READING DIVERSELY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
How do we respond to COVID-19 from a perspective of awakening?
By Dr. Ruth Anne Reese
The church is made up of many different people from a wide variety of backgrounds. There are many languages, many ethnic and social groups, and many races represented among the family of God. This is perhaps best seen in the vision that Revelation describes of a numberless multitude of people from every nation, tribe, people, and language worshipping before God’s throne (Rev. 7:9-10).
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embodying discipleship ∙ asburyseminary.edu
Despite this vision of worship before God’s throne, there is a tendency among humans to remain within our own groups and with the people and places where we feel most comfortable. One of our challenges in seminary education is to introduce students to a wide variety of voices within both the academic and the Christian tradition. As an educator, one of the ways that I have tried to do this is by requiring my students, especially in my introductory New Testament class, to read materials written by a variety of people. In addition to our regular textbooks this semester, we are also reading works by a feminist scholar, two Latino scholars, and an African American. Each one of these essays approaches the biblical text from a different angle than the textbook we are using. By having students read these essays and engage in discussion around them, it is my hope that they will realize that our embodied experience contrib-
