The Religious Educator as Cultural Spec-Actor: Researching Self in Intercultural Pedagogy

This article seeks to explore notions regarding the conceptualization of culture in the field of Christian religious education. These conceptualizations are central to understanding the social nature of faith communities and the role of religious educators as they respond to this nature. The author proposes that the faith community is intercultural in that people with distinct cultural perspectives come together to forge a shared religious identity. Consequently, the vocation of the religious educator is presented as a call to be a specactor1, a practitioner who constantly assesses his/her own cultural orientations in relation to those of the learners. The article concludes the paper with some suggestions on how to develop a contrastive pedagogy that takes into account both the intercultural dynamics of the Christian educational experience and the vocation of the intercultural religious educator.