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The latest book in our series “Asian Christianity in the Diaspora” is Interreligous Pedagogy: Reflections and Applications in Honor of Judith A. Berling.

Please do order it for your libraries!

Interreligous Pedagogy:  Reflections and Applications in Honor of Judith A. Berling

Editors: Park, Jung Eun Sophia, Wu, Emily S. (Eds.)

  • Provides theoretical frameworks for engagements across conventional borders
    Explores how collaborative learning model can be utilized in various teaching settings
    Explores interreligious pedagogy with considerations of social, political, ecological, and cultural power dynamics

 

About the Book

This volume is a collection of essays by former students of Judith Berling based on her revolutionary interreligious pedagogy. Her pedagogy can be summarized as a student centered, collaborative, and engaging teaching and learning process sparked by various ways of boundary-crossing. In this enterprise, each chapter explores the importance of understanding and negotiating “differences” through dialogue. The authors provide theoretical frameworks for engagements across conventional borders, and explore how the collaborative teaching model can be utilized in various teaching settings. As an example of her dialogical approach, Judith Berling herself provides a response to the chapters.

Reviews

“A teacher can become immortal when her insights and practices empower students to embrace new challenges and cross new boundaries in different contexts across their careers.  In this collection of essays written by her students, we can see the indelible mark of Judith Berling’s deep learning, innovative methodology, interreligious engagement and respect for each person’s promise.  Years ago Judith invited me into the “open space for mutual learning” that she has famously created for students and colleagues at the Graduate Theological Union.  I am grateful that this volume, with rich examples that can be emulated, invites new participants to share and explore that open space.” (Michael Gilligan, President, Henry Luce Foundation, USA)

“Berling has been shaping the field of interreligious pedagogy not only through her scholarship, but more importantly through her dedication to whole person education whose purpose is to help her students become both informed scholars and respected human beings in the world beyond the academy.  The education for the whole personhood is a value embraced by both Christianity, her lived religion and Chinese religions, her scholarly expertise, and she constantly crosses boundaries of different religious and cultural boundaries to embody the value in her scholarship, teaching and mentoring.  This books is a small showcase of her life-long boundary-crossing pedagogy with many entrance points, turns, exits and reentries. Highly recommend it for both interreligious studies scholars and pedagogical practitioners!” (Boyung Lee, Professor of Practical Theology, Iliff School of Theology, USA)

“One of the biggest challenges in theological education today and for the foreseeable future is interreligious engagement. Judith Berling’s brilliant and multifaceted career includes developing and practicing interreligious pedagogy that offers multiple ways in which to effectively transform challenges into opportunities for greater understanding and appreciation of one another. This volume is a fitting tribute to the master teacher.” (Uriah Y. Kim, John Dillenberger Professor of Biblical Studies, Graduate Theological Union, USA)

“This collection of essays offers a rich introduction to Judith Berling’s practices of interreligious teaching and learning.  Written by her students, the ideas reflected in each chapter are important in themselves, as embodied approaches to dialogue, interreligious pedagogy and interdisciplinary boundary crossing.  I commend this book to all who are interested in new approaches to interreligious theological education and religious studies.” (Philip L. Wickeri, Advisor to the Archbishop on Historical and Theological Studies, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, Anglican Church)

About the Authors

Jung Eun Sophia Park, SNJM, is associate professor in Religious Studies at the Holy Names University. She is the author of numerous books, including Dislocation as Experience: Creating a Hybrid Identity, Constructing a Borderland (2010), and Border Crossing Spirituality: Transformation in the Borderland (2016). Her research interest is global women’s spirituality and cross-cultural spiritual direction.

Emily S. Wu teaches in the Religion Department and Service-Learning Program in Dominican University of California.  She is the author of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the United States: Searching for Spiritual Meaning and Ultimate Health (2013).Wu’s teaching and community work also explore the diasporic, transnational, and cross-cultural Asian experiences.

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Kim, G. J. (Ed), Cheah, J. (Ed)

Asian American theology is still at its nascent stage. It began in the 1980’s with just a handful of scholars who were recent immigrants to the United States. Now with the rise in Asian American population and the rise of Asian American theologians, this new community is an ever-important voice within theological discourse and Asian American cultural studies. This new series seeks to bring to the forefront some of the important, provocative new voices within Asian American Theology.
The series aims to provide Asian American theological responses to the complex process of migration and resettlement process of Asian immigrants and refugees. We will address theoretical works on the meaning of diaspora, exile, and social memory, and the foundational works concerning the ways in which displaced communities remember and narrate their experiences. Such an interdisciplinary approach entails intersectional analysis between Asian American contextual theology and one other factor; be it sexuality, gender, race/ethnicity, and/or cultural studies. This series also addresses Christianity from Asian perspectives. We welcome manuscripts that examine the identity and internal coherence of the Christian faith in its encounters with different Asian cultures, with Asian people, the majority of whom are poor, and with non-Christian religions that predominate the landscape of the Asian continent. Palgrave is embarking on a transformation of discourse within Asian and Asian American theological scholarship as this will be the first of its kind. As we live in a global world in which Christianity has re-centered itself in the Global South and among the racialized minorities in the United States, it behooves us to listen to the rich, diverse and engaging voices of Asian and Asian American theologians.
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