Agora
THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE
FALL 2021
LUTHER COLLEGE, DECORAH, IOWA
THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE
Martin Klammer, editor
FALL 2021 VOLUME 34 NUMBER 1
Bonnie Tunnicliff Johnson, production editor
Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. The Luther College Paideia Program encompasses many activities and resources for students, faculty members, and the broader community. It includes an annual lecture series, library acquisitions, student writing services, a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops, and Agora: The Liberal Arts at Luther College. All these activities receive financial support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. The Paideia owl logo was designed by Professor of Art John Whelan.
The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. Agora was established in 1988 LUTHER COLLEGE by Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics, who edited the journal from 1988-1998. Other editors include: Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, 1998-2004; Peter Seeking Wisdom in Community A. Scholl, Professor of English, 2004-2014; and Martin Klammer, Professor of English, editor since 2014. Agora is distributed to on-campus faculty and administrators as well as to off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the print copy list or donate to Agora should contact us at (563) 387-1153 or e-mail agora@luther.edu.
PAIDEIA
To see the current issue and archival issues online, go to www.luther.edu/paideia/agora.
Contents 2021-2022 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Decolonizing Paideia? Revising the Products and Processes of Education
Cover: mound builder (attaboy)
Opening Ourselves to the World: Navigating a Global-Critical Curriculum Gereon Kopf ............................................................................................................ 3
UV-cured archival inks printed onto shaped and powder-coated aluminum, 20 mesh sifted dirt
Decolonized Approaches to Teaching Religious Studies Wanda Deifelt, Robert Shedinger, Todd Green, Dominique Stringer ('22), and Nora Nyi Myint ('22) .................................................................................................... 10
Sabbaticals Sabbatical as Disruption Anna Peterson........................................................................................................ 17 In Memory of a Dream: A Pattern Language Joseph Madrigal..................................................................................................... 19 Outside the Zoom Room: Collaboration, Migration, and Telenovelas Nancy Gates Madsen............................................................................................. 22 Pandemic Particle Physics: A Sabbatical Saga Todd Pedlar........................................................................................................... 24 A Good Sabbatical Novian Whitsitt.................................................................................................... 27
Chapel Talks Something New (September 3, 2021) Storm Bailey.......................................................................................................... 28 Birds of the Air (September 8, 2021) Melissa Bills.......................................................................................................... 30 The Call to Remember (September 10, 2021) Brooke Joyce........................................................................................................... 32 Making All Things New (Including Ourselves) (September 22, 2021) Guy Nave.............................................................................................................. 34 Founders Day: O Sing Jubilee (October 13, 2021) David Faldet......................................................................................................... 36 Letting Go, With Faith in God's Promises (October 22, 2021)) Tanuj "Rick" Guha '22............................................................................................ 38 The Amazing Race (October 27, 2021) Jenifer Ward.......................................................................................................... 39 Groan, People, Groan! (November 5, 2021) Patrick Cabello-Hansel ......................................................................................... 41 On Mentors and Mentorship: Remembering Nadine (November 10, 2021)) Nicholas Shaneyfelt................................................................................................ 43
Joseph Madrigal
36 x 45 x 45 in
Introduction by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Editor of Agora
I
read today on the CNN website that “Omicron variant cases are generally mild, but global experts warn it’s still too early to know just how dangerous it is.” The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated France as one of five destinations in Europe as “very high” COVID-19 travel risk. And in Michigan, “more people are hospitalized with COVID-19 now than at any other point during the pandemic.” How long will COVID be with us? We don’t know. This may be the new reality: masked classrooms, masked Christmas at Luther, more booster shots, more testing, more suffering, more death. Not a happy prospect. And yet…and yet…our Campus Ministries website tells us: The fall 2021 chapel theme is: “A New Creation.” This theme, grounded in Isaiah 65: 17-18, invites us to reflect on God’s work in continually making all things new. It reminds us that we are beloved creations of God and emphasizes our response to this new creation through gladness and rejoicing. It also reminds us that, especially through the most shadowed times, God is forever creating and helping the former things to pass away. If it weren’t in the Bible, I’d be pretty skeptical right now about “making all things new.” And yet that is just what our faculty and students have been doing at Luther College. Agora is testament to that. In this issue: • Wanda Deifelt, Robert Shedinger, and Todd Green, and students Dominique Stringer and Nora Nyi Myint share their insights in a Paideia Text and Issues panel on decolonizing approaches to religious 2
Agora/Fall 2021
studies at Luther. Dominique and Nora, in particular, suggest what we could do to make things new by reconsidering the foundational religion course at the college. • Along these lines, Gereon Kopf ’s Paideia Text and Issues talk offers a “multi-entry” approach to teaching the philosophy of religion in a way that makes things new by acknowledging “the diversity of voices around the world.” • Nancy Gates Madsen reports on how, during her sabbatical, she had planned to travel to the US-Mexico border in Arizona to work with an organization that provided free legal services to “refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers.” When COVID protocols canceled her trip, she made things new by working with student Mackenzie Zenk, analyzing the rhetoric of migration in the novel Signs Preceding the End of the World by Mexican author Yuri Herrera, a work itself that makes things new by subverting conventional migration narratives. • Similarly, Todd Pedlar has been unable to travel to KEK, the national high energy physics laboratory in Japan which has been the site of his ongoing research. Nevertheless, he was able to engage Luther students Linnea Lee-Brown, Aiden Berdahl, Nicholas Behrens, and Alain Nishimwe in remotelyconnected research efforts that enabled them to make meaningful contributions to the particle physics research of the international Belle II Collaboration. • All of the chapel talks featured in this issue address the theme of “A New Creation.” David Faldet, in the Founders Day chapel of October 13, reminds us of the time
when Luther College itself was a new creation: …[T]hough the founders originally thought to do as they had in Norway, train pastors through a state university, they now were in America, supported not officially through the state, but by the private giving of, mainly, farmers. They founded something new: an American college with a European classical curriculum. Making something “new” is not easy, as campus pastor Melissa Bills reminds us—she herself being new to Luther this semester. “Newness means change,” she says, and “Change brings uncertainty…a little bit of loss…[and] anticipation or anxiety or both.” So, as we seek to make things new in a time of pandemic that is getting a little old, let’s all take a breath (masks on) and, as Melissa encourages us, find time for a “grace interlude.” I hope this issue of Agora gives you, our readers, a grace interlude—a time to read, reflect, and appreciate the good work by students, faculty, and staff that continues to flourish at Luther College.
Opening Ourselves to the World: Navigating a Global-Critical Curriculum by GEREON KOPF, Professor of Religion
Preliminary reflections Before we begin our journey into the vision of an inclusive liberal arts curriculum, I would like to venture a few preliminary reflections. First, while most of us strive to be fair and inclusive, we need to be aware that inclusive pedagogies and curricula have the potential to make us feel uncomfortable. They confront us with views on reality and on our self-understanding as well as histories other than our own. They raise the possibility that there are not only other ways of understanding reality and of interpreting histories other than the ones we are used to, but also world views and even academic methods that supplement the ones we have come to embrace and identify with. The reason for this is that worldviews and even academic methods not only constitute intellectual exercises but also are intimately intertwined with our self-understanding and with our identities. In other words, inclusive pedagogies and curricula require “brave spaces” (Arao and Clemens 2013), they require an environment in which we leave our comfort zone and encounter beliefs and ways of thinking that, heretofore, we assigned to an other. I will return this point later in this essay.
Inclusive pedagogies and curricula have the potential to make us feel uncomfortable. In addition, I would like to briefly reflect on the terminology that we use to describe inclusive and diverse pedagogies and curricula. The title of the Paideia Text and Issues Lecture series asks whether it is necessary to decolonize Paideia. The titles of the three other talks in this series explic-
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
I
am very grateful for the opportunity to present at the Paideia Text and Issues Lecture series as well as in Agora. I would like to thank Kathryn Reed, Brian Caton, the Text and Issues Lectures committee, and Martin Klammer, the editor of Agora, for this opportunity. The topic of this year’s Paideia Text and Issues Lecture series, “Decolonizing Paideia? Revising the Products and Process of Education,” is extremely important and timely. The topic of the lecture series also coincides with and augments the DEI Action Plan of Provost Lynda Szymanski. Diversifying the campus and the curriculum need to go hand in hand. Therefore, it is an honor to kick off this lecture series. The current essay assesses existing approaches to a diversified as well as inclusive curriculum and proposes a strategy to decentralize the liberal arts that I created over the past few years and especially during my sabbatical last year. I will illustrate this method with the work of the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion group (GCPoR), of which I am a member and co-organizer. This group, which was founded in 2015, received a Wabash Grant that is administered by Luther College and that I also serve as the Principal Investigator (PI). Its primary goal is to develop and implement strategies to “teach philosophy of religion inclusively to diverse students.” The present essay 1) opens with a few preliminary reflections, 2) illustrates the current crisis of global-critical liberal arts by discussing the status quo of, the problems inherent in, and a new approach to the discipline of philosophy of religion, 3) analyzes the underlying obstacles that prevent us from opening ourselves to the world, 4) presents two practical approaches that I hope will enable us to do just that, and 5) identifies the goals of a decentralized liberal arts curriculum.1
Gereon Kopf itly address the need to decolonize the liberal arts and to envision humanities and sciences in the light of postcolonial studies. I agree that the liberal arts and Paideia as our flagship program need to be decolonized. As a professor and researcher of East Asian religions and philosophies I clearly see and emphatically endorse the need for postcolonial studies in my field. However, I am not the person to advance postcolonial studies. As a German, who lives in the U.S. and researches the philosophies of Japan and “around the world,” I am in no position to decolonize anything, to envision postcolonial studies, or to “represent” the subaltern. As Gayatri Spivak has argued convincingly in her (in)famous “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), representation in both the sense of “speaking-for” and “presenting” silences the colonial subject and, therefore, is doomed to fail. Therefore, I propose to decentralize the liberal arts and to invite postcolonial voices into the community that envisions inclusive and diverse pedagogies and curricula. When I decided on a title for the talk, I choose the adjective “global-critical” Fall 2021/Agora
3
intentionally for two reasons. First, the name of our group designed to make philosophy of religion more open and inclusive is “global-critical.” Second, and more importantly, this descriptor indicates both the strengths and the deficiencies of both “global” and “critical” approaches. In short, global approaches to philosophy acknowledge the need to make our discipline more inclusive, to represent a multiplicity of geographical regions and traditions, to expand our horizon, and to fashion a “philosophy around the world.” Bloomsbury Academics and our group agreed that this phrase is descriptive of our project. Global approaches focus on the scope of the discipline and expand the range of the texts, thinkers, and traditions discussed in our publications and curricula. This is the strength of this kind of approach. But it also has a weakness: It applies one particular method, mostly methods developed in Western Europe or North America, to all other traditions and texts. Critical approaches point out the dangers of hegemonic thinking that takes one cultural paradigm or the conceptual framework of what constitutes “religion” and/or “philosophy” framed in the context of one specific tradition as normative and applies it to all traditions “around the world.” Critical philosophy, contrary to global philosophy, is framed “from below” and “in a new key” (McAffee Brown 1978) and illuminates the hegemonic power structures reflected in our practice of philosophy in particular and the liberal arts in general. It encourages us to acknowledge the colonial politics of the current academia, to rethink our methodological presuppositions, and to de-colonize the philosophical discourse. It thus focuses on the meta-discourse, the examination of the method and conceptual framework that we imply and apply in philosophical discourses.
Table 1 4
Agora/Fall 2021
Table 1 compares global philosophy, on the one side, and the critical, postcolonial approach to philosophy of religion, on the other, with the new approach I introduce in this essay. Global philosophy implies a monistic worldview insofar as it assumes a set of universals that applies to all cultures and traditions and postulates a commonality across the borders between cultures and traditions. It employs a top down approach universalizing the methodological assumptions and the conceptual framework developed in one particular cultural setting. Postcolonial philosophy, on the other hand, advances a cultural monadology postulating the particularity of cultures, even implying cultural relativism, and privileges the principle of difference. It suggests decolonizing academia from the bottom up and gives voice to the communities previously marginalized and silenced. I believe that both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Global philosophy asserts the common humanity shared and expressed by all traditions but assumes the power to identify and define this commonality; it postulates the universality of human rights but silences particularity and diversity in its name. Postcolonial theory highlights the particularity of specific cultures but advances general theories which ask us to listen to the marginalized, yet, as Spivak has pointed out, speak for them. To mediate between globalism and postcolonialism and to highlight the strengths of each of these approaches, I suggest a third option, cosmopolitanism (Kopf 2021). Inspired by Mutai Risaku’s 務台 理作 (1890-1974) social philosophy and Anthony Appiah’s theory of cosmopolitanism (2007), I argue that cosmopolitanism reconciles these two seemingly opposing principles, the commonality of humanity and the particularity of cultures, universality and individual-
ity. The cosmopolitanism that I envision is based on the Tiantai principle “one-and-yet-many, many-and-yet-one” (Chin.: yijiduo duojiyi 一即多 多即一) that emphasizes commonality-in-difference and difference-in-commonality. Any philosophy as well as liberal arts that is rooted in such a cosmopolitanism is entirely decentralized. It has no beginning and no end and is based on a non-essentialist ontology assuming no center, implying no “grand narrative” (Fr.: méta-récits).
The main problem of philosophy of religion is that the discipline is characterized by overlapping hegemonic discourses. Why the need for a global-critical curriculum? To illustrate the basic need for global, postcolonial, and decentralized liberal arts, I would like to introduce the central discussion in the academic philosophy of religion to illustrate the need for a global-critical and decentralized curriculum. To do that, I have to first introduce the history of the discipline. It is not uncommon to locate the birth of this discipline in the European Christian traditions. However, that is only partially true. While it is possible to trace some of the debates that make up the canon of current philosophy of religion to Augustine (354-430) and Pelagius (360-418), its antecedents can be found in the application of Aristotelian philosophy to Islamic theology by the Mu’tazilites and Ash’arites in the ninth and tenth centuries. Islamic philosophy, in particular the works of Ibn Sīnā (980–1037) and Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), influenced medieval Jewish and Christian philosophy significantly. Philosophers such as Maimonides (1138–1204), Thomas Aquinas (1224– 1274), and, more broadly, European intellectuals in general inherited Aristotelian philosophy and science from the Islamic intellectual
tradition. Be that as it may, philosophy of religion today is heavily shaped by Christian philosophers from Europe and North America. The main problem of philosophy of religion is that the discipline is characterized by overlapping Table 2 hegemonic discourses including Eurocentrism, Christocentrism, androcentrism, ethnocentrism, Anglo-phono-centrism, heteronormativity, ableism, speciesism, just to name a few. The method applied and the questions asked are not only framed within a monotheistic context, they further imply a specific normativity and a clearly recognizable vision of what religion is and who the practitioners of philosophy of religion are. One of these many hegemonic discourses that is often assumed but rarely criticized is Anglo-phono-centrism. Yet it is almost always assumed that all texts, primary or secondary, relevant to the discipline are accessible in English, i.e. either written in or translated into English. Similarly, all major conferences in the discipline are either held in or translated into English. On first sight, this seems to be mainly a practical issue. On further examination, however, one realizes that it is problematic if the relevance of conferences and publications to a discipline that focuses on the careful analysis of concepts and arguments is determined by the language in which they are held or produced. To counteract these hegemonic discourses in philosophy of religion in particular, and the liberal arts in general, an inclusive—that is, global, postcolonial, and decentralized—curriculum is necessary. What makes the globalization, decolonization, and decentralization of the liberal arts even more difficult is that disciplines are not one dimensional but comprise at least four different discursive layers: 1) the discourse constitutes the subject and the scope of study, 2) the organizing structure provides the method of study, 3) the meta-discourse provides the horizon of study, and 4)
the discursive deep structure comprises the underlying heuristic framework and determines the form and shape of the discourse. Table 2 classifies a variety of globalcritical approaches to philosophy of religion by identifying the discursive layer they intend to diversify. Traditional global approaches such as Joseph Runzo’s Global Philosophy of Religion: A Short Introduction (2001) diversify the subject of study and, e.g., complement sources investigated in traditional philosophical studies of religion such as Thomas Aquinas with sources produced by the Mu’tazilites, Nyāya Hinduism, or the Japanese Zen philosopher Dōgen (1200-1253). Critical approaches decolonize the organizing structure of the discipline by diversifying the method of study. The philosophical method is thus supplemented and sometimes even replaced with the Confucian “investigation of things” (gewu 格物), the Hindu “critical understanding” (darśana), and the Shintō “pathos of things” (mono no aware 物の哀れ). Arvind Sharma’s trilogy The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective, The Philosophy of Religion: A Sikh Perspective, and A Primal Perspective on Philosophy of Religion is an example of this approach. Global-critical approaches such as Timothy Knepper’s Philosophy of Religion: A Global and Critical Approach broaden the horizon of the study insofar as they challenge the theocentric paradigm of religion and treat, as in Knepper’s case, Lakota, Yorùbá, South Asian, East Asian, and contemporary academic philosophies of religion on the same level as the traditional philosophy of religion steeped in the Abrahamic traditions. Finally, cosmopolitan approaches decentralize the discursive deep structure as well as
the underlying heuristic framework of the discipline. Later in this essay I introduce my “multi-entry approach” (hereafter abbreviated as “MEV”) (Kopf 2019, 2022), which proposes to conceive of the philosophy of religion and the liberal arts as a multilogue of “small discourses” (petit récits), rather than one “metanarrative” (métarécit). Obstacles that prevent us from opening ourselves to the world But why is there resistance to diversifying the liberal arts curriculum on any or all of these four discursive layers? Why do most disciplines, including the sciences, replace the multiplicity of voices and traditions with a multiplicity of juxtapositions and identity conflicts? The binary framework that is expressed in our rhetoric of “East” vs. “West,” “religion” vs. “science,” “rational” vs. “irrational,” “good” vs. “evil,” and “us vs. them” is clearly indicative of identity politics. As Jessica Benjamin has argued brilliantly (1977), every binary framework will lead to hegemonic rhetoric and politics and what Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900) called “the will to power.” Identity politics not only bifurcates the world into two irreconcilable realms, it also leads to what J. J. Clarke calls “quasientities” and “cultural enclavism” (Clarke 1994, 14-15). Mutai Risaku has argued that identity formation creates a “small world” (shōsekai 小世界) (MRC 4: 59), that is, the illusion that our experience, our way of looking at the world, our method of study is normative. We mistake the world we experience with THE world. This is why the globalization, decolonization, and decentralization of the curriculum makes us uncomfortable: it threatens our “small world.” This is why we often feel the urge to resist it. Fall 2021/Agora
5
In my sabbatical, I developed a metapsychology to analyze the obstacles we face when we attempt to open ourselves to the world and to suggest ways to overcome these obstacles. For the sake of time/space, I focus on four out of ten metapsychological comportments.
one side, and a simple challenge to the Weltanschauung of the self, on the other. I explore this difference in length in a recent essay (Kopf 2022). Be that as it may, there are three possible outcomes to this anti-thetical encounter: first, the eternal conflict between self and other, second, the subjugation of one by the other, or, third, an uneasy truce not unlike the “non-overlapping magisteria” of “science” and “religion” as suggested by Stephen Gould (1997).
Graph 1 Graph 1 illustrates the comportment that I call “constructing-the-other-foroneself ” (對自成他). Here we live in what the comedian A. Whitney Brown calls “pre-Copernican universe,” where the “world revolves around ourselves.” When we live in our “small world” and possess an “ego-centered worldview” we construct the world as an object of our experience, understanding, and desire. To use the language of Jean Piaget (1896-1980), we “assimilate” the objects of our experience into our world and make them conform to our worldview. Jean-Paul Sartre calls this comportment “being-for-itself ” (être-pour-soi).
Graph two Graph 1 depicts the “encounter of self and other” (自偶遇他). In this antithetical encounter, two self-conscious subjects, two intentionalities, two worldviews face each other. At this point, the self is no longer able to “assimilate” the other into its world. The independent other resists the assimilation by the self. At the same time, the self feels limited and threatened by the other. Of course, we need to distinguish between threats to the very existence of the self, on 6
Agora/Fall 2021
Graph 3 Graph 3, “recognizing-sameness-in-difference,” (找同存異), suggests one way of how this deadlock of the anti-thetical encounter between self and other can be broken. The “presence of a third” (Kopf 2018) reveals the complexity of identity choices, underlying solidarity, and shifting allegiances and discloses an a-thetic modality. Faced with a multiplicity of interlocutors, the self finds different sets of commonalities with varying people: I might share a language with person A, a religious practice with person B, and a liking for 80s pop music with person C. All of a sudden, identity choices become more difficult than expected. This complexity disrupts the easy rhetoric of “us vs. them.” I call this modality of “recognizing-sameness-in-difference” a-thetic since it is no longer rooted in a selfconsciously articulated project but rather in a “mutual feeling response” (ganying daojiao 感應道交) (T 1911.46.004). This “mutual feeling response” has to be cultivated in embodied practice to shape who we are—otherwise it remains a fleeting insight. Finally, graph 4 proposes the modality of “existing together-complementingeach-other” (共存互補). In the same way, in which the “presence of the third” reveals the complexity of iden-
Graph 4 tity constructions, the “demand of the fourth” (Kopf 2018) brings to light that all individuals as well as all encounters between individuals do not occur in a vacuum but in a social context. The self always constitutes a self-in-a-web-ofmultiplicity. The graph further indicates that the modality of “being-in-multiplicity” is not exclusive: it neither transcends nor rejects the thetic and a-thetic modalities of the self, but includes and expresses them—it is non-thetic. The identity of the self-in-multiplicity is neither monolithic not permanent, but liminal. It comprises a hybrid identity. It is only then that we become multicultural, that we are open to the world, that we embrace diversity. Table 3 suggests examples of these four comportments. “Constructing-theother-for-oneself ” is expressed in the methodological solipsism of graduate students and researchers who are so immersed in their own method that they cannot imagine a different way of approaching the subject of their study. If other methods of study are encountered, they are then interpreted within the framework of one’s own method. Similarly, theology of religion “assimilates” religious systems other than one’s own into my own theological framework. The “encounter-of-self-and-other” illustrates an awareness of the diversity of scholarly methods and interreligious dialogue or interfaith encounters. One is aware of the other, maybe intrigued, but prefers to stay within one’s own domain and home-ground. The comportment of “recognizing-sameness-indifference,” then, outlines the first step towards interdisciplinarity as well as the pluralistic approach to the diversity of religious systems and practices. While
Table 3 still foreign, one recognizes similarities with other academic disciplines as well as religious practices and is willing to embark on the journey to a common goal. The modality of “existing togethercomplementing-each-other” is expressed by a multi-entry approach to philosophy, the acceptance of hybrid identities, and the sense and practice of multiple belonging. As I mentioned above, these four comportments do not outline a process from a naïve to a more mature attitude. Rather, all four attitudes are at play at any given time: we all have our own worldview and disciplinary method, we all encounter particular other worldviews and methods, and we realize that the juxtaposition of self and other is constructed and located in a web of multiplicity. Accordingly, our identities are not monolithic and exclusive but rather complex, multi-layered, and liminal. Strategies for decentralizing the curriculum In this section, I would like to discuss strategies to decentralize the liberal arts curriculum based on the above analysis of our resistance to engage across real and imagined boundaries and to open ourselves to the world. The first strategy is what I call “frame switching.” This is a skill commonly practiced in philosophy and religious studies classes, a skill that lies at the foundation of Knepper’s approach to philosophy of religion. Students learn not only about but also to think through multiple perspectives, positions, and systems of thought and familiarize themselves with these systems from the inside as well as the outside. Concretely, students learn to appreciate assumptions, arguments, and implications, conducting both an internal and external criticism of philo-
sophical positions framed in response to specific questions such as “who are we,” “do we have free will,” and “what is the cosmos.” Since this strategy should be common practice in philosophy of religion classes, I will not discuss it here. The strategies that I focus is on here are my multi-entry approach to philosophy as well as the liberal arts and the practice of common pilgrimages. The goal of both of these practices is “knowing-theself-understanding-the-other, knowingthe-other-understanding-the-self ” (知 自明他 知他明自).
I have articulated the multi-entry approach” (Kopf 2019, 2022) as a strategy to research, develop, and teach philosophy of religion in a way that acknowledges the diversity of voices “around the world.” This idea was inspired by the Buddhist image of Indra’s net––a net of diamonds, each of which reflects all other diamonds as well as the whole net in itself––and the rhizomatic model developed and suggested by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987). Both models suggest an academic discourse without a beginning/arche, end/goal/ telos, or center, regardless of whether this discourse is realized as an anthology or monograph, a workshop, a textbook, or a syllabus. Each chapter/section constitutes a textbook/unit in itself and discusses the four discursive layers introduced above (discourse, structure of discourse, meta-discourse, discursive deep structure) inside out. At the same time, every chapter/section integrates all other chapters/sections in itself and provides its own rationale of how to read the book or approach the subject. Such a textbook is best written by multiple authors, each of whom presents one position/system and engages all other positions from their own perspective.
It is a little bit more difficult to apply this multi-entry strategy to the classroom, since college courses are usually taught by one faculty or a small team of two to three faculty. Therefore, our GCPoR research group is developing extensive resource materials and provides a network of expertise. Concretely, our website connects faculty who teach philosophy of religion “inclusively to diverse students” with experts in specific traditions, positions, and methods who are willing to visit courses via online platforms such as Zoom and Skype. Another strategy to open ourselves to the world and decentralize the curriculum is pilgrimages. Pilgrimages are usually understood as religious practices and come in various shapes and sizes. There are single-site pilgrimages such the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (Spain), multi-site pilgrimages such as the 88 Sacred Places in Shikoku ( Japan), as well as pilgrimages that focus on the path itself rather than the goal. We tend to think that pilgrimages are designed to re-establish (religare) the bond between human beings and spiritual power(s) or embrace and follow the role model of religious heroes such as saints and religious founders. However, it is also possible to think of pilgrimage as transformation, charting a journey from self-doubt or “thinking” (shirō 思 量), struggle or “not thinking” (fushirō 不思量), to “just doing or “withoutthinking”2 (hishirō 非思量) (DZZ vol. 1). Or translated in a language that is less cryptic, we can say that pilgrimages facilitate a transformation from ignorance via the practice of “attunement” (Nagatomo 1992) to, as the Ten Ox Pictures (shiniutu 十牛図) of Kuoan Shiyuan 廓庵師遠 (twelfth century)3 suggest, wisdom (prajñā) and compassion (karunā). Here, “wisdom” implies understanding-the-other and “compassion” caring-for-the-other. These pictures suggest that pilgrimage constitutes liberation from self-centeredness and facilitates openness to the world. Fall 2021/Agora
7
So what does this practice, as exciting as it may be, have to do with our curriculum? The answer to this question is actually in front of us. Both pilgrimages and the liberal arts curriculum nurture “discursive self-reflection.” In both cases, we learn about ourselves, our histories, our relationship to each other, and our place in the world. The overarching themes of Paideia 111 and 112 have echoed this sentiment. Pilgrimages facilitate this kind of self-reflection even more so when they constitute the communal exploration of our identities in relation to each other. If we and the perceived other venture together on a common journey to places of significance such as memorial sites, pilgrimages cannot but facilitate reflection on our various and sometimes variant understanding of our common history and encourage a mutual exchange of these multiple and frequently divergent narratives. When the pilgrims engage each other’s experiences, narratives, and worldviews, they arrive at a recognition of our commonalities-in-difference (this includes members of the same community) and an appreciation of our common humanity. The memorial sites that I have in mind commemorate what I call “unique inescapable ruptures” (hereafter “UIR”) (Kopf 2010). The purpose of those sites has been discussed in recent literature on the “ethics of memory” (Margalit 2004) and “dark tourism.” Having engaged with the ethics of memory for a while, especially with the work of Avishai Margalit (2004) and Sueki Fumihiko (2017), I am excited that the Center for Ethics and Public Engagement (CEPE) chose ethics of memory as its topic for this semester. Margalit proposes the importance of an ethics of memory as follows: “The difference between dwelling on humiliation and not on recognition is not the same sort of difference as that between seeing the cup half empty and seeing it half full. The difference, I believe, cuts deeper. Is it not injustice rather than justice that ‘hurts us into politics’?” (Avishai Margalit 2004, 104). Similarly, Trinh Minh Ha encourages us to walk “with the disappeared” (Trinh 2016). The experience of injustice constitutes an important starting point for social 8
Agora/Fall 2021
justice, but it puts the onus of this work and intercultural understanding squarely on the shoulders of the oppressed, the marginalized, the silenced. I sincerely believe that it is equally important that we acknowledge and face the injustice that our communities have committed. For me as a German, who lives in the Midwest of the U.S., researches Japanese philosophy, and has taught in Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China, some of the UIRs that I have to confront are the Holocaust, the Native American genocide, the legacy of slavery and racism, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nanjing massacre, just to name a few. Pilgrimages to memorial sites such as Dachau and Hiroshima are not easy, but they are necessary if we are serious about inclusiveness, education, and morality.
Pilgrimages to memorial sites such as Dachau and Hiroshima are not easy, but they are necessary if we are serious about inclusiveness, education, and morality. Obviously, there are practical limitations to arranging such pilgrimages. But it is possible to start with small steps. I believe Paideia has done a wonderful job including heretofore silenced and neglected voices into our firstyear program. As a college we need to keep including these voices into our curriculum. In addition, the current conversations on the reform of our general education requirement provide a wonderful opportunity to promote the study of systemic inequalities and to focus on global citizenship. In addition to these curricular changes, we could organize trips for all first-year students to the National Historic Site of Wounded Knee and Wounded Knee: The Museum in South Dakota and for all third-year students to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice as well as the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The Paideia Program could sponsor
the former and the CEPE the latter. Finally, if we are serious about making a commitment to global citizenship, we will enable each student to participate in study abroad and each faculty member by the end of their first sabbatical to live in a country in which English is neither the official nor the primary language. Obviously, those changes require financial and human resources. But programs like these are necessary if we truly want to be inclusive and if we are committed to truth and justice. They also help us to realize the high ideals of our mission statement: “As people of all backgrounds, we embrace diversity and challenge one another to learn in community, to discern our callings, and to serve with distinction for the common good.” Conclusion: the goals of a decentralized liberal arts curriculum The goal of these strategies and of global, critical, and cosmopolitan approaches to the liberal arts is “knowingthe-self-understanding-the-other” (知 自明他). As long as we live exclusively in the ego-centered world created by our self-consciousness, we experience other people, cultures, traditions as a limitation, a threat, and—possibly—as an enemy. We are locked in our own world. Self-awareness, however, facilitates an understanding of our standpoint, our place in the world, and our connections with others. Knowing who we are enables us to see similarities with others and to recognize “similarities-in-difference.” Ultimately, self-awareness not only illuminates the standpoint of the self but also facilitates the path to understanding the standpoint of the other. It facilitates the insight that self and other are intrinsically intertwined: one cannot exist without the other. While the practice of pilgrimage conceived as putting-oneself-in-the-shoes-ofthe-other (换位思考) that leads to the modality of existing-together-complementing-each-other requires the difficult work of pilgrimages to UIRs at one point, it also starts with little steps such as reading books written in a different part of the world that convey a heretofore unknown experience, watching foreign language films, or simply talking and listening to members of communi-
ties to which we do not belong. At institutes of higher education such as Luther College, it also includes taking classes outside one’s comfort zone in disciplines and areas one is not familiar with. These little steps constitute the beginning of a journey beyond the boundaries of my own world, they help us open ourselves to the world, to navigate a globalcritical curriculum, and “to serve with distinction for the common good.”
Works Cited Abbreviations:
DZZ Dōgen zenji zenshū 道元禅師全集 [Complete Works of Zen Master Dōgen]. 2 vols. Ed. Dōshū Ōkubo. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1969-1970).
MRC Mutai risaku chosakushū 務台理 作著作集 [Collected Works of Mutai Risaku]. 9 vols. (Tokyo: Kobushi Shobō, 2000–2002). NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū 西田幾多 郎全集 [Complete Works of Kitarō Nishida]. 20 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988). T
NOTES 1. This essay is based on my recent publications (Kopf 2018, 2019, 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b).
2. This is Thomas P. Kasulis’ translation of “hishirō” (Kasulis 1980, 73).
3. An online search of “ten ox pictures” or “ox herding pictures” and “Kuoan” will render versions of this famous series of pictures and poems.
4. This fourfold model of consciousness/ awareness is mapped onto Chengguan’s 澄觀 (738-839) “four dharma worlds” (sifajie), the dharma worlds of “particulars” (shi-fajie), “universals” (li-fajie), “nonobstruction of universal and particular” (lishiwuai-fajie), and “non-obstruction among particulars” (shishiwuai-fajie) (T 1883.45.672).
Taishō daizōkyō 大正大藏經 [Buddhist Canon - The Taishō Version], ed. by Junjirō Takakusu and Kaigyoku Watanabe (Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai. 1961).
Other works
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2007. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York W. W. Norton & Company.
Arao, Brian and Kristi Clemens. 2013. “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice.” In The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators, ed. Lisa M. Landreman, 135-150. (Sterling: Stylus Publishing. Benjamin, Jessica. 1977. “The End of Internalization: Adorno’s Social Psychology.” Telos Vol. 32, 42-64.
Clarke, J. J. 1993. Jung and the East: a Dialogue with the Orient. New York: Routledge.
Davies, Brian. 2020. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. One Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Transl. Brian Massumi. New York: Continuum. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1997. “NonOverlapping Magisteria.” Natural History Vol. 106, 16-26.
Heisig, James W. 2013. Nothingness and Desire: An East-West Philosophical Antiphony. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Kasulis, Thomas P. 1981. Zen Action – Zen Person. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Knepper, Timothy. 2022. Philosophy of Religion: A Global and Critical Approach. London: Bloomsbury Academics.
Kopf, Gereon. 2010. “Ethics of Memory and Politics of Commemoration: The Case of the Nanjing Massacre” (co-authored), Religious Studies News. Vol. 24, No. 2 _____. 2018. “Self, selflessness, and the endless search for identity: a meta-psychology of human folly,” Self or No-Self, edited by Ingolf U. Dalfehrt,239-262.Tübingen: in Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 239-262. _____. 2019. “Emptiness, Multiverses, and the Conception of a Multi-Entry Philosophy,” APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies Vol. 19, No. 1, 34-36.
_____. 2021. “How to Talk Across Boundaries,” Meridian Vol. 1 No. 2 (https://gsc.gust.edu.kw/newsletter-122021#overlay-context=) (09/2021). ______. 2022. “The Theory and Practice of the Multi-Entry Approach.” In Philosophy of Religion Around the World: A Critical Approach, edited by Nathan Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska. London: Bloomsbury Academics. Margalit, Avishai. 2004. The Ethics of Memory. Boston: Harvard University Press.
McAfee Brown, Robert. 1978. Theology in a new Key: Responding to Liberation Themes. Philadelphia: Westminster John Know Press. Nagatomo, Shigenori. 1992. Attunement Through the Body. Albany: SUNY Press. Runzo, Joseph. 2001. Global Philosophy of Religion: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
Sharma, Arvind. 1997. The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. _____. 2007. The Philosophy of Religion: A Sikh Perspective. Rupa Publications. _____. 2010. A Primal Perspective on Philosophy of Religion. Dordrecht: Springer.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sueki, Fumihiko. 2017. Religion and Ethics at Odds: A Buddhist Counter-position. Transl. Anton Sevilla. Nagoya: Chisokudō Publications.
Trinh, T. Minh-Ha. 2016. Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared. New York: Fordham University Press.
Fall 2021/Agora
9
Decolonized Approaches to Teaching Religious Studies
by WANDA DEIFELT, Professor of Religion, ROBERT SHEDINGER, Professor of Religion, TODD GREEN, Associate Professor of Religion, DOMINIQUE STRINGER ('22) and NORA NYI MYINT ('22)
Editor's note: This November 2 panel was part of the 2021-22 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture series Decolonizing Paideia? Revising the Products and Processes of Education. Todd Green
L
et me begin by expressing gratitude for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the larger theme of decolonizing Paideia, particularly as this theme relates to the teaching of religion at Luther College and to how religion courses can contribute to larger efforts to decolonize our curriculum. My interest in this topic come from my training as a historian of religion and as a scholar of religious bigotry. Much of my research focuses on Islamophobia, but I have broader interest as a scholar in studying how minority religious traditions in the United States and Europe historically have been forced to negotiate their place in the cultural, political, and religious landscape. Such negotiation takes place within particular matrices of power, and this includes colonial power and colonial history. In my own teaching, I work to expose students to the colonial attitudes and structures that shape how many
Todd Green 10
Agora/Fall 2021
Americans understand religion, particularly the American tendency to think of America’s embrace of religion and religious liberty as exceptional and enlightened. To illustrate how I address this topic in my teaching, let me focus briefly on two courses that I teach regularly: Religion in America, and Islamophobia. Religion in America The story of religion in America, in the political and popular imagination, is often told in a way that reflects certain myths about the United States in regards to its exceptional place in the world. It’s a story that gets reified in the US public school system and in political speeches and messaging from across the ideological spectrum. The story goes like this. The Pilgrims and Puritans fled religious persecution in Britain in order to establish a safe haven for freedom of religion here in the New World. They sought to create what John Winthrop called a city on a hill, a metaphor that would resonate throughout American history and become a prominent fixture in presidential politics from figures as wide-ranging as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. This story implies that religious intolerance was what the English were escaping when coming to the New World, not something they would impose once they set about creating the city on a hill. What is often missing from that story is how diverse religious communities that were not white Protestants were subject to bias and discrimination. We often don’t encounter in prominent ways the story of white Protestants invoking God or Christianity to justify genocidal campaigns against the indigenous populations, or to justify racial terrorism and brutality in the form of slavery. Both of these projects were colonial projects. Both reflected deeply engrained notions
of racial and religious superiority for the purpose of creating communities and ultimately a nation that imposed colonial structures that restricted the religious liberty of minoritized racial and religious communities. But telling this story is not popular. It does not get much space in the US public schools, and it certainly is not what politicians want to tout when giving speeches on America as a beacon of liberty and freedom. When I teach my Religion in America course, I work hard to give ample attention to these alternative narratives, to point out that the United States was a product of a larger colonial project steeped in racism and religious bigotry. This racism and religious bigotry morphed and adapted throughout American history, but it did not disappear. We cannot understand why white Protestants, and later white Christians more broadly, dominated political structures and positions of power without challenging the myths and stories that have presented the United States as a model of religious freedom. Students in my Religion in America course study this history from the perspective of those subjected to intolerance and bigotry, and in doing so, we all move a step closer to decolonizing a history that all too often is used to perpetuate—as opposed to dismantle—attitudes and practices that subject anyone who is not a white Christian to second-class citizen status or worse. Islamophobia My main area of research is Islamophobia. Islamophobia is the fear and hostility toward Muslims and Islam that is rooted in racism and that results in individual and systemic acts of exclusion, discrimination, and violence that targets Muslims and those perceived as Muslims. In addition to researching and
writing extensively on this topic, I teach a course on it here at Luther. The academic study of Islamophobia goes hand in hand with a recognition that colonial histories have had a profound impact on the way many of us in the West think about and imagine Muslims, Islam, and certain regions of the world (particularly the Middle East and North Africa). A legendary scholar in the field who has shaped the way I and many other scholars of Islamophobia and Islam go about our work is the late Edward Said. In 1978, Said published a seminal book called Orientalism. In the book, he called attention to the ways in which European and American imperial interests in the Middle East influenced the way they understood Islam and Muslims. He argued that the Western desire to dominate the Middle East politically, economically, and militarily shaped the kinds of knowledge produced about the Middle East and its dominant religion, Islam. In other words, power over the Middle East resulted in a type of knowledge about the Middle East that justified the imperial project. Islam as a religion, and Muslims as a people, were cast as backwards, barbaric, uneducated, and violent, all of which in turn justified Western imperial dominance in the region to “tame” the Muslim natives. This type of mindset was prominent in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century, but in his preface to an updated edition after 9/11, Said noted that this mindset continues to infect the attitudes of scholars, politicians, and journalists in the United States and Europe, resulting in the disastrous war on terror. All of this is important because it raises substantive and essential questions about whether there is any approach to the study of Islam that is objective. As Said noted, all of us in Europe and the United States are embedded in political contexts with particular interests in Muslim-majority countries, interests that are by no means neutral. In ways that we are often not fully conscious of, our images and impressions of Islam and Muslims have been produced by a larger colonial project. Many of us have inherited colonial and racist stereotypes about Islam and Muslims that
in turn get mistaken all too often for objective knowledge—for example, the stereotype that Muslims are prone to violence whereas “we” are not. For this reason, we must endeavor to decolonize our approach to the study of Islam, to allow Muslims to become our teachers, our windows into the world of Islam, to give space for Muslims to interpret their own texts and traditions. This is what I endeavor to do in my course on Islamophobia. The course is not an introduction to Islam. The course is an introduction to how Islam has been constructed and interpreted in such a way as to promote Western political, economic, and military interests. The course is an opportunity to deconstruct this “knowledge” and to call attention to the colonial mindset that pervades Western discourse about Islam and Muslims. Once this work is done, I feel, a healthier, more nuanced approach to Islam is possible, and space is created for Muslims to become interpreters of their own texts, traditions, histories, and rituals. That is in part how I envision decolonizing the study of Islam and religion—the deconstructing of colonial narratives and interpretative frameworks that allow maligned religious communities and traditions the space and platform to assert their voices and their narratives. Thank you for the opportunity to offer these reflections. I look forward to fruitful conversation on this topic in the year ahead. Wanda Deifelt The title of my talk might well be called “How Not to Read Martin Luther: Three Anecdotes and a Punchline.” First anecdote: My first reading of anything written by Martin Luther was his Small Catechism for confirmation class, back in Brazil. The pastor had us memorize the lessons, but there was no reflection and conversation, only repetition and recitation. On the Sunday before confirmation, there was an oral exam in front of the entire congregation. The pastor would call out the name of one of the 14-year-old confirmands and request that we answer the questions. It could be the names of the books of the Old Testament, one of the Ten Com-
mandments and its explanation or any of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. It helped that the pastor gave us hints about what he might ask us individually, but it in no way diminished the terror of getting an answer wrong.
Wanda Deifelt It was a traumatic experience. The church was packed, with people standing outside at the door or peeking through the windows. I suspect they came to see how many of us would embarrass ourselves instead of being there for support. It was a great shame if somebody got an answer wrong. For example, I heard somebody comment about a man who was unfaithful to his wife “that he had never gotten the commandment about adultery right,” and the fact that he didn’t know it at his confirmation exam was an indication that he wouldn’t practice it now. As we know, when Martin Luther wrote the small and large catechisms, he was helping people to more fully be members of the body of Christ. He was convinced that those who had been baptized were able to become theodidacti, people taught by God, and able to understand and therefore also proclaim the Christian faith. After each topic he posed the question: “What does this mean?” This was not a rhetorical question, but an invitation to wrestle with and ponder over matters of faith. This impetus for ongoing formation could be summarized not only through the maxim ecclesia semper reformanda (the church always reforming) but also Fall 2021/Agora
11
through the expectation of what I call the ecclesia semper educanda, that is, that the church is always educating, always reading its truth in light of a new reality. In this capacity, the church is helping to form and inform not only its own constituency but society at large. This theological formation is not a privilege of pastors and theologians, but a commitment that everybody—from pulpit to pew to classroom and beyond—find meaning in and can articulate their faith. Second anecdote: I was already working as a pastor in the Lutheran Church in Brazil and teaching at the seminary when I received an invitation to talk to a group of Missouri Synod pastors on the topic of women’s ordination. As you know, the LCMS does not ordain women. I didn’t know what to expect, so I went prepared. I brushed up on the best exegetical resources on those biblical texts that oppose women’s leadership in the early church. In my best academic effort, I proposed a critical reading of the Bible—similar to what is taught in Introduction to Biblical Studies here at Luther College. But we were getting nowhere, because for the Missouri Synod the Bible is inerrant and needs to be taken literally. I realized that we were talking completely different theological languages, and we needed to find some commonalities in order to have any meaningful exchange. After coffee break, I started with a different approach. I asked them: what did Luther teach about the Bible? Together we recalled that Luther had translated the New Testament in record time from Greek into German, that he longed to find words that even a person in the market place could understand. Luther had emphasized Sola Fide (only faith), Sola Gratia (only grace), Sola Scriptura (only Scripture), and Solus Christus (only Christ). He also defended the centrality of the gospel, the evangel found in Jesus Christ, and used it as a criterion to read other biblical texts, asking whether they proclaim the good news of love, grace, and reconciliation. “What would Jesus do?” is basically Luther’s key to evaluate all other passages, and that biblical interpretation requires conscience and reason. All 12
Agora/Fall 2021
of the pastors had learned this well, and, when I brought it up, they also remembered that Luther had exercised freedom when he deemed the epistle of James as “straw” because it could not withstand the wind of the gospel. They agreed that Luther was correct in his criticism. My next argument was—as you can predict—to apply Luther’s own hermeneutical principle to the leadership of women in the church and the ordination of women. Just because something is in the Bible does not mean that it needs to be preached. The truth of the Bible lies not in its historical accuracy or whether it is inerrant, but because it leads us to ponder. It makes us think and evaluate what other passages in the bible are straw. The criterion of discernment is always the love of Christ, not the exclusion from the body of Christ. Third anecdote: In 2009, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran bilateral dialogue committee was having its first meeting in Germany. One of our mandates was to draft a statement regarding the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. Some Lutherans at the meeting spoke with great enthusiasm about the anniversary, reporting that in Germany the festivities had already started a decade earlier and great renovations were being done in Wittenberg for the occasion. This jubilation from the Lutheran side was met with a different mood from some of the Roman Catholics, who talked about sorrow and lament, since the Reformation broke the unity of the church. Between celebration and lamentation, it took the committee a while to figure out that the appropriate language was neither festivity and fireworks nor mourning and tears, but a commemoration—from the Latin commemorare, a sharing of a collective memory, a bringing to remembrance whereby both Catholics and Lutherans could tell the story of what had happened and how we proposed to move forward. How can Lutherans engage with the very people that Luther called the Antichrist? Times have changed, people change, and theologies change. That is why we value the writings by Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition,
while also critically engaging them with current challenges and perspectives. If colonialism is the occupation of people’s lands, bodies, and minds, to decolonize Martin Luther is to point out precisely where and when religious teachings perpetuate oppressive systems, and when they liberate us from them. This requires critical thinking and ethical discernment. That is why Luther’s writings against the peasants and the Jews, for instance, have been criticized and denounced. The punchline: Sometimes we need to read Luther against Luther, to show how some of his writings contradict the very principles he espoused. Martin Luther was not always a good Lutheran. We can celebrate but we also must point out the flaws of his reasoning—as well as those of Lutheran denominations— when they want to restrict God’s grace and hide God’s love. After all, we are always called to translate the breakthrough of the Reformation anew and to challenge ourselves into growth. The Reformation is an ongoing process. Robert Shedinger Last year I read about an interesting survey asking ordinary American citizens whether children should be taught Arabic numerals in school. Supposedly 40 percent of respondents said no. That is, a significant minority of American citizens believe that children should not be taught our basic number system 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9! Of course, this number system is called Arabic numerals because it is based on the number system developed by Muslim mathematicians in the medieval period, a number system which they borrowed from
Robert Shedinger
India. But many people are not aware of this because our Western educational system has almost totally erased the great flowering of culture brought about by the medieval Muslim world (or its preservation of Hindu culture), preferring instead to create the illusion that Western culture is built directly on that of the Greco-Roman world, a tradition that was then mediated directly to Europe during the Enlightenment. Thus, there is a need for a decolonizing approach to education that provides a more historically accurate picture of the development of cultural traditions that is not dependent on a myth of Western exceptionalism.
algebra was known in Europe at this time (where Roman numerals were still the order of the day!). And few people today even recognize “algebra” as an Arabic word. But the mathematical legacy of the West very much rests on the mathematical developments of the medieval Muslim world.
From the year 750 CE until the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258, the medieval Muslim world, under the auspices of the Abbasid Dynasty, created one of the great flowerings of culture in the history of the world. Centered on its capital of Baghdad and stretching from India to Spain, Muslim scholars made all manner of advances in subjects like astronomy, physics, biology, medicine, engineering, art, literature, and architecture. I want to highlight just a few of these advances that still resonate within Western society today.
Interestingly, alKhwarizmi continues to resonate in the West in an even lessunderstood, but ironically more obvious way. Many figures of the Arabic world had their names Latinized when their works were discussed by later European scholars. Al-Khwarizmi’s name was Latinized as “algorithm,” making him perhaps the most frequently cited Muslim scholar in the English language! Yet how many people realize when they complain about Facebook’s algorithms or use this term in a math or computer science class that they are uttering the name of a medieval Muslim mathematician? Not many. But why not? Why shouldn’t we know this?
One of the great figures of this period was the polymath al-Khwarizmi (c. 750-850). Al-Khwarizmi dabbled in many different subject areas but is best known for his contributions to the developing field of mathematics. He developed a mathematical system called al-jabr (the balancing) which involved the manipulation of equations to solve for unknown variables and proposed solutions to linear and quadratic equations. We know this system better today as “algebra.” Nothing even remotely like
One of the betterknown figures from this period is Ibn Sina (better known in the West by the Latinized Avicenna). Ibn Sina was also a polymath well known for his work in medieval philosophy. But he was also an accomplished physician. Ibn Sina regularized a process that had been practiced in the ancient world of separating people suspected of having infectious diseases from the general population to prevent spread of disease epidemics. Ibn Sina dubbed this process al-‘arba’iniyah (the Arabic ordinal number “fortieth). The idea was to isolate people for up to forty days to prevent epidemics. In the seventeenth century, Italian doctors used medical manuals produced in the Muslim world, and therefore translated al-‘arba’iniya directly into Italian as quarantena, thus
giving us our word “quarantine,” a word which we have unfortunately become only too familiar with over the last two years.
When I teach my courses in Islam and in Science and Religion, I always share with my students the following quote and ask them to guess who wrote it: One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected to the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of touch. The word “connection” with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group. The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point, we come to the first stage of man after (the world of monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends. Of course, many hands go up in the air and students confidently state that this quote must be from the pen of Charles Darwin. No one is more firmly Fall 2021/Agora
13
connected to evolutionary ideas in our Western imagination than Darwin. But this passage comes from Ibn Khaldun’s (1332-1406) Muqaddimah, one of the great scholarly works of the Muslim world. Concepts of gradual evolution and a shared heritage of humans with other primates was quite common in medieval Muslim thinking half a millennium before Darwin. But these extraordinary accomplishments have been almost totally erased from Western educational traditions.
was listening to this presentation was a junior mathematics major. At the end of the presentation I could see that she was visibly upset. I asked her what was wrong to which she responded that she had been studying math her entire life and knew the names of all the great mathematicians, like Euclid, Leibnitz, Lorentz, and Fourier, but she had never once been told about al-Khwarizmi, the developer of algebra. How, she wondered, was it possible that she could be a junior math major in college and never have heard of al-Khwarizmi (until encountering him in a religion class!). This is an excellent question and underscores the urgent need to decolonize our entire educational system. Dominique Stringer
In the tenth century, a German dramatist and poet, Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, traveled to Córdoba in southern Spain. She was overwhelmed by what she saw. Coming from a medieval German city that was dark and often beset by disease and plagues, she instead experienced a city that was light, clean, full of beautiful flower gardens with flowing fountains, sanitation and irrigation systems, medical infrastructure, and beautiful architecture, and she dubbed Córdoba the “Ornament of the World.” And indeed, the entire medieval Muslim world was in many ways the center of scientific and cultural advancement. Decolonizing our educational systems means recovering these lost traditions and returning them to the prominence they deserve. In service to historical accuracy and greater appreciation for the intelligence and creativity that can be found among people from all parts of the world, we must work to break down the stereotype that says all great cultural achievements were produced by the West Several years ago in my Islam class, a group of students was making a presentation to the class on medieval Muslim mathematics. One student who 14
Agora/Fall 2021
I want to acknowledge at the beginning that I am not a religion student. I have only taken religion classes at Luther to fulfill campus-wide requirements and because certain classes have piqued my interest. However, as a student of anthropology, I am interested in the ways in which we can learn to understand and appreciate ways of thinking different from our own. I have been drawn to various religion classes at Luther particularly because they have challenged me to re-evaluate assumptions I have made about religion in the
Dominique Stringer ('22)
past. When I came to Luther, I had a strong theological background; while in high school, I had completed a great books program that included the works of people such as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. However, I had no conception of how the theology I had been taught had given me a colonized mindset. Before I came to Luther, when religious texts were presented to me as authoritative, I accepted that these were the voices that needed to be heard and studied. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned in a Luther religion class is that the voices that have been erased throughout history are often the voices we need to hear. Through courses such as “Queer and Trans Religions” and “Hidden Figures of Early Christianity,” I have seen people practicing diverse and decolonized forms of religion. I have also come to understand just how many people have been silenced both within Christianity and without as Christianity in particular has moved as a colonizing force across the United States and the world at large. In addition, an anthropology course on “Religion and Culture” allowed me to explore how indigenous and non-world religions have existed in the past and continue to be practiced today in spite of colonizing forces. Luther classes have also led me to consider how our education system in America has close historical ties to religious groups and to colonization. I encountered one example of this particular history while developing a Luther exhibit on the Bethany Indian Mission boarding school in Wittenberg, Wisconsin. This project, which was undertaken in a museum studies course here at Luther, helped me personally to realize the extent to which education, particularly religious education, has often been tied to colonizing efforts. Historically, it has been the practice of many educational organizations to forcefully convert students and to teach students how to effectively convert others to a colonizing religion. I will admit that this line of thinking has also led me to question some educational practices here at Luther. For example, I do wonder why Biblical
Studies 101 is one of only four specific classes that must be taken at Luther. Most Luther educational requirements can be fulfilled through many different courses, but every student at Luther must take Biblical Studies 101. While I respect the way that biblical studies is taught by the professors here at Luther, I do wonder at the message we send when we continue to emphasize that students have a working knowledge of Christianity above all other religions and philosophies. We are told that we must study biblical studies because it is foundational for western literature. However, this reinforces the supremacy of western literature over other cultural texts that other religions would use as cultural touchstones. In other words, by requiring biblical studies without introducing students to other religious traditions, we continue the historical tradition of religious colonization in the classroom while also reinforcing the idea that western literature is more valuable than non-western literature. This is one area where I hope to see Luther continue to grow as we learn to embrace diversity and decolonization. What I have appreciated most in Luther religion classes have been the opportunities to question the significance and the teachings of religious texts. In my experience, class discussions of the strengths and shortcomings of religion may be difficult, but those discussions are also incredibly valuable. I hope to see Luther further develop spaces where students can grapple with both the importance of religion and the dangerous connections between many religious institutions and colonization. I also hope that we can develop more classes that focus on diversity in religion and that bring awareness to marginalized people and religions. While decolonization is no easy task, our first step to decolonize religious studies can be to listen for and respect the voices of the people who have been silenced by religion in the past. Nora Nyi Myint My name is Nora Nyi Myint, and I am a senior double majoring in international studies and women and gender
studies. I am not majoring in religion at all, but I found myself having taken four religion classes thus far. Some of it had to do with the classes fulfilling some of my electives in my majors—such as "Introduction to Interfaith Studies" fulfilling the Peace and Dialogue track of international studies, or "God and Gender" for women and gender studies. However, I am drawn to religion much more deeply than I show, and it has to do with my background growing up in a country with religion being an important identifier.
Nora Nyi Myint ('22) I am from Myanmar, a country made up of a Buddhist majority of 87.9%. Religion plays such a crucial part in my country that we have a section on our National Registry Card to declare our religion. If one fails to be devout to a particular religion or claim as an atheist, more times than not they are automatically given a Buddhist identity without consent. Such incidents show the extent of the corruption, and the phrase “To be Burmese is to be Buddhist” gets thrown around. Nonetheless, growing up in the city of Yangon, home to more than five million people, I was exposed to a melting pot of cultures. I am from a family where the paternal side is Baptist, and the maternal side is all Catholic. At times, I was discriminated against because of my Christian faith. One reason was that Christians were a minority. Another more crucial reason is that Myanmar was colonized by the British from 1824 to 1948 when Christianity became widespread. Due to
this, Christians are sometimes seen by Buddhist extremists as traitors or “colonizers’ dogs.” I am going extensively into my background because I want people to know about the impacts of colonization. I feel like I never truly belong; in Myanmar, I am out of place due to the Buddhist majority, and here at Luther in the U.S. I feel like an outsider yet again, for my practice of Christianity is now laced with rituals that were adapted by Myanmar’s own culture. Upon initially arriving at Luther, I knew that this is a Lutheran college, and, as Christian as I am, I get anxious for my non-Christian peers whenever prayers are said during big events where everyone gathers, such as orientation, graduation, and more. I find myself questioning, do they feel like they belong here? Like all first-year students, I had to take a Biblical Studies course. I was extremely fortunate to have Dr. Jimmy Hoke, who helped me view the classic Christian narratives I know with a new lens, whether through a womanist lens or queer lens and more. We learned about Thecla, a devout follower of the apostle Paul who baptized herself, midrash focusing on narratives of women like Hagar who had little to no space in the thick book of the Bible, a lesbian interpretation of Ruth and Naomi, and so on. It made me interested in my faith again as a feminist and a pansexual woman who had felt choked by the ideologies spread by conventional Christianity. This already was a process of decolonization for me since I believe decolonization calls for the deconstruction and reevaluation of settler-imposed systems that try to silence people of color’s narratives. Further instances of decolonization happened with classes I took afterward: "Introduction to Interfaith Studies," "God, and Gender," and "From Buddhist Texts to Anime." These courses made me think how wonderful it would have been to take such courses beginning in my first year. To be effective in decolonization efforts since students’ first year, I think Luther should consider turning Introduction to Interfaith Studies, currently a 200 level course, into the first religion general education course. The class touches upon Fall 2021/Agora
15
Islamophobia, provides crash courses on world religions, and explains the concept of religious pluralism all while paying attention to Christianity and its context that we may need for tackling western literature, which I heard was one of the reasons for having Introduction to Biblical Studies as a general education course. I also fully advocate that the decolonization of religions can occur outside of classes. In the future, Luther can plan excursions to religious sites to promote understanding of religious diversity and create an interfaith club where conversations like what I am having at this panel about decolonizing religions can continue. Furthermore, I am the co-president of the Intersectional Feminist Club, and we can collaborate with College Ministries and others to raise awareness about our campus’s religious diversity. Whatever we do, we must remember that efforts to decolonize religions do not have to stay in the classroom. In conclusion, I want to share a quote by Eboo Patel, president and founder of Interfaith Youth Core: “You can look for the differences, or you can find resonances.” Let us look for ways to uplift all of us from different backgrounds of faith.
16
Agora/Fall 2021
Sabbatical as Disruption by ANNA PETERSON, Associate Professor of History
the next day holds, let alone the next month or year. It has fundamentally altered our ability to live our lives as we once did.
COURTESY OF PREUS LIBRARY, LUTHER COLLEGE
It stands to reason that the pandemic affected my sabbatical as well. During my year away from campus, I had planned to continue delving into the archival research I had already conducted on the Bethany Indian Mission. Started in 1884 outside Wittenberg, Wisconsin by Luther alumnus and recent immigrant from Norway, Even Johnson Homme, the Mission offered religious and secular instruction to Native American tribes in Wisconsin, mainly Anna Peterson Oneida and Ho-Chunk, until 1955. For my Nena Amundson project to the circumstances created by the (2018-2020), I had worked alongside pandemic. While I still participated two students to collect and catalog in one academic conference virtually, the Mission’s many and various the others I had wanted to attend were records. But I hadn’t had time to postponed indefinitely. Chicago was in really process, both practically and lockdown and the thought of visiting intellectually, the records’ contents. with elders in Wittenberg seemed othMy sabbatical was the perfect time erworldly. Instead, I hunkered down in to do so. I intended to spend the Decorah in my home office. To say that bulk of the fall semester reading, this was a welcome retreat and respite transcribing, and summarizing from the demands of the outside world the sources. Then in the spring, I would be a lie. My proverbial ivory planned to analyze the materials, tower was breached time and again by writing two publishable journal a four (and then five)-year-old whose articles. Along the way, I hoped concept of “work” was most informed to conduct additional research in by her experience cutting pickles at Wittenberg and at the Newberry the local Montessori preschool, which Library in Chicago. As this is my would be closed unexpectedly for weeks, first research into Native Amerinot once but twice, during the fall of can history, I also wanted to gain 2020. Add in a lengthy quarantine or additional insight and perspectwo, a husband doing his best to work tive into that field by traveling to remotely, a baby who joined our family academic conferences, listening in December 2020, and two cats, and and learning from others’ research you have an environment that is lessas well as getting feedback on my than-conducive to the life of the mind. own. I thought I might not recover if I read Perhaps most obviously, I needed one more meme about Shakespeare to cancel these travel plans due writing King Lear while quarantining
Souvenir pamphlet from the Bethany Indian Mission (1921)
Fall 2021/Agora
17
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
F
ew of us welcome disruption in our carefully planned and curated lives. The ability to reflect on the past and plan for the future is one of the distinguishing characteristics of humanity. We like to know what is coming, and we like to believe we have some kind of control over the trajectory of our days, months, and lifetimes. In most cases we plan for tomorrow with the circumstances of today in mind as though the context in which we live, as well as our notions of ourselves, is static. As a historian, I should know better. But I don’t. I too like the notion of certainty, of stasis, of the idea that I can somehow manage my way to a particular outcome. Nothing has wrought havoc on this collective way of seeing and being in the world more than this past year. The Covid-19 pandemic has upended and uprooted all attempts to anticipate what
during the Black Plague. Thanks for the added pressure, internet.
unclear.
College and university administrators But looking back, it was ridiculous of carried threads of this ancient practice me to have expected anything less of into their establishment of academic my sabbatical. Not only because “the sabbaticals in the 1880s and 1890s. best laid plans of mice and men often They adopted the timing of the ancient go awry” as poet Robert Burns wrote sabbaticals, instituting periods of leave in 1786, but also because the sabbatical after six years of employment. Like the itself is intended to be a disruption. The ancient Israelites, modern administramodern sabbatical can be traced, in part, tors, too, did not believe the primary back to a practice outlined in Leviticus goal of a sabbatical should be to benefit 25: 3-5: “For six years you shall plow the person taking it. As Dartmouth’s your field, for six years you shall prune Committee on Sabbatical Leave your vine and gather its produce. But in cautioned in 1922, “The purpose of the the seventh year the land is to have its sabbatical leave is to render the recipient rest, a sabbatical year for Yahweh. You more useful to the college…[They] are must not sow your field or prune your in nowise to be regarded as increased vine or harvest your ungathered corn vacation periods….” Any personal or gather grapes from your untrimmed regeneration that occurred was to be vine. It is to be a year of rest for the land.” Your work was to be interrupted. You were instructed to stop your normal activities in service of a larger purpose. The rest was not necessarily to be yours, but rather the land’s. What exactly you were supposed to do instead of your Records of the 1893 confirmation class at the Bethany Indian Mission normal routine is 18
Agora/Fall 2021
No matter what, I was going to encounter disruption on my sabbatical. The idea that sabbatical proposals and plans will be brought to fruition exactly as outlined goes against the nature of life in all its unpredictability, and it goes against the purpose of the sabbatical as originally designed thousands of years ago. I am confident that anyone who has ever taken a sabbatical knows this intimately. Perhaps some of you are reading this and thinking “Of course, Anna. Of course.” I see it now, but the extreme unpredictability of the pandemic obscured this truth from me. The pandemic became a scapegoat of sorts for why I didn’t do what I had thought I would do during this past year. It hid this reality of the sabbatical from me: The point is not to do. The point is to stop doing what you have been doing. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t achieve anything on my sabbatical. I found one of the greatest things about the sabbatical and the pandemic to be the way aspects of time slowed down. I had ample minutes, hours, days and months to let my thinking about my research percolate. I digested information in ways previously unknown to me. My fall was indeed full of reading and transcribing and thinking with plenty of pregnant pauses in between. I found that when I sat down this spring to write an article on the nine students the superintendent of the Bethany Indian Mission, Reverend Ernest Sihler, helped send to college, that I had largely already written the piece in my head. The spaces the sabbatical had created and the pandemic had fostered had borne a different fruit than the ones I had harvested in the past, a kind that I never could have predicted. COURTESY OF LUTHER SEMINARY ARCHIVES
COURTESY OF THE ELCA ARCHIVES, ELK GROVE, ILLINOIS
Fourth grade students with their teacher at the Bethany Indian Mission summer school (1954)
in service to the larger mission of the college. But just as in the past, the exact activities one was supposed to partake in during the leave of absence from the college was, and is, nebulous. The main premise continues to be the interruption of regular work patterns and activities.
In Memory of a Dream: A Pattern Language
M
y sabbatical proposal preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. And as the early part of the pandemic unfolded, it was clear that the key components of my initial sabbatical proposal were impossible to carry through. Source material collection and research was to coincide and rely on a planned trip to the area of California where I was born and spent the first seven years of my life; an endless summer. The intention of this trip was to investigate many geological and histori-
cal sites there and along the contiguous landscape between Decorah and central coastal California. I am particularly invested in the overlay of culture and civilization and all the idiosyncrasies therein from pre-Columbian NativeAmerican history, Spanish (Mexican) occupation of California, Portuguese diaspora, and modern American society. This happens to be my particular mix of genetic and cultural heritage and continues to inform how I situate my connection to past, present, and future as a non-linear field or wave-function collapsing place and time. Art creates stories or places to contemplate and engage the total place of human and non-human experience. Not just the beautiful and ideal but the ugly and broken places of humanity as well. Although I was not able to accomplish plans as originally choreographed, I approached my sabbatical research and scholarship with the spirit of these goals and ideas in mind. of Place and Time
#2 (american standard) archival pigmented inkjet on washi paper, crown molding, hand-built ceramic with tinted porcelain and underglaze surfacing 96 x 24 x 4 inches
I began digitally scanning old family photos with particular attention to the time period just before my birth and through my first seven years in Watsonville, California on San Juan Road and the greater Bay Area. If I could not travel externally, I would move inward and explore my relationship to my past. This process also helped
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
by JOSEPH MADRIGAL, Associate Professor of Art
Joseph Madrigal to shape my shifting perspectives on concepts of "space/time" and re-placing them with a developing appreciation of "place/time." Space is cold and empty; theoretical. Place is warm, populated, and storied; experiential. Family photographs emerge as useful means to play through these ideas. Snapshots of particular times in the places my family occupied in the home, out in the landscape, and all the interstitial places thereof like gardens, patios, driveways, and decks. to Wonder and Wander I went on daily walks around Decorah with special attention paid to our "natural" prairie and woodland places. These walks became purposeful in the gathering and collection of flowers. These flowers were systematically pressed, dried, and then digitally scanned. The Fall 2021/Agora
19
of wheat and chaff
vol. 27, no. 2 - february, 1980 (wookin' pa nub)
archival pigmented inkjet on washi paper, crown molding, hand-built ceramic with underglaze surfacing hung on glazed ceramic hook
archival pigmented inkjet on washi paper, crown molding, slipdipped porcelain burnout with underglaze surfacing on glazed ceramic shelf
96 x 30 x 8 inches
96 x 22 x 5 inches
digitized flowers became the literal wallpaper patterns in the exhibition work. And as serendipity would unfold, some of these files got corrupted which later influenced how I would alter my now-digital family photos.
I may not remember someone’s name, but I can almost perfectly recall their gait or how they occupy and imprint upon their lived space. My language is a body-language. My memory is a bodymemory.
of Memory and Recapitulation
of Soil and Labor
These long walks and the pandemic/ sabbatical paradigm of spending countless hours and days alone was an opportune time to travel inward. I engaged in recapitulation work, an excavation of and sifting through memory and personal story. My memory favors spatial and emotional frameworks. Time collapses in this framework and emotional awareness gets imprinted across many internalized landscapes. My memory favors qualitative information over quanta.
I collected local soil and started a filtering process. This process is very similar to how natural clays are rendered; a process that is available from my ceramics background. This refined soil was then systematically filtered with varied dry mesh sieves to separate out quantities of soils each with unified mesh sizes 10, 20, 30, 40 of the dried filtered earth.* The equipment and processes
20
Agora/Fall 2021
* Mesh sizes are standard industry sizes that refer to the holes per square inch in a sieve.
involved also mimic gold panning and prospecting, which was a driver in the settlement of the west and bears the name of the football franchise (49ers) of the greater Bay Area where I was born. At that time, I did not have a plan for how I would use this refined material. I just knew that the process had purpose and meaning and was informative about the other ways in which I was working through ideas. Labor is a story of time as experienced through the body. of Objects: Oneiric and Mnemonic There are moments where memory and dream overlap which only logic and linear chronology can parse out. To this day, I have a collection of dreams/ memories that are still as yet uncoupled.
I gathered many objects both mundane and specific: chewed bubble gum, rusted nails, bits of fabric and foil, pencils, books, teeth. These objects have various connections and associations to my story in direct, layered and many intentionally unknowable ways. The universality and ubiquity of many of these objects also allow for connections beyond the particularities of my story. The initial intent was to use the objects as they are. I made a late fortuitous decision to render them all in clay to create distance from the real by capturing memory in an object through its literal re-making. Much in the ways we re-member our bodies when we dream.
grandpa's ww2 army shovel set in hoe mode hand-built ceramic with tinted porcelain and underglaze surfacing 22 x 6 x 10 in
rag slip-dipped tinted porcelain burnout on glazed ceramic hook 19 x 5 x 4 in Fall 2021/Agora
21
Outside the Zoom Room: Collaboration, Migration, and Telenovelas by NANCY GATES MADSEN, Professor of Spanish
N
Not surprisingly, what I accomplished during my sabbatical year did not fully reflect what I had originally proposed. Like many others, I too needed to pivot due to changing circumstances. Okay, maybe “pivot” is a bit of an overstatement. Instructors who compressed fourteen-week classes into seven, taught in two different classrooms at the same time, and marched along from January to May with nary a break, all while developing ever more creative ways to vavoom their zoom rooms were the ones who had to pivot. Me? I did more of a shimmy to one side, modifying some of my projects in order to be able to complete them. What follows is a short summary of two elements of my sabbatical year. One goal of my sabbatical was to pursue professional development in the areas of medical and legal Spanish, in order to better serve students in our Professional Spanish courses (Spanish 350 and Spanish 341). I had planned to pursue various in-person opportunities to increase my knowledge and hone my interpreting skills, ranging from volunteering at medical and legal clinics in Decorah to traveling to the US-Mexico border and working with the Florence Project, an Arizona-based organization dedicated to providing free legal services to refugees, immigrants, 22
Agora/Fall 2021
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
obody wants to read about the experience of the professor who was on sabbatical during 2020-21. “Tell me more about how you didn’t have to figure out how to teach in person, online, and hybrid all at once!” “However did you survive without zoom meetings? It must have been ghastly!” So if the very thought of reading an account that chronicles an academic journey outside the pandemic teaching trenches makes you feel physically ill (or potentially violent toward the author), read no further. I totally understand.
Nancy Gates Madsen and Mackenzie Zenk ('21) and asylum seekers. With the disappearance of most of these in-person opportunities, I sought other ways to fulfill these goals. In-person medical interpreting became online training and development, and the visit to the border to explore issues of immigration turned into a collaborative research project with a talented student and advisee, Mackenzie Zenk (’21). We spent the year analyzing the rhetoric of migration in a Mexican novel by Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World, and our weekly zoom conversations to discuss our research quickly became the highlight of my sabbatical year. During our collaboration, Mackenzie focused on researching media representations of border-crossing, while I dug into the literary analysis of the novel itself, to see how Herrera’s work dialogued with dominant narratives of migration. The paper, “Destabilizing the Binary Rhetoric of Migration in Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán el fin del mundo (Signs Preceding the End of the World)” explores how Herrera’s 2010 novel sub-
verts the migration narratives typically seen in the news. Media portrayals often employ simplistic binaries to describe border-crossing: legal versus illegal, us versus them, North versus South. Herrera’s novel provides a more nuanced picture of migration that is often lacking in mainstream representations. First, the novel disrupts the common characterization of North and South as opposing poles of civilization versus barbarity by questioning the portrayal of the migrant journey as a perilous march toward a promised land. In fact, the “civilized” North proves more dangerous and lawless than the “violent” South, as the southern border zone in Signs embodies cooperation and improvised community between migrants, while the North remains the locus of fear and violence. Second, Herrera’s novel destabilizes the concepts of borders and the rhetoric of “us” versus “them” by emphasizing both the inadequate nature of the existing binaries and the transformative power of migration. In short, by questioning the binary narratives
that emphasize difference (legal versus illegal, us versus them), Signs reveals the interconnected and interdependent relationships inherent in the dualities themselves, and the novel highlights how the migrant journey flattens distinctions between North and South, transforming both people and place. Mackenzie and I were fortunate to be able to present the paper at the annual conference of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists (NCCLA), which took place virtually in April 2021. In what was surely a bit of karmic payback for having avoided the trials of teaching via zoom, I kicked off our panel by demonstrating Complete Technical Ineptitude regarding screen sharing. Once the snafus were resolved, however, we were able to share our research with Latin Americanists from many colleges across the Midwest, and Mackenzie gave such a polished presentation that one of the audience members contacted us afterwards to pass along her congratulations. But the icing on the cake was learning that our paper was selected to receive the faculty-student collaborative research award from the NCCLA organization. Although the pandemic disrupted my original plans for in-person professional development, the opportunity to collaborate with Mackenzie was a bright spot in what could have been a rather gloomy year. A second central objective of my sabbatical was the creation of teaching materials to accompany telenovelas and TV series in the Spanish conversation classroom (Spanish 302). This too was a collaborative project, as I worked with Julee Tate, professor of Spanish at Berry College, a leading expert in telenovela research and a fellow superfan of Latin American serialized dramas. Given their enormous popularity and cultural significance in the Spanish-speaking world, telenovelas and TV series are ideal vehicles for exploring intercultural issues related to gender, politics, and socio-economic class; at the same time, they exhibit authentic language that helps students improve their listening comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. However, to date there exist relatively few teaching resources for college professors interested in using telenovelas in the conversation
classroom. Our project aimed to fill that gap by creating teaching materials to accompany culturally relevant Spanishlanguage programs. While Julee and I were not alone in binge-watching series on Netflix and Amazon during the pandemic, we were fortunate to be able to call such activity “research,” and the hours spent searching for appropriate programs to incorporate into our classrooms were highly enjoyable. I was also able to pilot some of the materials with my daughter and nephew in the weekly family Spanish conversation class I taught while they were both experiencing remote schooling. As Julee and I were unsure about our comfort level teaching some of the mature content of a few of the programs (including steamy sex scenes and rampant drug use), I figured if I could successfully lead a discussion about teenage sex and drugs with my high school-aged daughter and nephew, Julee and I ought to be able to discuss these themes with our college students. Ultimately, we selected three Netflix shows for our pedagogical materials: Control Z, which chronicles a loner’s attempt to uncover the identity of a hacker who is exposing secrets in a Mexican high school (and contains the aforementioned scenes of drug use and sex), Altamar (High Seas), which follows the adventures of two sisters traveling from Spain to Brazil in the 1940s, and Madre solo hay dos (Daughter of Another Mother), a dramady that explores the consequences when two women from different social classes have their babies accidentally switched in the hospital. While telenovelas and TV series are excellent vehicles for practicing listening comprehension, building vocabulary, and deepening understanding of thorny grammar points, their role and importance in providing snapshots of political and social reality makes them well suited for developing intercultural understanding of key issues related to gender, class, and politics. Julee and I therefore developed materials that incorporate socio-cultural analyses of the series alongside exercises to build language proficiency, thereby bridging the gap between Spanish-language
programming as objects of critical study and as vehicles for language learning. For Madre, this means digging deeper into questions of gender and class, as the program’s contrast between a wealthy mother who works as a business executive and a single mother who struggles to get by lends itself to conversations regarding cultural expectations of motherhood and the consequences of privilege. The highlight of this project was our presentation at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) conference, held in person in Atlanta during the summer ( July 2021). After over a year of social distancing and relative isolation, teachers from across the country were positively giddy to be able to gather in person and exchange ideas. Whether due to the great interest participants had in teaching with TV series (or the convenient time of our panel), Julee and I found ourselves in front of a large, boisterous, engaged group of educators eager to learn about our experience incorporating telenovelas into the language classroom and share ideas with us. We left the session invigorated and energized to test drive our teaching materials in our fall courses. At the time of writing (fall 2021), Julee is incorporating Altamar into her 300-level conversation class at Berry, and I am teaching Madre in Spanish 302 at Luther. Our collaboration continues, with plans to polish our pedagogical materials based on our students’ experience and submit an article regarding best practices to the AATSP journal Hispania. Although the sabbatical year I expected was somewhat different from the one I experienced, I appreciated having time to focus on professional development, especially during such a challenging academic year. I am ever mindful that the small side-steps I executed to achieve my project goals pale in comparison to the multiple pivots my colleagues made to respond to an ever-changing situation. As I return to the classroom, I hope to match the creativity, grit, and good humor demonstrated by those who kept the teaching and learning rolling at Luther during the memorable year of 2020-21. Fall 2021/Agora
23
Pandemic Particle Physics: A Sabbatical Saga by TODD PEDLAR, Professor of Physics
The research I do with my students and my colleagues near and far is done as part of the Belle and Belle II Collaborations—1000-strong collaborations which have operated experiments at KEK, the national high energy physics laboratory of Japan, since 1999. I have collaborated on Belle and Belle II since 2010, when Belle II was little more than a twinkle in the collective eye of
the Belle Collaboration, which had just completed data taking on the original Belle Experiment. Since then, Luther has been an institutional member of these collaborations, one of the 126 participating institutions from 26 countries around the world. The physical processes that we study concern the decays of objects known as baryons and mesons (which are composed of quarks and antiquarks at the fundamental level). Baryons, like the proton, are composed of three quarks, while mesons, the lightest of which is known as the pion (𝜋), consist of a quark-antiquark pair. Most of the systems we study involve one or more heavy quarks (strange, charm, and/or bottom). By measuring the masses and studying the decay processes undergone by these heavy quark systems, we are able to gain insight into the force that binds these systems, the strong nuclear interaction. In order to study the decays of heavy mesons and baryons most effectively,
The Belle II detector on the Super-KEKB beamline at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan. Copyright KEK
24
Agora/Fall 2021
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
T
he final week of spring semester 2019 was at its end. As the summer of 2019 was around the corner, the thought rang through my mind: “The next time I’ll be in the classroom for a class meeting is now 15 months away!” The blessing of a year-long sabbatical was upon me, through the generous support of the National Science Foundation, which made a year-long sabbatical possible. The anticipation of a full year of completely diving into my research and being able to devote myself fully to the research that students whom I would have over the coming two summers and the intervening academic year was palpable.
Todd Pedlar one must identify all the decay products of a given decay process and measure their energies and momenta. In many cases, a given heavy meson decays by way of a cascade of a few steps until finally what remains are those particles referred to as “final state particles,” which are either stable or long-lived enough to exit the detector before undergoing further decays. The work that we do specifically at Luther involves both studying the various decays of heavy mesons, and, in service of Belle II, developing software for final state particle identification. In the spring of 2019, the Belle II Experiment had begun in earnest, at long last, after many years of preparation, construction, and testing of various component parts of the detector and accelerator systems. As my sabbatical started, in June of 2019, we were beginning to work out the kinks of an essentially brand-new detector system,
I remarked at the time to my friends and colleagues at Luther as it became evident that things were suddenly to change, I couldn’t have chosen two more ironic locations for my first two planned destinations of the year: the two places (apart from China) where serious Covid outbreaks would occur. I was indeed fortunate that the workshop had not been set for its original date of early February. Who knows what I unwittingly might have brought back to the US (or if I’d have been able to travel back at all!).
Aerial view of KEK, the national high energy physics laboratory of Japan, and neighboring Mount Tsukuba. Copyright KEK and were working together with our colleagues in the accelerator division of KEK, the national high energy physics laboratory of Japan, to characterize the performance of the upgraded accelerator system, Super-KEKB. Elementary particle physics experiments nearly always come on line quite gradually, and the new incarnation of Belle was no exception to the rule. Every instrument within the massive detector systems we use in our field must be checked, rechecked, calibrated, and recalibrated. New accelerator facilities like Super-KEKB also need extensive testing before the associated experiment(s) are ready for prime time. In the spring of 2018, the Super-KEKB electron and positron beams which collide in the heart of the Belle II detector were first brought into collision, and the first year of low-intensity running of the experiment was entirely devoted to initial tests of the functionality of the accelerator and to some components of our detector system. By June 2019, we were ready to start taking data using the fully-instrumented Belle II detector, and to study its ability to do what we need it to do—i.e. precisely record the energy, momentum, and particle type produced in each annihilation event arising when electrons and positrons collide. One of the tasks for this first full year of detector stud-
ies—and one of the tasks performed by the Physics Performance working group that I am part of in the Belle II Collaboration—could now be undertaken. It was indeed an exciting time. As I frequently remind my students, there is no experience for a particle physicist like the startup of a brand-new experiment, watching those first bits of data being collected, knowing that all your preparatory work is being put to the test. It’s positively exhilarating. After a summer of working here at Luther with my students, travelling to KEK for some shifts on the experiment in this early data-taking phase, and making a long trip to KEK in October 2019 for meetings of our collaboration and more shift-taking, the calendar turned over to 2020. I was looking forward to quite a bit of travel that spring to work with colleagues in Europe and at the experiment in Japan. My first trip of 2020 was to be to a week-long workshop on certain aspects of software development for our experiment. As it turns out, that workshop was to be held in early March... in Torino (Turin), in the far northwest of Italy. (Cue spooky music.) My travel then was to take me from there directly to KEK in Japan, for a couple of weeks (cue spooky music a second time) working on the experiment during the early 2020 running of the experiment. As
In short, all that travel—and all travel to date—ground to a halt. No extended stays at KEK, and unfortunately no ability to work side by side in Japan with Zach Stottler ('15), a research student of mine, and a close colleague of mine on Belle II. Zach is a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech, and he and I are working together on an analysis of a particular class of heavy meson decays using Belle data. We will soon be publishing a paper on the analysis, and it forms the basis for his Ph.D. dissertation, which he expects to defend in the fall or winter of this year. Fortunately, both before and after COVID fundamentally flipped our lives upside down, Zach and I had been collaborating by remote connection for a very long time. Our work wasn’t tremendously interrupted by our inability to be in the same physical location, but we lament the opportunity for close collaboration during long stretches at KEK. In addition to my work with Zach on our analysis of Belle data during my sabbatical, I also had the help of Luther research students Linnea Lee-Brown ('21), Aiden Berdahl ('21), Nicholas Behrens ('21), and Alain Nishimwe ('22) on studies of the Belle II detector performance using the brand new data taken in 2019-2020. COVID made 2020 interesting, though the students and I were able to do research all summer, albeit remotely. Despite the challenges, we were able to make some significant contributions to the work of the collaboration in its particle identification efforts. One of the techniques that we developed over the course of my sabbatical was the use of a fairly prolifically proFall 2021/Agora
25
duced baryon, the 𝛬, which is a heavy cousin of the neutron, in which one of the neutron’s down quarks is replaced by a strange quark. Most of the time, 𝛬 decays to a proton and a pion, and the decay signature for the process we found to enable identification of which of the two particles produced when the 𝛬 decays is the proton, and which is the pion, without recourse to any of our particle detection capabilities. We purely study the decay kinematics, that is, how the momentum of each particle produced in the decay is related to each other. The bottom line in terms of Belle II particle identification is that the technique we developed using 𝛬 decays enables us to independently study, calibrate, and evaluate the performance of the Belle II detector. Because we know from kinematics of these decays which of the decay products is the proton, we are able to directly test how the detector responds to a proton passing through it. We can use the decays of 𝛬 that we reconstruct to tell us how efficiently our particle-identification algorithms are able detect protons, and how often we mistakenly identify actual protons in the data as some other kind of particle— what we denote “fake rate.” We are able to use direct measurements using the data itself rather than on estimates that rely on a combination of the data and simulations. This and other data-driven methods help us to understand our detector performance more precisely, but also to revise and improve our detector simulation software so that it better reflects the actual response of our new detector. One of the wonderful lessons for my research students that arises from this work concerns the iterative process that characterizes all scientific endeavors. My students have been able to undertake the journey, which began with simulation, and proceeded to detector design, construction, development of techniques for analyzing data, and seeking creative solutions to interpret the data. Those solutions, together with comparisons of data and simulations, and our new interpretive grid, help inform the next generation of simulations. These in turn can again be checked and compared 26
Agora/Fall 2021
to our data, giving rise to new and revised models and understanding of the detector performance yet again. The opportunity for students to take part in this iterative scientific process is hard to reproduce in any way other than just doing it, as they’ve been able to. So here, now, in the fall of 2021, my colleagues and I will be opening a new running period soon after our annual summer shutdown. Our accelerator colleagues continue to work on increasing the amount of data that we can take in a given period of time by making gradual improvements of a related quantity known as luminosity, which indicates the number of interactions produced per second. At this early date in the life of the Belle II experiment, we are already accumulating data at a faster rate than any previous experiment, and we look forward to increasing that rate further by a factor of 40 or so in the next few years. This improvement is accomplished by squeezing the beams down to smaller and smaller sizes, as luminosity is inversely proportional to the size of the region in which the beams intersect. The more densely packed the two beams are, the more interactions per unit time can be produced, so it behooves us to squeeze down the beams to occupy as small a region as possible at the interaction point. It is here where, ironically, the SARSCoV-2 virus provides a helpful point of reference. The SARS-CoV-2 virus ranges roughly from 50-nm to 140-nm in size. By the time the accelerator complex realizes its potential and is producing a luminosity a factor of 40 times than the current world-record performance, the SuperKEKB electron and positron beams will need to be, literally, virus-sized in the vertical dimension. As an experimenter who works on the detector and software side of things, what our accelerator colleagues are able to do is simply incredible, and adds to my already deep respect for my Super-KEKB colleagues. The idea of electron and positron beams, in which bunches of electrons and positrons, each moving at nearly the speed of light, are being brought together in
an interaction region no thicker than a virus, boggles the mind. Post tenebras lux* the Genevan Reformers said concerning the Reformation—a phrase having nothing to do, of course, with either the darkness of the COVID pandemic, or the luminosity (or light!) that fuels the Belle II experiment. Regardless of the potential clumsiness of borrowing such a theological phrase to characterize my hopes for the future of my research group’s work, I’ll stand by it. With hope for the future as we emerge from this pandemic stronger together, Soli Deo Gloria. *After darkness, light.
A Good Sabbatical by NOVIAN WHITSITT, Professor of Africana Studies and English
T
his past spring’s sabbatical proved to be fruitful. I made substantial progress on my latest scholarly project and had time for other side projects, webinars, and workshops. My main scholarly project is the anthology currently titled The Color of Change: Black Intellectual Thought and Social Change in America. It is a project that’s grown out of a Paideia 450 course that I’ve instructed on numerous occasions with Guy Nave. The text will be an edited volume of primary works of African-American intellectuals from varied backgrounds, and they’ll be organized within particular historical epochs: 1) Antebellum Thoughts: Addressing White Notions of Black Identity, 1773 – 1861; 2) Reconstruction and the Black Response: Where Do We Go from Here? 1861 – 1915;
3) Dawn of the New Negro: Envisioning New Identities, 1915 – 1955; 4) Civil Rights and Black Power: The Time Is Now, 1950 – 1975; 5) Post-Civil Rights: Has It Been Solved? 1975 – present. This spring, I was able to research one of those epochs at length with the intention of writing the historical introduction for that particular unit. I read monographs, scholarly articles, autobiographies, and state historical archives. That research allowed me to write and complete the introduction on the Reconstruction period, and I have also finished doing much of the historical research for the final period as well. Culminating and reading the appropriate historical sources has been timeconsuming, but the spring and summer provided me adequate time to make real progress. The spring sabbatical also allowed me more time to work with student researchers, Sam Schillinger and Amelia Morrow, who were writing biographical entries on black intellectuals included in the anthology.
Anthology in which Novian Whitsitt's article appears
In addition to this project, the spring hiatus allowed me to write a lecture for Black History Month in February on James Baldwin, entitled “The Love and Rage of James Baldwin: The Unwavering Witness.” The lecture was published in the spring edition of Luther’s Agora. The lecture provided me with material that I expounded upon in a webinar in April at the University of Southern Indiana, entitled “How Can We Transcend Our Political Divide? Insights from James Baldwin.” I also
Novian Whitsitt had the wonderful opportunity to lead a three-day workshop at the University of Idaho in April, entitled, “Understanding Systems of Power and Oppression through Intersectionality.” It was part of a Diversity and Inclusion certification program offered to all levels of university students. Finally, I was able to complete the finishing revisions and edits to an article that appears in an anthology on Hausa literature. The article, entitled “Northern Nigerian Popular Literature and the Boundaries of Hausa Feminism: The Literature of Balaraba Yakubu and Bilkisu Funtuwa,” is part of Hausa Prose Fiction: A Reader, and the hard copy will be published this academic year. Given the dearth of scholarly work on Hausa fiction, this anthology will certainly expand the terrain of Hausa literary studies, and I’m honored to be a part of the project. Yes, it was a GOOD sabbatical.
Fall 2021/Agora
27
Something New by STORM BAILEY, Professor of Philosophy
My text today is Isaiah 43:18-19 18 Do not call to mind the former things Or consider things of the past 19 Behold, I am going to do something new, Now it will spring up Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness Rivers in the desert.
W
hen I copied the note from last spring into my new datebook, I put Isaiah 48:1819. So last week when I went to read the text and think about it here’s what I read: 18 If only you had paid attention to My commandments Then your well-being would have been like a river And your righteousness like the waves of the sea, 19 Your descendants would have been like the sand And your offspring like its grains Their name would never be eliminated or destroyed from My presence. I have to say this surprised me enough to go back and try to find the original assignment message. This is just not the sort of passage that I have normally been invited to speak about (and as you can see I did get it straightened out). All this is pretty much irrelevant to my actual talk, except that maybe it makes it easier to note that it isn’t altogether obvious just how (or whether) the prophets of antiquity give us communication from God to Luther College. Now let me quickly say that I don’t mean this in a critical or snarky way. I think that all scripture shows us something about who God is, and I welcome the opportunity in this broken world 28
Agora/Fall 2021
SEPTEMBER 3, 2021
to acknowledge God who creates new heavens and a new earth. But representing the voice of God in scripture to people, communities, and institutions who have or profess (or don’t profess) various relationships to God is a delicate and difficult interpretive task. And it has long seemed to me that Luther Campus Ministries has an almost impossibly daunting version of that task, which it tackles with integrity and sensitivity. I am grateful—honored beyond words—to have so often been welcomed into that work in a number of ways, especially by speaking in chapel. I love speaking here, and I love coming here to hear others—that’s why I come. But here’s the thing I want tell you (is it a confession?): I don’t come to chapel to worship. I don’t worship in chapel—not in the formal sense. Let me tell you why. It’s not that I couldn’t; I’m not Lutheran, but as a protestant Christian most of what we do here is close to my alley, theologically if not culturally. So it’s not that I can’t, it’s that others can’t. Not all of us at Luther College are people who worship. Maybe I should say there isn’t one kind of way that we worship, and many of us (including me) are fairly picky about how we do or don’t worship, whatever we call it. So for years now I stand without my hymnal when we sing or liturgize or whatever and enjoy being here and listening to my friends and colleagues—and sort of pointedly not worship. I don’t mean any disrespect, and it might be dumb to try to stand in the place of people who aren’t even here. But there are things that happen here that are so valuable that I just can’t stand the thought of people in our community missing them because they don’t worship, or don’t worship in a particular
Storm Bailey way. I have heard so many stories and perspectives here that deepened my understanding of who is in this community and how they got here and why they stay here, or feel that they can’t stay. There have been days when I walked out the front of the CFL into the masses heading from the Union to class and just started saying to people “you should have heard that,” or “you don’t know what you just missed.” Now, in these times of recorded live-streams I have often gone into class and said, “Y’all should check out today’s or yesterday’s chapel talk.” In an earlier century, there was a time or two when I walked into classrooms that were already buzzing about what had just happened or been said in chapel. But this isn’t a lament for the chapel of old; we aren’t the community of old. I do have a vision, or a dream, of something new. I don’t know if it could happen—everybody’s so dang busy, and pressured, and tired, and worried. But would it help to hear each other’s stories, each other’s perspectives? Not just the ones that are sort of similar—but all of them.
Would our students be energized by hearing not just what we’ve learned by our disciplinary training and research, but why we ever decided to do it, or what we love, or what we think about God or why we think there is no God? Chapel’s not the place for that, not as “chapel”—I get that. And worship is important: look, I’m not trying to compromise on Jesus—I’m an exclusivist Christian (or close enough that I’ll take the label). I am grateful to have been welcomed into this college community. And I am confident of our sincerity in welcoming students, faculty, and staff of every religious commitment and no religious commitment. But I regret that we don’t have some kind of public forum where we all—
Thank you for coming; and thank you to College Ministries for the invitation to speak, and for your ongoing work in hospitality, in service, and in the forging of beloved community. I’m grateful to be a part of it.
all—are equally at home, where we tell our stories and discuss our varying perspectives on our shared commitment. If our shared commitment was religious, a worship service could be that. But it isn’t. Our shared commitment, I guess, is to liberal education. But could we do more than just each of us keep plugging at that in our departments and classrooms and offices? Could we learn from the best traditions of the Lutherans, and the long and diligent of labor of College Ministries, and forge some kind of space and time where everybody feels they can speak and listen? What kind of vitality would that bring to our academic mission? What kind of depth and seriousness would that bring to each of us in our own religious commitments? What kind of model and laboratory would that be in a larger society which seems almost certain to perish because people cannot or will not engage with fellow citizens who don’t share religious or political commitments? I don’t know how to do this, or even if it is possible for us. And approaches I’ve suggested here and there are probably bad ideas. But if we’re talking about making things new, well this is something I yearn for—somehow, some place in our community. Whether we have a formal space for it or not, let’s figure out how to make it happen, if that vision seems worthwhile to you. Fall 2021/Agora
29
The Birds of the Air
by MELISSA BILLS, College Pastor and Director of College Ministries
Matthew 6:25-34 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
W
ell, I feel pretty lucky about now. We’ve planned two outdoor chapel services this fall, last week and today, and both of 30
Agora/Fall 2021
SEPTEMBER 8, 2021
them have been graced with absolutely perfect weather. Blue sky, nice temperature, not rainy or windy, not oppressively hot. Our only foes out here might be the bees and the squirrels, but we’ll hope that even they behave this morning. I really love being in nature. Maybe some of you do, too. And it seems like Jesus did, as well! The passage that we just heard today comes near the end of the Sermon on the Mount. This is the sermon where Jesus says all the “Blessed are theys”— blessed are they that mourn, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the peacemakers, the merciful, the pure in heart. And then, Jesus continues the sermon by telling them that they are the light of the world, and then...then things get a little challenging. Jesus starts preaching about righteous living, and he tells them that they are supposed to do the full max when it comes to living faithfully, and not the bare minimum, and he tells them to love their enemies, and teaches them how to pray, and tells them that they can’t serve both God and wealth, and does that whole “if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out….” And I think, at this point, everybody is staring at Jesus wide-eyed. They are on information overload. And the anxiety about how to “be perfect as your God in heaven is perfect,” as Jesus challenged them, is starting to creep in. So Jesus takes a breath, and offers them a grace-interlude. “Look around at nature,” Jesus says, “and see how God takes care of everything that God has created. The birds are well-fed, the flowers of the field bloom in beauty; how much more does God provide you what you need?”
Melissa Bills When we are facing down newness in our life—whether the start of a new adventure of our choosing, or a new reality that has been put upon us—our bodies and minds tend to react the same. Newness means change. Change brings uncertainty, it always comes with at least a little bit of loss, and it brings that adrenaline rush of either anticipation or anxiety or both. In our passage today, Jesus is using nature as one way to help us stay grounded during these seasons of change. Let the days unfold as they come to you, stay present, trust God the way that the birds and the flowers do. Now, we have to be a little careful here, because anxiety and depression are real, and a walk through the wildflowers probably isn’t going to cure those things. Like, you should still talk to your therapist and take your meds and use all the good resources that are available to you. But there is something about nature that can help us gain perspective, and help us listen more closely to our heads, our hearts, and the voice of God.
In a recent season of transition, I took a day to hike the entirety of the Trout Run Trail, which is a loop of about 12 miles around the perimeter of Decorah. I had no major epiphanies. I didn’t solve anything. But I did stand for a while on a bridge to watch the birds play in the trees. I ate a picnic lunch and read a chapter of my favorite book. I found a little side path through a sea of bright yellow flowers. I chatted with a herd of overly-curious cows. I listened to the wind whoosh around me at the tops of the hills. I got some serious blisters. And somehow, at the end of it, even though nothing had changed, the load felt a little lighter, or maybe I felt a little stronger. Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your God in heaven feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow withers and fades, will God not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So seek first the kingdom of God, and remember that all of these things will be given to you as well. For God is your companion and your provider, your constant, and your hope.
Fall 2021/Agora
31
The Call to Remember
by BROOKE JOYCE, Professor of Music and Composer in Residence
Isaiah 65:17-18 (NRSV) 17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
A
s I began preparing for this chapel service, I became fixated on verse 17, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” At first, I was reminded of Julian of Norwich, my fourteenth century theologian friend whose writings have been a source of inspiration and wonder for me over the years. She writes that God will do a great deed, that the world will be mended, and that no matter what challenges we face, we will not be overcome. That sounds like a new heaven and a new earth. But then there’s the second part of verse, about former things that shall not be remembered or come to mind. After speaking with Pastor Amy Larson and reading earlier passages of Isaiah, I understand that “former things” refers to the sins of those who followed false prophets and worshipped other gods. From verse 11-12: “But you who forsake the Lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny; I will destine you to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter.” In the words of a nun I interviewed a couple of years ago, “God is pissed and ready for retribution.” If these former things shall not be remembered or come to mind, perhaps 32
Agora/Fall 2021
SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
Isaiah is inviting us to let go of our guilt, to not dwell on our past shortcomings. But should we also forget the lessons we hopefully learned? What, exactly, is worth remembering? I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about what we remember, and what we take with us. I think about Afghanis, fleeing their country with practically no possessions. I’m reminded of our former colleague in the music department, Michael O’Brien, who asked his ethnomusicology students what music they would take with them if they had to Brooke Joyce flee their homeland, probably never to return. other relatives whom we visited more And what about our own histories? frequently, and I think this part of the What parts of our past do we seek to refamily simply fell off the radar. I’m sure member, and which parts do we actively this happens in many families. But I forget? I recently traveled to my parents’ can’t help but think that had my family hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin. chosen to stay connected to this part of During that trip, my sister and I met our family tree, it would not have been my mother’s cousin for the first time, difficult to get to know those folks and a person from a branch of the family the stories they knew. We just made we barely know. As it turns out, the other choices. We chose not to rememancestors of that branch of the family ber. are all buried in one section of the same But that choice, I’m coming to undercemetery in West Bloomfield, Wisstand, is a form of privilege I enjoy. consin, and just up the road, in an old, What if my family history wasn’t overgrown cemetery barely visible from available to me? What if it had been the road, are even more distant ancesdestroyed, or stolen, or lost? What if I tors, the ones who came to Wisconsin wanted to remember, but couldn’t? from the Pomerania region of Germany in the early 1800s. But most shocking to In my role as a music teacher, I often me was the discovery that my greatthink about what music and what musigrandfather’s farm, on the north end of cians I should encourage my students the town of Berlin, Wisconsin, is still to remember. Over the past couple a working farm, and that the original of years, I’ve made a concerted effort farmhouse, built in 1911, still stands, to include the music of more Black virtually unchanged. Americans in my music courses. Florence Price, for one, was the first woman I don’t think there is any significant of color to have a work performed by a reason why I didn’t know about this major American orchestra, the Chicago cousin or my great-grandfather’s farm Symphony, in 1933. She wrote four until recently. My mother was closer to symphonies, but only three of them
survive. The bulk of her musical output was rediscovered, by accident, in the attic of a suburban Chicago house in 2008. Why was her music, her sketches, her correspondence, her history, not better preserved? You may not know the name Florence Price, though we heard a beautiful composition of hers performed at our opening convocation by Spencer Martin and Nicholas Shaneyfelt, but you undoubtedly know the name Scott Joplin, the king of ragtime, the most well-known American composer of piano music. He left us with 38 spectacular piano rags. But did you know that he considered himself an opera composer? His crowning achievement was his opera Treemonisha, not performed during his lifetime and only reconstructed in 1972. An earlier operetta, “A Guest of Honor,” was confiscated when Joplin was unable to pay his performers. That music has never been found. Only three photographs are known to exist of Joplin, and not a single piece of musical manuscript has ever been found in his own handwriting.
The burden of our past can be stifling. We have fallen short in many ways. That guilt, that paralysis, can be set aside and not come to mind. What is important, though, is to remember, in all senses of the word—to be mindful, to call to mind, to preserve. Especially for those communities whose history is in danger of being lost, or whose history is not given the same consideration as others, we need to remember. That will be the new earth we all need.
We don’t need sketches or manuscripts to enjoy or verify the accomplishments of these two artists. Enough of their work survives to give us a window into their artistic achievements. But I can’t help but wonder how the stature of these two composers might be viewed differently if we had more of their history at our fingertips. It has been an unfortunate tendency of academia to assume that those artists who are most discussed and written about must necessarily be the ones we should most teach and learn about—or in the case of composers, the ones we should perform the most. This self-perpetuating cycle has kept so much wonderful music out of our music classrooms, studios, and recital halls. Just to cite one particular area of music pedagogy, of the seven most frequently used music theory textbooks in the US, which account for 96% of the market, 98.3% of the musical examples in those books are by white persons. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Fall 2021/Agora
33
Making All Things New (Including Ourselves)
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021
by GUY NAVE, Professor of Religion
A
t the beginning of the fall semester, I received an email reminder that I was scheduled to give today’s chapel talk. The email stated that our fall theme to begin the 202122 academic year is: “A New Creation.” The email, read, “This theme, grounded in Isaiah 65: 17-18, invites us to reflect on God’s work in continually making all things new. It reminds us that we are beloved creations of God and emphasizes our response to this new creation through gladness and rejoicing.” I have to be honest with you, as the current chair of the Curriculum Committee, a committee tasked with helping the faculty develop a new general education curriculum, I’d welcome a little more of this idea of us responding to newness with “gladness and rejoicing.” I’d also welcome a little more “gladness and rejoicing” related to our work as a college community developing a DEI statement. My experience after 21 years of teaching at Luther College is that “gladness and rejoicing” are not always the FIRST or dominant reactions exhibited in response to change. Regarding faculty reception toward change, I’m actually a little more reminded of a New Testament passage from the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 4:1429 we find the following words: Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the 34
Agora/Fall 2021
Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then Jesus began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Jesus said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove Jesus out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. According to the text, when Jesus began speaking everyone in the synagogue “spoke well of him and were amazed at [his] gracious words.” By the time he finished speaking, however, they were all ready to throw him over the edge of a
Guy Nave
cliff (Talk about an address going terribly wrong!). Over the course of the past 12 years or so, I’ve been doing quite a bit a research on “change.” As a result of my research, I’ve noticed that much of the literature and conversation about change seem to frequently bring me back to a common point: It seems that most of the time when people are talking about change, what they are really talking about is convincing other people to see things the way they see them. While in some way I guess this makes sense, the problem I have with this way of thinking about change is that change is ALWAYS one directional— it is always “the other” who needs to change. This understanding of change rarely involves the ones demanding change needing to change as well. As I struggled (and continue to struggle) with this, I found myself asking, “What would happen, if change were multidirectional rather than one directional? What would happen if those of us clamoring for change were also required to change?” I find it somewhat ironic that it is
during a period in human history that many have identified as possibly the most deeply divided period in global politics and culture—a time when political gridlock is the norm rather than the exception—that there has been an exponential increase in the rhetoric of change. Everyone is dug in; everyone is entrenched and unwilling to move from their own ideological positions, but at the same time everyone is demanding and talking about change. Few of us are willing to change, but many of us are demanding change. What kind of change is possible, however, when few of us think we need to change and many of us think “others” are the ones who need to change? We often tend to resonate most favorably with change that demands more change of others than of ourselves and least favorably with change that demands more change of us than of others. In other words, we’re often all right with doing things differently, as long as it’s consistent with how we’ve always done them (hmm?). In some way I think this is what we are witnessing in the story before us this morning. A detailed examination of Luke’s gospel reveals that the author places a strong emphasis on the idea of “change.” In Luke, there are two words that the author uses more than any other gospel writer. The words are metanoeo and metanoia. The words are commonly translated “repent” and “repentance.” The words literally mean a “change of mind”—an alteration in thinking that results in an alteration in living. The words are found in Luke over four times more than in Mark and Matthew combined. The words are consistently used by the author to express a fundamental change in thinking that leads to a fundamental change in behavior and/ or living. Jesus was born during a time when many Jewish people were expecting a “Messiah” to come and deliver them from Roman oppression and establish a new kingdom—the kingdom of God, a kingdom where the “justice of God” would prevail over the “injustices of the kingdom of Rome.” Such a kingdom surely meant God’s people would be
liberated, and those who had oppressed them would be punished for what they had done. Through this story, however, the author seeks to demonstrate that change often entails MORE than what we think it should entail. The author seeks to demonstrate that change doesn’t simply mean a change in “the other”—it also means a change in us. When the characters in the story thought the “poor” and “oppressed” in Isaiah’s prophecy referred to them, and that Jesus’ words stating that “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” referred to their liberation, they were pleased, and marveled at the “gracious words” spoken by Jesus. However, when they realized that Jesus was suggesting that the change God desires to bring about involved them needing to change their way of thinking as well, they became furious and actually wanted to kill Jesus. It is clear from Jesus’ reference to Elijah being sent by God to the widow of Sidon rather than to any of the widows of Israel and to Elisha being sent to the leper of Syria rather than to any of the lepers of Israel, that Jesus was insinuating that the poor and captive, the blind and oppressed to whom he had been sent by God were people other than (or at least included people other than) those listening to him. Furthermore, not only was Jesus insinuating that he had been sent to others, but that God was concerned about (and even on the side of ) those whom they considered to be enemies—people they believed needed to change. How dare Jesus insinuate God’s preference for a widow of Sidon rather than all the widows of Israel! How dare he insinuate God’s preference for a leper of Syria rather than all the lepers of Israel! During the time of Elijah, Zarephath of Sidon was in the heartland of those who worshipped Baal rather than Yahweh. It was the home of Jezebel, who had mercilessly slaughtered countless prophets of Israel. And during the time of Elisha, Syria had long been an enemy of Israel. How dare Jesus suggest that the God of Israel was concerned about their enemies!
however, the God of Israel is not simply a God of some people—the God of Israel is a God of all people, a God who is on the side of ALL those who are despised and rejected, even when they are despised and rejected by us. The idea that throughout Israel’s history God had also been concerned for Israel’s enemies infuriated those listening to Jesus—so much so that they were ready to throw Jesus over a cliff ! When the one promising change brings the change that we think needs to happen, the change that agrees with our way of seeing things, the change that benefits us directly and that requires everyone other than us to change, then we’re often happy with that “change.” However, when change brought by the one promising change requires us to change as well, requires us to see things differently and do things differently, we often become extremely upset. Based upon years of reading the Gospel of Luke, it seems somewhat apparent to me that this author was trying to get his readers to understand that genuine “change” requires a change in thinking and living by everyone, not just by the ones that others think need to change. As I continually reflect upon the idea of change, as I observe us becoming what to me appears to be a nation and a world more and more divided and stuck in ideological differences, I am convinced that the only type of change that is going to make a lasting and meaningful difference is that type of change in which WE ALL experience a transformation in thinking that leads to a transformation in living and experiencing the world. Here’s to making all things new.
According to the author of Luke, Fall 2021/Agora
35
Founders Day: O Sing Jubilee OCTOBER 13, 2021
by DAVID FALDET, Professor of English
I have been asked today to talk about a new creation, which the prophet Isaiah said would mean “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Yet I’ve been asked to do that on Founders Day, a celebration of history. Perhaps in that challenge I can take some guidance from the peoples who lived here before Luther College was founded: tribes such as the Ioway, the Dakota, the Fox, and the Winnebago who were among the many consulted when the Smithsonian began planning the construction of the National Museum of the American Indian. One point on which tribal leaders insisted was that only about a third of the museum be devoted to the past. They didn’t want history to eclipse the present or somehow block out the vital prospect of seven generations into the future. I honor the wisdom of those Indian elders. You cannot and should not make an idol of the past, imagine an Eden that never was. Still, even as we make ourselves and our lives anew, the past is there, guiding and defining us, and I believe it is important to stay familiar with it, perhaps even as a model for how to make things new. For example, the song with which we began: “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It’s the African-American national anthem, filled with references to a long and difficult history, but also about facing a new day and marching on with hope. I can’t sing that song without hearing, in my own mind, a little bit of my own treasured history, the voice of my departed colleague Lawrence Williams who for 25 years rarely missed a chapel service. Lawrence was not a great singer but when we sang “Lift Every Voice” he sang it with an inspirational voice. Lawrence grew up African-American in segregated Louisville, Kentucky, attending Green Street Baptist Church. 36
Agora/Fall 2021
As a high school student he went to jail for protesting segregation at the dining counter of the local department store. At Luther on weekdays Lawrence taught Africana Studies, American history, and Paideia, and on Sunday ministered to a rural Baptist congregation one county south of here. As a historian, Lawrence knew in grim detail the stony road and the chastening rod. As a child, he was often barred access to his rightful place in this, his native land. Putting his and his generation’s progress in the light of that history, collective and personal, put joy in Lawrence’s heart as he sang “Lift Every Voice.” And remembering Lawrence, an important force for change at the heart of Luther’s history, deepens my new joy in that song each time I sing it. We’re celebrating Founders Day: 162 years ago Norwegian pastor Laur Larsen joined the faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis to teach eight Norwegian students: one of the earliest of many steps in Luther’s early history where, though they sought to perpetuate Norwegian culture and the old Lutheran faith, the college founders had to do something new. Note that we are not gathered today in St. Louis. In 1861, a civil war was declared in April. That war ignited what Luther grad Brynjolf Hovde once called “class warfare” among Norwegians. Larsen and pastors like him thought highly of the Missouri Lutheran seminary’s pure Lutheran way of looking to the Bible for truth. The Bible did not label slavery a sin, and neither would Larsen or his fellow Norwegian pastors. Parishioners here in the North were horrified: people owning and brutalizing their brothers and sisters; that could not be right. Bible or no Bible, those immigrant farmers wanted their sons to return north, and when the pastors gave in, the college was founded not
David Faldet in a slave state, but in Wisconsin, and later Iowa. And though the founders originally thought to do as they had in Norway, train pastors through a state university, they now were in America, supported not officially through the state, but by the private giving of, mainly, farmers. They founded something new: an American college with a European classical curriculum. This was a strange and foreign country. The language was unfamiliar, and the customs often shocking. As one horrified economic migrant wrote home to Norway: “In America men milk the cows!” Laur Larsen, the first Norwegian teacher here, spoke Hebrew and Greek and Latin and German and his native Norwegian, but his English was weak, a language still strange to him. He therefore brought with him to the new college which began in Wisconsin a fellow teacher, not a Norwegian like himself, but a German-born pastor named Friedrich Schmidt who had grown up in America and spoke English well. And when the college was opened here on this hill, the most honored speaker at the occasion was a German
theology professor from the seminary in St. Louis. The people of these two nationalities found new friendship and allies in their mutual difference from Anglo-American culture, and their mutual agreement in Lutheran faith. While the main purpose of the school was to train pastors, those farmers paying the bills insisted that college entrance be open to all, not just future seminarians but also men who planned to teach or farm or enter business or a profession. That would have been hard or unusual in Norway, but it would be the new way here: a new, profoundly leveling mission. And when the pastors attempted to set up Norwegian-speaking church schools for grades 1-8, parishioners balked and insisted instead on sending their children to the English-speaking public schools, reserving Norwegian only for a short summer session of church school. The children of the church in America would, like Friedrich Schmidt, grow comfortable in a language foreign to their parents. There were more surprises. On the very first class day when Luther was opened in its new facility here on the hill, no students showed up for class. They were staging a strike due to the disappointing design of their dormitories and the oppressive demands placed on them by the faculty. Their leader Rasmus Bjorn Anderson, perhaps the college’s most brilliant student, was expelled. But Laur Larsen, the very president who expelled him, later praised and collaborated with Anderson, for, scorned by the faithful, Anderson turned to the secular University of Wisconsin where he joined the faculty in 1867 and where he made something new: the country’s first Scandinavian Studies department. Out of division came something new that all parties could agree was good.
for during the Babylonian captivity. And jubilee? That’s the one year in seven in the Jewish calendar when Hebrew slaves and prisoners were freed, debts were forgiven, and God’s mercy celebrated. I believe that for Koren, born and educated in Norway, when he penned these words in 1874, his twenty-first year in this country, this place where we gather had become Zion, a place of hope as well as loss. Singing jubilee meant that for all the division and strife and difficulty, it felt like God’s mercy could be felt here. For all the trouble, Koren, like his farmer parishioners, could sense a light shining here, a new and hopeful one. It is not hard for us to imagine a world like the world of our founders, a world where much is shifting, unsettled, divided, uncertain, and difficult, but also filled with possibility, and, really, exciting unknowns. I hope those hopeful Norwegians and their German-American ally, those founders, would recognize Luther College still as Zion, a place of alliance and intersection, that connects memory with hopefulness, a place where, despite differences, love of what is best in our heritages and belief in new possibilities brings us together still. Sing Jubilee!
Our service closes with a song written by one of our founders, Reverend Ulrik Vilhelm Koren, the man who saw to it that Luther College was founded and remained in Decorah. “O Sing Jubilee to the Lord . . . sing praise unto God out of Zion.” Zion is the hill in Jerusalem where the temple stood, a temple nostalgically missed and ached Fall 2021/Agora
37
Letting Go, With Faith in God's Promises OCTOBER 22, 2021
by TANUJ "RICK" GUHA (’22)
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.”
T
Isaiah 65:17-18
he theme of rebirth, growth, and overall newness is pretty apparent in these verses.
Today, however, I will talk about what I believe precedes a rebirth and newness: death of what is familiar and current. I have this opinion that the belief in rebirth is meaningless for an infant, a new life, but is extremely important during one’s autumn years. To be able to share my viewpoint, and thus my opinion, let’s use the parable of the weather. Outside it is fall, and the bare branches streak up to the heavens, like the life of summer grasping for one last exultant breath. What follows is the frozen earth, with rigor mortis for most, and hibernation for a lucky few. And while we stand oriented towards the cold, without any agency of our own, it is now that we need God’s covenants the most. See in spring, life will come around and we will be out and about. There will be no need for assurances, there will be no need for faith, and there will be empirical proof of God’s blessing. It is, however, in the moments preceding death, when we are entering the unknown, that we find comfort in God’s words. I will advocate for this controversial thought that life is man’s domain. 38
Agora/Fall 2021
We know what lies between birth and death, or at least know enough. Life is the time given to us by God, and despite his generosity, our lifetime is just a tiny flash when compared to eternity. What happens outside the domain of our life is up to God. And this is when God assures us: the new Jerusalem, that maybe heaven, or maybe another birth—whatever it is that follows—will be just as delightful, if not more than what we currently have. This death, I think, is the proverbial representation of letting go. It is only when we let go of what we currently hold that we can possess better things. And yet letting go is hard. Holding on is comfortable and predictable, and we don’t necessarily know that what follows will be better. This is when God’s promises work. They assure us that what follows after death will indeed be good. Let me supply an example here. Imagine a cozy kitchen – on the floor stands a toddler. He’s clutching a spoon he just licked peanut butter off of. His hands are full, but he likes the spoon because, well, peanut butter you know. His parents are trying to clean the spoon and give him another round of peanut butter, but he is apprehensive. He doesn’t know what happens after he lets go of the spoon, and his skepticism is understandably not unfounded. Eventually he chooses to trust his parent’s promises, lets the spoon go and after a few moments of nerve-wracking uncertainty, he has his spoon back again, with more peanut butter, and his treat is topped with sprinkles this time! Given the audience, I don’t think I’ll have to explain who the metaphorical toddler and the parents are in the story. So I’ll move on to the conclusion: you see that squirrel squirrelling nuts? You see that beaver building its dam? You see, from afar, that bear fattening up?
Tanuj "Rick" Guha They’re all hunkering down for the winter, for they have faith spring will follow. Even those little green saplings that shoot out after a forest fire have faith that they will flourish. So if a bear, a beaver, a squirrel and even a tree can have faith in God’s promise that better things will follow, why can’t we?
The Amazing Race OCTOBER 27, 2021
by JENIFER WARD, President of Luther College
“This life therefore is not righteousness But growth in righteousness, Not health, but healing, Not being but becoming. Not rest but exercise. “We are not yet what we shall be, But we are growing toward it, The process is not yet finished, But it is going on, This is not the end, But it is the road.”
T
hese words from Martin Luther served as the inspiration for the theme I chose for my inauguration as Luther College’s eleventh president two years ago. I keep counting from November 2, 2019 to today in 2021, because it doesn’t seem possible that only two years have passed. And indeed, if we are “always becoming”—if God makes all things continually new, as in our scripture from Isaiah—maybe it’s not just “COVID time” that messes with my sense that time is standing still and at the same time racing, racing, racing at a pace that dizzies and disorients. It’s that there is no end, but only the road. Now, depending on what you’re going through, say, a pandemic, or the march toward racial justice and true, beloved community, seeing no end to your journey can seem hopeless. On the other hand, if you see every step as an intention to keep moving forward, every day as a new opportunity to educate, to learn, to serve, to receive blessings, to love, and to accept love, there is a promise of redemption and grace-full renewal. I am a Lutheran now, but some of you know that I am not a so-called “cradle” Lutheran. I grew up Baptist in the rural South. Church on Sunday meant a long, passionate sermon by my grandfather, a dinner on the ground—essentially a
weekly potluck picnic–singing school, where we sang gospel songs using dogeared shape-note hymnals—and then church again on Sunday night. Those songs didn’t so much point to our text in Isaiah or to continual renewal, but to an end to an arduous journey, just over yonder, over in gloryland, in our heavenly home, when all sorrow has drifted away. Our hymn today, Jerusalem, My Happy Home, plays with both. The text moves between an end to sorrows and a final destination, on the one hand, and a continual greening and renewal, an “always becoming”—an “evermore,” on the other hand. As we move closer to Reformation Sunday and a celebration of all saints, I think of where I am in the “evermore” of Luther College, where I am situated among those who have led this institution. I had dinner with Emeritus President H. George Anderson and his wife Monday night, and as we compared notes on his presidency decades ago and mine in this time, I was struck by how I am running the same race he did. The course is somewhat different, the runners are not the ones he ran with, but we both took the baton from someone behind us, and we handed it off, or will hand it off, to the next person up ahead. I started thinking about relay races and the strategy involved in them and realized that an endless relay race was an instructive way to think about our work at Luther College. We are individual runners but we are part of a team. We don’t run the whole race, but our part is crucial. And each leg of the race is a new start. I watched a couple of videos of Olympic races just to pay attention to how individual runners behaved, and the most striking thing to me was how they didn’t turn around to look behind them to get the baton handoff, but they were intent and aware of what had gone before, and they knew that the success
Jenifer Ward of their own leg of the race would help the next runner in front of them. A relay is a race that is always becoming. The legs themselves have a beginning and an end, but they are part of something bigger. And while you need to run the best race you can while you are holding the baton, you won’t necessarily be the one to complete the race. Whether you are trying to lead a college, or educate students or classmates, or be part of a movement for social justice, you are only one leg in a race that started before you arrived and will continue long after you’re gone. You may not get credit for winning the race all by yourself. That doesn’t give you a pass to relax and let someone else carry the load–your leg helps the person in front of you. But neither does it mean that it is all on you. You may drop the baton, but the race will continue. You may stumble along the way. The race will continue. Your task is to run the best race you can for that period when you have the baton. Be aware of what came before Fall 2021/Agora
39
you, but looking back and concentrating too keenly on past progress or failures will distract you from the work ahead. When I say you, I mean me. I am saying this to remind ME that I can either focus on the progress or challenges the runners behind me left–and by turning my head to look back, know that I will likely stumble and fall–or I can be aware of what came before and then look straight ahead and do everything in my power to give the person ahead of me the best possibility for success once I hand the baton to them. The race will continue. “We are not yet what we shall be, But we are growing toward it, The process is not yet finished, But it is going on, This is not the end, But it is the road.” AMEN.
40
Agora/Fall 2021
Groan, People, Groan! by PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL, Retired ELCA Pastor
Editor’s note: Pastor Patrick Cabello Hansel, along with his wife Pastor Luisa Cabello Hansel, retired in 2020 after serving ELCA parishes for more than 30 years in the Bronx, Philadelphia, and, most recently, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis. Romans 8:19-25 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
F
or the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
Which way is east? Over there? I would like to shout towards the world leaders meeting at Glasgow at the climate summit: “The creation is waiting with eager longing for the children of God to do the right thing.” In order to survive as a people and as a planet, we need to make huge changes in how we do economy, government, church; in what we buy, what we eat, and so much more. These are simply not easy changes. They will involve labor pains.
NOVEMBER 5, 2021
My wife, Luisa and I are expecting our first grandchild in January. It is a long wait. Our daughter has been sharing updates on how the baby is growing, including size updates: first a pin prick, than a pea, plum, orange, cauliflower, grapefruit. (I don’t think you can go any higher for a fruit—a watermelon would really bring labor pains!) Like all first-time moms, our daughter is a bit nervous, wondering about how the birth will go. She is taking classes, getting prepared. But she knows that the pain may at times seem unbearable. She is anticipating and will be living these very words from our text today: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly.” You can’t give birth to new life without labor pains. And if you got those pains, you got to groan! How have you groaned over the last 20 months? Have you lost friends or family to COVID? Or have you lost them to political disputes? Has your mental or physical health suffered? Is there groaning in your heart over the state of the world? The coronavirus now has killed over five million people worldwide. There are more refugees in the world now than since the end of World War II. In our country, we have suffered armed insurrection and attacks on voting rights. Drastic forest fires, floods, and heat waves. And on and on. Oh, the creation is really moaning. A year ago last May, our neighborhood was on fire. We live a mile from where George Floyd was murdered. Our church is two blocks from Lake Street, where nearly 100 businesses, mostly im-
Patrick Cabello Hansel migrant owned, were severely damaged or destroyed. One night, I stepped out on our little second floor balcony. I could smell the smoke from the arsons on Lake Street, I could smell the tear gas, I could hear sirens and people shouting. There were military helicopters with huge spotlights flying overhead. There were vans with no license plates and tinted windows, with skinheads driving around. I could hear gunshots. And I said, “What is going on, God?” And I prayed (I think I shouted): “God, can you get us out of this?” The radical teaching of Paul’s letter to the Romans is this: that groaning we feel in these times, that pain is the prayer of the Holy Spirit of God. That groaning, that pain in us is bringing new life to the world, if we go with it. I think the great challenge for our time is this: if you are following the Spirit of God, if you are being fully alive, you can’t escape the pain of the world. You can’t. You will moan. But here’s the good news: that pain, that groaning we experience is the birth Fall 2021/Agora
41
pangs of a new creation coming to be, and you and I have a role to play in that. And you and I are not alone. Our struggle is shared by sisters and brothers around the world, who are groaning, but who know that these are labor pains, and the birth will be worth it. As Paul notes, that new birth is not something we can see, but we can hope for it. As he said, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” We can hope for that new birth, we can struggle for it. And we can trust it will come. So much of mass culture tells us to numb our pain: buy this, watch this, enjoy this, drink this. Numb out the pain. Thank God, we don’t have to. We have a passionate God embodied in Jesus who gets angry with injustice. Who weeps for his people. Who is willing to suffer, even to death—and will not give up even in death! By his death and resurrection, he has conquered death. Death no longer has power over him. Or over us. So, groan, people, groan! And trust that in that groaning, in those sighs too deep for words, new life is being born.
42
Agora/Fall 2021
On Mentors and Mentorship: Remembering Nadine by NICHOLAS SHANEYFELT, Assistant Professor of Music
N
NOVEMBER 10, 2021
ovember is a month of remembrance—a time to honor those we have lost. Many of us haven’t had a chance to properly— publicly—acknowledge these losses since the pandemic began. Thankfully, I didn’t have to endure the loss of a family member during COVID, but it was the loss of my mentor, Nadine Shank, that shook me. I’d like to tell you about Nadine, and a visit I paid to her not long before she died. Nadine was a student of legendary pianist Menahem Pressler at Indiana University, and she began teaching at the University of Massachusetts in 1981, when she was just 25 years old. I met Nadine in 2009, when I was 22 years old, fully determined to be a pianist with a solo career. But I think she sensed all along that collaborative piano was my destiny, and her influence steered my career path toward a life of collaborative music making. Fast forward to 2020. It wasn’t a COVID diagnosis that claimed her life, but a rare degenerative brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CJD. Think Lou Gehrig’s disease of the mind. It’s awful. Diagnosis to death is one year on average. For Nadine, it was seven months. When it became clear that her days were numbered, I resolved to visit her for the last time, in August 2020, when the world was still wounded by COVID. If we were given anything during the pandemic, it was the gift of time. On the drive to Massachusetts, I imagined how good it would be to reminisce with Nadine and to enjoy a long catching-up conversation. By the time I arrived, she communicated only in short, labored sentences, struggled with basic requests, sometimes resorting to gestures (like grasping her wrist for “where is my watch?”).
Nicholas Shaneyfelt and Nadine Shank Words failed, but her infectious laugh and the unforgettable inflection of her voice prevailed. Words failed, but music still spoke. I imagined that we might sit at her Steinway and read a few duets, including Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, which we had performed together in 2012. I brought the music, and we tried to play a couple, but she struggled with the complex harmonic language, and remarked how strange these pieces were. She didn’t remember them. We read Mozart instead. I still think about that morning sitting together at her piano: while it was painful not to be able to share memories, we could breathe together and share musical phrases and rhythms and gestures and the order and balance of classical style and two halves of a piano. Her partner David later told me that musical expression would be one of the last cognitive abilities to be extinguished from Nadine’s mind, just a couple of weeks after I made my way back to Iowa.
While I was in town, David lent me the key to her UMass studio. Imagine the flood of memories that crept back when I turned the key, heard the same Zen chimes sounding gently as I opened the door, remembered the tabletop mini Zen garden near her piano that when somebody raked an interesting design in it, she would take the time to scribble in swoopy handwriting “Isn’t this GORGEOUS!?” on a Post-It note. It was a sensory overload to be in that room again, and a reminder of the things that Nadine taught me without actively teaching me. One summer, she hired me to digitize her reel-to-reel and cassette recordings from high school, undergrad, masters, and professional concerts. Listening to her performances on repeat (and learning how to work a reel-to-reel machine) was itself an education. By her example, she taught me that a life surrounded by music, art, and poetry is richer than gold. Her untimely death taught me that life is too fleeting not to surround oneself with good art, good people, and good deeds, and to share it liberally with others. Fall 2021/Agora
43
I have said a few times since that final trip that if my life is interesting enough to merit a book, my experience of gaining and losing a mentor in this way will certainly be one of the chapters. I know that this talk sounds exclusively like a tribute, but I hope you can see how it applies to your life, in this community of mentors and mentees. I hope you consider the importance of mentorship, and the sacredness of teaching and learning. It’s easy to forget it at this point in the semester, and it’s easy to squander an opportunity to say “thank you.” By imparting knowledge, we make all things new—a new generation receives a spark of wisdom, and becomes inspired to pass that on, in return. In the midst of this busy semester, may we continue to make space to impart and receive new knowledge in grateful, open hearts and minds. May it be so.
44
Agora/Fall 2021
Find the current issue and back issues of Agora online
Y
ou can read the current issue of Agora online, and you can also find and search all back issues by going to our webpage: www. luther.edu/paideia/agora.
Changing your address? Want to stop receiving Agora? If you do, please email or write us. Contact Agora at agora@luther.edu or write Agora, Main 126, Luther College, 700 College Dr., Decorah, IA 52101. The image at left illustrated early issues of Agora. The journal was established by the Paideia Program, and paideia translates as education. The image shows a teacher with his tablet on his lap and stylus in his hand.
THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE Luther College, 700 College Drive, Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045 Address Service Requested
Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Rochester, MN Permit No. 289