{"id":8677,"date":"2013-04-30T13:05:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T18:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=8677"},"modified":"2015-03-13T16:44:33","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:44:33","slug":"would-you-step-on-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2013\/04\/30\/would-you-step-on-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Step on Jesus?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

My friend and fellow Minnesotan, Jay Bakker<\/a>, is known to throw his Bible to the ground during his talks<\/strong>, in order to break his audiences of their bibliolatry. At first blush, it seems like an act of sacrilege, but his point is that the Bible is ink on a page, whereas the Word of God is something more than that.<\/p>\n

The always insightful Stanley Fish draws our attention<\/a> to a class at Florida Atlantic University, in which students were asked to write the name \u201cJesus\u201d on a peace of paper and then step on it<\/strong>. The governor of Florida was horrified, as were many others. But, as Fish reports, they got the story wrong. The professor is a Christian, and the exercise had a point:<\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>

<\/p>\n

So there was no intention either to cause offense or display disrespect for Christianity; rather, the intention was to jump-start discussion by causing students to realize, in an immediate and visceral way, how charged is the relationship they have with iconic and talismanic symbols. I can imagine that some of the students who hesitated and\/or declined were neither Christian nor religious, but felt a vague uneasiness at being asked to step on a revered name, even if they themselves did not revere it. I am not a Christian yet I felt vaguely uneasy when I heard about the incident, and I\u2019ve been trying to dress up and dignify my uneasiness with a legal\/philosophical analysis of it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fish goes on to compare it with a couple other instances in higher education. And he ultimately comes to the conclusion that, while asking students to examine their \u201cdeepest commitments and anxieties\u201d is a worthy goal in undergraduate education, asking students to perform an exercise like this in front of their fellow students is not the best pedagogical method. Fish concludes,<\/p>\n

The unwillingness of the complaining student at F.A.U. was deeper; he was not being asked to pretend to step on Jesus\u2019 name; he was being asked to do it. And he was not role-playing, as he might have been had he been invited to participate in the thought experiment I described earlier or told to write a paper titled \u201cHow I Would React If I Were Asked to Perform an Action Inimical to My Values.\u201d He could do either of those things and still reserve for himself a private space into which the pedagogical reach had not intruded. But in Poole\u2019s class, he was put in a position where a confrontation with his innermost being could not be avoided; no room to hide.<\/p>\n

Is that what education is about? I know that many think so, but I tend to think that education is more formally deliberative, more a matter of contemplating ideas and possible courses of action than of implementing ideas and actually taking action<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve wondered some of these very things as I have taught \u2014 for the first time \u2014 a semester-long course on the New Testament \u2014 a text that I consider sacred \u2014 to undergrads at a state university. Some come with commitments to that text; others, like the student I mentioned yesterday<\/a>, are committed atheists. Others are in between. Finding a pedagogy that is both respectful and challenging has been tricky.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend and fellow Minnesotan, Jay Bakker, is known to throw his Bible to the ground during his talks, in order to break his audiences of their bibliolatry. 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