Ekklesial work: toward a feminist public theology (1).

Publication: Harvard Theological Review

Publication Date: 01-OCT-06

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Religion is deeply implicated in contemporary U.S. public life, as demonstrated in the increasing analysis of faith in any given presidential, congressional, or judicial candidate's political viewpoints; in ongoing presidential executive orders that approve government support and funding for faith-based initiatives; and in the continued lobbying by religious groups about a variety of moral and social justice issues such as euthanasia and immigration, to name a sample of recent flashpoint issues. What role do religious claims play in U.S. public life? How does Christian theology help clarify that role? What is the particular contribution of Christian feminist theology to understanding and rethinking that role?

Scholarly studies examining the role and influence of religion in U.S. public life are more frequently emerging from feminist perspectives, especially in the disciplines of ethics and theology. (2) These pathbreaking studies show that feminist religious reflection is concerned with the socio-political order but they do not yet fully articulate a feminist public theology, that is, a feminist theology of public life and of political engagement? What would a feminist public theology look like? What would be some of its significant challenges and contributions to U.S. public theology as well as to contemporary theological reflection?

This essay represents one part of my larger study, a book-length manuscript in-process, that examines gender, religion, and politics in the U.S. context through the lens of public theology, i.e., theological reflection on the interrelationships of religion and U.S. public life. To study one aspect of these interrelationships, this essay aims to construct a feminist public theology, i.e., a feminist theological understanding of U.S. public life and of political engagement, by exploring one predominant strand of U.S. public theology based on its theological anthropology (or theological understanding of the human person-in-community); by opening up the possibility of redefining U.S. public theology and its associated vision, practices, and virtues of public life from a feminist theological perspective; and by outlining some implications of a feminist public theology for doing contemporary theology. In this essay, I propose that the theological concept of the ekklesia of wo/men (4) elaborated by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza provides a potent theological resource for constructing a feminist vision of public life and its attendant practices as well as its virtues of political engagement. My main claim is that the ekklesia of wo/men affords a fruitful theological perspective from which to critically analyze as well as to constructively reshape and reimagine our visions, practices, and virtues of public life. (5) What I will call "ekklesial work" brings to the foreground a major theological task of public theology: to create community, or, more specifically, to imagine and seek to enact a more just, egalitarian, and participatory political community in U.S. public life. Moreover, doing public theology with this task in mind can profoundly impact the locus of contemporary theology and the vocation of contemporary theologians.

* Defining U.S. Public Theology

Public theology in the U.S. context participates in a long Christian intellectual tradition of theological reflection that addresses and seeks to clarify the relationships between church and world, (6) or between the church and what historian Martin Marty called "the res publica, the public order that surrounds and includes people of faith." (7) More specifically, it consists of one major and multivalent site of theological reflection regarding the role of religion in an ever more religiously diverse society. (8) Such projects of theological reflection include public philosophy, which is primarily concerned with interpreting the public significance of religious beliefs and claims through universally applicable philosophical reasons and warrants. (9) Civil religion refers to certain nonreligious texts, beliefs, and symbols in U.S. political life that serve to unify a people around a common national identity (e.g., a flag, such as the U.S. flag after 9/11) or to reinforce national principles and ways of life (e.g., a constitution, such as the U.S. Constitution in recent debates about presidential appointments to the Supreme Court). (10) Political theology, originating in and moving well beyond its initial German theological context, urges social change through solidarity with the nonsubjects of history--a solidarity that is catalyzed by what Johann Baptist Metz called the recovery of the "dangerous memory" of suffering peoples. (11) Populist theologies consist of grassroots theologies, or theologies "from below," that are articulated to support both conservative and civil rights movements. (12)

In my view, what unifies these theological projects is highlighted by the term "public" in public theology. As historian and theologian W. Clark Gilpin has observed, public theology is properly considered "public" because of its "convocative capability," that is, its imperative to conjoin disparate groups (which mainly include church, academy, and society) into an "ultimate public." (13) Thus, the term "public" communicates a main purpose of this kind of theology: public theology acts on a convocative or community-building imperative to theologically envision and enliven a common political order that is designed to counter a potentially excessive individualism and a potentially divisive identity politics in U.S. public life. (14)

If public theology centers on an imperative to convoke or make a public, to create a more comprehensive community among multiple groups, then what kind of ultimate or consummate public is envisioned in public theology? What kinds of practices and virtues of political engagement reflect and realize that vision of public life? The following analysis makes explicit this oftentimes implicit theological dimension of public theology in the U.S. context, namely, its understanding of common life. To this end, I explore one predominant strand of U.S. public theology with particular attention to its theological anthropology (i.e., its theological understanding of the human person-in-political community), its practices for engaging in that community, and its virtues for participating in that community.

In most public theologies the public is identified not with the state but with civil society, with a shared space of political inquiry and debate in a pluralistic democratic society. For example, the "public church," according to Marty, helps cultivate a public within the U.S. political order, which he regards as a democratic assembly of rational civic discourse in which all citizens collectively deliberate and make decisions about their common life. (15) The public or political order is construed discursively, and is characterized as well as constituted by shared norms and practices of rational argument, or rhetorical practices of giving and exchanging reasons in a deliberative model of democracy. (16) Some major Catholic and Protestant figures in U.S. public theology, such as David Tracy, Francis Fiorenza, Ronald Thiemann, and Jeffrey Stout, identify the public order with a discursive realm of debate and deliberation that is defined primarily through public reason. As my discussion of selected writings from these figures shows, in a discursive vision of the public and its practices of civic debate, religious claims are introduced in the U.S. public forum in a widely intelligible way by using shared norms of rational democratic discourse. The goal is to address prominent public issues and policies from theological perspectives, which can in turn cultivate lively civic debate and perhaps begin to build consensus about these particular issues and policies. (17)

David Tracy considers the "public realm" a "shared rational space" that is enabled by "a shared concept of reason." (18) Participation in U.S. civic debate occurs through a communicative practice of rational, persuasive argument, i.e., the giving and exchanging of reasons for political positions and policies in a deliberative democracy. (19) Tracy acknowledges that reason is socio-historically located and conditioned, but still defends its ability to establish a more comprehensive public realm without fueling competing and irreconcilable "particularist interest groups." (20) In a pluralistic public life, reason functions to evaluate not the "origins" but the "effects" or implications of religious claims, symbols, and texts for the meaning of human existence, and especially the realities and possibilities of human life together. (21) Tracy's theological aesthetic figures prominently in his public theology, in that public/civic debate centers on the effects, products, or what he calls "classics" of particular religious traditions. (22) The "classic" highlights the ways in which particular traditions deal with widely shared human concerns. If religious classics address persistent human questions about the limits and joys of human life, (23) then all persons can engage in a conversation that analyzes differing answers to these questions by using shared standards of rational argument, which for Tracy include intelligibility, truth, rightness, and reciprocity. (24) A discursive vision of public life enables rational civic debate about the classics to take place and thus forms a community of argument. Moreover, rational argument plays an integral role in identifying a consensus among different groups regarding how best to support human dignity and flourishing, and thus eventually leads to a community of interpretive evaluation.

Public theology advances a discursive vision of political community that depends not only on practices of reasoned argument but also on a dialogical notion of the person. As Francis Fiorenza contends, Christians are prepared to engage in public discourse not only because they are socialized in political life with rhetorical norms and procedures of rational civic debate, as described by Tracy. Rather, the church itself already constitutes a community of shared inquiry and debate, what Fiorenza calls "a community of interpretation," that deliberates morality, justice, and the good life from Christian perspectives. (25) The church expresses and embodies a community of inquiry that equips people with certain conversational practices required for participating in U.S. democratic debate. Actively deliberating among alternative visions of religious life is preparation for actively deliberating among alternative visions of public life.

Inquiry and debate in the church, according to Fiorenza, are consonant with dialogical practices of democratic debate in U.S. public life. Reasoned argument is also a centerpiece of some theologies of the human person within public theology, such that becoming more fully human takes place by participating in public/political debate rather than by withdrawing from it. Forming persons with virtues for public life and for its civic debate is central to the public theology of Ronald Thiemann. Public theology for Thiemann involves an "experiment in constructing a pluralistic society from the many particular communities that constitute our national identity." (26) Thiemann argues not only that democratic debate supports a pluralistic society but also that such debate serves as the basis of public life and depends on a virtuous citizenry. Democratic debate upholds such virtues as freedom, equality, mutual respect, and justice, which in turn contributes to a common life that reflects similar virtues and values. (27) Thus, debate shapes a pluralistic political community with such virtues; it also cultivates and reinforces such moral virtues in its citizenry so that they are prepared for political engagement. Rather than lament the absence of theology or theological virtues in a pluralistic society, Thiemann holds that religious--alongside civic--traditions play important roles in shaping and socializing persons with such dialogical virtues necessary for public engagement. (28) Thiemann proposes that religious traditions (29) "school" their members in certain virtues (30) for a descriptive, nonfoundational theology that in turn enables the formation of good citizens, or a "civic-minded, public-spirited citizenry." (31) In other words, a nonfoundational approach to theology--which rejects the notion of a transhistorical essence of Christianity and instead stresses...

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