In this video I discuss both Spiritual Wounding and Narcissism. Two subjects that seem to present themselves more often than I’m happy to admit. Carol Howard Merritt offers tangible pastoral advice about working through our religious and spiritual trauma that doesn’t reject God and spirituality completely. Chuck DeGroat walks us through understanding narcissism and systemic narcissism. Both books work symbiotically looking at the victim of spiritual abuse and the abuser.
None of this is easy. This subject matter is difficult to talk about yet important. Because, sadly, if the church is going to become what it can be for future generations, then it needs to go through this transition of death into new life. Fearless and honest moral inventory of the self is the only way forward for both the the clerics and authorities of the church and the church herself.
Simultaneously the charge is also leveled against the academy. Too long has it been that narcissists and those who spiritually and intellectually wound and manipulate have been able to hide in your folds. Those who abuse women, people of color, the lgbtqia+ community, standing on their shoulders for self-promotion and narrative promulgation can no longer run for refuge to the academy. No longer shall we be okay with the “good” theology of those who privately drive into the ground those close to them (family, friends, colleagues, and students). It is one thing to tromp around social media excoriating people for false belief and malrepresetantion, and it is another thing to be the person of substance who invokes action on the ground beyond words spilled from image drunken lips. The sand runs out for those who use smoke and mirror to build and promote their own platforms on the language of liberation of the captives. No longer are creative and charismatic words enough…
Action is necessary. Priests and professors must substantiate their words with their bodies and actions. People are dying, and as long as we keep playing linguistic games of rhetoric, we will be gambling lives…
Episode 2: Ch. 1 “A Hispanic Garden in a Foreign Land”
In the previous episode of our special project, Sacred Seminary Symposium, the host of Seminary for the Rest of Us (@seminaryshow), Sabrina Reyes-Peters (@_sdrp), and I dove into the short yet significant introduction of Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. Sabrina noted in the show notes for this first episode, “There’s a lot to dig into, including privilege in theology, liberation, the kind of fruit theology produces…” And those themes continue in this second episode as we narrow in on chapter one: “A Hispanic Garden in a Foreign Land”. We spent this segment addressing specifically the problem of white feminism, specifically white American feminism, the normativity of white cis-het patriarchal theology as a the plumb line to measure “other” theology (read: theology by non-male, non-white, non-hetero theologians), and the necessity to affirm the work of our sisters who have gone before us in this fight while building for future generations.
Follow along, read along, and let us know your thoughts ! Here are the excerpts we reference:
“True sharing of power leads to mutuality, and that is what we mujeristas ask of Euro-American feminists. It is not a matter of their allowing us to share in what they define as good. Nor is it only a matter of each one of us respecting what the other says and defending her right to say it. Mutuality asks us to give serious consideration to what the other is saying, not only to respect it but to be willing to accept it as good for all. Mujerista understandings must be included in what is normative for all feminists.” (19)
“One of the easiest ways to understand the structure of power in a society and within the women’s liberation movement is to look at how we both construct and express what we think. Let us, therefore, look at language. For example, the fact that the word ‘women’ refers only to middle- and upper-strata white women shows who decides what is normative. All the rest of us, in order not to be totally invisible, have to add adjectives to the word…” (20)
“As long as Euro-American feminists do not share power within the movement with Hispanic, African American, and other marginalized racial/ethnic women, the movement will only be capable of bringing about a liberalization of those who control and oppress. Under these circumstances, the feminist movmemnet might moderate patriarchy, but it will not do away with it.” (20-1)
“As a matter of fact, I think the difference exists in part because what she has told me and the way she has lived have pushed me a few steps farther. I believe we must take time to explain this to our older sisters in the women’s liberation movement. We build on what they have wrought. If we only maintain what they have built, the women’s liberation movement will retreat instead of advancing. Our older sisters in the movement must be told time and again that if we can see farther than they do it is because we stand on their giant shoulders and capitalize on what they have accomplished.” (23)
In this episode Kyle Trowbridge (@kyletrow) joined me to talk about state violence, Judith Shklar, and Bonhoeffer. The question on Kyle’s mind, which is the background to our conversation, is: “How do we think about political and state violence today?” There is a need for a Church response to the state. Referring to Shklar’s work, Kyle highlights that in regard to current state violence and political violence, the liberal political orders should focus on state encroachment and the psychological and physical impact on groups that are being encroached upon (also the different spheres of encroachment: domestic and economic to name a few). If or when the Church opts out of a response to state and political violence in the name of the gospel, it forfeits its realm as the Church, because the Church should hold its ground and confront the problems being created by the state for the people—because it is the Church that is oriented toward the people and oriented toward God, both being the fullness of the commandment of God. We can see this as the ability of the Church and her members to see through the normalization of violence and oppression present in our politics, economics, and our social posture. Also, to refer to Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, there is a need to address the penultimate needs of the people of society before and in order to address the ultimate need: the need of the gospel. Thus, the church can’t opt out of activity on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized in the name of the gospel, because if someone is barely surviving under the oppression of local oppressive rule and authority, then giving them the gospel at the expense of a means to survive is rubbing salt in wounds and essentially telling them their bodies don’t matter. (Sadly, the church is all too familiar with this type of abuse.) The burden is not merely just on the Church as an abstract entity that we can blame when all things go wrong, but also on those who sit in her pews. We as individuals, as Christians, as those who have heard the good word of Christ Crucified also bear the burden to address penultimate needs. Kyle highlights a few tangible ways for our activity in the world: we can organize, we can works for social and common good, we can vote, we can have an eye and a desire to engage with the process of correcting problems (and this means going beyond merely pointing out problems and engaging with solving the problems). Kyle points out the need for this work even if we don’t see the outcome of our labors…calling into light: if we only work for reward, are we are truly human society? I think that’s something to think about. Come listen to Kyle and join not only the conversation, but also the fight for our humanity.
Intrigued? You should be. Listen here:
Kyle Trowbridge is a master’s student in theology at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has as bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University, and is an irrational Indiana basketball fan. His thesis is titled ‘Protestant Theology, Sin, and the Faces of Injustice.’ Kyle’s thesis explores interconnections of democratic and liberal political theory and modern and contemporary Protestant theology around the questions of sin, Christology, and political injustice. His other interests include modern Protestant theology, political theology, ethics, and potential interconnections between liberal theology and apocalyptic theology. Kyle lives in Indianapolis with his wife, Trena, their cat Sameya, and two dogs, Paxton and Leland.
LaurenRELarkin.com 