Learning with One Another in the Spirit

Abstract

Grassroots church communities demonstrate what it means to resist colonial ways of learning and of being church that have been internalized and reproduced in educational and ecclesial spaces. In their practices of communal discernment, they bear witness to a kind of religious education wherein all learn with one another. Learning from the practices of these communities, this dissertation is an exercise of reimagining a religious education that resists colonial ways of being and creates the possibility for all to learn with one another in the Spirit. Informed by a theology of synodality and the principles of critical pedagogy, I argue for a religious education that is a practice of creating space for an engagement with local theologies that are grounded in the everyday, for dialogue to emerge wherein all learn through diffraction, and for the voice of the Spirit to arise from a kind of dialogue that is not merely an exchange of ideas but a meeting and being with one another. Synodality, as seen in the synodal practices of basic ecclesial communities, creates space for a church that learns together. Synodal practices show how people can do theology together in a dialogical way, discerning how the Spirit is guiding the church in the context of the everyday. Critical pedagogy, on the other hand, centers silenced voices in the practices of learning and teaching. In doing so, critical pedagogy fosters a critical awareness of hegemonic epistemologies while creating space for capacitating silenced voices in dialogue. These two foundations inform the religious education I am arguing for in this dissertation. I propose that this religious education is seen most concretely in participatory action research (PAR) which creates spaces for people to learn with one another for transformation. PAR expands the pedagogical imagination as it involves the people as active agents of the process of knowledge production, decolonizing the research process and presents a way of learning with one another in a way that is just. Using PAR as a way to do a synodal and decolonial religious education, grassroots church communities can listen to the Spirit together, guiding the church into new ways of knowing and being.