestions for
learning other religions. Berling uses the five threads to frame the
chapter and re-presents them briefly, so that those who took her suggestion to skip the middle chapters of the book will still be able to find
their way. Two very helpful appendices are included: (1) an annotated
bibliography, including various types of resources related to the topics
covered in the volume, and (2) guidelines for parish learning experiences, a concise summary of the material in the last chapter presented
here in question form and organized around the five threads. A more
extended bibliography and an index follow.
This is a remarkable book, combining carefully articulated theory
with practical advice for application, as valuable to anyone concerned
with teaching in diverse classrooms and across differences as to those
teaching and learning other religions.
David Esterline
McCormick Theological Seminary