The Share Christian Praxis (SCP) methodology developed by Thomas Groome is an excellent approach to justice education. It is an action-reflection methodology, grounded in the experience and social setting of the individual or community. SCP includes six elements, beginning with the life experience of the person, engaging him or her in critical reflection on that experience, relating that experience to the Story and Vision of our Faith (the Scriptures and Tradition), and concluding by reflecting on the meaning of the learning and the implications of this learning for his or her life.

SCP is a learning methodology that may lead to individual or group action for social change, but could also result in direct service, a commitment to further study, or a shift in attitudes.

Focusing Activity

The purpose of the Focusing Activity is to bring the attention of the group to bear on the theme or issue of the lesson so that they can begin to identify it in their own life, their family, culture, society, church. The focusing activity is meant to grab the attention of young people through an experiential learning activity. It tries to help young people look at their own activity (beliefs, values, attitudes, understanding, feelings, and doing) around the theme of the lesson.

Some learning experiences need very short focusing activities because the topic is easy to draw out from their life experience and concerns (topics like sexuality, personal growth, relationships, moral dilemmas). For young people who are or have experienced the injustice being explored, the Focusing Activity helps them to get in touch with the experience. At other times there is a need to draw young people creatively into the topic because it may, on the surface, seem removed from their current life experience and concerns (topics like Scripture, prayer and worship, justice and peace). In many situations, teachers/leaders will need to create a focusing activity on justice themes to compensate for the lack of experience in the lives of the young people on the particular issue being explored. Experiential activities which help young people affectively enter into the issue are essential at this stage of the learning process.

The focusing activity can be programmed in a number of ways: group activity, story, poem, rock music and videos, a project, scripture reading, role playing, field trip, movie/video, simulation game, creative art, case study, demonstration, reflection questionnaire.

Movement One: Experiencing Life

Having focused the group on the theme or issue of the lesson, Movement One invites the young people to express their feelings and thoughts concerning their experience. Young people are encouraged to express what they already know about the theme/issue, or how they feel about it, or how they understand it, or how they now live it, or what they believe about it. Movement One enables them to express their own life activity (knowing, action, feeling) and that of their community, ethnic culture, youth culture, popular culture or society on the theme/issue of the learning experience.

Inviting the group to express their life experiences on the topic of the learning experience can be accomplished in a variety of ways: presentations, reflection questionnaires, dram/role playing, making and describing something, symbolizing or miming. Helping young people express their present action needs to be done in a non-threatening way. It is important to make it clear that they should feel free to share or simply to participate by listening. Be sure to leave time for silence.

As young people move through the lesson, Movement One becomes the reference point against which they can compare what they are learning and what impact it will have on their lives.

Movement Two: Reflecting Together

The purpose of Movement Two is to allow the group an opportunity to reflect together on the justice theme or issue of the lesson. This will sometimes be intuitive as well as analytical -- engaging reason, memory, and imagination. In exploring justice themes or issues, Movement Two uses an analysis process that engages the young people in analyzing the history of the situation, the major structures which influence the situation (economic, political, social, and cultural), the key values operative in this structure, and the future direction of the situation. By conducting an analysis of the situation, the young people will be able to name the two or three "root" elements most responsible for the current situation.

The teacher or leader will need to provide the group with the resources and information on the problem or issue so that the young people will be able to explore the issue. Through the use of media, guest speakers, printed resources, simulation games, and the participants' own experience of the issue; the teacher can assist the exploration process. In conducting Movement Two it is often helpful to communicate more threatening content through audiovisuals, readings, and outside speakers -- "experts" with a lot of credibility. It is also helpful to anticipate some of the participants' objections and speak to these concerns in the course of the presentation.

It is important not to name the causes of the injustice for the young people, handing them a completed analysis of the issue. Teachers/leaders guide young people to think critically on the structural influence causing the injustice, to identify the causes, and to make decisions about what it will take to alleviate the injustice. Even if presentations are utilized, young people can be prepared to ask the right questions and to debate or discuss what they have seen and heard.

Movement Three: Discovering the Faith Story

Movement Three presents the Story and Vision of the Catholic Christian community in response to the justice theme or issue. The Story is a metaphor for the whole faith identity of the Christian community. Here young people encounter the Story of faith that comes to us from Scripture, Tradition, the teachings of the Church, and the faith-life of Christian people throughout the ages and in our present time. The Vision is a metaphor for what the Story promises and demands of our lives. It is God's Vision of God's reign (the Kingdom of God). We engage people in exploring how we are called to faithfully live God's Vision, individually and as a community -- at personal, interpersonal, and social/political levels of human existence.

From a Christian faith perspective, it is within the Story and Vision that we interpret, make sense out of, and respond to our own Stories and Vision, and to the challenge of injustice in our world. In Christian faith, our own Stories must be interpreted within the Christian Vision -- in dialogue with the Vision. Socially, the norms of peace and justice provide a base from which youth and adults can criticize and evaluate political and economic systems, foreign and domestic policy, as well as the alternatives generated by the young people themselves.

In a justice session the resources of the Scriptures and Catholic Social Teachings, especially the most recent encyclicals from the popes and the pastoral letters of the U.S. bishops provide a rich tradition to draw on in educating for justice. In addition, the Christian men and women who embody in their lives and work the call to justice provide rich role models for others.

Sharing the Story and Vision is accomplished through a variety of means: presentations, guided study (of the Scriptures), media, reading, discussion, research, field trip, group project, demonstration, or panel presentation. Teacher and learner are involved in sharing the Story and exploring the Vision. Learners need to be actively involved in Movement Three, overcoming the tendency for passive reception of the Story and Vision.

It is important to keep in mind the following points in designing Movement Three: (1) the Story shared reflects the most informed understanding the community (magisterium, scholars, faithful) has at this time, (2) the Vision proposed and the Story shared promote the values of God's reign in people's lives -- peace, justice, equality, love, freedom, life, and wholeness, and (3) the Story and Vision engage the participants -- touching the focus, Stories, Visions of their lives as expressed in the Focusing Activity and Movements One and Two.

Movement Four: Owning the Faith

Movement Four provides the group with an opportunity to compare their own life experience and faith with the Story and Vision of the Catholic Christian community. Through this dialogue young people can test out their experience and the Christian Story and Vision can inform their experience. The Story will confront, challenge, affirm, and/or expand the faith of each person. The purpose of Movement Four is to enable the young people to take the Story and Vision back to their own life situations, to appropriate its meaning for their lives, to make it their own. It attempts to promote a moment of "aha" when the participants come to know the Story as their own, in the context of their lives. There will be as many responses to this dialogue as there are people. It is vitally important, at this step, to allow them the freedom to come to their own answers and conclusions. With this freedom people can be guided to see the "why" of the Christian Story and Vision.

Movement Four can be accomplished in a variety of ways: reflection questionnaire, comparing Movement One and Two responses with the Movement Three Story; creative expression of one's learning by writing, creating a role play or a dramatization or a case study, creating an audiovisual presentation video, slide show), creating a symbol, poster, TV or radio commercial; group activity/discussion; imagination activities where people envision how they can live the learning's from the session.

In justice lessons, it is important to help young people envision or imagine what it would be like if the world were transformed by the Story and Vision. Questions like the following could be explored: If the Story and Vision were applied to this injustice what would happen? What would it look like? What would the consequences be for the people experiencing the injustice, for the structures which promote the injustice, for you? For our society? What has to happen to make these changes? How would you do it? It is important to engage young people in imagining a better world. This leads the way to Movement Five.

Movement Five: Responding in Faith

The purpose of Movement Five is to help bring the group to a lived faith response, helping people translate their learning into a lived faith response. Once again, applying the learning must be a free response. Some will be changed by the learning experience and motivated to concrete action, while others will need time to ponder its meanings and implications, and still others will not be affected. The teacher/leader creates an environment which invites a faith response, a decision for living more faithfully as a Christian, but respects the right of young people to choose their own response, even if it is not the response that had been hoped for.

In justice lessons, it is especially important to help young people respond at all three levels of their lives. Young people need to probe the implications of their learning for all three levels. They need to be engaged in developing concrete plans for the coming week (personally, interpersonally, socially); in developing individual or group action projects which involve them in living their faith; service and social change actions in their faith community, school, family, community, society, world); in prayer experiences which celebrate or draw people into reflection on their response; in journaling activities where they can reflect on how they are living their faith. The teacher or leader will need to make available specific ideas for service and social change actions (like programs and action organizations) in which young people can be involved and help young people freely choose a course of action.

Sharlene Swartz, a South African Scripture Union worker, who specialises in life skills training at schools, introduced me to the concept of Shared Christian Praxis, originally documented by Thomas Groome. The following information is largely taken from an e-mail I received from Sharlene.

Many lecturers and teachers are often exasperated by the common assumption among their students that discussion of literature, ethics, or religion is no more than a sharing of opinion or personal taste and that the attempt to establish truth criteria is an affront to their private sensibilities. Shared Christian Praxis provides a practical method that will enable these students to share their opinions and ideas in a manner that not only exposes them to truth criteria but also challenges their opinions, ideas and presuppositions.

The method was described by its originator (Groome, Thomas. Christian Religious Education. Harper & Row, 1981.) as a "group of Christians sharing in dialogue their critical reflection on present action in the light of the Christian Story and its Vision toward the end of lived Christian faith." While proposed as a method for general Christian education its dialectical methodology is valuable in the field of Christian ethical decision making. Its value also lies in that it is a communal process and contributes to the building of the Christian church community as together they work for clarity and answers. This process contributes to the formation of character for all involved as they are apprenticed into this method and develop the necessary critical consciousness it seeks to develop.

This method has a flow to it: beginning with personal shared reflection, moving to input from outside oneself and then back to allow personal dialogue with this input. This is more than "head" learning and becomes "heart" learning, an encounter of two meanings. It is composed of 5 simple movements that although identifiable as separate units, flow together in the rhythm of the method.

Naming present Action

It is an invitation to respond to the focus of the situation/problem/dilemma. This response is not merely an intellectual one but encourages a response at whatever level the expression arises. The important point is that this response must be my response, not their response, or the "correct" response, but personal response in reflective honesty. Questions such as: "What is my response, understanding, feeling, action to this situation?"

Critical Reflection

The key question is: "Why do we do what we do and what are our hopes in doing it?" Critical reflection aims to achieve three things: (1) Evaluate the present, noticing the obvious and developing a critique of it; (2) To uncover the past in the present, and discover how the past influences the present (discover the personal and social genesis of our present action); (3) To creatively imagine and envision the future.
In this movement participants are encouraged to firstly tell their own Story, to discover it and share it. Secondly they are encouraged to discover and share their Vision for their future actions.

In character formation, this critical reflection is crucially important if we are to help Christians mature. Too long the authoritarian approach of teacher-tell and student believe, has been the pattern. This does not equip students to take this given external Knowledge/Content and make it their own, because all too often they are not sure where they are at, and why they are there. If they have been aware of themselves, this has not been accepted and so they are not enabled to benefit from this awareness in the educational event. This movement encourages participants to listen to each other and begin to communicate on a deeper and more authentic level towards the creating of community and a greater civility amongst them.

Christian Story and Vision

Having come to terms with their own Story and Vision the participants now discover by a variety of input options, what the Christian Story and Vision might be. This is the theory input and may take the form of research or an "expert’s" input, or may involve some of the creative techniques discussed above. Notice that this is not offered first, as in most educational situations, but comes after the two crucial movements that precede it. The Christian Vision is a comprehensive representation of the lived response which the Christian Story invites and of the promise God makes in that Story. It is a Story of the Kingdom of God - God’s Vision for creation. This implies that a Christian community is free to place its own emphases on this Christian Story and Vision and use Scripture, Tradition and The Holy Spirit resources as appropriate to its chosen approach.
The third movement is one that moves out from oneself to the community and the fourth and fifth movements take this community Vision and Story back into the personal.

Dialectical Dialogue 1

This fourth movement encourages a dialectical dialogue between the Christian Story and the participant’s Story. "What is affirming in the Christian Story?" "What is challenging?" "How do we need to change as a result of this encounter?" These might be some of the questions that enable this dialectic to take place.

Dialectical Dialogue 2

The fifth movement encourages deeper dialogue between the Christian Vision and the participant’s Vision, and invites a faith response, a decision making process, to choose to live out this enlarged Vision. "Is our present action creative or non-creative of this Vision and how will I/we act in the future?"

Any dialectical process may encourage participants to move beyond the Christian Story and Vision into something that corrupts it. If this happens, it must be clearly indicated what is integral to the Christian Story, and where the participant is standing outside of that Vision.

There are three guidelines to "test" the process of Shared Christian Praxis. These operate under the guidance, in prayer, of the Holy Spirit. These are not mutually exclusive and work together to give the correct balance. The first is about consequences of decisions and choices made and whether they contribute to the building of God’s Kingdom now and in the future. The second is about continuity so that decisions and choices are not in contradiction to what can be discerned by the Christian Community. The third relates to the shared praxis group and its being informed by, and informing the Church in which we all learn together.