Qualitative Research in Theological Education

Pedagogy in Practice

Moschella, Willhauck, Moschella, Willhauck

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780334056799
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Education

Qualitative Research in Theological Education brings together a diverse group of scholars to consider the theological values arising from and contributing to their use of qualitative research in scholarship and teaching. The book offers a careful consideration of the pedagogical and administrative challenges involved in teaching qualitative research and its various sub-disciplines such as ethnography. As a whole, the book argues that the teaching of QR methods is critical to the theological, ethical, spiritual, and/or pastoral formation of ministers and theological scholars

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Theology as Playbook and Gamefilm: Explaining an Ethnographic Approach to Theology to a Sports-Centred Culture

TODD DAVID WHITMORE

The use of ethnographic methods of research and modes of writing in the doing of theology is relatively rare, so presenting such methods and modes requires some extra explaining when introducing them in the classroom.1 For this, I draw upon one of Jesus’ rhetorical strategies: utilizing images from the common life of his audience – planting mustard seeds, fishing with nets – to convey both the glory and the demands of the Gospel. Given that over 114 million people in the United States – the largest audience in US television history – watched the 2015 Super Bowl, the example of sports perhaps works best for contemporary American culture for providing images from common life.2 And sports are central to identity at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach. The most dramatic recent instance of institutional expansion on campus on the part of the university – its central importance underscored by its official title as the ‘Campus Crossroads Project’ – is a $400 million bid to involve academic space in a plan to expand the football stadium with luxury seating. The monetary numbers serve as rough indices of institutional value: buy-in for the most exclusive seating is a $1 million opening donation plus annual $120,000 gifts over the ensuing 20 years for a total payment of $3.4 million for a pod of eight seats.3 To put the monetary valuation a different way, the university’s nine-year buyout agreement with a former head coach fired for poor performance, Charlie Weis, amounted to almost $2.1 million per year, or approximately 27 times what a newly tenured – and thus successful – professor in the humanities earns.4 Given their centrality in popular culture in general and at Notre Dame in particular, then, sports and images from sports appear to be the best way to teach anthropological theology. So I will take precisely this tack.

I grew up in Kitgum mission.5

I studied my primary in Kitgum girls primary school.

As I was living with the Sisters, the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Gulu. I started to admire them. Yeah, their way of life actually, struck me and I started to share with them what I feel.

I wanted to become like one of them, the kind of life the Sisters were living. Community life.

And they were so lovable, charitable, they could move around the community.

The way they were also caring for the girls. Really I feel that it was . . . I don’t know how to say it because the Sisters were living very very close, directing them to do this and that, both spiritual and physical.

They train us how to work in the field, how to cook, how to knit and all this.

And the kind of love they were showing us . . . That is what I really admired.

And the prayer life of course. The best prayer was rosary. They taught how to say the rosary, you know how to lead the rosary in the church and every evening when the bell goes we run to the church, each one of us wants to what? to lead the prayer . . .

After completing P7, we were invited in the convent. That was completely prayer life. They were now training us in prayer life and also to know more about the congregation . . .

You could go to school and then you come back in the convent . . .

During the school you do the academic work.

When you come to the convent you are being formed spiritually.

It was a very nice thing because we were really taught deep in the spiritual life, deep in the spiritual life. More even the social life.

How when you become a Sister how you behave outside there with the what? With the community. How do you do your work.

So they prepare us actually how to interact with the people.

After novitiate I took my first vows. My first work was teaching.

We were brought in 1987 to Kitgum . . . From Kitgum we stayed some three days, and we were asked to go to Padibe.

In Padibe there was nobody. The missionaries were in Kitgum. All of them were in Kitgum . . .

In Padibe, things were not easy. Things were not easy.

Many of the people around were living in the mission, so all of us were in the mission . . .

I cannot remember the number because all those buildings in Padibe, they were filled up.

In the hospital, the health centre, people were there in the school, and then at the Sisters’.

You find people really suffered. And you could not eat twice a day.

During the evening they come. We eat once a day.

Because the people are there we said, ‘Now we are sent there’, which means the congregation wants us to die together with the people. We are not going to leave them.

In Padibe at least we have one hour Adoration. We used to do one hour Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. We would close all the doors so people don’t know where we are.

Just once they wake. But we do as a group . . . When we were going for prayers we tell our people.

Because there was no – you could not predict when things may not be okay at that particular moment . . . Because there was no communication outside.

Padibe was very risky. So we were confined in Padibe.

And once in a while, maybe twice in the month, we footed from Padibe to Kitgum together with the catechumens.

We come Kitgum to get the what? The Blessed Sacrament.

When it was consecrated then we carry together, we move on foot with the children in back.

That was the Sacrament we put in the tabernacle for daily Holy Communion.

Sometimes we were scared. But knowing we were going back with the Blessed Sacrament we keep on praying praying praying . . .

We were just praying, ‘O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every morning thine. O Blessed Sacrament.’ Just like that.

So when we reached somewhere in the middle we were almost approaching Kitgum mission. That is when we met the rebels.

For the first time . . . They took us and moved in the bush . . . We moved throughout the night until the next morning throughout the day and then at six o’clock that is when they release us.

And we came back . . .

. . . What we were usually – when we were coming to Kitgum we would keep on saying rosary.

At that time we were also saying rosary, we had not yet finished the what? The decades.

So as soon as the rebels stopped us, I jumped out and I raise my arm and the rosary was there . . . They came and snatched it, you know, picked away the rosary.

Say ‘Bring it here’. So as we were moving, going, I was not even scared. I don’t know why. I was not scared because I say, ‘Now Jesus we have not done anything wrong’ . . .

I was the first Sister for the first time to be taken in the bush by these people.

So now when they took us in the bush I just moved with them . . .

One time when the rebels entered in the convent the Sisters were beaten.

I had come to Kitgum town. I was preparing myself to go to school now, in ’88 September.

But now when I heard that they have entered the convent, I took my motorcycle.

I told the Sisters in Kitgum I’m going back . . .

We had been so close together all along, suffering together and now I am away from them. I felt that I should go again, we be together . . . I was praying, ‘God allow me, let nothing happen to me, let nothing happen to me. Just let nothing happen to me’ . . .

When I went back to Padibe, I did not even feel bad because I know my Sisters are there, and they are those who I have been working with.

They are there. So if they are suffering, why can’t I suffer together with them?

So I did not feel actually so bad, and I did not even complain, ‘Now why are you taking me back where I’ve been suffering?’ and the r...