Transgressive Pedagogy: Cultivating Democracy and Agency for Social Justice through Arts of Community Organizing

This paper traces the development and on-going assessment of a six-year experiment teaching community organizing as a required ethics course in graduate level theological education, and harvests insights useful to others seeking to integrate community organizing or other activist arts into theological and religious studies education. Assessment draws on recorded evaluations by students, faculty and guest instructors who are community organizers, and on three theoretical fields: community-organizing theory developed by feminist and Black women organizers, critical pedagogy, and decolonial theory. Questions arise: How can courses in community organizing address white supremacist undergirdings of theological and religious studies education, and neoliberal mentalities impacting morality? What are guidelines for teaching social change arts in academic curricula? What are relationships of community organizing to traditional fields in theology and religious studies? What are criteria for courses with explicit political implications that are required courses? What role may arts play in the pedagogy?