From Life-denying to Life-flourishing: Curricula in Theological Education By Dr Eve Parker
“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” ~Rosa Luxemburg “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” (Matt 22:15)
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heological education in the UK remains dominated by Eurocentrism and white male middle class heteronormativity. As a result, a small number of theologians have been asking critical questions about the existing inequalities that dominate academic spaces of theological discourse, with some calling for a (de)colonising of the curriculum. Yet for the most part theological education in the UK remains Eurocentric and the norms of colonial Christianity remain ingrained in the academy. This is in part, as a result of the Mission Christianity of Western imperialism has had a lasting impact on theological education, where, as Gascoigne has remarked, “the English drew on their deep reserves of Christian thought and tradition to explain to themselves why they were entitled to have an empire.”1 After all Empire’s need creeds as they seek to conquer and control the land of others, in order to sustain and justify their acts of violence and control, and the British did so in the name of God. Under the guise of a discourse of respectability and morality the British developed a Christian theological narrative that like previous empires used Christendom to attempt to theologically ground its colonial conquests. In doing so it created boundaries and barriers of belonging, shaped by social and moral acceptability and decency and those who violated the boundaries were condemned as heathens, dogs, harlots and sluts. The boundaries enabled the sustaining of the orders of power that were fundamentally white and patriarchal and were embodied in dichotomies that have enabled a simplistic understanding of good and bad, that
being Christian and heathen, virgin and whore, gay and straight, black and white. The Bible has been used to justify such dichotomous thinking as have the dominant discourses of theology, because, as the sociologist of education Paulo Freire remarks, education enables for “the transference of power and privileges…”2 By applying such theory to the theological education institutes – we can witness how social structures such as classism, racism, patriarchy and sexism are reproduced and have enabled for theological curricula that has given the impression of universal theological truths. We see this in the curriculums, the reading lists, the staff representation, and the methodologies of teaching. The Victorian-era paradigm of discipline, obedience and deference has enabled such systems to go unchallenged and to dominate our theological education institutes whilst being further instilled in and by church bodies. The question then is how to go about deconstructing the ingrained notions of belonging, inequality and domination that are fundamentally life-denying to those who have existed and continue to exist on the margins? This is not however about simply creating environments of integration within the current systems that have enabled and justified oppression, it is about the need for transformation of the education systems so that students and staff can become “beings for themselves.”3 In order to create life-flourishing and life-affirming curriculums in theological education it will not be enough to go about a process of diversification of reading lists and staff bodies – this is too often a superficial process used to give an
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