embracing present challenges nancy j. ramsay february 10, 2012
TRANSCRIPT
Embracing Present Challenges
Nancy J. RamsayFebruary 10, 2012
Inclusion and Difference
AcademyClinic
Congregation
Status of our Fields
Shift in Guiding Metaphors
Individual
Living Human Documents•Anton Boisen
Ecological
Living Human Web•Archie Smith, Jr.•Bonnie Miller McLemore
Ecological Framework
Intersecting Dynamics in Web of Care
• Political• Systemic• Economic• Cultural• Historical
Public Theology:
Political Dimensions of Care
Embodied Differences Treated Oppressively:• Gender• Race• Class• Sexuality• Religion
Postmodernity
Epistemological Shift
• Authority• Master Narratives out—human subjects in• Social location • Social identity
Critical Postmodernity
Universal Human Rights
Priority for Justice
Ethic of Love
Complex Social Identities
• Formative
• Insinuated by power
• Evolving
• Contextual
New Conversation Partners
Critical TheoryRace
Gender
Sexuality
Class
Sociology
Economics
Theological Developments
Difference as Gift
A human community with no one on the margins
Difference as revelatory of God’s imagination
Theological Developments
Radical Hospitality
Each is host and guest
Community not uniformity
Love rather than tolerance
Theological Developments
Relational Justice
An ethical framework for the practice of Care
Justice in the service of Love
Power as a theological category
Solidarity as allies in the work of justice
Theological Developments
Oppression as Sin
Structural and systemic analysis
Apt metaphors: “lie” “negation of relation”
Sin as Privilege: interlocking systems of advantage reproducing oppression
Theological Developments
Religious Plurality
To see what is sacred in each life
To value the distinctive contributions of each Tradition
To find common ground for the work of healing
Theological Proposal
Embodiment
Embodied human experience as a primary lens for theological understanding
Social memory and particular experience
Intersecting multiplicity of social identities
Particularity of embodied experience
Embodiment and Justice
Resisting Embodied Oppression
“We must begin with ourselves” E. Townes
“…we are in a world we have helped make.”
Working as allies to dismantle oppression
Embodiment and Oppression
Oppression as institutional, systematic processes imposed often unwittingly through practices and norms
Impacting various social identity groups
Systematic injustice as consequence for whole groups of persons who share a social identity
Five Faces of Oppression
Exploitation
Marginalization
Cultural Imperialism
Powerlessness
Violence
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference
Exploitation
The transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to the benefit of another
Enacts an inequitable structural relation between social groups
Marginalization
Whole groups of persons:
• expelled from useful participation in society
• Subject to serious deprivation
• Not allowed to work
• Loss of freedom, dignity, self-respect
Powerlessness
In relation to Professionals:
• Lack authority, status, sense of self
• Take orders rather than give them
• Not treated with respect
Cultural Imperialism
The imposition of dominance
• Symbolic control
• Construction of the “other”
• Rendered invisible
• Marked
Violence
Directed toward particular social identity groups as “dangerous or hated other”
Systematic and irrational,
Tolerated if not encouraged
Five Faces of Oppressionand Spiritual Care
Disclosing intersecting experiences of oppression and privilege
Weighing cumulative experience of oppression
Disclosing practices of “scaling bodies”
Externalizing stigma and privilege
Oppression and Beauty
“Who can tell me what beauty is?” Fanon
The perception of another is
never innocent, ahistorical, or unaffected by power
Tutoring eyes and hearts to “see”
Beauty, Healing, and Justice
“Beauty is consonant with human performance, with habit or virtue, with authentic ethics: Beauty is living up to and living out the love and summons of creation in all our particularity and specificity as God’s human creatures, made in God’s own image and likeness.”
Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom
Theological Imaginationand Embodiment
The particularity of embodied theology
James Nelson, Embodiment
Embodied experience contributes to our imagination about God
Imagination about God shapes experiences of our embodied life
Embracing Present Challenges
Translating new knowledge into ACTION
Fluency with new conversation partners
Second order change
Organizational alignment
Embracing Present Challenges
Fostering Liberative Spaces for healing
Sustaining the work of dismantling evil in embodied oppression