I would like to draw your attention to one more book on Christian education, this one from the perspective of a North American Hispanic man (my last post highlighted a Christian education book by an African American woman). Robert Pazmiño is a professor of religious education at Andover Newton Theological School, who felt inspired to learn more about his Latin American roots with his family. He journeys to Costa Rica and his ancestral homeland of Ecuador. The resulting book is a way of applying his lessons learned on that journey to his profession in equipping Christian educators.

In the first two chapters, Pazmiño reviews Latin American liberation theology, particularly those ideas related to pedagogy. He discusses the threats (“destroyers”) to life as God intended and calls to action as proclaimed by folks like Gutierrez, Boff, Guillermo Cook, and Orlando Costas. His discussion of education and its relationship to liberation theology appropriately centers on the work of Paulo Freire.

Pazmiño takes the rest of the book to flesh out what those theories look like in North American Christian education. He outlines how lessons from liberation theology help us in leading transformative Christian education. He also provides the reader with a tremendous resource for wrestling with multicultural challenges in North America. Any educator in the church would be wise to tackle this book along with Wimberly’s (see last post) in order to consider out-of-the-box ways of approaching educational ministry. As for me, I will be looking for ways to adapt these insights into the academic classroom in my search for creative pedagogy.