CHRIST
THE PLACENTA
CHRIST
THE PLACENTA
by David Arthur Bickimer
Summary: The major theme of this exhilarating book is that religious education at every level and in every setting must be education for transcendence. In this view, mysticism as a goal of religious education is as natural as the air we breathe. When Christ becomes the living placenta for the enactment of religious instruction, learners can grow in a mature manner unto transcendence.
Spirit of the Book: Using the deeply religious metaphor of Christ as the necessary and all-nourishing placenta for education which is truly Christian, the author shows why transcendence constitutes the all-encompassing matrix, fundamental process, and basic goal of incarnational religious education-and why it is necessary for religious educators to place their teaching activity on the central axis of transcendence..
What this Book Gives You: This book helps you transform your everyday concrete religious instruction work into education for personal and religious transcendence. It shows how you can concretely tap into the here-and-now needs and values of the learners to lead them to transcendence. It even shows how the nitty-gritty religious instruction activities such as performance objectives and curricular planning can become dynamic engines for helping learners to strive and maybe even gain transcendence.
Distinctiveness: Why this Book is Special: Written as a series of letters, this volume is dazzling in the way it deliciously integrates religion, poetry, art, modern physics, social science, contemporary theology, and everyday human experience into a spectacular vision of the means and ends of religious education.
Major Feature: The major feature of this easy-to-read book is that religious educators can (and should) work to integrate everything they do during the teaching event into a seamless tapestry of transcendence. Correlative to this feature is that this book helps religious educators to augment their own vision of the central role and goal of transcendence in their own teaching.
Chapters
Letter 1 [Christ as the Redemption, and Resurrection as Related to Teaching
for Transcendence]
Letter 2 [How Human Needs Can Only be Truly Nourished by
Christ the Placenta]
Letter 3 [Transcendence and Mysticism as an Integral
Part of Human Nature]
Letter 4 [Prerequisites to
Education for Transcendence]
Letter 5 [Some Key Aids to Education for
Transcendence; Social Science and the Prehensive Curriculum]
Letter 6 [The
Dynamic Intersection of Art, Science, and Transcendence in Religious Education
Activity]
Letter 7 [Stress on Transcendence in Preservice and Inservice
Training of Religious Educators]
Letter 8 [Quantum Physics and the Expansion
of the Reality of Transcendence]
Letter 9 [The Religious Educator's Spiritual
Life and Transcendence]
Letter 10 [Doubt, Exploration, and the Search for
Transcendence through Religious Education]
Letter 11 [Authority and
Bureaucracy as Obstacles to the Search for Transcendence in Religious
Education]
Letter 12 [The Cross, Basis, Nourisher, and Goal of Religious
Education]
Praise for this Book:
This fine book has received a great deal of praise.
MARY ELLEN LEVIN of the National Academy of Religion writes: This book is a rare find for everyone interested in education. It is absorbingly personal, delightfully spiritual, and deeply poetic. Bickimer calls for a renewed recognition of the real goal of all education, namely the transcendence of everyday experience."
R. BRUCE McPHERSON of the University of Illinois
at Chicago says: "This book assists educators to help others release the
eternal part of us not just in the next world but right here and now in this
world. It helps us get in touch with
something larger than
ourselves.
Price and
Such
239 pages List Price:
$16.95 ISBN 0-891350034-9