The Faithful Struggle to Forgive
The Second Betty Jo Hay Seminar on Religion and Mental Health
1/9/2010( 8:30:00 AM - 1:45:00 PM )
Northway Christian Church, Dallas
Joretta Marshall, Professor of Pastoral Theology and Care, Brite Divinity School

Forgiveness is part of the journey of faith for many Christians. It is, on the one hand, something that compels us toward right relationships and justice. On the other hand, forgiveness is hard work that requires energy, spiritual integrity, and honesty. Forgiveness is not a fix for our relationships; rather it is a process one moves through. This seminar will engage participants in wrestling with the call of forgiveness in our lives even as it seeks to unpack the complexity of forgiveness in diverse contexts and situations. The day is designed to help people of faith discern how best to respond to individual, interpersonal, and communal pain and injustice through the work of forgiveness.
Joretta Marshall is currently Professor of Pastoral Theology and Care at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX. Prior to joining the faculty at Brite, she served on the faculties of Vanderbilt University Divinity School (1989-1993), Iliff School of Theology (1993-2001), and Eden Seminary (2001-2007), where she was also Academic Dean (2001-2005). Dr. Marshall has served as one of the Co-Editors for the Journal of Pastoral Theology, a publication supported by the Society for Pastoral Theology, and is currently on the editorial Boards for The Journal of Religion and Abuse and Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Joretta is the author of Counseling Lesbian Partners and Why Should I Forgive?, is the co-editor of Forgiveness and Abuse: Jewish and Christian Reflections. (with Marie Fortune), and The Formation of Pastoral Counselors: Challenges and Opportunities (with Duane Bidwell), along with a number of articles in professional and church-related journals. Currently she serves as the President of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. She is ordained as an Elder in the United Methodist Church and holds membership in the Rocky Mountain Conference.
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In John 10:10, Jesus declares: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” What could he mean? What does an abundant life look like? How might one find it or be found by it? The Gospel of John provides ample clues. It beckons us to “come and see” and invites us to experience the poetry of the created order around us and within us. So come (re)discover the richness of this Gospel whose uniqueness and layers of mystery continue to grip its readers and whose unanticipated surprises delight at every turn!
Jaime Clark-Soles has taught New Testament at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University since 2001. She received her B.A. from Stetson University where she studied Philosophy and Russian Studies. She earned her M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and her Ph.D. in New Testament from Yale University. Her specialties include “The Gospel of John” and “Evil, Suffering, and Death in the New Testament.” She is the author of Death and Afterlife in the New Testament (T&T Clark, 2006) and Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Social Function of the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel (E.J. Brill, 2003). Dr. Clark-Soles enjoys speaking and writing in both academic and popular venues. She has contributed articles to preaching resources in print and online and to resources on teaching the bible using resources from popular culture. Presently, she is writing two books which allow her to combine her scholarly and pastoral interests: Dying to Live: Questions and Answers about Death and Afterlife and The Active Word: New Testament Studies and the Christian Believer. Dr. Clark-Soles appears in the Johannine portions of Disciple Bible Study videos. As an ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Clark-Soles has served in both parish and hospice settings. She is a member at Church in the Cliff in Dallas.
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This course will explore the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 from a variety of critical perspectives, ranging from the Lord’s Prayer’s earliest version, history on how the Prayer came about, and its literary and theological background to the more contemporary perspectives relating to social justice and liberation reflected in the Lord’s Prayer. Framing the course is the theological question of how should Christians read the Lord’s Prayer? And what does the Lord’s Prayer teach us about how to engage global issues?
Francisco Lozada, Jr. holds a doctorate in New Testament and Early Christianity from Vanderbilt University. His teaching and research interests include New Testament Studies, Cultural Biblical Interpretation, and Latino/a (Hispanic) Theology and Church Studies. He is actively involved in leadership positions in the Society of Biblical Literature. He is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), a past teacher of the Hispanic Summer Program: An Ecumenical Program in Theology and Religion, and a mentor for doctoral students of the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) housed at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Lozada has published a monograph entitled A Literary Reading of John 5: Text as Construction (2000), a co-edited (with Tom Thatcher) book entitled New Currents Through John: A Global Perspective (2006), and numerous articles in cultural hermeneutics. He is currently working on a manuscript in Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics and another in the area of New Testament Studies. Dr. Lozada is Roman Catholic.
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What did Jesus look like? Why does it matter how he is portrayed through images? Though common, our depictions of Jesus are often unquestioned and convey a great deal of unexamined messages when used in worship and teaching. In these sessions we will begin to explore these depictions to determine what if any impact they have on contemporary Christian communities and how they subtly inform larger conversations about “race,” ethnicity, and anti-semitism by privileging one conception of Christ. In four modules, we will consider the accuracy of our traditional familiar images, wrestle with the problems of “qualified Christs,” explore alternative images, and suggest a way for the Church to foster human reconciliation at the start of a new millennium.
Rodney S. Sadler, Jr. is Associate Professor of Bible at Union Presbyterian Seminary (Formerly Union-PSCE) at Charlotte. He is a graduate of Howard University (B.S.-Psychology, Philosophy), Howard School of Divinity (M.Div.), and Duke University (Ph.D. Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology). Dr. Sadler lectures and writes on the following subjects: Black Church Studies, the Bible and “Race,” Difference in Scripture, “Race” and the Face of Jesus, Biblical Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls, and general themes in Old Testament and New Testament studies. He is widely published, serves on editorial councils of Interpretation, The African American Devotional Bible, and The Africana Bible (forthcoming) and authored a discussion on “race” in Scripture entitled Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible.
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St. Augustine once famously named restlessness as central to what it means to be human. “You have made us for yourself,” Augustine writes to God in his Confessions, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” In this course, we will explore how literary artists from many times and places have explored the deeply human, deeply religious enterprise that emerges from this restlessness—the enterprise of making journeys and embarking on quests. We will read and discuss excerpts from great journey narratives such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Abraham and Sarah’s journey in Genesis, The Quest of the Holy Grail, Dante’s Inferno, Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Stephanie Paulsell is the Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School where she regularly teaches a course on the literature of journey and quest. Author of Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice (Jossey-Bass, 2002) and editor of The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher (Eerdmans, 2001), she is at work on a commentary on the Song of Songs.
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