Two troublesome portraits of religious studies professors often exist in the minds of some students at any given time: the Guru, or wise spiritual teacher, and the Deceiver. These metaphors capture student perceptions of us that may be ill-informed and beyond our control. We will examine and compare how our own chosen metaphors for…

Theological education typically includes classroom worship, a practice of great pedagogical power and curricular import. As pedagogy, classroom worship does four things. It focuses teaching and learning on God, and fosters theological dispositions necessary for sustaining that attention. Second, it rightly positions the entire class in dialogical…