February 2, 2000

When Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was asked in 1993 why he was attending a “parliament of the world’s religions,” he answered that we are told to “welcome strangers,” that many things are happening in the world which people of different religions need to confront jointly, and that Christians can find such a gathering a unique occasion to talk about Jesus.

In the fall of 1998 Candler School of Theology made a serious wager concerning its future: it launched a comprehensive new program in contextual education. The faculty hopes this program can provide the means of integrating theological learning and practice—something every seminary teacher knows is largely lacking.

Candler’s experiment is only just begun, and the outcome is uncertain. We offer merely an interim report on our process and program with the hope of making a small contribution to a conversation that is taking place in many schools.

"I want my seminary experience to form me as a person of prayer.” We had never heard a student state this desire so eloquently and succinctly. We sensed in this comment something much more than a first-year student’s desire for greater piety in the school environment. This student had done extremely well at a college with a strong undergraduate program. She was mature, intellectually able, and eager to study. Yet she perceived a need in her soul that she wanted addressed in her seminary education.

The End of the Affair (1999), directed by Neil Jordan

Having read Graham Greene's The End of the Affair many times, and having taught it to hundreds of theology students, I have a rather passionate relationship with the text. So I was relieved to discover that Neil Jordan's film adaptation allows some of the book's Christian convictions to shine through. The film employs a great deal of dialogue directly from the book--so much so that my wife had to tell me to stop whispering the characters' lines before they spoke them.