Debt of Gratitude to Religious Education Ancestors

We stand on the shoulders of giants: teachers, mentors, pastors, imams, rabbis, faith educators, prophets, scholars, spiritual leaders, pioneers, elders, missionaries, artists, writers, caretakers of creation, and many others whose flame of faith burns in our minds and hearts. We also stand on the shoulders of faith educators who raised critical questions, challenged the status quo, thought outside the box, risked excommunication and exile, and—knowingly or unknowingly—delved into the world of heresy, because they forced us to think about our faith more clearly. They all are our ancestors. It is difficult to imagine any form of religious education scholarship and praxis that ignores the contributions of those past believers who dared to journey with their communities attempting to make sense of the holy in their lives. We are who we are, we believe what we believe, largely because our ancestors received a faith tradition with trusting openness, interpreted it in light of their particular experience, and then passed it on to the next generation. Today we receive those faith traditions and are charged with the responsibility of doing likewise: to interpret them in light of our own particular experiences, then pass them onto the next generations. One day, tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow, we will be called ancestors on the journey of faith. Any reflection about ancestors thrusts us inevitably into the question of how we ought to relate to them. Individual believers and entire faith communities in our day do not always agree on this question. Many believers find comfort trusting their ancestors and the traditions they espoused as givens, often accepting at face value their words as well as their vision for what they assumed being a person of faith was about. Many others feel gratitude toward their ancestors for passing on the faith, yet do not hesitate to assert their conscientious right to receive such faith with a critical lens and the freedom to embrace it on their own terms. These believers, young and old, seem to espouse an attitude that I venture to call “engaged irreverence.” Although the number of people who self-identify as non-religiously affiliated has increased dramatically throughout the world, and many people have simply stopped believing, our contemporary irreverently engaged generation has not necessarily discarded religion altogether. Many a declaration of the “death of God” or the “end of religion” is usually followed by the fervent announcement that “God is back,” then ensuing bouts of spiritual revival. Religious educators often find ourselves amidst this tension. We have the responsibility to accompany these communities receiving the wisdom of their ancestors while finding ways to help them navigate their relationship with what has been received and those from whom they received it. Discerning how to relate to ancestors also demands that we inquire who are the ancestors we honor and privilege, which we have ignored, who we chose to marginalize because of some form of prejudice, and who are those we still need to meet. Such inquiry requires that religious educators have honest conversations with one another as well as with colleagues from other fields and voices in the peripheries of church and society. As we do so, we must humbly remain open to make necessary corrections. The 2022 Annual Meeting of the Religious Education Association (REA) focused on the theme Becoming Good Ancestors: Courageously Co-Creating. Religious education scholars from various continents converged in prayer and reflection for a week to engage in creative