Activist Theology

Activist Theology

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

ACTIVIST THEOLOGY

Copyright © 2019 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email copyright@1517.media or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN  55440-1209.

Poetry is by Brittíni Ree Belle Gray

Cover image: Jing Jing Tsong c/o Theispot

Cover design: Laurie Ingram

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-2464-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-2465-1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Para Almas Fines—and all who are becoming

For those who buoy me: Nikki, Jared, and Alba

For my lifeline: Rev. Sex

For calling me into being and into a deeper bodily becoming: E

Knowledge is power.

—The Black Panthers

Vale la pena; Do work that matters.

—Gloria Anzaldúa

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

—Ernesto Che Guevara

Contents

Foreword: So What?

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The What and Why of Activist Theology

1. The Darkness of Holy Saturday: Rupturing Complacency and Becoming Transformation

2. Turning Tables in the Temple: Disruption

3. The Struggle Is Real

4. The Psalmist Sings: The Poetry of Protest

5. Following the Ways of Jesus: Enacting Radical Social Change

6. Old Wine in New Wineskins: Reframing Theology as Activism

7. Economic Supremacy: When Class Ascendency Doesn’t Work in Your Favor

8. Activist Theology’s Resilience: A Year after Charlottesville

Coda: Poetry by Ree Belle

Further Reading

Foreword: So What?

In Activist Theology, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza explores neither a theology meant for activists nor merely the theology of activists, but rather invites readers into a way of doing theology that is itself active and transformative, both for those engaged in it and for the worlds in which they live: There is no theology without activism, and there is no activist without theology. It is a theology lived out in the midst of the wounds inflicted by the disruptions and ruptures of systemic violence, and thus marked by lament and even despair, but also traversed by hope. Ignatian spirituality often speaks of a way of being in the world that is simultaneously contemplative and active or, said otherwise, contemplative while active. Jesuit theologians in Central America such as Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino have further contextualized and sharpened this motto, so as to emphasize that we are to be contemplative in action for justice (contemplativos y contemplativas en la acción por la justicia). This book traces out some of the contours for a way of theological contemplation in action and of theological action in contemplation—an activist theology that is deeply aware of the Holy both within and beyond human lives and that is constantly nurtured by that awareness.

Such an activist theology is a theology of the gerund: it is active by way of affirming, dismantling, storytelling, restorying, healing, breathing, and reorienting. It works at tearing down but also, simultaneously, at building up. It is continually on the way, desirous of taking small—and sometimes large—steps against destructiveness. Translating and bridging are at the heart of the project. As Robyn puts it, "I use the term activist theology to describe my work of translating theory to action and theology to practice." Significantly, the meaning of activist theology is never defined normatively in the book but rather is gestured at constantly through circumlocutions, storytelling, poetic reason, and the invitation to enter into a movement of becoming that spirals toward justice.

Some of the theology in this book is explicit, while other theological dimensions remain implicit yet no less present. One sees this, for example, in what theology traditionally calls Christology and pneumatology—working out the implications of faith in Christ and in the Holy Spirit respectively. The former is addressed explicitly, and the latter less so, yet both are present transversally in the task of activist theology as envisioned by Robyn. Jesus—the brown Palestinian Jew of the gospels, in contradistinction to the toxic white Jesus of US white nationalism—walks through the book, inviting us quite insistently to follow in the way of radical justice and transformation. By contrast, there is little explicit talk about the Holy Spirit, yet we find many mentions of spirituality, a strong sense of God as the Moving Wind who can be called upon, and a resilient conviction throughout that the Divine is present and accessible to us in meaningful ways: "God is in the struggle; God is in the change that is becoming."

The hope that gives meaning to eschatology (another traditional locus or place of theology) pulses throughout the book as well, as does ecclesiology (reflection upon the meaning of church). Activist theology is imagined and modeled as a hope-inducing, hope-giving, hope-refilling endeavor that is in a frank and dialectical relationship with lament but is not smothered by despair. Thus, though the church often disappoints, and indeed has too often been complicit with injustice or indifference, church communities are not discarded as spaces for the practice of hope-inducing activist theologies, though they cannot and should not subsume or colonize an activist theology in their self-interest as institutions. A key ecclesiological question of activist theology therefore becomes: How are queer bodies, bodies of color, and/or queer bodies of color treated in this space? A corollary of this question is the profound insight that the struggle to be fully human as a queer person is the work of all of humanity. Existential and survival questions that in one sense arise out of our particularities (for example, being Latinx, queer, and biracial) are shown to be deeply important at the level of universality.

An activist theology as worked out in the book neither discards the work of the church in history nor is limited to it; it neither forgets the traditional notion of theology as faith seeking understanding, nor does it get caught up in worries about faith or a lack thereof. It engages movement work without idealizing it. Neither does it abandon interest in high theory or other tools of academic work. Rather, it weaves imaginatively through and around the movement, the academy, and the church, learning from all of them, limited to none of them, attentive to the material consequences of their logic, committed to divine doubt, to militant peacemaking and to embodying in concrete and resilient ways the wisdom of the traditions and the stories of Jesus.

One of the central contributions of the book is that it issues a call for conversion and transformation. Robyn models the process of bracing self-examination that is necessary in order for our lives not only to involve deep self-knowledge but also to explore ways of being in the world that are life-giving and fruitful. One key question posed several times is: Am I a revolutionary or a charlatan? It is a central question for the spiritual discernment of those of us who think we are at least somewhat counter-hegemonic in our way of being in the world. Is this really the case? Are we just hearers (or maybe speakers) of words of transformation but not doers—and therefore simply fooling ourselves (James 1:22)? In other words, So what? This book honestly, grippingly, and lovingly helps us grapple with such questions, in the light of the stories and struggles of our own lives and those of the communities we are called to love.

Nancy Elizabeth Bedford

Evanston, October 6, 2018

Preface

Activist Theology is a book for anyone curious about social justice, our current reality, and the work of connecting the dots between your own story and living theology and ethics out loud. It’s a book that not only offers the reader a deeper dive into my own story of becoming a theologian through translating theory to action and looking outside the academy but  also  offers  an  invitation  to  the  reader  to  take  a  more critical look at the ways our socialization affects our social practices. It takes the reader on a journey—a journey of becoming. It also offers an invitation to the reader to step into the work of interrogating their own story and a chance to sharpen the skills of analyzing our experiences, so that the work of collective liberation can be achieved in our lifetime. This book as a narrative and a restorying of myself within the public square is an attempt to model living my politics and naming things that have shaped and shifted in my own mind and heart, so that we can build a movement that mobilizes people for radical social change.

Part of the work of activist theology is the work of undoing our sociopolitical imagination in favor of a sociopolitical imagination that privileges the politics of radical difference whose normative horizon is collective liberation. In this book, I mention a few terms that I would like to define:

Theology: An open discourse concerning meaning and value (in an ultimate sense) that is always connecting to our lived practices in the world. I believe all theology is ethics; theology is an open discourse concerning meaning, and value is a discourse concerning ethics.

White supremacy: An ideology rooted in the belief that white people are superior in all ways to anyone else, especially people who are nonwhite. In addition, the politics of this ideology is often illustrated by the social practices of white people being dominant over other races. White supremacy has been legalized in this country since settler colonialism became the expressed ideology. This ideology has continued and has reinforced the perceived inferiority of people of color.

Anti-blackness: A belief and practice of overt racism and a layered and covert structural, systemic, and ideological reality and subsequent practice that undermine the value of Black people and the predetermined socioeconomic reality of Black persons in this country. Anti-blackness is concretely stabilized in this country by and through anti-Black politics, institutions, and ideologies.

Capitalism: A global economic system whereby the focus is grounded in the outcome or production of products that are produced and subsequently distributed for profit using privately owned capital goods and wage labor. This economic system is also invested in the privatization of capital for the furthering of the individual. The privatization of capital has a material consequence of racism, anti-blackness, and economic disparity, among other things.

Patriarchy: A form and practice of the social stratification of the power relations that privilege male-bodied persons, especially cisgender white men, granting them power, access, and privileges that in turn undermine and oppress women and other people in interconnected ways: economically, politically, socially, religiously, and sexually. Patriarchy shares a relationship with capitalism in that white male-bodied individuals often amass greater social capital at the expense of many others, including the minoritized. Another way to understand patriarchy is as a sex/gender system of authoritarian male dominance that reinforces female dependency and diminishes female agency.

When Method Is the Matter

This book is a book of story, a book that takes the lived experience as the very place for theology to materialize. As a child of a Mexican woman not of this country, I have always been looking for my story, for my ground of becoming. When I was in college, I was introduced to Latin American liberation theology and then went to study with a Latin American feminist theologian in Chicago. It was during