Taking theology into the city

MAGAZINES & JOURNALS

A glance at the spring issue of "CrossCurrents":
Taking theology into the city

By requiring students in his course on Roman Catholic social
doctrine to complete "service-learning" stints in urban
settings, the Rev. Paul Fitzgerald, an assistant professor of
religious studies at Santa Clara University, hopes to give them
an opportunity to develop relationships with people in poverty.
Service-learning jobs in shelters for abused women and at AIDS
hospices "help students avoid the lurking danger of complete
relativism ... and the surrender to utilitarian individualism,"
he writes. The engagement of students in different social
settings is crucial to the learning process, he says.
"Developmental theorists Thomas Cook and Brian Flay remark that
we are more likely to act ourselves into new ways of thinking
than think ourselves into new ways of acting." Students are not
the only ones who can benefit from "the discomfort of being a
regular guest in the world of the urban poor," he says.
Theologians cannot stay cloistered in university libraries,
conversing only with their peers. "The fruit of this research
would most likely engage crucial questions from within a single
culture, most probably a middle-class, academic, modern, or
postmodern one." Theologians ignore the worlds across town at
their peril, says Father Fitzgerald. Today's cities, he
concludes, are places where students of theology can test out
"the insights and the intuitions they first heard whispered on
the mountaintops of retreat and withdrawal." The article is
available online at
http://www.crosscurrents.org/fitzgerald0151.htm


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Vincent Peters
Associate Dean of Off-Campus Programs &
Professor of Social Work
3900 Bethel Drive
Arden Hills, MN 55112
Phone:  (651) 638-6124
Fax: (651) 635-1966
Internet: v-peters@bethel.edu

"I slept and dreamt that life was pleasure;
  I woke and saw that life was service;
  I served and discovered that service was pleasure."

                                         - Rabindranath Tagore

"The greatest tragedy is not to live and die, as we all must.
  The greatest tragedy is for a person to live and die
  without knowing the satisfaction of giving life to others."

                                         - Cesar E. Chavez

"As long as space remains,
  As long as living beings remain,
  I will remain
  In order to Serve."
                                        - Dalai Lama
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