Ever since this year’s REA Board and Program Chair Patrick Reyes announced the 2022 annual meeting’s conference theme, “Becoming Good Ancestors: Courageously Co-Creating,” I have been struck by how this theme locates REA members as a people living between times. Or, to put it in Reyes’ brain-twisting language in his forum essay in this issue, “We are living in tomorrow’s yesterday and yesterday’s tomorrow.” He spells out what it means that in our organization we stand on the shoulders of many who came before us and are our good ancestors as a “five-generation organization,” while at the same time our lives and work in this present moment open into a future we will not inhabit ourselves but for which our present-day choices and decisions are consequential. With Reyes and this year’s conference planners we are called to wonder, “What does it mean to be a good ancestor?” Specifically for religious education, what is the pedagogy of a good ancestor?
This issue of Religious Education features our annual pre-conference forum section. The forum offers a set of essays kicked off by the program chair’s exploration of the theme, in which a group of scholars offer brief reflections on the theme from the perspective of their own lives and work. Some tell stories in quite personal terms about what “becoming a good ancestor” means for them. Others pose what might be a new or different way of thinking about the theme when seen through the lens of their social and geographical location. We are indebted to Patrick Reyes, Dori Baker, Patricia Bonilla, Carmichael Crutchfield, Anthony Ephirim-Donkor, Mary Love, Maureen O’Brien, and Ina ter Avest for their forum essays and for igniting our imaginations with anticipation of our conversations during this year’s meeting. Due to ongoing COVID concerns, the meeting will take place online this year, July 5–8, 2022. See the REA website, https://religiouseducation.net/meetings, for more information and registration.
The articles in this issue of Religious Education cover a range of territory, both topically and in terms of the four continents from which their five authors hail. Dennis Gunn’s historical research interrogates the mixed legacy of the REA’s founding. Gunn interrogates the language of American imperialism in William Rainey Harper’s founding vision for the REA, infused with notions of “American providentialism” while also seeing in Harper’s vision the promotion of what Gunn terms “a space for working toward peace” in the REA. Loc Tan Le looks at Buddhist religious education in Vietnam as a resource for moral development in teens. Based upon an exploratory study of three Zen monasteries belonging to Truc Lam (Bamboo Forest) Zen Buddhism, the author argues for the extension of Buddhist religious education with teens because it helps them achieve greater self-control and moral behavior. Carl Procario-Foley marks the fifty-year anniversary of the publication “Justicia en Mundo,” Justice in the World, part of the corpus of contemporary Catholic Social Teaching. Procario-Foley argues that while the document has been overlooked, it has insights worthy of retrieval for religious education, even as it “neglects to articulate how white supremacy, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression perpetuate injustice.” Lipiäinen Tuuli, Ubani Martin, and Kallioniemi Arto collaborate on a study of teachers in Finland, exploring teacher attitudes toward the “visibility of worldviews” (worldviews is inclusive of religions here) in Finnish schools. Noting that teachers in Finland possess considerably more freedom to determine materials and methods in their classrooms than is the case in some other locations, they contend that teacher attitudes can shape the “actualized curriculum” even when actions are in line with policies of official neutrality toward particular religions/worldviews. Finally, Theo van der Nest’s research concerns the role called “Director of Religious Studies” (DRS) in Catholic secondary schools in the Hamilton Diocese, Aotearoa New Zealand. Given that these positions were established to preserve and foster the “Catholic special character” of Catholic school in line with a government act requiring such a focus by private schools, van der Nest’s research inquires about aspects of the position of the DRS that support or inhibit this interest. Book reviews by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Lindsey Brooke Maxwell, Sylvia Sweeney, and Henry Zunio conclude the issue.
Yale University Divinity School
New Haven, CT, USA
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