Women's Seminar in Constructive Theology

1999

Process Studies, 2021

In this article, a proposal for Christian theology is constructed in relation to racial injustice. This proposal involves “strategic essentialism,” which is informed by feminist theory. This proposal will be explored in light of the views of John Cobb and James Cone.

Theological Studies, 2014

Lisa Sowle Cahill's recent book aims to provide the reader with 'reasons for Christian commitment to justice' and 'to show why just action is necessarily a criterion of authentic Christian theology' (p. 1). In doing so, Cahill draws on a wealth of research in biblical studies, systematic theology, ethics, political the ory and social theory resulting in a cohesive and compelling work. The opening chapter on the politics of salvation argues that the reality of the incarnation of God in Jesus illuminates the embodied and therefore socio-political dimen sions of faith. Therefore, theology must include praxis as a normative criterion because of the centrality of embodied existence within Christian experience. The emphasis on the corporeal and political is brought together with insights from pragmatism as a resource for both theology and ethics. Cahill envisages a threefold connection between pragmatist philosophy and her own work: first, the affirmation that a self is socially constituted; secondly, the word truth does not merely denote a symbol system or set of practices, but refers 'to the cor respondence between reality and a perception about reality' in a relation of agreement; thirdly, such truths engage with, affect and are affected by human realities and relationships (pp. 13-16). From this starting point and in concert with a theologically sensitive, historical-critical approach to the biblical mate rials Cahill proceeds in subsequent chapters to work through several key doc trines and outline their impact on a politically engaged Christian ethic. The first doctrinal locus formally addressed deals with the biblical narratives of creation and sin. With a thorough textual analysis of the biblical materials, Cahill interprets the biblical narratives of creation to offer ample theological material for a fruitful discussion on the dynamics of evil and the possibility of redemption. Cahill highlights that the violence inherent in the evolution ary process of the development of life coheres with the biblical materials in a way which calls a pristine original creation, free from all hurt or suffering, into question. The early narratives in Genesis highlight that before the myth of original sin, humanity still had to subdue a creation which was unruly, give it order through naming, and participate in the overcoming of an original chaos which precedes the divine activity of the creator. While the creative act does not have the violence inherent within it as comparative myths of the ancient world, there is still a need to create and sustain life-giving relationships. In fact, Cahill states that 'moral evil is the failure to avoid or minimize the harm that plurality and contingency can cause ' (p. 48). The divine image is then fulfilled in relationship. This relationship is seen between the two created persons

2002

The Heythrop Journal, 2017

Lynch here criticizes modern individualistic and rationalistic tendencies to dismiss collective passions and traditions. This approach misses inevitable aspects of social life and so 'fails to understand the true nature of collective. .. morality' (2). Further, it is dangerous, tempting us to glibly ignore collective passions and their violent potential. Central to Lynch's critique is the phenomena of 'the sacred', and he aims to illuminate its social role by distinguishing it from traditional religions. Lynch follows Durkheim's functionalism in defining the sacred as a sphere of experience and behavior-namely, that which is 'set apart or forbidden' (23). So anything may be sacred; indeed 'flags, war memorials, bills of rights and child protection procedures' all function as sacred in modern society (24). The sacred is experienced as 'non-contingent' and (note) 'unquestionable' (26). It is discovered not by our disposition to call an object sacred, but in the powerful responses the object elicits, especially when confronted with the profane, a kind of 'evil' which threatens to 'pollute' the sacred (26-27). The sacred, then, creates emotionally powerful social dynamics by reinforcing collective identities in ritual and symbol. Because of the sacred's binding role, 'as a matter of theoretical principle. .. society without the sacred is impossible' (35). This argument is a priori, which perhaps explains the lack of cross-cultural illustrations. Lynch shows the transience of sacred forms with a whirlwind survey from prehistory until the present. Pre-modernity's hierarchical sacred forms collapsed under the Reformation's deinstitutionalization, which separated religion from social life. Modern societies needed other unifying symbols and forms and predominantly settled on nation and humanity as sacred. These should not be understood as secular 'quasireligions,' though (102). Unlike traditional religions, they shape society not as distinct phenomena but in a complex interplay. Moreover, these sacred forms both affect and are affected by traditional religions. Despite the word's connotations, the sacred is not unambiguously positive. It demarcates out-groups and produces powerful collective sentiments. It tends to create 'moral blind spot[s]' and can motivate violence against the profane (120). This unveiling of the sacred's dark side is the heart of the book. Lynch suggests that theology can provide even the nonreligious with resources to correct these violent tendencies. The theme of transcendence reminds us that our sacred forms are not equivalent to moral reality, and the theme of universal sinfulness protects against self-righteousness. These help us see others as human beings rather than sacred/profane symbols. Repeatedly, however, a number of related problems appear which threaten Lynch's main definitions and distract from his normative argument. Recall Lynch's insistence that the sacred is 'unquestionable'. It follows by definition that critical reflection on the sacred, including Lynch's, undermines sacred commitments, thus threatening 'relativism' (14). But why think that the sacred is unquestionable? Lynch thinks we must 'defend ourselves from the unsettling recognition' (41) that 'what we take to be unchanging, universal sacred realities are in fact continually undergoing gradual change' (40). But this conflates ontology with epistemology. Torture can be universally wrong, notwithstanding medieval mores, just as water was H 2 0 before modern chemistry discovered the fact. Lynch himself grants this (14, 152) but nevertheless suggests that 'we can never fully allow ourselves to experience' our understanding of the sacred as evolving 'if those sacred meanings are to have any purchase on our lives' (41). This claim's plausibility rests on the vital-seemingly constitutive-role emotion plays in the sacred as Lynch defines it. Reflection often seems to dispel emotional zeal. But we can apprehend the same object (say, humanity) as valuable with or without certain emotions (though not without any). One can find pedophilia absolutely impermissible without feeling murderous rage. Indeed, Lynch wants this sort of result (146). But Lynch's criterion for identifying the sacred relies on strong reactions (25-30). Does this imply that without gut reactions we can hold something only as 'valuable', not as 'sacred'? This would confine the sacred mostly to negative phenomena, especially since shared values can plausibly bind communities together (another supposed mark of the sacred). Without conceptually clarifying the relations of emotions and values to the sacred, its explanatory and normative value will be unclear. Despite these reservations, Lynch provides an engaging introduction to Durkheim's thought and its recent appropriations (especially by Yale's

The list from which to choose the required three books for this summative reflection was a daunting challenge for this student. I for one would much rather have the professor make choices for me, but, then again, a challenge is always in order when learning a subject anew. When one has a certain paradigm on a particular subject such as “Social Justice”, one that the student found needed to be changed, the more resources addressing the needed new paradigm the better. This student had not so much as heard of any of these books and resources before this class. So, the required statement as such is an easy one and flowed naturally. I suppose the professor can take a certain sense of satisfaction in this, as he should. The Social Justice Handbook, The Justice Project, and Global Pentecostalism, as are all of the other list books and articles within this class syllabus, are now a resource within my library as they should have been all along. Deficiency corrected!

Religious Studies Review, 2009

sophical questions of evidence, the individuation of persons, and idolatry. Throughout these analyses there is also a tenor of cultural critique as Steinbock criticises the modern conception of the self and diagnoses the rejection of vertical relations, which he calls idolatry, as the root of much evil in late capitalist societies. So while the book displays academic rigor it is at the same time a plea for a restored cultural sense of the vertical. Phenomenology and Mysticism stands out as an original work in a genre too often reduced to commentaries on classical figures. Steinbock is an acute phenomenologist in his own right, and this work sets a new standard for the interaction between phenomenology and theology/religious studies. While free of obscurantist jargon, the book nonetheless requires some background in philosophy and religious studies. Still, its fresh approach and its original analyses should make it the necessary point of reference for postgraduate students and established scholars alike. Press, 2007. Pp. vii +146. $26.99. In this text, which appears in SCM Press's Controversies in Contextual Theology Series, the authors insist that controversy demonstrates the inherently democratic nature of feminist theology and continually pushes it toward new ways of transgressing and transforming oppressive structures. Each chapter examines various feminist positions with regard to a particular methodological or doctrinal issue: gender and sexuality, feminist theological hermeneutics, the Virgin Mary, Christology, life after death, and the future of feminist theologies. While providing an overview of significant feminist theological positions, the authors emphasize approaches, like postcolonial and queer theologies, that more radically challenge the sexual, metaphysical, and capitalist assumptions of Western theology. Both authors have written extensively elsewhere on the need for Christian theology to take seriously transgressive sexualities, and this is the freshest insight that they bring to the discussions in this text (see especially the chapters on gender and sexuality and on Christology). It remains unclear, however, what audience is best served by this text. There is little new here for the reader who is well acquainted with feminist theologies, yet the discussions of various thinkers assume this acquaintance, and are too brief to serve well as introductory summaries. Moreover, the text would have embodied its argument more fully, and demonstrated the stated aims of the series more successfully, if the authors' voices were more distinct, thus performing the dialogically constructive nature of controversy.

Message of Solidarity: An Introduction, an Opportunity, and a Challenge by Editor and Professor Sandie McNeel Department of Organizational Leadership Center for Adult and Professional Studies and Graduate School Bethel University, St. Paul, MN, USA Rising Consciousness, as a journal aims to grapple with how to respond to such issues as oppression, brokenness, violence, isolation, and the disenfranchised, and is therefore an opportunity for readers to raise their consciousness and to respond to the challenge to act. There are many forms and locations on the planet today of these issues, and they are all “a disease of the human spirit and the body politic” (Thurman, 1963, p. 127). They are therefore issues Christians must work to diminish. We want this journal to be a vehicle for thinking that leads to action liberating people from passivity, hegemony, and indifference, and on to action, truth, and passionate commitment. Over twenty years ago I read Dr. Allan Boesak’s early book, The Finger of God, never dreaming I would meet him in South Africa in 2006 or that Bethel would be able to host him for our 2008 commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. But thanks be to God, both happened. A month after Dr. Boesak left the Twin Cities, he has had high level meetings in Zimbabwe South Africa, and has written a challenging and compassionate open letter to the Zimbabwean church, which is most sobering. We have chosen Open letter to the Zimbabwean Church as well as articles by Rev. Dr. Curtiss DeYoung and Rev. Seth Naicker to model the kind of consciousness raising that this journal wants to produce. Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak is a renowned South African theologian, anti-apartheid activist, author, and speaker on the issue of reconciliation. Dr. Boesak is a sought-after speaker and preacher, a human rights activist and consultant to churches and civic groups. Dr. Boesak uses his considerable skills, and wide ecumenical, political, and diplomatic experience to serve these communities. Boesak is a regular columnist on socio-political and religious issues in the secular press. Rev. Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung is Bethel University’s professor of Reconciliation Studies. Dr. DeYoung is a noted author and proponent of the work and ministry of Reconciliation. Dr. DeYoung has been afforded the title, ‘The Reconciler’, and goes about passionately developing and mentoring students, as well as prophetically addressing 21st century traumas by speaking nationally and internationally on God’s ‘one-item agenda’, Reconciliation. Rev. Seth Naicker is an activist for justice and reconciliation from South Africa, and is currently completing a Masters in Organizational Leadership, and working at Bethel University as the program and projects director in the Office of Reconciliation Studies. Rev. Seth Naicker has worked in the field of youth development, in post apartheid South Africa, and directed the training of teams of diversity within the organization of Youth for Christ South Africa. The notion of consciousness raising can be aided by Friere’s (1974) idea of critically transitive consciousness, which is characterized by depth in the interpretation of problems; by the substitution of causal principles for magical explanations; by the testing of one’s ‘findings’ and by openness to revision; by the attempt to avoid distortion when perceiving problems and to avoid preconceived notions when analyzing them; by refusing to transfer responsibility; by rejecting passive positions; by soundness of argument; by the practice of dialogue rather than polemics. (p. 14)

The Journal of Markets and Morality, 2012

Justice That Transforms: Volume Three, 2018

While a student at Regent College in the mid-seventies, there was something I knew to be defective in my evangelical pietistic upbringing – glaringly absent actually in two previous years of evangelism on the streets of West Berlin. Clark Pinnock’s “The Politics of Jesus” course taught at inter-term supplied the first piece: the socio-political application of the Gospel. Pinnock also pointed towards, but did not fully present (and has since rejected), a second missing piece: a nonviolent reading of the atonement that was vigorously biblical, traditional, and Good-News-With-Teeth in a world drenched in violence. The book under review, at last for me, is that missing piece. What the author argues is an understanding of atonement he dubs “narrative Christus Victor”. He readily admits its contextual particularity, saying: It cannot be claimed that narrative Christus Victor is the ultimate atonement image and that our problem of how best to articulate the saving work of Christ has now been definitively solved for the remainder of life on earth (p. 228). He writes at the outset: The working assumption in development of this model is that the rejection of violence, whether the direct violence of the sword or the systemic violence of racism or sexism, should be visible in expressions of Christology and atonement…. Thus proposing narrative Christus Victor as a non-violent atonement motif also poses a fundamental challenge to and ultimately a rejection of satisfaction atonement (p. 7).