The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher

by L. Gregory Jones, Stephanie Paulsell

Overview

In The Scope of Our Art a diverse group of theological teachers explores the spiritual dimensions of their vocation as religious educators. Drawing on a rich array of resources, including Scripture, The Rule of St.Benedict, medieval women mystics, the Methodist theologian Georgia Harkness, and Simone Weil, as well as their own teaching experiences, the contributors discuss the vital relationships between academic and spiritual formation, religious commitments and teaching practices, and individual and institutional vocation.
Contributors:
Michael Battle
W. Clark Gilpin
Paul J. Griffiths
L. Gregory Jones
Rosemary Skinner Keller
Lois Malcolm
Claire Mathews McGinnis
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore
Frederick Norris
Stephanie Paulsell
Phillis Sheppard
Susan Simonaitis
Gordon T. Smith
Leanne Van Dyk
Paul Wadell

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802849588
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/25/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

L. Gregory Jones is executive vice president and provost of Baylor University, Waco, Texas, and the author of Christian Social Innovation: Renewing Wesleyan Witness. Known for his visionary and entrepreneurial leadership, he is also an ordained United Methodist pastor and an editor-at-large for The Christian Century.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
	Formative Practices of the Theological Teacher's Vocation
	The Formation of the Scholar	3
	Writing as a Spiritual Discipline	17
	Reading as a Spiritual Discipline	32
	Contemplation in the Midst of Chaos: Contesting the Maceration of the Theological Teacher	48
	My Vocational Kinship with the United States' First Female Theologian	75
	Theological Teachers in Their Classrooms
	Teaching as Conversation	99
	Teaching as a Ministry of Hope	120
	Teaching as Cultivating Wisdom for a Complex World	135
	Teaching and Learning as Ceaseless Prayer	155
	Theological Teachers in Their Schools
	"Yea, the Work of Our Hands, Establish Thou It": On Stability in the Academic Life	173
	Vocation in the Outback	190
	Negotiating the Tensions of Vocation	209
	The Formation of Vocation--Institutional and Individual	225
	Attending to the Collective Vocation	240
	Contributors	262

Editorial Reviews

Parker J. Palmer
"Over the past decade a growing number of college and university professors have been reclaiming teaching as a vocation, but seminary faculty have been strangely silent on the subject. The Scope of Our Art breaks that silence with eloquence and power. I believe it will be regarded as a landmark book for years to come. This superb set of essays by some of our finest theological educators should spark a life-giving conversation about teaching and learning in the seminaries — where vocation as embodied by the faculty of today helps give shape to the vocation of ministry in the church of tomorrow."

Richard A. Rosengarten
"Theological educators both present and future will profit greatly from this volume's cogent and remarkably lucid meditations that limn the personal, pedagogical, and institutional dimensions of a fraught but absolutely crucial endeavor. Jones and Paulsell have accomplished the unusual feat of coaxing real unity of focus out of genuine and lasting diversity of experience. The resulting volume is rich in perspective but carries real cumulative heft; it is not incidental that it thus testifies persuasively to the challenging, vital, and important work of freestanding theological seminaries and university-related divinity schools."

Donald Senior, C.P.
"For anyone who has been or aspires to be a teacher of theology, reading this book will be like the refreshment of a spring breeze. Discussions of pedagogy and theological method abound, but rarely does one find such thoughtful and inspiring essays on the vocation of the theological teacher. The authors gathered here — all skilled and committed to their art — do all of us a great favor."

Margaret R. Miles
"These challenging and moving essays address everyone who teaches religious studies. They make the point that we are all student-teachers, perennially learning the quality of attentiveness that characterizes good teaching."

From the Publisher