“Loves the spirit”: Transformative mediation as pedagogical practice

Abstract

After 20 years of teaching in a predominately white Southern protestant seminary, womanist ethicist Marcia Riggs envisions and enters her classroom as a space where frequently conflictual energies of particularities and differences can generate creative teaching and learning. She has developed a pedagogical method called religious ethical mediation that draws on transformative mediation theory, intercultural communication, and womanist ethics. This essay shares key insights from these theories, describes the pedagogical method that integrates them, and explains the import of religious ethical mediation for teaching religion in the twenty-first century. Riggs argues that the problem of religion and violence is at the heart of teaching religion and theology today. Given this fact and the reality of conflict in the classroom, teaching and learning require transformative mediation as pedagogical practice.