Understanding and Overstanding: Religious Reading in Historical Perspective

Abstract

I SUGGEST THAT, in universities, we often use the word 'understanding' when we mean 'overstanding'. This is connected to relying on limited approaches to reading, ones that are forgetful of religious ways of reading. I offer a critical retrieval of religious ways of reading, practised in the past, and suggest how they might be included in the university today, thereby providing a richer form of educational experience for students.

Reading for understanding: Methodist youths’ shared Scripture- reading practices

“…With the exception of “making comments,” the youths’ five strategic reading practices are part of the robust reading repertoires of skilled readers (Harvey and Goudvis, 2017; Keene and Zimmerman, 1997; Pearson and Dole, 1987; Pressley, 1976). The current study complements and extends Sullivan’s (2007: 25) “clusters of factors” that can influence students’ religious reading. Sullivan’s factors include the “chance and unforeseen circumstances and connections” (Sullivan, 2007: 36) that serendipity can bring to a reading, students’ “hopes and fears” (p. 35), and their “knowledge, maturity and intellectual capacity” (p. 35).…”

“…The current study complements and extends Sullivan’s (2007: 25) “clusters of factors” that can influence students’ religious reading. Sullivan’s factors include the “chance and unforeseen circumstances and connections” (Sullivan, 2007: 36) that serendipity can bring to a reading, students’ “hopes and fears” (p. 35), and their “knowledge, maturity and intellectual capacity” (p. 35). The present study moves beyond broad “clusters of factors” to identify specific religious reading practices.…”

“…A clearer understanding of the manner in which youths read Scripture can provide religious researchers and educators with the knowledge to make more informed decisions about what counts as Scripture-reading in a given institutional (or individual) context. Moreover, greater awareness of Methodist youths’ Scripture-reading practices can help clarify broad theories of religious literacy (Pike, 2007; Sullivan, 2007) by providing tools and insights that can be used to inform youths’ Scripture-reading experiences.…”

Overstandin: Upscaling reading positions and rescaling texts/signs

“…But, overstanding is also used in semiotics and literary criticism (Booth 1979;Culler 1992) and theology (Sullivan 2007). Here it is deployedwithout acknowledging its Rastafarian roots or recognising its etymologyto create critical reading positions for analysts that go beyond asking narrow questions about a text's meaning.…”

“…Here it is deployedwithout acknowledging its Rastafarian roots or recognising its etymologyto create critical reading positions for analysts that go beyond asking narrow questions about a text's meaning. Sullivan (2007) maintains that what we usually regard as the modern scientific perspective of understanding (Kant's Verstand, Weber's verstehen) is in fact better conceptualised as overstanding. The modern reader is agentive and places herself above the text, as it were; analysing it, dissecting it, critiquing it, dominating it.…”