237 Relational Epistemology and the Art of Living Together 7 The immediate and spontaneous reactions to this devotion, from students (5 out of 10 spoke during this part of the meeting) and teachers (3 out of 8), revealed recognition within the conversational community. At later points in the meeting, the other members of the conversational community also showed their approval of at least two things that the devotion leader had put forward— namely, in a diverse context, it is necessary to be able to draw a distinction between the unnegotiable core of faith (salvation through only belief in Jesus as the Saviour) and what surrounds that core and can be open for discussion. Teachers may come from different ecclesial backgrounds or traditions, notwithstanding they have to share this conviction because, according to all of the participants, it is fundamental for Christian education. This was also the tenor of the opening devotion in the 17th meeting by a member of the insider group on Genesis 20, the passage in which Abraham distrusts the people of Gerar and their king. Before this devotion, all of the participants read a Bible study by David Smith (2009) that is used at DCU to prepare senior students for their internationalisation tracks. ‘Abraham thinks in terms of black and white’, explained the devotion leader. ‘He sees himself as morally superior because he belongs to God, and the foreign rulers he suspects of evil thoughts and deeds.’ What the devotion leader found especially striking was that God revealed Himself in this story not to Abraham but to the one Abraham suspected of being godless, Abimelech. In the discussion that followed, the participants endorsed this idea. According to the minutes, they all managed to relate the Biblical message of this study to concrete experiences with students. For instance, an outsider group member warned about not only looking at less experienced students: ‘P1 indicates that even after many years of experience with multiculturalism, one can still be very susceptible to developing prejudices’. An insider group member advocated for not taking a harsh approach when students do not immediately manage to avoid prejudices: Abraham’s fears and ideas about knowledge and power are, at the same time, very human. We are all like that and we live in a society with a lot of polarisation. What is needed, according to P1, is to name this openly, but then also to work on the professional role of the teacher and the awareness that comes with it—namely, to be able to deal with these things. Your job obliges you to do things that you don’t immediately feel comfortable with. This is driven by the Biblical commandment of charity. The Bible study on Abraham’s prejudices led the conversational community, as proposed by a member of the outsider group, to conclude that Abraham’s
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