Duration: The course will meet on Tuesdays, November 27, December 4, and December 11, 5:30-8:30pm.
Content: This three-part course will reclaim the radical teachings of the Bible around poverty, wealth and power that have been lost to many of our movements. It will be structured around the acclaimed scholarship of Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and her book, Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor, and the pedagogy of “reading the Bible with the poor” or “contextual Bible study.”
Because of the significance the Bible holds for many in our society and because of the way the Bible has been used both as a “text of terror” and as an inspiration for social movements, the Poverty Initiative and Kairos Center hold the Bible and contextual Bible study – what we term “Reading the Bible with the Poor” – as central work in building a social movement to end poverty, led by the poor. This pedagogy grows out of examples from South Africa, Latin American Liberation Theology, and other experiences of the poor globally reclaiming the biblical mandate for justice, and we have developed it within our U.S. context.