Imagining Just Peace: Deciding to HopeMary Elizabeth Moore (Boston University School of Theology)Research Interest Group. [
Paper] This paper analyzes oral histories with just peacemakers to identify ways they engage imagination as a source for hope and a guide for transformative action. The paper describes imagination as a decision to hope, distinguishing hope from optimism, and it analyzes the role of imagination as revealed in the literature of just peacebuilding and in narratives of just peace-builders. The heart of the paper is a thematic analysis of nine oral history interviews (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) in dialogue with the literature. The paper concludes with a theoretical proposition regarding imagination as a decision to hope and with educational proposals for schools, activists, and religious leaders.
Jesus: Pedagogue of Prophetic ImaginationChristopher Welch (Boston College)Research Interest Group. [
Paper] If education in faith includes a tutoring of the imagination, then Christian religious education must attend not only to the prophetic content of Jesus' own imagination, but also to the ways in which he kindled such imagination in others. The prophetic task entails both a critique of the dominant "false" consciousness and and animation of a community with an alternative consciousness. In particular, a Christology that centers on Jesus' empowering of his disciples in imagining and practicing the Reign of God prompts us to retrieve from Jesus principles for teaching for a prophetic imagination.
