[Dialogue] 7/25/13, Spong: On Teaching at Drew University’s Theological School

Thu Jul 25 12:44:09 PDT 2013

     HOMEPAGE        MY PROFILE        ESSAY ARCHIVE       MESSAGE BOARDS       CALENDAR

	On Teaching at Drew University’s Theological School
	Drew University is my neighborhood institution of higher learning. It offers to Morris County, New Jersey, the enrichment that only a university can bring. There is a magnificent library on this campus that has three constituent parts: The University Library, a Theological Library and the Methodist Archives, in which the history of American Methodism is preserved. Periodically Drew brings speakers of national and international interest to our community, such as the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Judy and Dennis Shepard, the parents of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was murdered in Wyoming. In addition to this there is a theatre that each year presents several plays by William Shakespeare, including some of the less familiar works of the bard such as “The Winter’s Tale” and “Cymbeline.”
	The history of this university is unique in that it began as a theological seminary to train clergy for the Methodist Church and then the university grew out of the seminary. The Drew Theological School is thus, not just an adjunct to the university, but it is the parent of the university. This is symbolized by the fact that the Dean of the Theological School is an important part of the cabinet of the University President, which is the body responsible for the totality of the university’s life. I have found this university a treasure to me professionally and personally and I rejoice in my relationship with it. This summer this relationship deepened significantly when I was invited to teach two courses in the Theological School’s summer session. I had taught in this school once before five years ago. It was a one week course in the winter break between semesters, when students were offered a variety of short intensive courses led by local community leaders who were thought to possess gifts that would enrich a theological education. This second invitation was to teach two separate courses, each of which would last three to four hours a day, five days a week. The intensity of the schedule was necessary to qualify students to receive 1.5 credits for each week or 3 credits if they chose to attend both courses. The invitation came from the dean, Dr. Jeffrey Kuan, who prior to coming to Drew had been the Professor of Old Testament studies at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He has also just recently announced his resignation from Drew to become the President and Dean of the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California, one of the top ecumenical, graduate theological centers in the United States. Dr. Kuan is an enormously gifted scholar and administrator. A native of Malaysia, at Drew he became the first Asian dean of a Methodist Theological School in America and he brought both to Drew University and to the theological enterprise, a broad international vision that seemed to expand what Drew was already about.
	Also of note is the fact that the Dean of the Libraries at Drew is a theologically-trained scholar named Andrew Scrimgeour, who has not only been an active fellow in the Jesus Seminar, but Chairman of the Board of the Westar Institute, which created the Jesus Seminar. Andrew understands the theological issues facing the Christian Church today and is desirous of engaging those issues head on, something that church hierarchies and local congregations frequently seek to dodge, “lest the faithful be upset.” Needless to say, Andrew has not only been a significant friend to me, but he has also made the resources of the Drew Library available to me, granting me the same privileges that are accorded to the members of the Drew faculty. I have done research for many of my books in that library, but especially for my books on the Fourth Gospel and Eternal Life. I am given my own study carrel, long-time access to books on which I am working and to articles in the best theological journals in the world over the last century. In 2010, Drew University conferred on me an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. I wear the Drew hood with pride whenever I am privileged to be in an academic procession. Given this background, I accepted the dean’s appointment as a “visiting Professor of New Testament” with joy and excitement and I taught these two classes over a period of two weeks at the Drew Summer School.
	It was also, I might add, the hardest work I have ever done! The format committed me to two lectures a day for the five days of each course. This means that I had to prepare 20 lectures over the course of the two consecutive weeks. I also needed to read and grade my students’ papers. When I added together the time it took to get from my house to Drew and back each day; the time meeting with students before and after the classes; the classroom time itself and the time required for preparation, I was spending 10 to 11 hours a day on my responsibilities to Drew. That is not a complaint; I loved every minute of it, but it is a reality. I would usually spend the afternoon each day in the Drew library preparing the material for the following day.
	The rest of my life did not go on hold to allow me to teach these two courses. I still had this column and its question and answer feature to prepare each week. On the Sunday between the two weeks at Drew, I was scheduled to do two presentations at a church in another part of New Jersey. I still had to deal with all the communications that my column engenders. To top the two weeks off, it was also during that time that my book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic hit the bookstores and I began to do interviews about it with radio, television and the print media across the United States and as far away as Australia. I normally cook dinner each night for my wife and me (one of my favorite relaxing things to do), but that became physically impossible during those two weeks. I came away from this assignment with a renewed appreciation for the demands of academic life, but I also came away with an enhanced sense of the opportunity one has to teach bright, imaginative young minds.
	Over the two weeks, I had between 31-40 different students. Some were there only for one of the two weeks, but the majority of them were there for both. The largest single group of my students was made up of those seeking a Master of Divinity degree from Drew. I was impressed with the diversity of age and ethnicity that they represented. The second largest group was made up of those who had graduated and been ordained in a variety of Christian traditions, who were returning to do “summer refresher work.” This group included Methodist clergy, Presbyterian clergy, Episcopal clergy and a captain in the Salvation Army. One of the Methodist clergy was a former Jesuit priest. They were male and female, clergy couples and gay persons. They were excited about learning, happy in their ministries or potential ministerial careers and open to new knowledge. The third group in this class consisted of members of the Morris County community to whom Drew opened this course. This group included interested lay people who saw the church as a center of learning. One was a church organist, who had recently lost his partner and who took this course as a way of dealing with his still quite open grief. So a variety of human experiences came together, as they always do, in the best of church life.
	The first week my topic was “The Influence of the Synagogue on the Formation of the Synoptic Gospels.” We probed the background of Mark, Matthew and Luke in the recognition that at least Mark and Matthew were written before the separation between the church and the synagogue occurred and Luke, to the degree that it is based on Mark, reflects the same connection with the synagogue. That is why the memory of Jesus in these gospels is wrapped inside the images of both the Jewish Scriptures and the patterns of the synagogues’ liturgical life. Surely we have noticed that the Passover is the setting against which the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is told. Less obvious, but still true, is the fact that the winter Festival of Dedication (later called Hanukkah) is the setting against which the story of Jesus’ transfiguration is told. The Jewish harvest festival called Sukkoth or Tabernacles is the setting against which the Parable of the Sower is told. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is the setting against which the call of Levi from the receipt of customs is told. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is the setting against which the story of John the Baptist is told. Finally, the Jewish celebration of Shavuot or Pentecost is the setting against which the account of the Sermon on the Mount is told. The conclusion becomes inevitable, namely that the Synoptic Gospels present us with a deeply Jewish Jesus and they are all quite clearly the products of the synagogue. It was fascinating to watch that realization and what it meant being born in the minds of my students.
	The second week was on the Fourth Gospel and was based on my just published book. The Gospel of John is so different from the earlier synoptics. In John, for example, there is no miraculous birth story and the mother of Jesus is never called Mary. In this book miracles have been turned into signs that point beyond themselves to new meanings. John also introduces us to a host of characters like Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman by the well and the unnamed “beloved disciple,” none of whom have been mentioned ever before in Christian writing. Their inclusion raises the possibility that they are literary creations, not people of history. In John’s gospel the parables of Jesus have disappeared and have been replaced by long discourses. The climax of this gospel strikingly is not the resurrection, but the crucifixion, and the second coming of Jesus is identified not with the end of the world, but in Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to his disciples on the evening of the first Easter. These things make this book unique and unusual
	My students engaged these ideas. Their papers were magnificent, revealing that they understood the concepts. It was an exciting two weeks. Perhaps in time the churches they serve will also be exciting places of worship.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	Chuck Fisher, Executive Leader for the Disciples of Christ Church in the High Plains of Texas writes:

	Question:
	My question has the background of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" sermon. I believe the power of King's words lies not in poetry, emotion, nor logic, but from the moral core of all existence, the ground of our being that is love, what I call "God." I believe "I have a dream" is a modern example of prophetic speech, "Thus says the LORD." Is such a word to our culture possible today? With what authority could anyone speak such words?
	Answer:
	Dear Chuck,
	Thank you for your presence as well as your welcome and hospitality when we were recently in Amarillo, Texas. I plan to devote my column to that visit next week.
	Your question is an insightful one. No person can be accurately determined to be a prophet in his or her own generation. That is a judgment that history alone can make and it is history that has proclaimed Dr. King to be one of the great prophets of the 20th century. His impact on this nation was a powerful and moving one. He bore the pain and indignity that was heaped upon him with a calm dignity and an increased resolve. He interpreted such tragedies as the murder of those little girls in an Alabama church in such a way as never to minimize the pain or to reveal the slightest surrender to that killing violence. He captured the moral high ground and reduced the Bull Connors, the Lester Maddoxes and the George Wallaces of the world to the status of being petty bigots, a status which they had earned and from which George Wallace alone repented. He called national leaders like John F. Kennedy and most especially Lyndon B. Johnson to become spiritually larger and more compassionate than we had any reason to believe they could ever be. It was not just his “I have a dream” speech,” it was also his “Letter from a Birmingham jail,” that lifted him so visibly into the pantheon of charismatic leaders.
	The mark of a prophet is apparent when that figure moves the world, a nation or a people to a new consciousness. How a particular prophet does that is always subjective and debatable, but to do what Dr. King did means that he had a compelling vision that governed his life and that he was willing to pay any price to achieve that vision. In fact, he did pay the ultimate price, but his life and his words revealed that he was prepared to do that whether or not martyrdom was the price that such leadership required. Dr. King spoke with the authority of his own integrity, but it was clearly grounded in something or someone far beyond the limits of his humanity. I know him as a prophet and I am convinced that history will confirm for him that designation.
	If Dr. King could be a prophet in our generation then prophecy is still possible. Leaders force us to go beyond our comfort zones into new understandings of life. History may record others in that category, who are not as yet clearly defined in the public arena. Critical moments in history have a way of calling them forth.
	Thanks for raising the issue.

	John Shelby Spong

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