The Contribution of JFSR to Shaping the Field

i find the notion of "the field" to be a curious one this was heightened when i typed in field in the "look it up" line of my Visual Thesaurus program1 as you can see an interesting set of options emerges the field can be an enclosed piece of land that is treeless a battle region a place where practical work is done or data collected away from the studio or office or library or laboratory the space around a radiating body a particular environment or walk of life a piece of land used to play games an extensive tract of level open land [End Page 106] a region in which active military operations are in progress all of the horses in a particular horse race all of the competitors in a particular contest or sporting event (i tried to ignore the fact this diagram is the same as the one for the horse race) a geographic region (land or sea) under which something valuable is found the area that is visible (as through an optical instrument) a place where planes take off and land a branch of knowledge a playful reading of these options can locate jfsr 's contribution in each of these but it is the last a branch of knowledge that i want to give attention to tonight in my brief remarks perhaps because it is the most obvious or maybe even the most tedious but i want to take it on to think through for a bit what it means for jfsr to shape a branch of knowledge turning again to the visual thesaurus as an image and imagination prompt there is one definition the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth [End Page 107] that i want to focus on because here is where a visually imaginative program gets predictable, if not conservative, if not extremely limited but serves my purpose well, because this is exactly what i think is jfsr's strongest suit in contributing to a branch of knowledge the best that the visual thesaurus comes up with is the branch of theology that is concerned with angels the branch of theology that is concerned with the defense of christian doctrines the branch of theology that is concerned with the nature and constitution and functions of the church the branch of theology that is concerned with such final things as death and judgment; heaven and hell; the end of the world the branch of theology that deals with principles of exegesis the branch of theology that deals with sermons and homilies the study of liturgics the branch of theology that defends god's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil as the old black women i grew up with used to say about such narrow visions of life and sanctioning a siege-mentality intellect ummph . . . ummph . . . ummph aside from the fact that so many of the disciplines we find represented in the pages of any given issue of jfsr are missing from this list [End Page 108] or we have a different methodology than the one suggested is the absence of any notion of an engaged pedagogy 2 and this is why, i think, jfsr exists and why it does what it does as editorial board as reviewers as contributors as readers as supporters as critics there is a deep-walking commitment that our scholarship not be a monument to trivialities and utter irrelevancies but that it engage us and our readers in critical discourse that will have a transformative effect in our disciplines in our classrooms and in society and rather than see this as only politics (after all, what in life is not politics?) we see this as a mark of scholarship, intellect, rigorous research, and comprehensible writing simply put, jfsr 's contribution to shaping the field [End Page 109] is that

Field (mathematics · Political science · Pure mathematics · Sociology · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Mathematics · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Study and Philosophy of Religion