Theological Method

My engagement with theological method begins with my theological anthropology.  What is the role of humans?  My role?  Our role?  As a Christian panentheist and process theologian, I would suggest that humans, like all other beings in the universe, are manifestations of the Divine.  We act independently, but hopefully with our inherent interrelatedness in mind.  Humans are uniquely conscious and analytical, which gives us great responsibility to act in ways that benefit the entire system.  God aids us in this journey by luring us toward paths most advantageous to all, to enter into co-creating a better world until we reach a point of harmony.  This goal is one I refer to as “Kin-dom.”  As a theologian, then, the difference I seek to make must work toward Kin-dom, highlight interconnection, and seek a better world for all.  The process of doing theology must begin with questions related to unique contexts in order to be transformative.  What is transformational can only be such in relation to its starting point.  While we might ask, “Who would care about this work?” I tend to ask instead, “How can I frame this work in a way that elicits care in my community?”  My theological method therefore starts by asking, “Who are we and what are we doing here?  How might our scripture and tradition help us elucidate God’s lure?”

For my particular context and the spiritual community I am currently a part of, “we” are a collection of people, primarily white and upper middle class, more diverse in age and sexual and gender identities than in ethnic backgrounds, although we are from a variety of different places within the U.S. (and some from outside).  While each person brings their own struggles and joys, most occupy a space of “privilege.”  We are mostly financially secure, housed, and tend to be heard and protected members of society.  We are an old, (150 years) mainline Protestant church (Congregationalist/UCC).  As a community, most of us (and the church itself) have tended to benefit from the structures of society that oppress many.  I believe it is the work of the Church to uncover its complicity and engagement in reinforcing oppressive hierarchies and prescribed roles that have siloed and segregated communities and fostered a world characterized by extreme imbalance of resources.  

I prefer my process to be less prescribed than some, moving between and within "categories" organically in response to the kinds of questions raised and while keeping in mind the lenses offered to me by my academic career (postcolonial, feminist, historical-critical, queer, etc.) and the questions the application of such lenses asks us to consider.  Part of unpacking the theologies and worldviews we peddle is the work of criticism and awareness-- of finding how our tradition and theology has been conflated with enlightenment thinking used to promote inequality and injustice (Douglas, 61-64).    In considering our spirituality critically, we can hopefully see which vantage points will not be life-giving for all.  Starting with criticism allows us to see the direction we might need to move in by what merits resistance.

Given my context and the context of the community I serve and am a part of, it is important to ask how our theologies have been used to, and have the potential to, oppress.  Unpacking these paradigms asks us to turn the page in our narrative and to find new ways of finding life in our scriptures and stories that do not reinforce hierarchy.  Stuart offers a vision of God as a passionate friend-- transformative in its capacity to offer non-hierarchic, ungendered relationship of mutuality-- that can allow more space for honesty and vulnerability than the problematic relationship of “Father” (Stuart, 56-61).  This example elucidates how queer theology can “unstick” us from ways of understanding our tradition, much like Jesus did in his time, by asking us to consider a vantage point outside the box.  

Transforming theology requires us to see outside the box that tradition has slowly built over the years (and we therefore hardly notice).  Johnson recalls the peculiarity of our tradition and the ways that we have sterilized what is essentially, a spirituality built upon its penchant for oddity.  Recalling this and “destabilizing the ‘natural order of things’ can bring some surprisingly good news to light” (Johnson, 59).  In unsettling tradition and questioning our theological “givens,” we can find the room to live into our called, authentic lives (71).   

1. Douglas, Kelly Brown. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2015.
2. Johnson, Jay Emerson. Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness. New York: SEABURY BOOKS, 2014.
3. Stuart, Elizabeth. Gay and Lesbian Theologies: Repetitions with Critical Difference. Aldershot, England.: Routledge, 2003.