Looking ahead

I said in an earlier post that one of the great challenges for me related to Semester at Sea is that I'll be teaching courses I've not taught before.

Fortunately, I am teaching both courses now at Shenandoah University.  I had forgotten how enjoyable teaching new courses is!    In World Religions, after an introductory unit on what religion is and why it seems to be a universal human phenomenon, we spent a day on what my textbook calls "indigenous religions."  One of the features of those religious expressions is "shamanism" and I found an incredible 35 minute documentary on shamanism in Ghana, one of the countries we'll be visiting.  It's amazing what you can find on YouTube.  Check it out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgvw1erIJiQ

In my Liberation Theologies class, we've started with Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation.  I had forgotten what a huge impact that book had on my own thinking when I first read it in seminary soon after its publication.

There are many rich passages. Like this one:  "Our conversion process is effected by the socio-economic, political, cultural, and human environment in which it occurs. Without a change in these structures, there is no authentic conversion. We have to break with our mental categories, with the way we related to others, with our way of identifying with the Lord, with our cultural milieu, with our social class, in other words, with all that can stand in the way of a real, profound solidarity with those who suffer, in the first place, from misery and injustice. Only thus, and not through purely interior and spiritual attitudes, will the "new person" arise from the ashes of the old." Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 118.