Embracing Present
Challenges
Nancy J. Ramsay
February 10, 2012
Status of our Fields
Inclusion and Difference
Academy
Clinic
Congregation
Shift in Guiding Metaphors
Individual
Ecological
Living Human
Living Human
Web
Documents
• Anton Boisen
• Archie Smith, Jr.
• Bonnie Miller
McLemore
Ecological Framework
Intersecting Dynamics in Web of Care
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Political
Systemic
Economic
Cultural
Historical
Public Theology:
Political Dimensions of Care
Embodied Differences Treated Oppressively:
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Gender
Race
Class
Sexuality
Religion
Postmodernity
Epistemological Shift
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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
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Formative
Insinuated by power
Evolving
Contextual
New Conversation Partners
Critical Theory
Race
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 Oppression
and 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 Imagination
and 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