Each word (each sign) of the text exceeds its boundaries.
mikhail bakhtin1
A preliminary commitment to deep, multidimensional pluralism is amplified by the experience of belonging to time.
william e. connolly2
Many factors influenced what happened next. At the time, the teacher was also a student in Hartford Seminaryâs Islamic Chaplaincy program, so she approached the situation as a chaplain. âI remember thinking,â she told me in an interview, âthat I have to address this and have to do this carefully.â She knew that she would likely get a chance to speak with the girl in hijab only once. Most inmates would stay at the facility briefly before being transferred someplace else. The audience for the chaplainâs monthly lessons rotated constantly, and the girlsâ presence and attention was fleeting. Within minutes the chaplain assessed the situation and decided to hold a class, or rather a conversation, with âthree girlsââthe institutionâs entire population of incarcerated Muslims on that particular day. âLetâs talk about a concept,â she suggested to them, âWhat do you think about God? What is your relationship with Him?â The discussion âstarted with mercy, and it [was] not as black and white [as some might think].â3
Whyâand more importantly howâdoes interreligious theological education matter? What and how do we teach? In fact, what is interreligious and theological about the education our students go through? This chapter reflects on these questions through stories of graduates of one interreligious theological school, Hartford Seminary, where I have been teaching since 2010. I know Hartford Seminary as an extraordinarily welcoming place for religious minority students, particularly Muslims. For example, in 2016, when I was writing this essay, 39 percent of our students were Muslim. Most of our Muslim students are in the Islamic Chaplaincy program, which I happen to direct. Founded in 1999 by Ingrid Mattson, the program is a MDiv equivalent 72-credit hour combination of the MA in Religious Studies and the Graduate Certificate in Islamic Chaplaincy. While preparing to write this essay, I did what I always do: I taught courses ranging from âMuslims in American Religious Historyâ to
In this case of the interview that included the story from within the walls of a detention center, described above, my conversation partner and interviewee will remain anonymous. At the time, she was my student, and now she is a chaplain. We agree that confidentiality is imperative in our workâit affects human beings and if we are not careful, such effects might be negative. The second case study is based on a published article, and my interlocutor in this case was Bilal Ansari, a 2011 graduate of the Islamic Chaplaincy program. On September 13, 2015, Ansari posted an online article, âThug Life TheodicyâââA Mustard Seed of Faith: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Tupac Shakurâs Song âSo Many Tears.ââ4 Ansari and I spoke about that piece in May 2016. At the time, he served as the Dean of Students at Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, CA. âThug Life Theodicyâ was one of many examples of the ways in which Ansari serves as both a chaplain and a public intellectual with a voice.
In conversations with my anonymous interlocutor about an incarcerated hijabi resister and with Ansari about his âThug Life Theodicy,â I asked them both to talk about what prepared them to respond to each situation the way they did. I discovered that in both cases, as different as they were, each acted on their professional instincts: the teacher conducted her class as a chaplain, and Ansari reflected on Shakurâs âSo Many Tearsâ as a chaplain as well. Therefore, I ended up prompting them to reflect on the instincts behind their choices of words and actions. In the back of my mind and expressed through a variety of questions was a search for theology in their actions. Practically speaking, I wanted to trace glimpses of their Hartford Seminary training in their lived theology.
Of course, my interlocutorsâ theology is broaderâand its roots run deeperâthan a cursory review of their formal theological curriculum might suggest. Both come from Muslim families: my anonymous interlocutor is female, in her late twenties or early thirties, Arab American, Shiâi, and not yet a parent. Ansari is male, in his early forties, African American, Sunni, and a father of four children. Before and after their careers at Hartford Seminary, both had
The gist of my argument in this paper is found in the opening quotes from Bakhtin and Connolly. In my dialogues with the seminaryâs Muslim students and graduates, I searched for stories that encapsulate what we (they, I, other faculty, our institution) do. I found that their theologyâwhat went into the word âtheologyâ when they spoke itâexceeded the boundaries of what one would ordinarily understand by that term, particularly as it is framed within academic curricula. In moments where their theological training really mattered, what they relied upon went beyond the formal lessons they had learned in courses designated as âTheology.â Undeniably, theology courses were crucial: they provided a degree of fluency in the conceptual vocabulary and discursive grammar of their own and other traditions. But what proved to be vital was that Hartford Seminary had helped them to hone their theological sensibilities in ways that resonated with their pastoral work, in their professional settings. To explain this, I begin with Ansariâs âThug Life Theodicyâ and then move to the conclusion of the âgoing to hellâ episode. In part, this structure is chronological, as Ansari was a student at the seminary before his anonymous colleague. Their joint trajectories reflect a slice of the institutionâs history. Finally, after discussing how interreligious theological education matters, I offer a reflection on why it does. This is where Connollyâs notion of deep, multidimensional pluralism comes in. Central in my case studies is a deep, multidimensional, and theology-infused sense of time.
Ansariâs timing was impeccable: he published âThug Life Theodicyâ on September 13, 2015, twenty years to the day after the release of Tupac Shakurâs âSo Many Tears.â That songâa âpowerful spiritual hymn,â as Ansari described itâpresaged Shakurâs death by exactly one year.5 Ansari published his reflection in Umma Wide, an online magazine with 1,300 Twitter followers that
âThug Life Theodicyâ is a deep theological reflection delivered in the genre of a cyber sermon. It follows the basic structure of a khutba, the Islamic Friday congregational sermon, consisting of two units (first and second khutbas, as khatibs, Muslim preachers call these units), with a meditative break in between. At the beginning of the first unit there are two scriptural quotes, from the New Testament and the Qurâan, both relating the parable of the mustard seed: âIf you had faith even as small as a mustard seed ⦠nothing would be impossibleâ (Matt. 17:20), and, âWe will set up a just balance on the day of resurrection, no soul shall be dealt with unjustly in the least; and though there be the weight of a grain of mustard seed, [yet] will We bring itâ (Qurâan 21:47). Ansari concluded the first khutba with a prayer on his audienceâs behalf, inviting them to follow in his step:
Whether you live in deserted Detroit or Damascus, wait in prison in Philadelphia or Occupied Palestine, or are bomb survivors in Boston or Baghdad, may God hear the prayers of the archetypal Black man clinging on to a âmustard seed of faith,â boldly hoping and longing for a better life to come.
Ansari infused the break between the two units with a long quote form âSo Many Tears,â in which is Shakurâs vital appeal and lamentation is evident:
Is there heaven for a G? Remember me
So many homies in the cemetery, shed so many tears
Ahh, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tears
Lord, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears
At the end of Ansariâs sermon is a supplication, which I will address later. Preceding it is a lesson (dars):
Tupac Amaru Shakur cries out the struggle and misery of a child in a violent environment without family roots. His lack of education leads him to a business dirty and demonic. He was constantly intoxicated, which, in the urban streets, we call âmedicated.â In this state of mind, he concluded
it was impossible for him to be anything other than a seed; he longed to be laid to rest where he would find peace in the dirt like so many of his peers. Yet this state did not prevent him from repenting and hoping for Godâs forgiveness, mercy, and ultimate grace. He lived and died on the meaning of his Arabic last name, Shakur, as he did recognize and appreciate the transcendent capacity of a generous giver of grace who he called upon repeatedly as his God and Lord. Although he shed so many tears and failed to live a righteous life, his hope prevailed for a God who would grant him redemption.
The âweâ in this quote identifies Ansariâs audience: as a skillful preacher, he signals his connection to them by including himself in the collective âwe.â That âweâ is also an indication of Ansariâs sense of timing. As he explained to me in an interview, he wrote the piece âfor young college-age hearts and minds who are struggling with finding their place, and [for] African Americans and Muslimsâthose who are going through hard times here and identify with hip-hop as a genre of resistance.â By âresistance,â Ansari meant Black Lives Matter, a movement that emerged in 2013 with a hashtag, after the murder of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager, and the subsequent acquittal of his killer. By 2015, spurred by more killings at the hands of law enforcement, of children (Tamir Rice), women (Korryn Gaines), and men (Keith Lamont Scott), Black Lives Matter became a civil rights movement, an Internet-era iteration of James Baldwinâs âthe fire next time.â7 To Ansari, that time had a particular sense: âThere is so much pain, so much apathy within African American communityâ¦. So I used [the piece] to give hope to everybody who reads it and [is] going through a thing like that.â
How does Ansariâs cyber sermon reflect his theological education at Hartford Seminary, the Pacific School of Theology, and beyond? To answer this question, we have to start with the âbeyond,â which comes across in his instinctual and confident use of the word âredemption,â the last word in the sermonâs lesson/dars: â[Tupacâs] hope prevailed for a God who would grant him redemption.â Ansari began his studies at Hartford Seminary in 2006 at the age of thirty-five. Before then, his âtheological preparation was of a SmörgÃ¥sbord type.â He was involved in several Muslim networks, and had listened to and studied with many Muslim authorities, including Zaid Shakir and Hamza Yusuf, co-founders of Zaytuna College. His base, however, was within the community of Warith Deen Mohammed, an African American Sunni Muslim movement that grew out of the Nation of Islam of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm x.
Before Hartford Seminary, Ansari explained, he had been âblessed to listen to the lectures of Imam Mohammed.â In W. D. Mohammedâs teachings, the word âredemptionâ was the shibboleth, the password that reveals how God speaks to African Americans through scripture, the Qurâan and the Bible, as well as through history and nature.8 Ansariâs fluent interweaving of the message of redemption, which he found in the Bible and the Qurâan, comes from the years he spent listening to W. D. Mohammed. Behind this somewhat obvious dynamic, there is a deeper layer: âW. D. Mohammed,â Ansari remembered, âwas just a modest, humble man who worked and served those he was called to serve.â In other words, underpinning and informing W. D. Mohammedâs theological articulations was the purpose of serving his community. Ansari recalled that he had sensed this service-oriented nature of his and W. D. Mohammedâs theology all along. At Hartford Seminary, he found a formal term and framework for it.
Ansariâs first theology course at Hartford Seminary, âIntroduction to Islamic Theology,â with Timothy Winter, a prominent academic and Muslim intellectual based at the University of Cambridge, UK, took place in fall 2007. The course âwas very intellectual,â Ansari remembered, and âwhat was awesome about it was that Winter is an expert on [the thought of Abu Hamid] al-Ghazali,â the twelfth-century Muslim jurist-theologian whose influence in Islamic discourses parallels those of Maimonides in Judaism or of Thomas Aquinas in Christianity. Winter guided the students through al-Ghazaliâs famous text, The Revival of the Religious Sciences. âThen,â Ansari recalled, âWinter said that the Revival could be read as a pastoral guide.â To Ansari, that characterization was an eye-opener. Winterâs insight became for him a guide to looking at theology âas a pastoral means to try and preserve the flock.â
âPastoral theologyâ became Ansariâs own shibboleth, the key to his framework of engagement with other courses and, most important, to his work as a chaplain, which he continued to do throughout his years at Hartford Seminary. I asked him what courses had stood out in that respect. Ansari responded that in terms of his work as a chaplain it was the âIslamic Ethicsâ course taught by Ingrid Mattson, Professor of Islamic Studies and founder of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program that stood out. Ansari had taken the course near the end of the MA part of his program, while preparing to write a thesis that reflected upon âthe challenge of leading my flock, Muslim women, mostly African Americansâ at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, CT. Mattsonâs course allowed him to formulate an ethical and pastoral approach to a situation that
The case involved a dilemma: incarcerated Muslim women demanded that prison authorities allow them to hold weekly Friday congregational prayers led by an imam. Local imams, while sympathetic to the intent behind this request, responded that, legally speaking, women are not required to attend Friday congregational prayers. They added that they were already taking care of their own flocks and could not come to the prison on Friday afternoons. To Ansari, this response was tone-deaf; it went against the grain of his sense of theologically-infused pastoral care. While aware of juristic intricacies, he decided to volunteer as the imam/chaplain to lead afternoon Friday prayers for the women at Danbury prison. His response was informed by Mattsonâs course, where he had learned that âethics is a blend between theology and law, and thatâs how I was focusing on it and thatâs how it was helpful: it helped me to come up with an ethical responseâ to the dilemma.9
Winter and Mattsonâs courses proved to be crucial in Ansariâs theological education. The course that informed Ansariâs âThug Theodicyâ more directly, however, was âSuffering, Theodicy, and Repentance: Interreligious Readings of Job and Jonah,â taught by Yehezkel Landau, Hartford Seminaryâs first Jewish core faculty member and Director of the Abrahamic Partnership Program.10 The course resonated, Ansari explained, because he could see parallels with African American experience in Landauâs discussions of Jewish theological discourses. Central was the courseâs âinsight into Jewish scholarship, thought, critiqueâjust how much scholarship and work they put in into their theological wrestling,â especially, he highlighted, when it comes to âthe challenge of theodicy.â As Ansari perceived many years later when he felt the call to respond as a Muslim chaplain at the time of Black Lives Matter, theodicy was the challenge of Shakurâs âSo Many Tears.â Beyond Landauâs course at Hartford Seminary, what went into Ansariâs meditation on theodicy in Shakurâs masterpiece
From Said, Ansari borrowed the insight into the paradoxical power of public intellectualsâ out-of-placeness. As a chaplain, he has been cultivating the ability to speak from an âexilicâ place, of not being confined to routine, and to everyday senses of place, justice, and politics. One can sense the religious, interreligious, and pastoral dimensions in Ansariâs âThug Life Theodicy.â The piece brings readers into a conversation with Abrahamic scriptures and Shakurâs sorrowful psalm, and, through this shared ground, it responds to their âpainâ and âapathyâ and offers hope. Once Ansariâs pastoral theology framework is apparent, traces of what he learned in places like Hartford Seminary become somewhat salient. Yet where is the theology in his cyber sermon?
My sense is that it is in Ansariâs timing, in his theological âwrestlingâ with his and his readersâ sense of time. Consider, for example, how he utilizes the very medium of his online reflection. His textâespecially its meditative break, an excerpt from Shakurâs supplicationâis judiciously interleaved with links to other texts, from Isaiah 54:17 to âSigns & Symptoms of Suicidal Ideation.â11 These cyber pathways serve to disorder readersâ routine sense of time. Visiting those additional, ever-multiplying cyberspaces while listening to Shakurâs song becomes impossible to resist: it takes more than the allotted seven minutes to really read Ansariâs multilayered text. This accomplishes an effect of a particular type of latency: an ever-present possibility of expansion and deepening of time, from the secular â7 minâ to the time of eternity. It becomes pronounced in the cyber sermonâs final note, the supplication at the end of the second unit:
I pray that we today press on, holding tight to the rope of God, in order to live righteous lives despite the difficulties of this temporal life. I pray that we today continue our longing for Godâs grace despite the misery of life. Dear God, our trust in You is firm and we hope that the archetypal Black
man has the weight of at least a mustard seed that opens heavenâs door to him and those unjustly oppressed.
Sermonizing is a genre of oral communication. A sermonâs meanings depend on its sound. That is why, while preparing this chapter, I emailed Ansari with a follow-up question. I wanted to know what word he would emphasize if he had a chance to speak that supplication out loud. I shared with him a hunch: based on the fact that he timed his piece to be released exactly on September 13âto the day twenty years after Shakurâs âSo Many Tearsâ and nineteen years after his deathâand guessed that Ansari would stress the word âtodayâ in the first sentence of his supplication. Tied to this would be other time-bending emphases: âlife,â âtemporal lives,â âGodâs grace,â and âmustard seed.â âAm I correct?â I asked. Ansari confirmed it: âYou are correct with your interpretation and my intention with the word choice of âtoday,ââ he said, adding, âI meant it like al-Ê¿Asr.â12
Ansariâs deeply theological response is made even more profound by the fact that his âThug Life Theodicyâ does not directly reference the Qurâanic chapter al-Ê¿Asr. It is certainly there but as a deep allusion, even more deeply embedded in the text than his cyber links. Undergirding Ansariâs sermon is his theological sensibility of time informed by the revelation. The word Ê¿asr in Qurâan 103 is polyvocal: it is a play on the word âday/afternoonâ that also means âtimeâ and âTime,â as in a moment, which can be any moment, of ingathering, crystallization of time (pasts, presents, and futures that have or will have passed). Ansariâs fluent, instinctual, deeply-ingrained ability to speak from the Qurâanic sense of time is central to his pastoral work. He explained that his use of the phrase âarchetypal Black Manâ was in âthe James Weldon Johnson mode.â13 Yet this âarchetypalâ sense is also, at the very same time, Qurâanic, attuned to the way the word insan (âhumanâ) comes across in Qurâan 103, as at once singular and plural, directed at all humanity and at each individual. It is in this sense, connected to Ansariâs specific flock, that his pastoral theology comes alive. And this is where Ansariâs answer to Shakur and his peersâ question, âIs there heaven for a G?â comes from. Ansariâs answer, as he spelled out in our interview, is that âour theology allows room for people like Tupac; I think there is room in my theology, in my pastoral theology [his emphasis], for those who have been dismissed. I believe that heaven is spacious.â
â¦
âWhat is your relationship with Him?â asked the de-facto Muslim chaplain to three incarcerated teenagers, hoping for a reply from the person at the center of that dayâs controversy, the girl who had refused to take off her scarf. The chaplain knew that their class was only forty-five minutes, and that it might be the only time she would be able to share with them. Through conversation she guided them to a point where they could tell their stories, ask their questions. Eventually, the girl asked, âCan I remove the scarf?â âHow did you respond,â I inquired. âShe was asking me a fiqhi (legal/jurisprudential) question,â the chaplain explained, but âI approached it from a theological perspective.â That approach led her to continue the conversation.
The girl in hijab eventually shared that it was her âMuslim boyfriendâ who had led her to believe that the repercussion for removing the scarf was âgoing to hell.â She later confided, âYou know, I donât understand, how can I shower?â The chaplain recalled telling the young woman, âYou are going to run into a lot of people who are going to tell you a lot of things: âYouâre not Muslim if you do this or that.â [But] we are given a kind of a gut check: trust enough to know that you can ask for another opinion.â That was a pastoral response in many ways. The general contours of the situation were fairly typicalâmany teenagers in the institution had been âpressured by their boyfriendsâ to do all kinds of things. Knowing that they had âpermission to ask questionsâ and seek advice from other authorities could help them find the power to break through cycles of abuse. Where does that permission come from? At the end of the class, the chaplain finally gave her answer: âGodâs mercy is broader than this.â
The teacher/chaplain shared this story with me when I asked her to talk about a particular situation in which her Hartford Seminary training came into play. As in Ansariâs case, timing was crucial. At the time of her encounter with the hijabi rebel she was taking the âChaplaincy: Models and Methodsâ course with Lucinda Mosher, director of the seminaryâs Multifaith Chaplaincy Program. âI would have approached this interaction differently if I didnât have that chaplaincy course,â she recalled. âI remember thinking, I have to address this carefully, and I have to bring the other girls, and [we] canât have a one-on-one conversation, and ⦠how do I interact in a way that doesnât impose?â This technique of instantaneous assessment, she explained, came from Mosherâs chaplaincy course.
The next crucial stepâthe chaplainâs decision not to rush into a boilerplate response to a seemingly legalistic questionâwas informed by another theology course, also taught by Mosher, âChristian-Muslim Encounter: The Theological Dimension.â Before she told me about it, however, we spoke about her Muslim theological education before and during her years at Hartford Seminary. Like Ansari and many other students, she had enrolled in the seminary
To find out a bit more about this, I reached out to Mosher, who explained in an email interview that she based her approach on a theological wrestling of sorts, an engagement with theologies of other human beings that stresses âthe relation between theology and empathy in action.â14 My hunch is that it was this aspect of the course that proved crucial in the chaplainâs disciplined determination to continue the conversation, and in her ability to infuse it, at the right time, with the deeply theological notion of âGodâs mercy is broader than this.â
â¦
What was the role of Hartford Seminaryâs theological education in the two chaplainsâ stories? The seminary coursework that made the most tangible impact in both cases, in moments when it really mattered, was intersectional. For Ansari, the Islamic theology course he remembered infused pastoral care into theology. Added to the mix was a course that âblended theology and lawâ and one in comparative âtheological wrestling.â His colleagueâs path was comparable. Unlike Ansari, she did not find her Islamic theology course immediately productive; it had been informative but not formational. Like him, however, the courses she considered most impactful interweaved comparative theological engagement with pastoral care. Of course, in both cases, such interweaving was dialogical. The combination of the three threadsâtheological, comparative, and pastoralâresonated with both my interviewees because of their own
To explain what I mean by this, it is useful to begin with chaplaincy. Ansari and his anonymous colleague had done chaplaincy-type work prior to their seminary studies. This had shaped their priorities, the agendas that informed what they sought in the courses they took. What they needed were frameworks, terminologies, skills. What they found were courses that honed their personal and latent professional sensibilities and allowed them to respond to tough challenges instinctually, within a blink of time. Similarly, what they thought about God, their ârelationship with Him,â had been shaped in their pre-seminary lives and study. They had applied to the seminary seeking a more formal theological education. They found theology courses in their own tradition to be essential. Such courses provided them with deeper vocabulary, frameworks, logistics, and familiarity with historical and current precedentsâall of which enabled them to function as religious professionals. Yet, as important as the academic aspect was to both chaplains, the âpastoralâ fine-tuning is what made all the difference.
As I was mulling over this chapter, I related the story of the chaplain in the juvenile detention facility to one of my colleagues, Benjamin Watts, director of the Black Ministries program at Hartford Seminary. I asked him, âWhere is our theological education in that story?â âWell,â he said, âit is about moments when we need to live our theology in tight spaces.â For chaplains, the need for this is obvious. The stories I have related in this chapter are about two chaplainsâ ability, refined in part through their study at Hartford Seminary, to infuse deep theology into âtight spacesââthrough a word (âtodayâ), or a brief phrase (âGodâs mercy is broader than thisâ), or perhaps even through the seemingly minor act of continuing a conversation. This last detail, the learned discipline of continuing conversations, signals an additional side to these stories: comparative theology courses were crucial to both chaplains. The tight spaces they inhabit professionally are tight in the sense of being tough, but they are also tight in the sense of just how densely pluralistic they are. In that sense, they are more condensed versions of the spaces inhabited by most of our students and graduates, not only chaplains.
It is useful to remember here that, like the audiences they addressed in the above episodes, Ansari and his anonymous colleague are complex human beings whose lives and actions âabsorb and refractâ myriads of histories and, crucially, historical and current hierarchies of power, in which they find themselves as âproblematic minorities,â human beings marked not just by a degree of marginality but also by a state of liminalityâa condition in which individuals associated with a âproblematicâ minority group find themselves at the center of disciplines and discourses that enforce what is (and is not) ânormative.â15
In the United States, the location I share with my interlocutors, institutional practices of belonging within hierarchies of power have consistently revolved around such liminal groups: African Americans, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Muslims, and many others, including groups classified and disciplined through concepts of ânormativeâ genders. Particular clusters of such groups have come into the center of attention at specific points in history, always connected with numerous local and global developments, such as the âWar on Terrorâ or the Vietnam War.16 Therefore, this chapterâs (of necessity limited) focus on Muslims, a problematic minority, and a preeminent current post-9/11, highlights deeper and broader, and unavoidablyâat least latentlyâproblematic dynamics that absorb and refract the experiences of many other minorities.
This matters for interreligious theological schools because the diversity of students we attempt to cultivate is not flat; it not a mere collection of diverse profiles/imagined identities, but rather represents human beings whose lives are enmeshed in hierarchies of power, including, crucially, systems of racialized class prejudice. Interweaved in this human, embodied history and ongoing, never-ending politics, there are also theologies, or rather theological sensibilities. (Remember the chaplainâs question, âWhat is your relationship with Him?â The emphasis on relationship speaks to sensibilities, not formal theologies.) The pluralistic spaces our students inhabit are multidirectional, in the sense of embodied histories and politics. At the same time, done right, interreligious theological education hones in our students a sense of such pluralistic spaces being multidimensional as well. This multidimensional aspect of pluralistic spaces is difficult to express in words; it is best sensedâand a
Why does interreligious theological education matter? It matters because of the way it infuses theological sensibilities into tight spaces; because of the way it can make our pluralism, our commitment to, and our work within pluralism, deeper. It matters because without the discipline of honing our theological sensibilities, a â7 minâ engagement with a text or a human being may go no deeper than a flat, linear seven minutesâand pluralism might just be a collage or a wrestling arena of shallow/shadow identities. To make pluralism really work we need a sense of âGodâs mercy is broader than this.â To make it sustainable as a social reality, we need educational institutions that hone and inform such sensibilities, and enable their graduates, whatever professional paths they end up pursuing, to express and embody it one crucial, transformative moment at a time.
Bibliography
Ansari, Bilal. âThe Foundations of Pastoral Care in Islam: Reviving the Pastoral Voice in Islamic Prison Chaplaincy.â MA diss. Hartford Seminary, 2011.
Ansari, Bilal. âThug Life TheodicyâââA Mustard Seed of Faith: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Tupac Shakurâs Song âSo Many Tears.ââ Accessed June 23, 2017.https://ummahwide.com/thug-life-theodicy-a-mustard-seed-of-faith-5bb62c88dfc2#.15vj9wcv9.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences: Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Bayoumi, Moustafa. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
Clooney Francis x. Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Connolly, William E. Pluralism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Landau, Yehezkel. âBuilding Abrahamic Partnerships: A Model Interfaith Program at Hartford Seminary.â In David A. Roozen and Heidi Hadsell, eds., Changing the Way Seminaries Teach: Pedagogies for Interfaith Dialogue, 85â120. Hartford, MA: Hartford Seminary, 2009.
Schlund-Vials, Cathy. Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.
Stark, Harvey. âLooking for Leadership: Discovering American Islam in the Muslim Chaplaincy.â Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2015.
Weldon Johnson, James. Godâs Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. New York: The Viking Press, 1927.
Yancy, George, ed. Christology and Whiteness: What Would Jesus Do? New York: Routledge, 2012.
Yuskaev, Timur R. Speaking Qurâan: an American Scripture. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2017.
Yuskaev, Timur R., and Harvey Stark. âImams and Chaplains as American Religious Professionals.â In Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, eds., The Oxford Handbook of American Islam, 47â63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences: Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986), 161.
William E. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 169.
Anonymous, interview with author, May 16, 2016.
Bilal Ansari, âThug Life TheodicyâââA Mustard Seed of Faith: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Tupac Shakurâs Song âSo Many Tears,ââ accessed June 23, 2017, https://ummahwide.com/thug-life-theodicy-a-mustard-seed-of-faith-5bb62c88dfc2#.15vj9wcv9.
Bial Ansari, interview with author, May 18, 2016.
Ummah Wide, accessed March 20, 2017, https://ummahwide.com.
See Black Lives Matter, accessed March 21, 2017, http://blacklivesmatter.com.
See Chapter 3, âRedemption,â in Timur R. Yuskaev, Speaking Qurâan: an American Scripture (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2017).
See Bilal Ansari, âThe Foundations of Pastoral Care in Islam: Reviving the Pastoral Voice in Islamic Prison Chaplaincyâ (MA diss., Hartford Seminary, 2011); Harvey Stark, âLooking for Leadership: Discovering American Islam in the Muslim Chaplaincyâ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2015); and Timur Yuskaev and Harvey Stark, âImams and Chaplains as American Religious Professionals,â in Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, eds., The Oxford Handbook of American Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 47â63.
Yehezkel Landau, âBuilding Abrahamic Partnerships: A Model Interfaith Program at Hartford Seminary,â in David A. Roozen and Heidi Hadsell, eds., Changing the Way Seminaries Teach: Pedagogies for Interfaith Dialogue (Hartford, MA: Hartford Seminary, 2009), 84â120.
Bible Gateway, Isaiah 54:17 (kjv), accessed June 13, 2017, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+54%3A17&version=KJV; and Valley Behavioral Health System, âSigns and Symptoms of Suicidal Ideation,â accessed June 13, 2017, http://www.valleybehavioral.com/suicidal-ideation/signs-symptoms-causes.
Bilal Ansari, email interview with author, March 22, 2017.
See James Weldon Johnson, Godâs Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (New York: The Viking Press, 1927).
Lucinda Mosher, email interview with author, March 20, 2017. Mosherâs comparative theology course echoes Francis x. Clooneyâs Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
See, for example, George Yancy, ed., Christology and Whiteness: What Would Jesus Do? (New York: Routledge, 2012).
See, for example, Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America (New York: Penguin Press, 2009); and Cathy Schlund-Vials, Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011). My âabsorb and refractâ wording at the top of this paragraph is a refraction of a phrase by Moustafa Bayoumi; see Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? 121.