Joel Musser is a doctoral student in systematic theology minoring in comparative theology. He is concurrently pursuing a Licentiate of Sacred Theology through the Gloria L. and Charles I. Clough School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.

Prior to his time at BC, Joel spent over a dozen years working in ministry and education with children and adults of all ages and abilities in a variety of capacities and settings. He remains active nationally in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS), a holistic and ecumenical approach to religious education based on Maria Montessori’s pedagogical method and the biblical-liturgical theology of Sofia Cavalletti.

A guiding hypothesis of Joel’s, which comes from Montessori, is that profound personal and social transformation is possible if we follow the child. As Jesus said, we (adults) must become like children. Indeed, this is a universal religious truth.

In terms of comparative theology, Joel is interested in recovering the interreligious potential inherent in Montessori’s pedagogy and philosophical anthropology, which has fallen by the wayside in both practice and theory. Cavalletti’s catechetical pedagogy is similarly universal—catholic with a lowercase c—and fits any Christian tradition due to the essentiality of the child.

In a forthcoming book chapter, Joel brings Maria Montessori and Romano Guardini into conversation on the theology of work and theological anthropology to describe how, in addition to parallels between pedagogy and the liturgy, adults are (or ought to be) formed by children (“become like children”) as they form children (as parents, educators, neighbors, etc.).    

Joel enjoys pursing the theological issues at the heart of these topics: creation ex nihilo and the Incarnation, Christology and the Christ-Child, Trinity and imago trinitatis. These in turn raise interesting epistemological and methodological questions, which, he contends, must involve aesthetic and ethical concerns.

Other interests of Joel’s include evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, semiotics, and phenomenology.