Elizabeth F. Caldwell, I Wonder: Engaging a Child’s Curiosity about the Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2016)

Introduction

Elizabeth F. Caldwell is Visiting Professor of Religious Education at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. She taught previously at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago for thirty years, 1984-2014, where she was Professor of Pastoral Theology and Associate Dean for Students and Academics.

At McCormick she taught a course for seminarians called “Reading the Bible with Children.” Her goal for the course was, as she writes, to “model good biblical scholarship with children (vii).” This book came primarily from that experience. Her most recent books before I Wonder include God’s Big Table, Nurturing Children in a Diverse World (2011) and Making a Home for Faith: Nurturing the Spiritual Life of Your Children (2007). She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and in 2004 the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators selected her as Educator of the Year. Continue reading →

Courtney T. Goto, The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Leaning into God’s New Creation (2016)

Introduction

Professor Goto was educated at Mills College (BA), Harvard University (MTS), and Emory University (PhD).  She is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Education and Co-Director of the Center for Practical Theology at Boston University School of Theology.  She is a third generation Japanese American, United Methodist.

Her book, she writes, “is a conversation written by a Protestant primarily for theorists, students, and practitioners (xix),” but her audience does not need to be so severely limited.  The “practitioners,” however, do need to have a taste for theory.  She also writes that, “I am interested primarily in playing as it relates to adult learning (xviii),” but this book can also be applied to children, because playing is the natural bridge between the generations.  The book sometimes sounds like it is about religious education and other times about experiential therapy, but these activities are not incompatible.    Continue reading →