Teach them how to write like a … theologian

by Joe Kinnaird

This is the first in Joe’s series of lesson design blogs on ‘Teach them how to write like …’, taking the three disciplines of Theology, Philosophy, and Social Sciences in turn.

Introduction

As outlined in the Commission on Religious Education report, RE is a vital academic subject for education in the 21^st century.  The national entitlement should provide students with the opportunity to understand and engage with the different ways that people interpret and respond to texts and other sources of authority.  In addition, students should experience a range of ways of understanding religion through the disciplinary lenses of theology, philosophy and sociology.  If we want our students to have a multi-disciplinary understanding of religion, it is essential to consider how this can be reflected in student writing.  If writing is both the process of learning and the product, we need to look at how we can teach our students to write like theologians, philosophers and social scientists.

What does it mean to write like a theologian?

Writing like a theologian can be understood as students writing through a theological lens. At secondary level, students will be writing about established theological thinking. They are not able to offer original theological writing. Rather, they are producing knowledge-rich writing rooted in the discipline of theology.

To use an analogy, we can know how to play football and the traditions of the game.  This doesn’t make us an expert or mean that we are all professional footballers.  However, we can still play and participate in conversations about football. Likewise, our students are not theologians. However, students can write through a theological lens and write like a theologian.

My initial suggestions for what writing like a theologian entails are:

• Explaining the origin of a belief or concept
• Discussing the authority or reliability of key texts
• Examining different ways a belief or concept is interpreted or understood
• Exploring the significance and influence of a belief or concept

With these suggestions in mind, here are two strategies for getting students to write theological sentences.  These strategies are taken from The Writing Revolution by Judith Hockman and Natalie Wexler. 

Because-but-so

With this strategy, you give students a sentence stem (beginning of a sentence) and ask them to turn it into three complex sentences.  When introducing, it’s important to make sure students understand the meaning of each conjunction. Rather than providing an open-ended theological question, because- but-so offers a more precise way of enabling theological writing.

Here is an example from a lesson exploring the key teachings of Genesis and how different Christians may interpret it:

Here are examples of how students could complete these sentences:  

Using subordinating conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions join independent clauses with a dependent or subordinate clause

e.g. although, while, before. As with because-but-so, using subordinating conjunctions encourages more focused writing.

Subordinating conjunctions encourage theological writing as they can enable students to write about the origin, significance or consequence of a belief.

Here are some examples from a lesson on Muslim beliefs on the afterlife:

Here are examples of how students could complete these sentences:  

Writing a theological paragraph

In my own blog post, I have outlined a step-by-step approach to KS3 essay writing. Here, I will focus on teaching students how to answer a theological question.  By a theological question, I mean a question focused on explaining the origin of a belief/concept, how it is presented in a key text and different ways in which religious believers may interpret it.

Let’s imagine students are planning an answer to the question ‘What are the key teachings of the Genesis story and how do Christians interpret it?  Firstly, we would address key elements of the question and make annotations:

• What is Genesis?
• What are the key teachings?
• What do we mean by the word ‘interpretation’ and how do Christians interpret the Genesis story?

I will focus on the interpretation part of the answer.  To do this, students complete a single paragraph outline (S.P.O). Firstly, students create a topic sentence for the paragraph.  After discussion, we may arrive at ‘Literalist Christians interpret the Genesis story to be literally true and historical fact’.  Next, students need to provide theological evidence within the paragraph.  For scaffolding, I might provide prompt questions such as:  

• What is the origin of this belief?
• Who authored the key text of Genesis?
• Why does Genesis’s level of authenticity reveal about its authority?
• What are the implications for saying that Genesis does not have authority?

With prompt questions and class notes, students may include theological details such as:

Topic sentence:	Literalist Christians interpret the Genesis story to be literally true and historical fact.
Evidence: Consider the following… What is the origin of this belief? Who authored the key text of Genesis? Why does the text’s level of authenticity reveal about its authority? What are the implications for saying that Genesis does not have authority?	‘All scripture is God breathed’ this means that every word in the Bible comes from God   If Genesis is merely symbolic, then what’s to stop the rest of the Bible being symbolic too? If this is the case then the Bible doesn’t have any authority.   The Bible is a trustworthy and authoritative source for Christians – why should we interpret what is written in it differently? If the Bible says God created the sun on the fourth day, then he created it on the fourth day.   The Genesis story illustrates God’s omnipotence. The universe was created ‘ex-nihilo’ (from nothing)
Closing sentence:	Since Literalist Christians believe the words of the Bible come from God, the Genesis story could be interpreted as literally true.

To finish their S.P.O, students need to add a closing sentence.  To create an effective closing sentence, students can use a subordinating conjunction.

Next, students follow the exact same process and complete an S.P.O for a different interpretation of the Genesis story.  Students need to include relevant theological evidence so I may provide the following prompt questions:

• Why do some Christians reject the Genesis story as literally true?
• If not literally true, how do some Christians interpret the Genesis story?
• If Genesis lacks authenticity, what meaning does it provide for Christians?

With prompt questions and class notes, students may include theological details such as:

Topic sentence:	Non-literalist Christians interpret the Genesis story to be a myth which offers spiritual truths.
Evidence: Consider the following… Why do some Christians reject the Genesis story as literally true? If it is not literally true, how do some Christians look to interpret the Genesis story? If Genesis lacks authenticity, what meaning does it provide for Christians?	Genesis is quite poetic in nature with repeated passages throughout ‘and he [God] saw it was good’.   Each day of creation represents millions of years.   The Genesis creation story misses out on so much e.g. there is no mention of dinosaurs, which is strange as dinosaurs existed before humans    Genesis story does not say specifically how God created the world – perhaps the Big Bang could explain this?
Closing sentence:	As the Genesis story omits key details, non-literalist Christians interpret it as a myth offering spiritual truths.

Final thoughts

These are only preliminary ideas for teaching students how to write like a theologian.  I am sure there is a lot more scope and nuances to explore. However, I hope that they will start the process of enabling students to produce knowledge-rich writing rooted in the discipline of theology.