I recently spoke to a friend who used to be a student in one
of my courses. He’s about fifty years
old now and he told me he was finally figuring out what questions have to do
with faith. But, he added, he still
meets people upset at Religion professors who hurt faith.
So, what is really going on in these religion courses? Remember, these courses are being taught at
an institution committed to the liberal arts and affiliated with the Lutheran
Church.(ELCA)
First to say, all the professors teaching the courses are
people of faith and members of a religious tradition. We do not teach for the tradition, nor
against the tradition; we teach within the tradition.
The introductory course is entitled Exploring the Christian
Faith. We do not try to Lutheranize or Christianize students. The class is not
glorified confirmation. Our job is to
excavate the Christian tradition, to examine the tradition, history and
theology warts and all, to not shy away from or evade any question, to search
for the truth without fear or concern.
But, you might ask, shouldn’t we be worried our young and naïve
students, many of whom carry a simple faith or some with no faith, will be
shocked at the questions, and thereby “lose their faith?” Every professor at
our place is aware of the possible aftershocks. We care about their lives and
their souls. And we realize that each student walks into the classroom with a different
religious background, different faith experiences and different degrees of
faith maturation.
The fact is, there is no safer place to engage the
inconsistencies and questions that are part and parcel of any religious
tradition. There is no safer place to
wrestle with the existence of undeserved suffering and evil along with the
mystery that is God. And if we are not
honest here, where can we tell young people about the fragility of our theological
constructions? This is the class where
we teach students not to fear the questions but to engage them. This is the class where we look at Biblical
texts that forewarn us that questioning God is not against faith but a specific
part of having faith.
So, Religion Professors at Augustana do not hurt faith. They inoculate students against losing faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment