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The Work of a Gay College Chaplain

Becoming Ourselves in the Company of Others

• By Gary D. Comstock

• Price: $95.00
• Binding: Hardback (also available in Paperback)
• Pages: 170
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 24th August 2001
• ISBN: 978-1-56023-360-2

About the Book

Teach multicultural awareness from preschool to graduate school!

Blending personal experience, theoretical discussions, in-depth research, and practical exercises, The Work of a Gay College Chaplain traces one man's odyssey from effeminate boy to openly gay college chaplain, a journey that led him from a loving childhood through repressed sexuality, gay bars, Union Theological Seminary, and positions teaching preschool children, prisoners, and college students. In all these situations, he discovered that the key to nurturing individuals is discovering and supplying what they need, not imposing on them conventional ideas of what they should do.

The practical application of that philosophy is the heart of this book. It crosses conventional and academic boundaries in its courageous exploration of what it means to be a gay man, a Christian, a teacher, a parent, a minister. Instead of focusing on the problems and victimization of gay and lesbian people, The Work of a Gay College Chaplain celebrates the unique perspectives that gay people can offer to straight people.

This genuinely multicultural book shares specific ideas, exercises, and techniques for crossing boundaries and understanding widely divergent points of view, including:

• parenting techniques for rearing children whose tastes and needs are very different from those of their immediate families
• designing a preschool curriculum that avoids imposing inappropriate cultural expectations of gender and orientation
• writing methods that help clarify issues of identity and self-expression
• developing a theoretical and practical model for relating to people whose experience is different from our own
• creating worship services that work for people of many faiths

People of any age, culture, religion, ethnicity, or orientation can benefit from the process of learning from differences taught in The Work of a Gay College Chaplain.

Table of Contents

Contents

• Preface
• Beginning
• Becoming
• Working
• Chapter 1. Fathering Gay Children
• A Lack of Resources
• Inventing and Preventing Trouble
• Sources of Information for Understanding the Needs of Proto-Gay Kids: Halting Voices
• Changing Men?
• Problems with Initiation and Instruction
• Organizing Meaningful Experience
• Dialogical Guidance and Initiation
• Carrying, Ferrying, Sitting, and Talking
• Chapter 2. Learning from and with Children
• Underlying Religious Principle
• The Pioneers: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• The Second Wave: Mid-Twentieth Century
• Response and Application
• Chapter 3. Examining Preconceptions
• Teaching Prisoners
• Connected and Engaged
• Siddhartha versus Ceremony
• Surfacing Preconceptions
• Practicing What I Teach
• Moving on to Other Contexts
• Chapter 4. Interfacing
• Resources for Interfacing
• Central Viewpoint of Lesbian-of-Color Theory
• The Opportunity for Interface
• A Method of Connection and Interaction
• Fusing Experience, Theory, and Social Reality
• Testing the Theory
• Implications for Teaching
• Chapter 5. Writing for Students
• God-Talk
• But Who Do You Say That I Am?
• Open Letters
• Genesis
• Chapter 6. Creating Worship
• Loosening Up and Meeting Needs
• Stumbling onto a Solution
• Vespers
• But Is Vespers Christian Enough?
• So, Who or What is Worshipped Here?
• Returning Favors--A New Kind of Leadership Role
• Notes
• Index
• Reference Notes Included