The Theology and Ministry Program of the School of Humanities invites you to the oral defense of the PhD Dissertation entitled “PEDAGOGY OF THE PIGING: An Approach to Doing Religious Education Informed by Alimentary Theology” by JUSTIN JOSEPH G. BADION on April 18, 2022 (Monday), 10:00 am, at DLC 201, Loyola School of Theology. The Board of Examiners is composed of Patricia Lambino, Ph.D. (Second Reader/Principal Examiner), Fr. Jose Mario Francisco, S.J., S.T.L., Ph.D., Fr. Francis Alvarez, S.J., S.T.L., Ph.D., and Cristina Liamzon, Ph.D. Rachel Joyce Marie Sanchez, Ph.D. is the Dissertation Adviser. The defense is being held in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Theology. It is open to the public.
Abstract: The world is in the midst of a global food crisis, aggravated by a pandemic and post-pandemic reality. Although the global food system produces more than enough food to feed the world, many people remain hungry. Gathered around the common table of the world, the Church’s task is transcendental nourishing—a holistic feeding of the world in body, mind, and spirit. Religious educators can partake in this mission by not only integrating the call for food justice within their teaching but also by crafting pedagogy that is informed by alimentary theology—not simply a theology of food, but in itself sees theology as food. The pedagogy of the piging presented in this study is one such crafted pedagogy. Its novelty is in its inspiration from the vision of alimentary theology—a vision of transcendental alimentation that feeds the whole of the human person, as well as the whole of human society and created reality.
The pedagogy of the piging imagines all students as coming to the table of religious education with some manner of deep-seated hunger. This hunger can be found in the physical, social, cognitive, and spiritual aspects of their lives. All people are searching for something, and religious education is a kind of banquet that seekers can attend to find some manner of sustenance, especially in the form of theology as food. This theology encountered in the pedagogy of the piging must be designed as one that not only becomes alimentation but also furthers students to provide others with alimentation, a kind of theology that feeds it forward. It is a pedagogy of hospitality, extending the giftedness of the theological food encountered in the festive table of religious education by encouraging students to become food—to become themselves the piging for a broken world.
To showcase the pedagogy of the piging, this study also presents an application of the pedagogy on the design of an interdisciplinary theology elective on food justice intended to be taught at the undergraduate level in the Ateneo de Manila University.
