Archives for 2020

I have a confession to make. When everything moved online in the spring I detested everyone in every Zoom class and work meeting in which I participated. Okay, I didn’t quite detest my students and colleagues, but there was great resentment there. I hated working from home. Always have. ...

Throughout the spring and summer, from my porch, and in the comfort of my rocking chair, I had noticed bats feeding on insects under the street light. Then, on Sunday night, a bat came into my house. Sitting up in bed, reading on my iPad, I was enjoying an uneventful ...

In Luke 1:20, an angel named Gabriel informs the priest Zechariah that he will remain mute during his wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Zechariah’s mistake was to doubt Gabriel’s announcement that they would have a child despite decades of infertility. Perhaps Gabriel made a mistake by reacting harshly to a ...

The first time that I taught a graduate-level class where anti-oppression work was a primary component of the learning, I made a major blunder. I structured the class with materials and exercises assuming that students understood that racism, sexism, and other forms of structural injustice based on identity categories and ...

Throughout my twenty-five plus years of teaching I have most often declined opportunities to “team teach” (the terminology used in my institution) in the historically and predominantly white seminary I have spent the longest part of my teaching career. Why? Two primary reasons. First, I was the only full-time African ...