New Brunswick Theological Seminary

In their first revised core course, NBTS plans to provide scientific information that will enable students to understand the “how” of prejudice, such as how the imprinting of racism, sexism, classism, etc. is in the brains of everyone involved. A second related focus will confront some of the pseudoscience that has forged the pillars of systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. The second revised core course will introduce student to social science methodologies that they will use to conduct place-based research and critical analysis of their social contexts. At the same time the course will provide a framework whereby students critically examine and formulate public expressions of faith that foster the transformation of the very contexts in which they serve.

The campus-wide event will cover three topics: The science of prejudice; Pseudo-science and minoritized peoples, and Pseudo-theology – interrupting the colonial agenda. The science of Prejudice will consider how people’s bodies are marked by prejudice such as the neurological wiring of the brain. The Pseudo-Science and minoritized peoples section will consider how science has been used as tool of oppression and the destruction of people of color, particularly in urban spaces, within the US and across the globe. Psuedo-Theology – interrupting the colonial agenda, allows participants to interrogate the way theology has been and continues to be complicit in the colonization and exploitation of peoples with and without the help of pseudo-science. In many theological institutions the western hegemony on meaning-making about the divine remains sacrosanct. There is the need to interrupt this process and decolonize the minds, bodies and theological spaces to become bodies and spaces committed to liberation.

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