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NAINConnect 2008 Workshops |
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Theme: Gifts We Bring
INTERRELIGIOUS HIGHER EDUCATION – SURVEYING THE OPTIONS
WORKSHOP SUMMARY
The Bay Area’s manifold educational opportunities include four very different opportunities for graduate and professional education in religion – California Institute for Integral Studies, Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries, Graduate Theological Union, and Sophia Center. They come from different religious traditions and make different assumptions. But all have a track record of training religious/spiritual teachers and leaders. Our presenters will begin by surveying their own institutions, assumptions, and priorities. Then they will share a conversation about what the 21st century needs from graduate and professional programs in religious studies.
PRESENTERS
Presenters - James Conlon, Kimberly Connor (moderator), Gina Rose Halpern, Arthur Holder, CIIS representative-BIO to come
Rev. Dr. Jim Colon is director of the Sophia Center in Culture and Spirituality at Holy Names University in Oakland. Pastoral work, community organizing, teaching, and administering preceded his current work with “evolutionary faith,” a passion for the wisdom that is revealed in the universe story, the lives of his ancestors, and his own tradition. Widely published, Conlon's most recent book is From the Stars to the Street – Engaged Wisdom for a Brokenhearted World.
The Rev. Dr. Arthur Holder is Dean, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and John Dillenberger Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union. An Episcopal priest, he is the editor of The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, co-chair of the Christian Spirituality Group in the American Academy of Religion, and President-Elect of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality.
Rev. Dr. Gina Rose Halpern is founder and co-director of The Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and
Interfaith Ministries. She is author and illustrator of To Heal the Broken Heart, focusing her widely exhibited art work on healing and children. For 15 years she was director of Healing Through the Arts, a bridge-building nonprofit, and her teaching included a stint on the faculty of University of Creation Spirituality. In 1995 she toured Russian pediatric hospitals as a clown with Patch Adams.
CIIS Representative - BIO to come
Dr. Kimberly Rae Connor is the author of Conversion and Visions in the Writings of African American Women and the award-winning Imagining Grace: Liberating Theologies in the Slave Narrative Tradition. An associate professor at University of San Francisco, she is widely published on topics related to ethnic religion, literature, and pedagogy. Connor is editor of the Academy Series, a collaboration between the American Academy of Religion and Oxford University Press.
Workshop is interactive - please post a comment and note your interest
DISCUSSION AND COMMENTS
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OPENING STATEMENT
The mission statement of the University of San Francisco, the Jesuit institution where we are holding our conference, is “to educate the minds and hearts of students for justice,” a sturdy mission for a public university.
When we turn to higher religious education for the leaders, scholars, and clergy, identifying the mission is not simple. Our workshop panel is comprised of leaders from four institutions of higher-religious education that take very different approaches. We will hear about the traditional Christian seminary and graduate school (which is no longer so traditional); a graduate school, founded by a Hindu, that focuses on integral, transformative learning; an alternative interfaith seminary; and a graduate program which explores various wisdom traditions.
What do you expect from “religious higher education”? As a student of religion or spirituality, where are you drawn to learn more? What should the graduate curriculum include about religion and spirituality in this time of incredible religious changes in the culture?
Perhaps we can begin this discussion by asking for your answers, and any additional questions you’d like to raise In this arena.
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