{"id":2571,"date":"2006-04-27T10:56:48","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T10:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/food-for-thought-3.html"},"modified":"2006-04-27T10:56:48","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T10:56:48","slug":"food-for-thought-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/food-for-thought-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought.."},"content":{"rendered":"

I was just speaking to a woman who used to be a parish Director of Religious Education. She recounted a time when someone in her parish offered to teach a course in Biblical Greek. Some powers that were demurred, suggesting that no, that’s not what people would want. They want to (wait for it) share their faith<\/em>. Reflect.<\/p>\n

She said, eh, let’s try it. <\/p>\n

It was the most popular adult education program she ever offered.<\/p>\n

Are you surprised? I’m not – it’s practical<\/em>. People like practical. They like concrete. It’s interesting. <\/em>It gives people a chance to really do some study, try something new and grapple with Scripture texts in a profound way (I’d assume that the goal was probably working one’s way through John, eventually) in a way far beyond going around a circle and sharing what it means to us. Endlessly. Because circles have no beginning and no end. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was just speaking to a woman who used to be a parish Director of Religious Education. She recounted a time when someone in her parish offered to teach a course in Biblical Greek. Some powers that were demurred, suggesting that no, that’s not what people would want. They want to (wait for it) share…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFood for Thought.. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/food-for-thought-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Food for Thought.. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was just speaking to a woman who used to be a parish Director of Religious Education. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}