Transforming Fire

OPTalksBooksTEBTpodcast
Written By Open Plaza

Dr. Mayra Rivera talks to Dr. Mark Jordan about his recent book on imagining Christian teaching

“Fire Tree” from The Flower Book (1905) by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Source: The Birmingham Museum

 
 

In this episode of OP Talks, President of the American Academy of Religion Dr. Mayra Rivera and American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow Dr. Mark D. Jordan discuss his recent book Transforming Fire: Imagining Christian Teaching (Eerdmans, 2021). Among the questions Dr. Jordan engages are: What was Jesus’s teaching pedagogy? Considering that he taught in a variety of ways—parable, discussion, miracle performance, ritual observance—how should modern-day Christian teaching happen, especially in a time of significant change to theological education as an institution?

Whether teaching Matthew or the Platonic dialogues or Santa Teresa, Dr. Jordan sees his own pedagogy as an attempt to “reactivate that transmission right so [that] it becomes a living thing rather than just inert information passed down, so that the student can actually begin to feel this continuity of instruction of shaping that's passing down."

Along with the book, this conversation is part of the Theological Education between the Times (TEBT) series, an initiative out of HTI member school Emory University Candler School of Theology that "gathers diverse groups of people for critical, theological conversations about the meanings and purposes of theological education. The project begins with a recognition that theological education is between the times, on the way. And it works in the confidence that we do not walk this road alone."

 
 

“It may be hard to imagine a beautiful book about pedagogy. But Mark Jordan has given us one. More than a primer on great books or their consoling lessons in this age of existential panic about higher education, he shows how they teach. Evocative, disruptive, and learned, Transforming Fire is recommended not only for those interested in theological education, but all those who care about genuine learning.”

— Eric Gregory, Princeton University

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Mark Jordan

Dr. Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, is a scholar of Christian theology, European philosophy, and gender studies. He spent his childhood in Ajijic, Mexico, where his parents lived in a community of expatriate artists. He currently teaches courses on the Western traditions of Christian soul-shaping, the relations of religion to art or literature, and the prospects for sexual ethics. Dr. Jordan holds a BA from St. John's College, and MA and PhD degrees from University of Texas at Austin. Over the last three decades, he has written extensively on sexual ethics, producing books that are widely regarded as opening important new conversations. But he has also continued to explore longstanding topics at the boundaries of philosophy and Christian theology. 

His latest book Transforming Fire (Eerdmans 2021) tells a brief history of the imagined scenes of theological education. He is at work on another manuscript about the neglected languages of queer spirituality. Dr. Jordan has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays grant (Spain), and a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology. With support from the Ford Foundation, he led a seminar on public debates about religion and sexuality for rising scholars from the United States and abroad. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Mayra Rivera

Dr. Mayra Rivera is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. She is the president of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Rivera works at the intersections between continental philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from University of Puerto Rico, and MTS (summa cum laude) and PhD degrees in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew University. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (Duke University Press, 2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. Her book The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (Fordham Press, 2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (Chalice Press, 2004). Dr. Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and climate change through Caribbean thought.

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