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some thoughts re: #scholarstrike
At my undergraduate and graduate institutions, and at other universities as well, I've occasionally heard white whispering, complaints about constructive theological methods employed by some Black professors of theology.
At my undergraduate and graduate institutions, and at other universities as well, I've occasionally heard white whispering, complaints about constructive theological methods employed by some Black professors of theology.
The white theobros want a history of X doctrine and an understanding of how it fits into systematic theology—just, you know, THE systematic theology, I guess. That right one. Or the right ones by the usual people. You know, THEM. You know it when you see it.
Instead of a history of doctrine approach, the professor might offer their own way into the doctrine, their own constructive theology of X, drawing on a variety of sources from the early church to today, perhaps violating the student's desire for discrete historical categories.
The doctrine becomes a portal into a way of seeing God, theology, the world, and history in a manner previously unknown to the student, including components that they may not have been formally taught before, such as racialization, colonialism, gender oppression, etc.
Part of this may involve learning of the violence that has been enabled by certain understandings of a doctrine like creation, perhaps reading texts that don't conform to the genre of how the student thinks theology should be written.
The sources on the syllabus may in fact include a history of doctrine such as the student desires—as a starting place, as a narrative that needs to be questioned, as a history that needs to be revisited and/or resisted, found embedded in the argument, gestured to, footnoted.
This approach to theology necessitates learning to think complexly with a variety of sources, histories, and literatures. It involves systematic thinking, even if a driving desire is to end the reproduction of doctrines and systems that, e.g., turned Black people into property.
It involves learning to read in more ways, finding the theology driving a narrative, not having the theology handed to you, but thinking through it from one point to the next, making connections alongside a text, learning to think through others' idioms.
Nevermind that all of these things are crucial to the study of any theology, including however you want to construe the Western Canon TM. It is truly learning how to think.
Encountering texts not typically found in that canon involves learning to see the limits of that canon and, for some white students, confronting one's desire to remain within it, to disappear into it, really.
Most basically, what is required is willingness to learn from a Black scholar.
Maybe in theory one is, but as soon as one's assumptions are questioned, the whispered response is not "perhaps I need to learn how to think differently" or even "I disagree" but "this isn't theology... this isn't SYSTEMATIC theology"—you know, the true one.
Meanwhile, the white scholar in biblical studies can teach historical criticism (and that alone) and break the minds of a roomful of evangelical white students who are so willing to follow him there, so willing to learn and be fundamentally changed, as he smiles broadly.
I've been in that undergrad classroom and in the classroom of the next course in the mandatory sequence, in which a Black theology professor taught systematic theology in the wake of the previous course's demolition job.
He drew on Bonaventure, Douglass, and the Isenheim Altarpiece among others, spinning a stunning vision of who Jesus is and what theology can be. But, "he doesn't do theology."
I've been reading Willie Jennings's After Whiteness and these pages shared by Ed are very relevant, so I'll end this thread with this passage. https://twitter.com/an_edcentric/status/1303027554790539264?s=20
I hit "tweet" before I was done editing the thread! Was going to add: the racist delegitimization of a Black scholar's work and teaching in the guise of a methodological complaint is also a convenient way to have to think less.
Finally, when I've heard them over the years, these complaints are levied by straight white men who would like to do PhDs and who believe that their odds for getting in are worsened bc they are straight white men—which simply isn't true.
Here, unwillingness to be interested in anything beyond the Western Canon TM becomes a paranoid prophylactic against the potential for future self-doubt.
