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Education as Ascetic Practice: Teaching Theology in a Post-9/11 Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Maureen R. O'Brien
Affiliation:
Duquesne University

Abstract

This essay presents an argument for the inherently ascetic nature of education in theology when considered in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Using a specific undergraduate theology course on Christian and Muslim responses to war and violence as a test case, the essay describes ascetic education as creating an epistemological “space” in which the capacity to engage complexity is intentionally enlarged and transformed. This enlargement, in the course under discussion, occurred principally through the students' encounter with diverse historical Christian responses to the question of participation in war, along with the comparison of Western and Muslim notions of “just war” as differentiated by historical, political and cultural factors. After presenting some highlights of how course themes and methods engaged the central ascetic tensions in the post-9/11 situation, three dimensions of asceticism vis-à-vis education are presented: ascetic disposition, conversation and action.

Type
Creative Teaching
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2004

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References

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21 For example, Cahill finds tenuous the U.S. bishops' characterization of just-war theory and pacifism as complementary in their pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: “Gospel-based nonviolence and the notion that nations have a right to self-defense seem to have very different, if not opposite, implications for practical moral and political behavior” (ibid., 4). See United States Catholic Conference, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983), nos. 120–21.Google Scholar

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23 Class handout for 22 and 24 January 2002.

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36 Valantasis, 801–02.

37 In Love Your Enemies, Cahill sees the “hard sayings” of the Sermon on the Mount as central to ethical attempts for Christians to come to terms with violence within their “eschatological horizon.” See esp. chaps. 1 and 2: “Pacifism or Just War Thinking?” 1–14, and “The Kingdom Come?” 15–38.

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49 Ibid., 82. Emphasis in original.

50 E.g., following a closely reasoned argument for the conditions of authentic public discourse, Kathryn Tanner states that there is no “obvious locus” for it in the United States, though it may function as an ideal “to shape and revise present institutional practices without violating constitutional mandates” (“Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics [1996]: 100).

51 At the popular level, it has become distressingly clear that new technologies can subvert as well as encourage authentic conversation. See, for example, Friedman, Thomas L., “Global Village Idiocy,Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13 May 2002, sec. A, p. 9Google Scholar, in which he laments the spread of “hateful lies” among ordinary Muslims throughout the world. For example, Indonesian Muslims with whom he spoke were convinced that 4,000 Jews were warned to stay away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

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