Educating for Redemptive Community

Jesus made claims about redemptive community throughout his ministry when he called people to extravagant grace. Even in the midst of the oppression of his day, Jesus preached and taught that redemptive community was possible if his followers would simply stop hoarding, hiding, and excluding. What a prophetic word for today in the midst of modern day oppression and fears of scarcity! In this edited volume, in honor of religious education scholars Jack Seymour and Margaret Ann Crain, eight of their PhD advisees--each scholars in their own right--join Seymour and Crain to lay out their vision of redemptive community. Rooted in their own scholarship, each contributor proposes ways in which Jesus' vision of redemptive community can become reality in churches and congregations, and in our larger world. In addition to essays by Jack Seymour and Margaret Ann Crain, scholars contributing to this volume include Dori Grinenko Baker, Reginald Blount, Evelyn L. Parker, Mai-Anh Le Tran, Leah Gunning Francis, Carmichael Crutchfield, Débora B.A. Junker, and Denise Janssen. The foreword by Mary Elizabeth Moore and afterword by Seymour and Crain set the volume in the larger context of the church and academy.

Denise Janssen is Assistant Professor of Christian Education at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University. She is the author of Fostering Faith: Teaching and Learning in the Christian Church (2014) and Reclaimed: Faith in an Emerging Generation (2015). In addition to her faculty role, she serves as executive director of The Resource Center, an ecumenical non-profit in Richmond, Virginia. She is an ordained American Baptist pastor who has served as well under appointment in United Methodist congregations over the last 10 years. Her prior career in non-profit fundraising finds her writing grant proposals, providing fundraising consulting and training, and leading strategic planning sessions from time to time.

Mary Elizabeth Moore is dean emerita and professor emerita of theology and education in the Boston University School of Theology. Her poetry focuses on earth themes, human and ecological relationships, mourning, and hope. In other writing, she explores transformative theology and practices: Teaching as a Sacramental Act, Ministering with the Earth, and Teaching from the Heart, plus edited volumes, Deep Understanding for Divisive Times, A Living Tradition, and Children, Youth, Spirituality in a Troubling World.