Teaching with Talking Circles: Futuring the Theological Academy by Returning to Indigenous Principles and Practices

This paper presents teaching using the circle-keeping process as not only a restorative and critical pedagogical approach, but a returning to Indigenous and ancestral wisdom that promotes alternative decolonial futures inside the theological academy. The first section briefly traces the history circle-keeping in public schools and the steps for holding circles recommended by restorative justice practitioners like Kay Pranis. The next section highlights the similarities between various Indigenous principles that inform circle practice and proposes that embracing those values reframes the goal of theological education from individual to mutual flourishing. The next section posits this reframing as a process of deconstruction and reconstruction for decolonial futuring in theological education as proposed by interreligious theological educator Christine Hong. The paper concludes with an application of the circle-keeping process to a hybrid-synchronous ministry class about the socio-political implications of the sacraments.