- unpack ("Let's unpack that idea a little more")
- deconstruct ("we need to deconstruct the false binary of gender")
- Godself/God's (gender-neutral language please!)
- context ("What's your context?")
- privilege (white, male, hetero, US, etc)
My classmates and I sometimes laugh at ourselves and the way we throw around these terms, but language is important, and it often expresses ways of thinking and being that we often assume are universal. We spent a lot of the first semester "deconstructing" some of those ways of thinking--recognizing the ways in which people of privilege (whether by race, gender, economic status, education level, sexual orientation, citizenship, etc.) assume that their experience or way of thinking is universal or "normal."
One of the clearest analyses of this kind of examination of privilege (and the powers that accompany it) is an essay call the White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. The author, Peggy McIntosh, is a white woman who uses her understanding and experience of sexism to begin to "unpack" her own white privilege. Much of my first semester of seminary has been exposing me to different invisible knapsacks, which ones I wear, and the experiences of those knapsacks by people who do not wear them.
I came into seminary with a decent understanding of the way sexism functions in our society and my own life. I also, as a result of my years as a Young Adult Volunteer in Guatemala and Nashville, had some experience in understanding myself as a person of privilege by my US citizenship and how that plays some part in all of my relationships with people who are from different countries. I even understood that non-US citizen women faced different challenges than non-US citizen men and than US-citizen women. What I didn't understand was specifically how others may experience oppression and that their goals and ideas of what is liberative are often different than mine, even when the ultimate goal is to challenge oppression in various forms.
I've listed below (in no particular order) some of the books I read this semester that best helped me understand others' experiences and perspectives and, thus, opened me to new ways of seeing God and of creating my own theology.
- Sisters in the Wilderness by Delores Williams
- A student of James Cone and former professor at Union, Williams talks about womanist theology, and her examination of Hagar changed the way I understand the Abraham story as well as giving me a glimpse into the experiences of African American women who are concerned not with liberation but with survival according to Williams. She also gives a convincing critique of atonement theory, saying that anything that is forced suffering cannot be liberative or redemptive. (Womanism is a black women's movement that looks at power within the intersection of gender and race--it is often a direct response to feminism, which many women of color rightly accuse of being largely a white middle-class women's movement)
- Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick Cheng
- This is a very introductory-level book about queer theology but was possibly the book that most challenged my notions of God and Jesus. It's a good starting point for queer theology.
- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
- Continuing on the queer theology vein, this book is a collection of essays by black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde that examines lots of the -isms in our society and how they are inter-related
- The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
- This is my theology professor's most recent book that is an easy-to-read (but not easy-to-stomach) that examines the ways in which the lynching tree where so many black (and a few white) Americans were killed is a modern-day cross. Dr. Cone is the founder of black liberation theology in the US and describes his theology as being influenced by both Dr. King and Malcom X
If any of you do read some of these books I'd love to hear your thoughts about these books and/or what you might add to this list. Happy Reading!
