Philadelphia Center

Fall 2007

Faith and Justice

Meets: Monday Evenings, September 3-December 3, 2007

Instructor: Nicholas Rademacher, Ph.D.

E-mail: nrademacher@cabrini.edu

• When contacting instructor via e-mail, include “PhilaCtr” in subject heading.

Phone: 610-902-8419

I. Course Description

What can students learn by conceiving of “faith” as a verb—of faith as action? What is the relationship between faith—lived—and justice? By grappling with questions such as these, students will be challenged to discern what “centers of value and power” shape their lives as members of multiple communities that can range from their families to their national citizenship to their religious affiliation. In this course students will study core terms—such as faith, belief, and ritual—and continue by examining significant figures from different traditions who took seriously the relationship between faith—lived—and justice. Throughout the course, the reading, conversation, and student presentations will help each participant to evaluate critically their own faith commitments and way of being in the world vis-à-vis justice.

We will begin our study by examining the meaning of “faith” as distinguished from “belief” in the works of W.C. Smith and James W. Fowler. Once faith is understood as a verb, as an active way of “knowing” reality and of “being in the world,” critical questions can be raised as to the content of faith, the “shared centers of value and power,” as Fowler describes it.  By helping students understand faith as a verb, they can begin to see that we can and do have faith in many things. Furthermore, once we turn to a critical definition of faith, we will see that this concept is not limited to what happens in a church, synagogue or temple but what happens in other areas of our lives as well, especially with an eye to the students’ future careers whether they be in the classroom, on the floors of our government buildings or financial institutions both at the local and national levels. Finally, examining the definition of “ritual” will help us to see the ways in which we are shaped to adhere to certain forms of belief by participating in public and private rituals whether or not we are aware of it.

Once these terms, “faith,” “belief,” and “ritual” are clarified, it will be possible to critically appraise others—contemporaries or figures from the past—who have consciously adopted or constructed a way of being/doing/acting in the world that combines faith and justice. Broadly speaking, this class will take an ecumenical and inter-religious perspective by considering figures from the Protestant, Catholic, and Buddhist traditions as “case studies.” Students will be challenged to explore a living or historical figure who embodied a life of faith and justice and make a presentation to and lead a discussion with the class on that figure’s contribution to the world. Examples of such figures range from Bono to Dorothy Day to the Dalai Lama. By exploring the faith and justice commitments of a figure who holds the student’s interest, she or he will be well prepared to develop their “life view paper” in which they reflect upon their experience in light of the faith and justice questions we have raised during this course through the readings, discussion, and presentations.

II. Course Objectives and Goals (from Hope College website, accessed July 23, 2007):

• This course will help students to :
• “acquire knowledge of Christian ways of being, knowing, and living.”
• “articulate their own value commitments and discuss them in light of Christianity.”
• “acquire an awareness and tolerance of differing values that people affirm and live by.”
• “increase their ability to discuss differences of value openly, sensitively, and reasonably.”
• “acquire an ability to reflect on their own philosophy for life and to write about it in a personal, coherent, and disciplined manner.”

III. Course Evaluation

1. Participation: Participation includes attendance to all class period barring unforeseen emergencies; prompt (on-time) arrival to each class session; and respectful verbalization of your ideas in class and active, respectful listening to your classmates’ ideas.
2. Class Presentations: Students will investigate a person, group, or movement that reflects a particular commitment to faith and justice. The presentation will include a discussion of the way in which this person, group, or movement reflects faith in a particular shared center of value and power and the way in which they ritually carry out their commitment in everyday life. The presentation must include a critical evaluation of the various facets of the person’s, group’s, or movement’s commitments and actions. After reviewing the syllabus and in the first two weeks of the course, students will choose a theme and select a date on which to present. The presentation should match in some way the theme of the unit in general or the topic of a particular day. Consult with professor to establish a topic.
3. Life-view Paper: Students will prepare a life-view paper in which they articulate the faith commitments (shared center of value and power) that have guided their lives up to this point; the role that various relationships (e.g., family, church, school) have played in the formation of that commitment; and the way in which they have lived that commitment up to this point. Finally, students must discuss the way in which they foresee this faith commitment playing itself out in the immediate future as they consider life after college. Life-view papers will be due November 26.

IV. Course Schedule

Unit I - Defining Key Terms: What is faith, what is justice?

Week I (September 5): Introduction to course and Preliminary Conversation

• Introduction to the Course and Syllabus.
• Preliminary Conversation: What is Faith? What is Justice? Do they relate?

Week II (September 10): What is Faith?

• James Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (San Francisco: Harper, 1981).
• Chapter 2, “Faith, Religion, and Belief,” 9-15
• Chapter 3 “Faith and Relationship” 16-23
• Chapter 4 “Faith as Imagination,” 24-31

Week III (September 17): What is Justice?

• Walter Burghardt, Chapter 1, “Justice Analyzed,” 1-29
• Discussion of thesis statements, preliminary bibliographies, and strategies for presentations and papers.
• Discussion of the experiential component and our approach to visiting local sites.

UNIT II - Analyzing Key Categories:

If, Whether, and When Faith and Justice Should Come Together

Week IV (September 24): How do faith and justice relate to one another?

• Susan Rakoczy, Great Mystics and Social Justice: Walking on the Two Feet of Love (New York: Paulist Press, 2006).
• Chapter 1 “Prayer or Action? The Tension Explored”
• Chapter 2 “Mystical Experience the Common Call”  
• Clifford Geertz, “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

Week V (October 1): What does ritual have to do with it? Civic Religion and Public Ritual

• Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America” (1967), excerpted in Church and State in American History: Key Documents, Decisions and Commentary from the Past Three Centuries, third edition, ed. John F. Wilson and Donald L. Drakeman (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003).
• Discussion of a ritualized event/visit to a ritualized site.

UNIT III – POSITIONING ON WAR AND PEACE

Week VI (October 8): What is the Christian Tradition on Just War? How have Christians appropriated this tradition?

• The Just War Tradition: St. Augustine [Burghardt, 92-96; 97-106]
• Selections: Various positions on war. Students will choose one position and discuss how the individual in question relates their view to the traditional just war tradition.
• George Weigel: Just War doctrine is relevant and useful.
• “The Just War Tradition and the World after September 11” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
• Stanley Hauerwas: Pacifism
• Hauerwas: “September 11, 2001: A Pacifist Response” South Atlantic Quarterly
• Kenneth R. Himes: Sorting through the Questions 
• “Hard Questions about Just War” in America

Week VII (October 15): The unique contribution of Thomas Merton & Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• Rakoczy, “Thomas Merton: Speaking from Silence,” 117-134
• Related film [Thomas Merton Documentary]
• Renate Wind, “Learning to Believe in the This-Worldliness of Life, 1943-1944” and “The End is the Beginning, 1944-1945” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel
• Related film [Feature length film on Bonhoeffer]

Week VIII (October 22): Experiential Component: War, Peace, and Justice

• Visit to some organization that engages in matters related to war, peace, and justice.

UNIT V – EXAMINING JUSTICE AND POVERTY

Week IX (October 29): What is Poverty? How do Christians  Respond to Poverty?

• Poverty is…students bring in description of poverty from any source.
• [Children and the Elderly, Burghardt, 30-39]
• Selections from Commonweal Celebrates the Century: Students will read the short piece by Day and one other article.

• Pre-cursor: Dorothy Day: “For the Truly Poor.”
• Joseph L. Bernardin: “Our Responsibility to the Poor.”
• View on poverty from author of your choice [from scholarly source].

Week X (November 5): The unique contribution of Dorothy Day: Contemplation & Justice

• Focus on Dorothy Day
• Rackozy, “Dorothy Day: Prophet of Poverty,” 135-158.
• Additional readings from Day’s hand, to be determined.
• Entertaining Angels (video on the life of Dorothy Day).

Week XI (November 12): Experiential Component: Action for Justice, Poverty

• Visit to one of the various Catholic Worker establishments in Philadelphia [tentative]. 

UNIT VI – SYNTHESIZING INTER-RELIGIOUS CONSIDERATIONS

Week XII (November 19): A Buddhist Response to Injustice

• Life of Buddha (film)
• Chapter reading on the nature and importance of Inter-Religious Dialogue
• Readings from Thich Nhat Hanh on peace and justice.

Week XIII (November 26):

• Discussion of students’ visits to various religious sites of traditions other than their own in the Philadelphia area.  

Week IV (December 3):

• Rackozy, “Mysticism, Suffering, and Political Love,” 191-208

• Final Discussion: Questions, Comments, Review
• Synthetic discussion of material in light of Life-view papers.