Who is my Neighbour? Theological Education in the Global Village of the 21st Century (Responses)

The following are three response papers that were presented at the “Who is My Neighbour? Interfaith Dialogue and Theological Formation Conference,” held on October 19, 2022, and are indirectly responding to Robert Hill's discussion of theological education in the global villiage of the 21st Century. A running theme throughout the first panel of the second day is the struggle to retain the vitality of the presence of God in theological education today, in contexts that are, not only increasingly diverse, but are also – in some cases – increasingly dismissive or wary of the Christian tradition. While Hill’s keynote address suggests that this vitality of presence can be retained by adopting a liberal biblical theology, the first respondent, Roland De Vries, considers what is lost when we allow “the myriad of demands placed on theological education” to obscure this vital presence, the very thing that gives theological education its coherence in the first place. The second respondent, Heather McCance, argues that an important part of overcoming this struggle lies in training students to form a theological imagination – “the capacity to grasp the presence of the holy in and through all things.” Reminding us that this vital presence is what allows theology to reach into “the crevices (or, better, fractures) of life” that other disciplines tend to ignore, Cory Andrew Labrecque ends the panel by offering a series of reflections that highlight the ongoing value of theological education in the twenty-first century, even in spaces that might want to exclude it.