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)

Theological 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

impression of transformation. This has been made apparent by the many education institutes that are going through processes of curriculum development where liberal efforts are being made to diversify reading lists, and include more black scholars and women on the list, yet the systematic injustices of existing inequalities remain intact. There has to be an acknowledgement that the ways in which theological knowledge and power has been historically imposed has been done so through the violence of racism, sexism, heteronormativity and classism. Consequently the issue of inequality is systemic and deeply rooted, failing to address these realities will offer little transformation for those who have been marginalised by the dominant concepts, norms and values that have prevailed from the norms of empire to the pedagogies of theological education institutes in the UK.

Exploring such realities requires a conscious awakening and interrogation of our own complicit self. Because in order to create life-flourishing curriculums staff and students must become conscious of the life-denying aspects of the curriculum. To become conscious is to become aware of the unequal power dynamics that exist both within and outside of the classroom, and to recognise one’s own complicity in the systems of inequality in order to challenge the unequal relationships of dominance. The black womanist writer Toni Morrison makes the point that we need to “take away the gaze of the white male” and notes that “once you take that out, the whole world opens up.” (Morrison 2012) This is about addressing the imbalance of power and not seeking to theologically define who we are before God in ways that have been normalised by white, male, middle class, heteronormativity. It also requires a profound questioning of what world or whose world theological questioning and formation is being developed in. Any serious efforts to address the imbalances of power cannot simply be a process of adding books to reading lists from black and ethnic minority theologians and women, or adding modules to the existing arrangements of knowledge that leave the existing power dynamics intact. Though this is needed it also requires deconstructing systemic injustices through education and action by critically examining existing presuppositions of knowledge and theological thought.

Theological Education and Consciousness

Theological Education Institutes and universities in the UK remain uncontested sites of power, places in which social and societal norms are being reproduced. As such we are often not given the spaces or even the tools to contemplate God in ways that may help us to challenge systemic injustices. Questioning the politics of church and society is often not encouraged, as theological education has been dominated by what Freire has referred to as a “banking system” of education, where “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.”4 Ignorance is most commonly bestowed on the students and scholars who are black, women and working class, as there exists a hierarchy of opinion, knowledge, theory and critique where the ruling classes are deemed the most trusted in their insights. This can lead those at the bottom of the hierarchies to internalise feelings of inadequacy, un-belonging, and unworthiness. And this remains the case despite the rise in diversity of students studying theology in the UK because the social powers remain intact and have not been critically challenged, thereby perpetuating existing inequalities. Those in power therefore retain control over not just theological education but also mission, because they perpetuate their understandings of God’s will which can enable them to justify their own social positioning but also profess exclusive or patronising theologies to the detriment of those without power – the LGBTQ communities, women, the working class and people of colour.

Consciousness demands an awareness of the systems of oppression that have forced people into the margins inclusive of racism, sexism, and patriarchy. This requires what Anthony Reddie has referred to as “serious analysis of the wider socio-cultural and political construction of Empire and the ways in which the embedded nature of Whiteness has formed a world in which notions of manifest destiny and White exceptionalism have given rise to a toxic reality built on White supremacy.”5 Such analysis requires an exploration of Britain’s colonial past that has impacted theological

“Consciousness demands an awareness of the systems of oppression that have forced people into the margins inclusive of racism, sexism, and patriarchy.”

education not just in the UK but around the world. As the South African theologian Marilyn Naidoo has remarked: “the lens of colonial difference in institutions has not always been named or given the attention it deserves. Colonial difference is a reference to the spaces—the borders and peripheries of empire that have suffered the negative consequences of modernity.”6 As colonialism has not only impacted the structures of power in nation states but also the minds of the people and the colonised mind is “more subtle and more difficult to identify, resist and transform.” Colonialism has dehumanised indigenous communities, stereotyped people and disregarded their beliefs and religiosities as mere superstition and irrational thought. Through the process of ‘othering’ the colonial gaze distinguishes humanity into hierarchies of worth, the same process is used within the Bible to condemn other nation states and religious groups of being deserving of the wrath of God for believing in other Gods. Education has been used to legitimise such processes of dehumanisation and control and oppress the colonised through the mind. Producing dominant ideologies such as racism, patriarchy and classism that have been adapted into the structures of oppression and remain ingrained in former colonies of the British Empire and within the structures of power within British society.

There has been no process of reckoning for the atrocities of empire and the complicity of the church in the UK, therefore there has been no reconciliation or forgiveness because the past has been suppressed to meet the needs of the present for those who maintain power and privilege. British society is very good at brushing things under the carpet, keeping a stiff upper lip, and masking its sins and failures. For the British elites and establishments to critically address British imperialism and to confess to its atrocities would lead to critical questions about those who maintain the power in this nation, and it is much easier to live in denial, excuse slavery, racism and exploitation, and to suggest it is simply a thing of the past, despite the Prime Minister openly rejoicing in its glory, and society becoming increasingly intolerant. Consequently the legacy of theological education remains Eurocentric and rooted in the imperial idealism of the empire and its church, meaning the ways in which we have historically contemplated God and reasoned with our place and purpose on earth has been understood through the lens of the white ruling class in this country and this too often remains unchallenged.

As not all theological educators and students are content with discussions of identity, racism, and patriarchy in theology, with some ridiculing theologies of liberation including feminist and black theologies, and others more subtly choosing to keep such discourses off reading lists and modules. The Mud Flower Collective of theological educators in the USA, a group of feminist and womanist scholars, outlined that those who ridicule such theologies, “are those who have sizable investment in holding the power in place in prevailing patterns of social organisation – often those who are already holders in institutional power...”8 The same applies in the context of the UK where theological truths and methods are maintained by the custodians of knowledge and the views of those on the periphery are not trusted or respected. This epistemic struggle therefore demands a rethinking of theological education in the shadow of empire and in the midst of patriarchy, racism, classism and heteronormativity, in order to gather the untrusted insights of the oppressed and contemplate God in resistance and solidarity. To do so requires a conscious awakening to the interrelated narratives of struggle – where theological education must situate itself in the histories of racial violence, interreligious intolerance, sexism and LGTBQ hatred and abuse. Awakening to such struggles enables a challenging of the systems of knowledge that have enabled such violence and subjugation to occur, the systems that have said ‘trust in the white, straight, middle-class priest’ but not in the othered. The system that has enabled and justified centuries of theological oppression and abuse.

As “there’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.”9 For the theological educator that does not seek social transformation for the oppressed, their interest lies in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.”10 In other words, ‘educating’ the oppressed to accept the white, heterosexual, patriarchal, middle class way of thinking and being. A tool used by the missionaries during colonial rule in order to infiltrate the colonised mind with Victorian norms and ideals. For the liberal theological educator they give off the impression of promoting diversity, adding a seat at the table for one scholar of colour and a few spaces for white middle class women, in order to suggest that transformation has occurred. Yet in reality this is tokenism in diversity used to appease the conscience of the liberal educator whilst maintaining the status quo. This way trust in the knowledge that they profess and their social status remains intact within the system that granted them their powers. The theological educator that believes in a life-flourishing and life-affirming education believes in emancipatory education, a theological education that is in itself an act of liberation – not oppression and control. Where the theological educator enters into affirmative spaces of dialogue and enables transformative contemplations on God where students are able to be truly critical and conscious of their own identities and being. In doing so, they are committed to structural analysis and institutional change.

Christianity is a radical faith, its Scriptures speak of resistance and revolution, and its disciples are called on to be countercultural, to take up the cross and resist the oppressive systems that killed their Messiah. Our theological education must then be radical if it is to be Christ-like and life flourishing. To be radical is to be committed to human liberation, it requires a curriculum and pedagogies that are not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. One that is not afraid to meet the people or enter into dialogue with them and it must be aware of the context in which seeks to form people in their education and ministry. In the context of the UK this means acknowledging that our missional and theological history has been rooted in the complexities of the legacies of war, slavery and occupation. And it requires acknowledging the context of today, one of global inequality, where we are at times capable of drowning out the cries of the poor, the plight of the refugees and those who suffer the most from climate change - another link on the shackle of colonisation. And, of course, I write today during a global pandemic, that is fuelling existing inequalities. As alongside COVID-19, what runs rampage around the world is a virus of inequality, one that plunders our planet for profit that comes in the suit of a lobbyist calling for tax cuts for the rich and the privatisation of healthcare for the poor. One that violates a person’s right to the fullness of life, denies reparations for slavery and colonialism, and manipulates the spread of a global pandemic to fill the pockets of the billionaires.

A theological curriculum that is life flourishing is therefore dialogical as it involves addressing the history of colonialism whilst acknowledging embedded colonial norms, where whiteness and patriarchy continue to oppress the colonialised. It challenges cultures of dehumanisation and impunity and gives focus to the indigenous theology and theologies of liberation born out of struggles and resistance. A theological education that focuses on being life flourishing like the Canaanite woman subverts the master’s tools and challenges notions of theology and mission that are imposed from a position of privilege, power and possession, by addressing such power dynamics. It must also resist the temptation to embed itself in the safety of the academy and in doing so distance itself from the reality of the struggles of the people.

Dr Eve Parker, MTh, MLitt, PhD (University of St Andrews) is a feminist theologian in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. Her recent publications include Theologising with the Sacred 'Prostitutes' of South India: Towards an Indecent Dalit Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2021). She is also currently working on a book entitled: Trust in Theological Education (London: SCM , 2022).

1John Gascogne, “Introduction: Religion and Empire, an Historiographical Perspective”, Journal of Religious History Vol. 32, No. 2 (2008): 159-178, 164. 2See, Dirk Michel-Schertges, “Free Choice of Education? Capabilities, Possibility Spaces, and Incapabilities of Education, Labor, and the Way of Living One Values”, in Facing Trajectories from School to Work: Towards a Capability-Friendly Youth Policy in Europe eds. Roland Atzműller et al. (Switzerland: Springer, 2015): 73-87, 77. 3Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 47. 4Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 45. 5See, Anthony Reddie, “Reassessing the Inculcation of an Anti-Racist Ethic for Christian Ministry: From Racism Awareness to Deconstructing Whiteness”, Religions, 11, 497 (2020): 1-17, 6. 6Marilyn Naidoo, “Racism, whiteness and transformation: reforming the space of theological education in South Africa”, International Academy of Practical Theology Conference Series, (2019): 168-175, 169. 7Marilyn Naidoo, “Racism, whiteness and transformation: reforming the space of theological education in South Africa”, International Academy of Practical Theology Conference Series, (2019): 168-175, 169. 8Katie G. Cannon et al. God’s Fierce Whimsy: Christian Feminism and Theological Education (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1985), 12. 9Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 34. 10Simone de Beauvoir, La Pensée de Droite, Aujord’hui (Paris); ST, El Pensamiento politico de la Derecha (Buenos Aires, 1963), 34.