Comparative Theology in the Millennial Classroom: Hybrid Identities, Negotiated Boundaries eds. by Mara Brecht and Reid B. Locklin (review)

Stemming from a Wabash Center workshop and colloquy project, Comparative Theology in the Millennial Classroom assembles essays that speak to the challenges and rewards of teaching theology comparatively in a range of contemporary environments. Francis X. Clooney's influential vision of comparative theology as "faith seeking understanding," his model of "departure and return," is re-visited and, by some, questioned in light of millennial students' characteristics and generational trends.

As described in the introduction, millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000 (pp. x, 6). As "digital natives," both how millennials gather and interpret information and how they respond to difference are heavily shaped by technology and social media. Studies have shown that, despite having access to instant and endless information online, millennials feel insecure about their knowledge and easily question sources and authorities. While many are open to difference, their experience of actual encounters with difference may be limited or confined to virtual reality. Although the millennial cohort contains a high number of "nones," or religiously unaffiliated persons, they nonetheless often describe themselves as spiritual and many maintain traditional religious beliefs. Millennials' religious identities, like other aspects of their identities, are sometimes hybrid and complex, and many contest rigid boundaries of various kinds (pp. 6–9). These (and many more) related qualities raise interesting questions for teaching nowadays in general, and for teaching religion and comparative theology, in particular.

Part 1 begins with an essay by Judith Gruber that draws on postcolonial theory and is concerned especially with hybridity. Gruber explains the dangers of essentializing cultures and of delineating self vs. other, moves that can function as tools for power and domination, positing conversely that "unsilencing hybridity" can help combat hegemonial identity politics (p. 33). William L. Portier's contribution then focuses on "dis-affiliation or post-denominationalism," or the fact that millennials are "less likely to have serious knowledge of or commitment to any particular religious tradition" from which they might "depart and return" (p. 37). Portier explains some categories from John Henry Newman's writing (i.e., "notional" and "real" apprehension and assent) that help us see comparative theology as a pathway to cultivate meaningful encounters with religious cultures, despite the challenge of students' disaffiliation. Mary E. Hess's focus, in contrast, is on the millennial generation's epistemic culture and the question of how we might best foster openness, given that comparative theology involves encounter with diverse epistemological frameworks. Last in the first section, Wanda Scott's essay discusses the contrast between community college and exclusive liberal arts college settings. She is a strong advocate for service-learning and collaborative learning as effective pedagogies for comparative theology as justice education.

Opening part 2, Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier highlights the significance of the growing multiracial and multiple religious identities represented in her classes. She observes that many students, even those who do not identify formally as hyphenated or multiple belongers, have grown up practicing "multiply" or "interstitially" for a variety of reasons (e.g., intermarriage, intercultural assimilation, New Age practice, etc.) (pp. 77, 80). Rather than a problem, the presence of such students can be positive, as they help question categories, convey the fluidity of religious boundaries, show how religions are formed in specific environments, and demonstrate how to forge "connective spaces" (pp. 81, 83).

Mara Brecht's "Soteriological Privilege" is a brilliant piece. If readers are familiar with and appreciative of Peggy McIntosh's seminal work on white privilege, they will see the wisdom of Brecht's corollary concept of "soteriological privilege" and the importance of helping millennial students to recognize Christian privilege and its effect upon the study of religious others.¹

After Brecht's essay, Syed Adnan Hussain's and co-authors Lisa Gasson-Gardner and Jason Smith's chapters similarly use not race but queer theory to examine ways that we might innovate and improve our classroom work with millennials. Hussain is particularly interested...