Two pieces of powerful public theology crossed my path today, addressing painful current events. In one, Mihee Kim-Kort, a Korean American Presbyterian minister, calls out the bad theology which, going hand in hand with patterns of anti-Asian prejudice in the U. S., led to the horrific attacks in Atlanta last week. She recounts growing up within a Christianity which could not imagine a woman preaching.
Kim-Kort contrasts this with the inhuman Evangelical "purity culture" which shaped the Atlanta killer, unable to see others as anything but threats - especially Asian women, already denied full reality as Americans by entrenched stereotypes. Reports that the killer had a "strong Christian faith" gave me chills. The stronger Christian faith Kim-Kort describes gives me hope.
The other piece is by James Alison, long a hero, a pathbreaking gay Catholic theologian who manages to rise above rancor at churchly homophobia to prophetic love. In his newest piece he's responding to the recent Vatican announcement that forbade priestly blessing of same-sex unions (not to mention marriage). Alison's response is to describe the announcement as a "tantrum," and to recommend readers not take it personally. The writers are like people who've locked themselves in a small room, a conception of "objective truth" which does not do justice to the reality of God's creation. Their conniptions represent "self-fueling delusion at work." If only they could leave their little room, they'd see a world full of things to bless.
And this is their sadness: our brethren (sic) are locked into an account of objectivity which bears passing little relationship to the reality of creation as we are coming to know it and participate in it. ... Where frightened morality tries to close things down, wisdom, starting from our rejects, opens up the reality of what is, as we undergo being forgiven for our narrow goodness and hard-heartedness, sifting through our fears and delusions. And so we discover our neighbours as ourselves, and how we are loved. ... And so to the matter of blessings given to, received and shared by, same-sex couples: Our Lord teaches us to know a tree by its fruit. He provokes our learning process. And it leads us to find things to bless, forms of blessedness old and new. The power and the glory of the Creator do tend to show themselves through our becoming, as we discern what we are for and who we are. It is a learning which is especially blessed when we find ourselves being forgiven for having categorised groups of people in false ways, and discovering that life is richer and better for all of us when they are encouraged to be who they are.
How different are theologies which exclude and attack the new and the other from those which are able to see in all the work of God, who feel the grace-filled momentum of discovering the divine in more and more of human life! Both Kim-Kort and Alison help us see that a liberating theology, one which liberates us to love the world and all in it, must begin at home with acceptance that none of us is a mistake.
