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930 l MULTIDENOMINATIONAL MOVEMENTS—RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Association of Theological Schools. Her personal witness to the changing role of women in theological education expresses gratitude and hope for the future: [W]hen I went to seminary in the early 1960s there were very few women students or faculty. Today, although ATS members schools differ in their understanding of women’s leadership in the churches, all of us applaud and benefit from the increasing numbers of women in theological education . Setting aside the ordination question, we agree that educating women for Christian service, variously defined, is worthy. We know that God is pleased and our schools are stronger and more faithful when they, and the churches, benefit from the gifts and talents of women—in governance, in administration, as part of our faculties, and (in most of our schools) as our students. I have lived through much of this change and I celebrate how far we have come. (Zikmund, “Reflections on My Twenty-Five Years in Theological Education,” 24) SOURCES: This essay was completed with the help of interviewees who participated on the condition of anonymity. Sources consulted include Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Christianity and Women in the Modern World,” in Today’s Woman in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (1994); Barbara G. Wheeler, True and False: The First in a Series of Reports from a Study of Theological School Faculty (1966); Barbara Brown Zikmund, “Faculty as Scholars and Teachers,” Theological Education 28.1 (Autumn 1991): 76–79; Barbara Brown Zikmund, “Walking the Narrow Path: Female Administrators in ATS Schools,” Theological Education 29.1 (Autumn 1992): 55–65; and Barbara Brown Zikmund, “Reflections on My Twenty-Five Years in Theological Education,” Theological Education 36.2 (Spring 2000): 23–33. WHEN WOMEN ENTER THE CLASSROOM: THEORY, THEOLOGY, AND TEACHING Barbara J. Blodgett DO WOMEN WHO teach religion and theology in North America teach it differently than men? There has undoubtedly been a pedagogical shift in religious studies and theological education since women have entered academe , and many would argue that the shift is due at least in part to gender differences in teaching and learning and to feminists who have made deliberate changes in religion and theology classrooms. Perhaps the best way to describe the pedagogical change wrought by women is to say that women’s experience has entered the classroom. What this means, first and foremost, is that women themselves have increasingly populated religion and theology classrooms and have thereby literally changed the face of religious studies and theological education. Seminaries, divinity schools, and religion departments have had to reckon with the presence of female students and take their distinctive needs and interests into account. For example, women students have asked for more female faculty so that they might have female mentors and role models. They have asked their professors to add texts by and about women to the syllabus. They have read and interpreted the curriculum—theology, scripture, history, and practice—from their own particular point of view. In all these ways, the experience of women has become more visible and important in religious studies and theological education. But beyond the introduction of women themselves, female experience has changed the very way religion and theology are taught: Because female students have made a point of launching their intellectual inquiries from the standpoint of their own encounters and interests, experience itself has increasingly become both curricular content and method. For example, in addition to reading primary and secondary texts, studying historical accounts , memorizing words and actions, and honing skills, students in theology and religion classrooms are now reflecting on how texts have shaped them, examining the particular histories they have inherited, doing theology in their own words, and adapting traditional practices to fit their own contexts. All this is due in no small part to the new approaches women have brought to the practices of teaching and learning. The pedagogical shift toward embracing women’s experience finds a parallel in the development of feminist theologies and feminist approaches to the study of religion . In other words, theologians and scholars of religion have begun to think differently about the very category of “women’s experience” at the same time as they have been incorporating women’s experience into their teaching. In particular, scholars have wrestled with the question of how best to use concrete, everyday, lived experiences when doing theology and studying religion. How much weight should contemporary reality be given in comparison to ancient texts, long-standing...

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