Resources by Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi

Welcome to the Common Questions, an exciting initiative brought to you by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. In this series, we bring together some of the most esteemed scholars and educators in the field to engage with a central, thought-provoking question. The goal is to challenge and inspire. By exploring these questions, we hope to create a dynamic platform for scholarly dialogue, illuminate complexities in education, and enhance our understanding of the transformative power of teaching and learning in these vital disciplines. Featuring a diverse range of perspectives, this effort is a means of expanding the borders of academic rigor with profound spiritual and philosophical inquiry.This time, we asked…“We are all born with medicine inside of us: unique traits and attributes that contribute to healing humanity on this planet. How is your medicine utilized in your teaching?”Gathered here are responses from:Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Iliff School of TheologyRebecca Makas, Villanova UniversityCarol B. Duncan, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityHaruka Umetsu Cho, Santa Clara UniversityMolly Greening, Loyola University ChicagoLaura Carlson Hasler, Indiana UniversityFred Glennon, Le Moyne CollegeIf you are interested in sharing you response to this prompt or future Common Questions, please reach out to our blogs editor, Donald E. Quist at [email protected].

* Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White, and Lazaro Gamio, “These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration,” The New York Times, March 7, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html.

To My Beloveds, What they don’t tell you about being neither-this-nor-that is that it’s problematic. You are always living in the in-betweenness of things. That means you’re suspect, you’re shifty, you can’t be trusted. People want you to pick one thing, to be one thing, like in a game of five-card draw and you can just trade up. It’s actually like Texas hold ‘em—there are no choices. You can only work with the cards you are dealt. What they don’t tell you is that this is all most people can handle when it comes to race, for example. Otherwise, you get questions like, “So, what are you?” I usually take a deep breath before responding, “I’m biracial. My dad was Puerto Rican, and my mom was Italian.” If their face registers further perplexion, I add, “My spouse is Moroccan [and Muslim, depending on the crowd]. That’s the ‘Hajbi’ part of my name.” Finally, a look of relief creeps over their face—that look like, “Oh, now I see. Now I get you.” What they don’t tell you is that this state of forever in-betweenness doesn’t quite fit into the essentialisms about how one should properly embody identity. Early on in my ministerial formation, I had white church members tell me things like, “I don’t see you as a person of color” and “You speak very well [for your racial background].” They, of course, offered these sentiments as compliments. I believe these presentations and affects that church members experienced in me are likely the ones that make white students increasingly receptive to some of the more challenging content that I teach in my courses. Yet, some of these students might remain suspicious of whether I am too “biased” to be teaching about certain topics focused on systemic injustice and colonialism. Conversely, my Latinidad creates a shared identity with students of color—Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and international students—because we harbor and endure similar subaltern experiences in/of the world. This is not to equate our experiences, however, as my light skin affords me great privileges in many respects. Moreover, among some Latinx students, not being a fluent Spanish speaker has relegated me to the edges. Similar looks of perplexion arise when people ask, “¿Hablas español?” and I respond, “No…poquito.” There are generational histories of trauma and assimilation behind this response, but I can’t explain that in the moment. The silence following our brief exchanges speaks volumes. What they don’t tell you is that all of higher education, including theological education, is meant to be a practice of training people to be one thing, not many things. Previous generations of multiracial and multiethnic students and scholars alike were sometimes forced by these systems to either assimilate completely (if they had the privilege of “passing” as white or white-adjacent in some way) or to play into the role of the “other” within their institutions, relinquishing any whiteness altogether in favor of a different kind of power that came with being a representation of diversity for the whole. Neither option was/is ideal, simple, or always binary. These folks have had to “keep their hand” close to their chests. What they don’t tell you is that this extends to other areas of identity and to academic disciplines themselves. One can be a biblical scholar, or a theologian, or a homiletician, or an ethicist, or a historian, and so on. To be more than one of these is to not be considered a true “expert.” But such disciplines, just like racial and other categories of identity, are modern constructions that constrain the realities of multiplicitous being and belonging. Being “interdisciplinary” is certainly cool these days, except when it’s not and can become a barrier to gaining respect and access to opportunities within the academy. Ultimately, what they don’t tell you is that you are actually both-this-and-that. That you possess a superpower to hold within yourself more than one thing—more than one identity, more than one set of perspectives, more than one disciplinary area of knowledge/skill, more than one culture and all that such entails. That this in-betweenness attracts others who also exist within the liminal realms of being and makes it acceptable within the system to live more fully into their both-this-and-thatness. That this superpower held by many breaks open the systems themselves toward imagining new ways of being and doing. In reality, what they don’t tell you about being both-this-and-that is that those who uphold such notions are just like you, even if they don’t feel it quite like you do. Perhaps your existence gives permission for these individuals to dismantle the silos, the only-one-thingness within themselves. Peace and Love/Paz y Amor, A Multiracial, Multiethnic, Interdisciplinary (and So Many Other Things) Teacher-Scholar

In a previous blog, I detailed some of the ways in which white students’ practices of coloniality are manifested in the classroom through co-optation, silence, and resignation. Such praxes—often unconscious and subtle—must be unmasked, especially for those who consider themselves to be allies for justice with communities of color. Such learning is not limited to white students, however, as students of color witness how instructors address dynamics of privilege and oppression in their courses and, as a result, learn who can (or cannot) be trusted to sojourn with them through their educational experiences and beyond. But how do instructors unmask such subtle, ingrained responses (also known as embedded resistances)? Wisdom gathered from decolonial scholars and teachers within theological education, engagement with materials on decolonial pedagogy, and attempts to incorporate specific practices within my courses have led me to some core insights. I offer these not as a step-by-step “how to,” but with the hopes that they might inspire others to praxis unmasking coloniality and invite colleagues and students alike to share in this work. Give more attention and intention to the processes by which learners engage with one another in the course than to the content of the course itself. I realize that this might be blasphemous to some, so try to give equal attention and intention to both the what of course materials and the how of individuals’ relations across identity, power, and difference. A few questions to think through include: What values are you explicitly and implicitly privileging in your courses? For example, if academic rigor is a central value, what standards and signals do you incorporate to exemplify rigor and how might eurowestern colonial norms be privileged within these standards? How do students come to know and experience these values and how might white students experience them differently than students of color? How might you create a space that does not privilege the voices, perspectives, and participation of those for whom the academy was designed—namely, white (and male, heterosexual, wealthy, able-bodied) students? What commitments and modes of relating are you incorporating into the course design? What role do learners have in shaping these ways of relating, and what else is needed by you as the instructor to mitigate co-optation, silence, and resignation from white students? When you encounter particular actions or patterns by white students that are likely replicating or reinforcing colonial dynamics, consider the following: Ask neutral questions—ones that do not have opinions embedded—that invite individuals to dig deeper into their own stories, assumptions, and experiences.[1] This should be done with care and the intention to assist in students’ learning, but also with a genuine desire for the instructor to learn more about what lies underneath said actions or articulations (because our own assumptions are equally worthy of investigation). Questions can also be accompanied by, or followed up with, personal observations. It has been helpful for me to use “I” statements that reference my own observations or feelings in terms of the impact of particular noticings. In these cases, I tread a careful line as someone with positional power in the pedagogical relationship but who is also a person of color impacted by colonial dynamics. At times, I name and reflect upon my own complicity and unexamined colonial actions as a woman whose ancestry includes white colonizers and who continues to benefit from a system that privileges lighter skin. If students are able to acknowledge colonial underpinnings within their own embedded resistances, invite and/or offer alternatives to such resistances in order to decolonially reframe and re-praxis. For example, with white students who rely upon silence to avoid saying “the wrong thing,” I have asked them—along with others in the space—to imagine ways of participation beyond silence that encourage vulnerability and trust. In a virtual space, this has included the use of various art forms and nonverbal visual or auditory affirmations, as well as the usual verbal contributions to synchronous discussions. It helps if values of imperfection and leaning into tensions have been privileged in the course already to encourage actions beyond silence, as well as acknowledging that silence is necessary at times. These insights reside at the water’s edge of an ocean of practiced wisdom from educators who have been attentive to decolonial pedagogies for decades. As someone who is at the beginning of that journey, I know such learnings will only be shaped and tested with more time and experience and are subject to shifts based on context, timing, and a variety of other unique forces shaping each relational moment. Depending upon what visual representation is conjured by the imagination when one thinks of unmasking, the act itself might be quite simple, a bit uncomfortable, or downright painful (especially if one is a fan of horror films like me). Unmasking assumes that there are layers hidden beneath the mask that must be revealed in order for truth or healing to ensue. If we as teachers remain at the surface of course preparation and design by focusing on the attainment of intellectual knowledge, our students fail to encounter the depths of what they both desire and deserve as divinely breathed beings. Such failure clearly is not theirs; it is ours. White students, especially those with longings to cultivate communities of justice and equity in solidarity with their colleagues of color, deserve our reflective questions, our noticings, our own acknowledgments of complicity, and our personal discomforts with tension as co-learners. The irony of unmasking colonial practices in the classroom while teaching about decoloniality is not lost on me; but the truth of the matter is that colonial practices should be unmasked in all educational spaces and places.[2]   [1] Liz Lerman and John Bortsel, Critique Is Creative: The Critical Response Process in Theory and Action (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2022). [2] I am grateful to the following teachers and scholars who shared with generosity their wisdom, experiences, and best practices related to decolonial pedagogies: Cristian De La Rosa, Christine J. Hong, Willie James Jennings, HyeRan Kim-Cragg, and Melinda McGarrah Sharp.

There are two subjects about which I am passionate as a teacher and scholar: leadership formation and decolonial praxis. These areas may seem to be at odds with one another, at least in white western worldviews; but disrupting colonial frameworks and ways of being and doing leadership in ministry and theological education is a necessary endeavor for those of us who continue to long for worlds beyond death-dealing hegemony and homogeneity. As an early career Latina teacher and scholar, I feel this longing in my bones. Perhaps more importantly, I experience these longings from students both in my courses and in the wider institution. But what do you do when the very students who express such deep desires for change—even explicitly longing for a dismantling of western/white/colonial structures, processes, and epistemologies—function in ways that are wholly aligned with “possession, control, and mastery” as the ultimate display of white, self-sufficient masculinity, as Willie James Jennings articulates?[1] In other words, how does one teach decolonial praxis in a course about decolonial praxis, particularly with well-meaning and well-intentioned white students who praxis coloniality? The first time that I taught a course on ministry leadership and decolonial praxis, I was not prepared for the embedded resistances that I encountered from students, particularly socially and/or politically progressive white students, that sometimes contradicted the very praxes we were reflecting upon that same week. Of course, such actions were so subtle and automatic that the students themselves were unable to recognize them; but that’s how colonialism works its deadly charms—in the corners and cracks of the unconscious. As educators, our most important task is to unmask that which lies just underneath the surface of what students articulate in word, speech, and affect, as a learning for the whole, and with kindness, respect, and compassion. As bell hooks said, “We practice interrogating habits of being as well as ideas. Through this process we build community.”[2] After that first course, and like any good scholar, I researched what others had written about decolonial pedagogies in the classroom and white racial identity formation and resistances. I also engaged in wisdom-seeking conversations with trusted educators and scholars on their own practices for mitigating colonial praxes in their classrooms. Through this process, what began to appear were patterns of behavior for what I and others had experienced. In gaining clarity about the nature and origins of some of these movements on the part of white students, I was better able to respond in the moment and incorporate pedagogies and practices to mitigate these in my courses. Here are just a few of the subtle embedded resistances that were unmasked.[3] Co-optation. Whether it be in online or in-person discussions, many white students—unintentionally and without awareness—often take up time, space, and/or voice in class conversations and take over ideas, characteristics, and practices of nonwhite others, collapsing them into their own worldviews and subsuming them for their own purposes. For example, I noticed that a few white students in my class resonated with particular attributes or characteristics associated with some postcolonial and decolonial communities and leadership. Identifying that their own communities and/or leadership exemplified some of these attributes, they signified their ministries to be “decolonial” (yet remained situated contextually as majority white, middle-upper class congregations not necessarily allied with those most harmed by colonization and colonialism nor engaged in any kind of stated decolonial praxis). These attempts at possession and control also come in the form of collapsing decolonization into movements for gender, LGBTQ, or socioeconomic equity without acknowledging the racialized foundations and socio-historical trajectories of colonialism. Ultimately, students’ desires to not be seen as carriers of colonialism resulted in them perpetuating the very colonial characteristics they were attempting to deny. Silence. Several of the scholars with whom I spoke shared their experiences of white students maintaining silence in class in order to give space to students of color to speak or share or, more often than not, out of a fear of doing or saying “the wrong thing.” Unfortunately, this itself highlights the privilege one has to practice opacity as an exercise of power, leaving others to perform vulnerability for the benefit of white students’ learning. In my experience, white students—and even white colleagues—who say little to nothing in intercultural or interracial spaces often end up perpetuating the “white gaze” on students and colleagues of color as if they are being monitored or put upon to present in particular ways. Resignation. When the depths of our collective entanglements with colonialism are realized more fully, one of the most frequent responses from white students is to “burn it all down,” a form of resignation to the irreparability of religious and secular systems alike. It’s as if starting over completely, dismantling current structures, or working outside of institutional church spaces to create something new will rid us of our colonial ways of being and doing. Such a totalizing response arises from the privilege of being able to transcend or separate oneself from those very structures with little consequence or loss of power. Students of color in my courses have tended to not articulate such statements because the legacies and forces of colonization impact them more intensely and intimately than their white counterparts (though, of course, intersections exist). These students have not had the option or power to “burn it all down” and have learned to navigate within such systems for survival, with many finding spaces of joy and flourishing in spite of colonialism’s strongholds. Simply burning something down doesn’t make it disappear; it simply takes on another form. Unmasking such praxes in the classroom takes discernment, patience, and care on the part of the instructor. In the next blog post, I will share some of my pedagogical learnings around unmasking.   [1] Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2020). [2] bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 43. [3] While postcolonialism and decoloniality are intersectional in nature—meaning that they also seek to dismantle imposing eurowestern constructions of gender, sexuality, class, caste, etc.—the construction of racial hierarchies and white supremacy in the subjugation of non-white “others” assumes, historically and presently, a foundational place in the colonial project. Furthermore, because I noticed this phenomenon taking place with white students (regardless of their gender, sexual identity, or class), the praxes named here necessitate a specific focus on race as a socially constructed phenomenon.

It has been my experience that some of the most exciting, innovative, life-giving, and life-altering activities occur at the edges of established institutional life. Similar to the generation of new faith communities within denominations that look and feel nothing like their long-standing churches, the peripheries of theological schools often hold some of the most exciting projects, usually called “experiments” by those at the center. (Even further removed from established theological schools themselves, new places of learning and formation are arising that challenge the very existence of the centers of theological education. But that’s a subject for another time.) I’ve been thinking about this recently in terms of the work of teaching and learning within educational institutions. In dialoguing with a colleague on some of the most pedagogically creative and impactful courses that we as MDiv students took several years ago, we observed that many of them were taught by adjuncts or visiting instructors. Furthermore, in my own praxis of teaching, some of the most compelling tools and resources that I return to again and again have come from talented adjuncts and administrative staff who have taken thoughtful care in their course designs. Such treasures rarely penetrate the course designs of core faculty but have been incredibly formational for students. For instance, some of the online discussion practices and guidelines that I continue to draw upon and adapt were shared with me by a senior administrator, an adjunct instructor who has spent years developing specialized knowledge around online instructional design. I credit a former staff colleague and senior adjunct lecturer with my now standard use of visual, web-based, interactive infographics for all of my syllabi (designed through Piktochart and linked within a Canvas LMS). Students have found this type of content presentation to be more accessible, organized, and clear in terms of expectations, as well as easier to navigate. For an increasingly diverse learner population in theological education, this small, yet fun-to-create tool has also added an element of playfulness to courses that contain quite serious content (like postcolonial and decolonial theologies). People on the periphery may have more freedom to experiment beyond the harsher lines that come with being closer to the center. However, with this so-called freedom comes real constraint and injustice. For many, this is due to institutionalized power dynamics that place staff colleagues, adjuncts, and others beyond the core faculty as categorically “less than.” Core faculty privileges in the forms of greater compensation, full-time employment and tenure, more flexible work schedules, and increased access to scholarship and research opportunities certainly exacerbate this center/periphery dynamic. In addition, it might be argued that adjuncts and visiting scholars are more responsive to learning needs because teaching evaluations more readily determine whether they can continue instructing students from term to term. As someone who is considered an “early-career” scholar and teacher (i.e., newer to theological education yet whose many years of higher education and denominational leadership experience aren’t often recognized in academia), and as one who resides on the border between the center and the periphery as administrative faculty overseeing contextual education, I have spent a lot of time observing colleagues at the center (i.e., well established, tenured associate and full professors who have spent their entire careers in the academy) in order to adapt those elements most fitting to my own teaching and course design. I figured that because they were at the center, they would be doing things that were innovative and more adaptive to student learning needs. While many of them are indeed experimenting in exciting ways, I have concluded that the periphery is where my gaze needs to focus more often than not. As a scholar-practitioner committed to anticolonial pedagogies I should have known better, but the lure of the center can be quite powerful. The center is where acceptance and respect are found, and who doesn’t want to be accepted and respected? The alternative would be to have one’s teaching practices called into question as not rigorous enough, too practical (the horror!), or outright deviant (the delight!). Where do we situate ourselves in terms of our teaching—at the center or at the periphery, or perhaps in the in-between borderlands? Most binaries fail imaginations greatly but noticing loci of power and pedagogical authority unmasks boundaries so that they might be breached. Institutionally, we may find ourselves in very different roles; but for the collection of individuals who engage in the teaching and learning lives of our respective institutions—adjuncts, scholar-practitioners, practitioner-scholars, lecturers, student support staff, instructional technologists and coders, librarians, field education and Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors, spiritual life leaders and advisors, and core faculty, among others—our vocation is a shared one. A pedagogy of the periphery requires all of us to be attentive to the edges of institutional and communal life. What is happening in those spaces and places? What are the practices that not only invite innovation to seep into the cracks in the center, but also subvert the very notion of a pedagogical center? How might such practices transform the whole of the institution’s pedagogies and, more importantly, spark the very edges within students? For many a weary educator, it feels comfortable to stay close to the ways that one knows best, especially after the last two years. But I continue to ask myself whether those ways are the ones that genuinely nurture and challenge students. The periphery is simultaneously terrifying and invigorating, and so I must continue to go/be there and learn.

I believe we can create an altar-like pedagogy that turns the classroom into a sacred space where we nurture our students’ mindbodyspirit, where teaching is acknowledged as a sacred ritual of raising consciousness, and where we pay homage to and connect with the history of our ancestors’ struggle and resistance. — Norell Martínez [1] By early spring of last academic year, I was done!  Having taken on too many administrative projects and an additional teaching load, I was spent in all the ways that one could be depleted—mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and otherwise. My soul was tired. Yet I still had another course to teach in the spring quarter, and it was one that I had not taught previously. At that point, I knew that the best I could offer students was to read some books together and ponder how they related to our praxes of ministry leadership. In all honesty, I hadn’t even fully read all the books prior to the course, but I knew that I was interested in exploring these particular texts for wisdom and challenge and thought the students might have a similar response. Nevertheless, the course ended up being quite meaningful and engaging, no thanks to my lack of preparation. I tried to read two weeks ahead and prepare video lectures that touched upon the materials just enough to invite critical discussions within our Learning Management System. In our synchronous Zoom sessions, I came as I was, as we all were—tired and overworked, but intrigued and enlivened (and frustrated at times) by the materials we were reading. It was not my best teaching nor my best course design; nevertheless, it was transformative for several students personally and professionally. To make time this summer for rest and replenishment, I spent several days at a retreat center reading, journaling, and reflecting on the past year in preparation for the next one. While reading, I came across a teaching metaphor that spoke directly into my weary soul and encompassed all of what I had experienced in the last year and a half: a pedagogy of ofrendas (offerings). For Latinxs like me and millions of others around the globe, ofrendas are the things that one gives or sacrifices, usually for the love of and/or loyalty to what we hold most dear—our familia (family), our comunidad de fe (faith community), our gente (people). In our faith communities, we give ofrendas in the forms of money, resources, time, and talents. In broader Latinx cultures across time and location, however, ofrendas are most often shared on altares (altars), the purposes of which are to “create sacred spaces, spaces of prayer and ritual, and sites of offering and memory [. . . ] to connect with our ancestors,” as described by Norell Martínez. Moreover, Martínez argues that we create such sacred spaces—such altares with ofrendas—in our educational work. Ofrendas include all that we put into our courses in preparation, instruction, and evaluation, as well as our unique embodiments and care for the materials, our students’ transformation and learning, and the creation of just pedagogical spaces. Martínez states this much more eloquently: The mental and emotional energy we put into our lessons, the pedagogical tools we use. . . and the passion we have for raising consciousness are our ofrendas to our students. Likewise, we teach our students that the work they are doing, the knowledge they produce in our classroom, is their ofrenda. By envisioning each contribution, we make to the learning experience as an ofrenda on the altar of the course, what is required of us as teachers is expanded beyond fixed notions of what a “proper” course should contain and what roles we should play as main contributors. In addition, no ofrenda is too small and each is experienced as an expression of intentionality and care toward the creation of an altar filled with the beauty of all contributions. What if I had framed my entire course as an altar and each of our contributions as ofrendas? How might it have created an even more lovely, more sacred space for transformation (while at the same time allowing creative expression and acknowledgement of my own embodiment as a biracial Latina)? Given the world that we were surviving in the moment and the challenges each of us faced, I know now that what we offered collectively was enough; what I as a teacher offered was more than enough. All teaching and learning is altar-making, and my ofrendas only comprise one small part of the altar of any given course. In pandemic life, my ofrendas look different (much smaller, in fact); however, the sacredness of the ofrendas themselves is not diminished and, perhaps, is even increased. In this next year, especially amidst the continuing uncertainty of COVID-19 strains and infection rates, I am hopeful that practicing a pedagogy of ofrendas will aid in creating the grace-filled space so critical to my own survival and soul care in the work of teaching and learning. Such a pedagogy might itself be a loving ofrenda for students, colleagues, and institutions alike. [1] This and all other quotes in this piece are from Norell Martínez, “A Pedagogy of Ofrendas: The Altar as a Tool for Integrating Social Justice in the Classroom,” in Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expression and Healing Practices, eds. Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2019), 367-369.

In 1887, British politician Lord Acton wrote the well-known phrase, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Not as well-known is the context in which Lord Acton penned these words. They were written to the Archbishop of the Church of England, Mandell Creighton, who decried what he saw as overly harsh criticism of men in authority, namely, corrupt and abusive popes. In the same letter, Acton remarked, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power...there is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”[1] Christianity and power have long been intertwined in problematic ways, but does this mean that religious leaders and people of faith working for justice and peace should avoid power altogether? Is power inherently bad? In my Community Organizing course for theology students, our discussions interrogate these questions and contextualize them to current realities. Drawn from one of the class texts, our working definition of community organizing is “to mobilize disenfranchised people to advocate on their own behalf in relationship to some power structure in order to achieve needed changes.”[2] This important work necessitates the amassing of power, not for consolidation with the few but for distribution among the many, so that power relations are transformed and power itself becomes a shared entity. In other words, structures that have consolidated power such that individuals residing within them are “sanctified” by the nature of their office must be held to account by the collective power of those impacted by the sanctified’s actions. Ultimately, power is not inherently good or bad; but it has the potential to be either or both depending on who has it and how it is shared (or hoarded, as the case may be). Organizers—and ministry leaders—need to learn not only how to share power with others, but also how to help others recognize that they have power in the first place. In the COVID-19 era in which instruction has moved online, engaging in activities that help students practice power sharing requires creativity, patience, and a willingness to yield some of my own power as the instructor. The course is delivered asynchronously for the most part, but there are three seventy-five-minute synchronous Zoom sessions built into the design. I have utilized the majority of this time for the practice of key organizing activities designed to cultivate capacities for power sharing. In our first session, I facilitated a consensus decision making process whereby the students discussed in small groups, and then reported out to the whole class, their proposals and reasonings for how they would prefer to be grouped in responding to weekly discussion questions. (It is a large class, so there are many options for how they might be grouped for weekly assignments). Consensus was built around one option, and the group agreed to experiment with their decision until the next Zoom session when I would check in with everyone to see if any change was desired. At the next session, students also split into pairs and practiced relational meetings, a foundational tool in community organizing with a purpose of building shared power through identifying mutual interests. Through these activities, students cultivated awareness of their individual power, yet were challenged to forge connections with others to make shared decisions and listen for the purpose of understanding. These students, who will likely hold positional power as clergy or nonprofit directors, attained new understandings and praxes of creating collective power, moving beyond seeing power simply as a force to be cautiously kept behind a fence (as in a pastoral care conversation, for example) to embodying it as an active, dynamic energy that—with intentionality and humility—can transform individuals and dismantle unjust systems. By introducing students to such constructions and practices around power, and committing myself to practicing a pedagogy of power sharing in the virtual classroom (both as I’ve described and in other ways), alternatives to “absolute power corrupt[ing] absolutely” might instead form leaders who empower self and others relationally and collaboratively. There is no organizing—or leadership, for that matter—without community. Given what our country has witnessed over the past four years with a Trump presidency, such alternatives are needed now more than ever in religious and secular spheres alike so that democracy might be realized more full [1] Lord Acton, “Letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton,” April 5, 1887, https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165acton.html. [2] Loretta Pyles, Progressive Community Organizing: Reflective Practice in a Globalizing World, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 10.