Use of Novel and Film in the Introductory Class: How Five People You Meet in Heaven Teaches First Year Students to Practice Theology Main concept: Use of novel/film to teach theological method in introductory theology classes Methodology: Presentation with readings/film clips/student papers based on novel/film Five People You Meet in Heaven Grounding Sources: Research on First Year Experience/Success; Rebecca Chopp (Feminist Pedagogy); Michael Himes (Teaching and Joy); James and Evelyn Whitehead (Theological Method). One of the challenges of teaching theology at the undergraduate level is the introductory course. It is a course designed to offer a broad survey of both content and method; it is a gateway course for other theology courses, if required by the institution; it is a course in which future majors or minors might get “hooked” by the discipline itself, and where bright students might be identified and encouraged. It is also often considered a retention tool by the institution, as the research on first year students and their success in gateway courses seems to indicate. First year students routinely come to the first class (in this case at a religiously affiliated university) quite unhappy to have paid a great deal of tuition money to take a course so unrelated to career success as Introduction to Religious Studies, and are sometimes quite vocal about their unhappiness. In response, I ask students a series of questions: Have they ever loved someone who didn’t love them? Have they ever wondered why we love people and then they die? Have they ever wondered what happens when someone dies? Why do people suffer? In sixteen years I’ve never had a class where these questions don’t get the attention of even the most cynical student. My contention is that the deep questions of theology – of existence and meaning – are questions many first year students have already encountered in their lived experience, often without theological or philosophical frameworks to guide them. What’s missing is theological method to ground this reflection. A bridge to both the methodology of practical theology, rooted in experience, shaped by culture, illuminated by religious tradition, as well as the content of theological reflection, that I have found highly effective is Mitch Albom’s Five People You Meet in Heaven. Albom dedicates the book to his uncle “who gave me my first concept of heaven. Every year, around the Thanksgiving table, he spoke of a night in the hospital when he awoke to see the souls of his departed loved ones sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him. I never forgot that story…Everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected. The version represented here is only a guess, a wish, in some way.” It begins with the author’s reflection on personal experience in his life which lead him to reflect on ultimate meaning in novel form. This best-selling novel, both as a novel and made for television film (2004), offers images and language to talk not only about difficult theological issues but offers a methodology for such reflection at a level that engages students across religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity, and offers access to some of the more difficult theological questions to students who begin college academically under-prepared as well. The most engaging conversations I’ve encountered on the topic of forgiveness are as a result of this novel. In the face of forgiving his abusive father, Eddie, the main character is told: “Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves”. It is a counter- cultural Gospel message in literary form that helps to teach a methodology of theological reflection. It is this experience of success I would like to explore and share with other educators.