REA Annual Meeting 2019

W(Holy) Awareness: A Womanist Religious Education Curriculum Using Jazz for Prostate Cancer Awareness as a Case Study
Rondee Gaines (New York Theological Seminary)

Research Interest Group. [Paper] The span and multi-dimensionality of living, inter-institutional and inter-generational, embeds, within each of us, different ways of learning. Particularly, for those in faith communities, we are simultaneously learning and receiving education in faith, on a daily basis, in various situations. Christian tradition emphasizes death and suffering as redemptive processes through which resurrection channels the power of hope, healing, and educative purpose. Death, in Christian education, underscores that death can be life-giving. At a moment of death, Jazz for Prostate Cancer Awareness was birthed


The Exact Synonym for “Missionary” is Negro Teacher: Black Feminism in the Sunday School
Patricia Haggler (Medgar Evers College, CUNY)

Research Interest Group. [Paper] Black churches operated as extended families for many African Americans in the Jim Crow South. Women teaching in those Sunday schools became other mothers not only to Sunday school scholars but to those in the community. The author’s contention is that African-American Sunday school teachers were equally as concerned about the political, economic, and social plight of black Americans as they were about bringing people to God. The local community was the mission field for African-American Sunday school teachers and a spiritual, historical, and political ethic of care was their mission.


Postcolonial Imagination and Liberating Interdependence for Divided Societies
Mariska Lauterboom (Graduate Theological Union)

Research Interest Group. [Paper] This paper argues for the importance of combining postcolonial imagination and liberating interdependence in religious education conducted by a community of faith located in divided societies, using literature-based review and analysis and postcolonial historiography as methods. Postcolonial imagination and liberating interdependence lead to an intercultural education which promotes dialogue and liberation in the Indonesian context. It creates a safe space for indigenous people, their stories, and their cultures, as well as for Indonesian women to share their stories in religious education.



Keywords: african-american female teachers, african-american history, african-american sunday schools, community, culture, postcolonial, sacred spaces, story, womanism, womanist theology.