Youth Ministry as Peace Education: Cultivating Faith that Overcomes Silence and Transforms Violence

““What if, rather than using youth ministry as a way to protect youth from the world, our youth programs equipped young people to navigate, resist, and even transform the violence and disempowerment endemic in our communities and institutions?” ”

Team Members/Contributors

Elizabeth W. Corrie Emory University Contact Me

About this sabbatical grant for researchers

Peace education, civic engagement, and service learning scholarship has already identified effective strategies for teaching students skills, habits, and concepts to increase empathy, engage in conflict constructively, understand and counter structural oppression, resist either/or thinking, and overcome disempowerment. Yet the field of youth ministry has not tapped into this scholarship. We practitioners have missed opportunities to bring to the forefront of our teaching the wisdom within Christian tradition and practice that can prepare youth to transform violence and oppression as part of their Christian vocation.

My project examines pedagogical interventions in peace and civic engagement education that equip students to understand and address root causes of violence and build peace in institutions and civic life. Through this lens, it then identifies and adapts youth ministry practices that can teach peace effectively in local congregations through building community, engaging in mission and outreach, participating in religious practices, and studying scripture and tradition. By combining the insights of educational research outside typical Christian sources with those from within it that focus on our vocation to become peacemakers, I propose an approach to youth ministry that invites both adults and youth to cultivate Christian faith and practices that can bring Good News in a time of social upheaval and division.

Image Title Year Type Contributor(s) Other Info
  Deliberative Democratic Theological Education: A Proposal for Youth Ministry That Builds Peace 2020 Journal Article Elizabeth W. Corrie
Elizabeth W. Corrie (2020) Deliberative Democratic Theological Education: A Proposal for Youth Ministry That Builds Peace, Religious Education, 115:3, 233-244, DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2020.1768471
Youth Ministry as Peace Education: Overcoming Silence, Transforming Violence 2021 Book Elizabeth W. Corrie