Embracing Present Challenges Nancy J. Ramsay February 10, 2012.

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