Bodies, Place, and Role-Playing…Oh My.

If there is one thing that really gets theologians and scholars of religions going, view its a good text.

Many of us spend much of our scholarly lives immersed in them, whether it be biblical texts of the voluminous writings of the historians and systematic theologians. Practices of reading and writing are so ubiquitous in theological and religious studies that scholars must often speak in “textual” language, even when such language meets its limitations.

A Hungry Metaphor

Manuel Vasquez has written extensively about religious studies’ obsession with textual metaphors (Vasquez 2011). He suggests that in the study of religion, the language of texts has become a hungry metaphor, consuming even the way we talk about religion as it is lived and practiced. It common to talk about the ‘body as text’ or religious practices as symbolic texts to be read. This way of thinking has certainly opened new possibilities for theological and religious studies, but it also has serious limitations.

At two institutions in which I have worked as a teaching fellow/assistant, this way of thinking and talking about lived religion has even found its way into the course catalogs. Courses with titles such as, “Reading the World” (Boston University) or “Reading the Audiences” (Luther Seminary) reflect this approach. Part of the problem though is that people are not texts. They can not literally be read at all. When we reduce religion as it is lived to a text, we run the risk of perpetuating views of religion as static and as immediately accessible as a Google search on our smartphones.

The gift of practical theology and other approaches to lived religion is that they help us identify the limits of this kind of approach. Many practical theologians have begun to engage in methodological commitments, such as ethnography, which has the potential to move beyond such analysis of practice as text.

And yet, it seems to me, our pedagogies have not always kept us with our new approaches to thinking and talking about theology and religion.

How might our teaching of practical theologies and lived religion take on characteristics of the embodied and emplaced forms of practice we study in the first place?

A Case Study

When the academic dean asked if I’d be willing to serve as a teaching fellow to our new chair in psychology and theology, I was a bit skeptical. I’d be assisting with a class called “The Psychodynamics of Marriage and Family Counseling.” It mostly sounded just plain psycho to me. I am not qualified to teach counselors, I am not trained in psychology and I’m not even married. What on earth would I have to offer? Encouraged by an initial conversation with my faculty mentor, I reluctantly agreed.

Bodies in the Classroom

While I am not trained as a clinical psychologist like my faculty mentor, I am trained as an ethnographer. I spent much of the following semester taking detailed observations of our classroom. I payed attention and took notes about body postures, how students reacted to different teaching strategies and how and when they took notes or pulled out computers and cell phones. I also noticed how my faculty mentor used his body in the classroom. Perhaps not surprisingly, he used his body in ways I’d expect a clinical psychologist would. He sat with his legs crossed and spoke mostly from outlines. He had an uncanny ability to allow for silence to wash over the classroom. He could probably wait an answer out of an empty desk if he had to.

When I am preparing a class session, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I’m going to say. But I rarely spend any time considering my body, their bodies. I think this is unfortunate since they can’t just read me like they read a book. And though it might be easier if my classroom was as static and linear as text, it’s just not that. Learning in embodied and it involves the whole person. 

The Classroom is a Place

This past semester I participated in a classes that took place in large lecture halls, small seminar rooms, in medium-sized rooms with chairs arranged in a circle. Similar to the multitude of ways church architecture shapes the experience of worship, the arrangement of the classroom shapes learning. This is clear enough when one walks into any elementary classroom, but at some point after that, we forget that where we learn matters. The school I currently teach at is located in a densely urban setting. Our building sits between one of the busiest boulevards and the Charles River. At the center of campus is the historic Marsh Chapel which is flanked by the School of Theology and the College of Arts and Sciences. These architectural choices reflect our institutional heritage as a community of faith and learning.

When I’m in the middle of a class presentation, I’m rarely aware of all this. Mostly, I’m just trying to get through the next hour without saying something devastatingly unintelligent. But learn is as emplaced as it is embodied. Places, as in “hometown” recall not only physical space, but also memories, meaning and stories of our learning. We also learn from somewhere and that place is just as much of a course instructor as I am.

Role-Playing in the Classroom

The most surprising learning that took place in our fall course on Marriage and Family Counseling took place in staged role-playing exercises. Students practiced what they were learning in readings and class presentations by assuming the roles of “therapist” and “clients.” At times we gave students background narratives to work from and other times they made up their own clinical challenges. But there, face to face with another living, breathing person, students had to encounter the reality that they had no idea what might happen next. The contingencies of the lived required them to use not only their knowledge of attachment theories and family systems, but also their capacities for empathy, their appreciation for diversity and commitment to learning from missteps along the way.

To be honest, I am unsure what such role-playing would look like in other kinds of courses. However, I’m committed to experimenting with this because I have come to see role-playing as a helpful way of bringing the whole person as embodied learners emplaced in particular places and times to the foreground of learning.

In what ways do you take into account bodies and places in the subjects you teach? In ethics? In biblical study? In history?

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