Can Anyone Withhold the Water...?

Abstract Thesis Contextualization and indigenization have always been necessary and expected components of establishing Christian communities of faith and practice. Failed or obsolete attempts at contextualization and indigenization in evangelism and missions continue to harm the development of the African American Church. This results in the development of spiritually marginalized communities alienated from the very relationship with God that such communities need. Preventing such spiritual marginalization in communities requires a training curriculum that combines a working theology on appropriate contextualization and indigenization with a framework for practical implementation. The outcome would decrease the tendency to replicate non-contextual religious practice and increase the capacity to replicate the foundational concepts of the Christian faith, thus decreasing our development of spiritually marginalized people or groups. The methodology used towards exploring this thesis combines a biblical and historical analysis of contextualization and indigenization, a biblical and historical analysis of anti-contextualization and anti-indigenization in African regions and the African American Church, and a biblical and historical analysis of foundational Christian concepts. This conceptual analysis leads to a practical approach to appropriate contextualization in the contemporary African American Church. This research will ultimately contribute to a curriculum that will establish an understanding of contextual theology combined with practical application, specifically toward preserving urban African American culture without compromising foundational Christian concepts. Pastors, churches, and conferences in African American communities and broader contexts may use this curriculum to train church leaders on contextualization and indigenization

A Disability Theology of Limits for Responding to Moral Injury

The lament of Jeremiah, “they dress the wound of my people as if it were not serious,” reverberates today as veterans return home from a decade of war, ridden by PTSD and moral injury, only to discover lethargy, lack of seriousness and complacency in societal response. The seriousness of our soldiers’ wounds, to body and spirit alike, demand ethical, societal and theological responsibility. Failure to address the seriousness of these wounds results in distress, depression and even suicide for the soldier. Statistics may describe a portion of the reality, but the degree to which soldiers suffer in silence and the wider circles in their lives (family, work, faith, civic responsibility) are affected is difficult, if not impossible, to assess. The emerging field of Moral Injury describes a wound created by social suffering and moral distrust wherein a soldier’s sense of what is morally right is compromised. The loss of a meaningful and moral worldview creates a shattering of moral identity both within the soldier and from the perspective of the solider to the outside world. While the precise contours of the field are still being navigated, what is clear is moral injury has a disabling effect on the individual, their circles of support and the wider society. My intention in this dissertation is to construct a revised “limit model” of Moral Injury drawing on the highly regarded scholarly work of Deborah Creamer’s “limit model of disability.” Her model critiques the medical and social models of disability and provides a constructive alternative of a “limit model of disability.” In addition, this dissertation nuances her model by resourcing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological assessment of “limit” from his commentary on Genesis Creation and Fall. Situating Moral Injury within the limit model of disability will help provide pastoral resources and theological nuance to the individual veteran in distress due to moral injury. Two working hypotheses guide this study. First, moral injury carries within the ‘injury’ a theological component wherein a presenting wound for the veteran reveals a component of divine struggle. Whether that component regards providence, protection or lack thereof from a transcendent presence is yet to be seen. Second, theological work on moral injury has bypassed robust theological assessment of a theological anthropology, working Christology and overarching theology in order to move quickly toward nascent human need. The methodology needed to accomplish this task is fourfold. The first step is to create a working definition of moral injury by examining work across disciplines in the scholarship surrounding moral injury to determine a working definition of moral injury and its presenting characteristics. The second step is to draw alongside the discourse on moral injury contemporary understandings of disability, particularly from a theological perspective. Of particular interest to this study is the current project of Deborah Creamer who proposes a “limit model of disability” as an alternative to prevailing medical and social models of disability. The third methodological step vital to this project will be to draw into conversation the biblical theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who engages an extensive conversation on limits in his work Creation and Fall. The historical retrieval of his work will require an eye to the nuances of the German language, the context of the theological discussion at the time that necessitated his reflections, and the dogmatic theological method he engaged which allowed Scripture to be a place of divine revelation. In addition, Bonhoeffer’s conceptualization of limit offers a Christological account in addition to a theological anthropology and divine theology. Particular care will be taken to compare and contrast Creamer and Bonhoeffer in these areas with attention paid to the Christological addition Bonhoeffer suggests creating a threefold schema for anthropology, theology and Christology in the face of limits. This historical review will be key to understanding the particular nuances “limit” presents for Bonhoeffer and then drawing those into conversation with the disability theology of limit and its implications for moral injury. The final methodological step in this project will be to allow the conversation across these three areas to create constructive possibilities for our understanding of moral injury, its treatment and a theological assessment of the issues at hand. At stake in this conversation are the implications for practical and pastoral theology that the theological nuances will construe. This four-fold methodology will provide an overarching construct thereby allowing critical reflection on moral injury and the very real limits humanity faces in the midst of particular moral codes and their presenting crises. This cross discipline conversation will contribute to a deeper understanding of what moral injury is and how it must be both respected and addressed within our society and among our churches. Responding well, as ethicists, theologians and civilians, requires better understanding the transgression of moral limits a veteran experiences and the subsequent shame and soul-shattering repercussions of this injury. Responding well means medical treatment, when necessary, and social accountability beyond latent acceptance, but also a recognition of human limits and divine limitations within complicated moral dimensions. Bonhoeffer serves as helpful corrective to Creamer’s model in three ways: deepening the emotive space for anger, wrath, hatred and lament humans face when confronted with limits, offering a theological anthropology in the face of limits, and suggesting a Christology that upholds humanity in spite of limits through Christ’s “orders of preservation.” Moral Injury needs this model to transcend medical and social accounts of moral injury to a deeper theological account recognizing divine and human limits. Military Consultant David Wood calls moral injury “the signature wound of this generation.” Situating moral injury as a transgression of limits provides a helpful resource for moving beyond restrictive views of moral injury as a wound that can be treated medically through particular treatment, or as a socially inflicted lesion from the collapse of a particular moral world. Instead, a robust description of limits initiated by a conversation with the disability theology of Creamer and strengthened by the theological anthropology of Bonhoeffer can help moral injury be tended to in a socially serious and theologically astute manner

The knowledge of disembodied souls: Epistemology, body, and social embeddedness in the eschatological doctrine of later sixteenth-century German Lutherans

In the wake of their rejection of purgatory Protestants had to rethink their eschatological views. The German Lutherans of the latter half of the sixteenth century developed a robust doctrine of the last things, including a teaching on what departed souls know prior to the resurrection. Following an overview of the sources and a brief reconstruction of the overall locus, this article focuses on an analysis of what and how disembodied souls are claimed to know. The evidence holds some surprises. First, while more than lip-service is certainly paid to the ways of knowing God, the authors’ real interest lies in the exploration of interpersonal relationships. Their primary concern is how other human beings, whether still on earth or already departed, may be known and what may be known about them. The implications are threefold. Knowledge of God and knowledge of human beings—ultimately, knowledge of self—are intertwined. Anthropology takes centre-stage, and ontology is thus superseded by epistemology. In all this, the body is never relinquished. The apparently unconscious importation of sensory language and conceptualisation of sense-based experience permeate the discussion of ostensibly disembodied knowledge. Knowing, for our authors, is ultimately a function of the body even if this means ‘packing’ bodily functions into the soul. In this doctrine, which may have had its roots in patristics but which has also demonstrably absorbed impulses from popular religion, knowledge of God is not only deeply connected with individual identity but also exhibits indelible social features and is inseparable from the (re)constitution of community

Sharing Witness Along the Way: Engaging the Lived Theology of an Urban Congregation in Evangelical, Public, and Missional Strands

This ethnographic phenomenology explores the lived theology of an urban congregation as it engages with civil society. Drawing methodological considerations from Jen-Luc Marion, Paul Ricoeur, and James Clifford, the research journey attends theologically to the sociality embodied both within the congregation and with its neighborhood for the sake of participating with this congregation in bringing to discourse its lived evangelical, public, and missional theological strands. Drawing upon Charles Taylor\u27s use of moral frameworks in relationship to narratives, practices, and goods, the evangelical strand explores intimacy as a strongly valued good. Theologically, such a good makes possible James McClendon\u27s vision of a community of watch-care that bodies-forth a politics of forgiveness rooted in the Gospel. The evangelical narrative names intimate, authentic, and face-to-face relationships as participating in the Gospel of reconciled relationships. But such a narrative also excludes, for it understands Christian identity in relationship to firm boundaries. The public strand narrates the congregation\u27s perduring presence in and with the public life at its margins. Drawing upon McClendon and Miroslav Volf, the researcher shows how the congregation innovates with the theme of embodied witness to demonstrate generative reciprocality in the congregation\u27s public life. Its public life at the margins both bears witness-to and bears witness-with its neighbors in the generation of a common life Innovating with David Tracy\u27s \u27mutually critical correlation,\u27 the congregation\u27s embodied witness is a \u27mutually critical participation\u27 in and with public life. But such reciprocal witnessing is experienced by the congregation as a loss of its evangelical-intimacy narratives and thus its public life is often considered non-theologically. The missional strand disclosed to the congregation both this lack of theological attention and an emergent metaphor of \u27sowing\u27 by which the congregation articulated its trust in God\u27s faithfulness in its present liminality created by the public strand. As such, the missional strand demonstrates the possibility of genuine theological innovation on the part of the congregation to recognizing the gift of the \u27other\u27 and stranger in its midst, the gift of a public life on the way to God\u27s future in Christ

Panther - May 1979

https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pv-panther-newspapers/1966/thumbnail.jp

Mission: Vol. 20, No. 10

Mission: Vol. 20, No. 10. The articles in this issue include: \u27And so farewell...\u27 from the Editor, A Reflection on the Life of Ray F. Chester (Eulogy) by Victor L. Hunter, The Lamb of God (hymn) by George Ewing, Words: An Easter Reflection (Poem) by Georges P. Carillet, A Resurrection Day Prayer by Charles Boatman, In the Garden (Fiction) by David Henderson, A Bittersweet Brokenness (Communion Meditation) by Wilma C. Buckner, The Beatitudes: Are They For Us? Part III by Bill Love, Surrender Beyond the Rules by Larry M. James, and Grandmother and the Hobos by Richard J. Richardson. A WORD FOR OUR TIMES: Reflections on Terrorism by Ben B. Boothe, Innocence Lost by John Smith, and Forever in Diapers? by Diana Caillouet. BOOKS: Reviewed by Bruce L. Edwards: Christianity: The True Humanism (Thomas Howard and J. I. Packer), and Handbook of Life in Bible Times (J. A. Thompson). Offerings and Letters