The Inquisition of Today and U.S. Women Religious

By Ivone Gebara 

Translated from Portuguese

Once again, we watch dumbfounded as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directs a "doctrinal assessment of" or a “calling attention to” or the “punishment of” those who, according to the CDF, break away from the proper observance of Catholic doctrine. Only this time, the CDF is not pointing an accusatory finger at a person, but rather at an institution that brings together and represents more than 55,000 women religious in the United States—namely, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, known by its acronym LCWR. 

Throughout their long history, these women religious developed and continue to develop a broad educational mission which advances the dignity of many people and groups both within and beyond the United States. Most of these women belong to diverse national and international congregations. 

In addition to their Christian and humanistic formation, they are intellectuals and professionals in various fields of knowledge. They are writers, philosophers, biologists, sociologists, lawyers and theologians. They have broad backgrounds and their expertise is recognized nationally and internationally. They also are educators, catechists and human rights activists. In many situations, they set their lives at the service of those affected by injustice or set themselves in opposition to the grave actions taken by the government of the United States. I had the honor of meeting some of them who were arrested and imprisoned because they put themselves at the forefront of demonstrations to close the School of the Americas, an institution of the United States government that prepares soldiers from our countries to act in repressive and cruel ways. 

These religious are women of reflection and action with a long history of service not only in their country, but in many others. Today they are under suspicion and under the supervision of the Vatican. They are being criticized for disagreeing with the bishops who are considered to be the "authentic teachers of faith and morals." In addition, they are accused of being supporters of radical feminism, of deviating from Roman Catholic doctrine, of complicity in the approval of homosexual unions and other charges which are surprising given their anachronistic nature.

Exactly what would constitute radical feminism? And what might be its real manifestations in the lives of congregations of women religious? Exactly what kinds of theological deviations are affecting the lives of women religious? And might it be that we are being scrutinized and punished as women because we can no longer be true to ourselves and to the tradition of the Gospel by means of blind submission to a male hierarchical order? Might it be that those responsible for Vatican Congregations are out of touch with the vast worldwide feminist revolution that has touched every continent and even religious congregations? 

Many women religious in the United States and other countries are indeed the heirs, teachers and disciples of one of the most interesting expressions of worldwide feminism, specifically feminist theology which developed in the United States during the late 1960s. Its original ideas, critical analyses and liberating stances made possible a new way of doing theology which in turn continues to accompany movements of women's emancipation. As a consequence, women religious have contributed to a rethinking of our Christian religious tradition by taking us beyond the invisibility and oppression of women. They also created alternative venues for education and formation. They wrote theological and inspirational texts so that the tradition of the Jesus Movement could continue to nurture our present and would not be abandoned by thousands of persons made weary by the weight of patriarchal religious structures and rules. 

What actions can be taken given these curial and administrative examples of anachronism and symbolic violence on the part of the Roman Catholic Church? What are we to think of these rigid philosophical referents that ascribe to the masculine what is considered best in the human being? What can be said about a unilateral and misogynistic anthropological vision out of which the tradition of Jesus is interpreted? What are we to think about this administrative/ punitive treatment from which an archbishop is appointed to review, guide and approve decisions taken by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as if we were incapable of insight and lucidity? 

Are we simply a multinational capitalist enterprise the "products" of which should be in conformity with the dictates of a single line of production? And to maintain this enterprise, should we be controlled like robots by those who consider themselves the owners and guardians of the institution? Where is the freedom, the charity, the historical creativity, the fraternal and sisterly love? At the same time that indignation takes hold of us, a sense of fidelity to our dignity as women and to the Gospel as proclaimed to the poor and marginalized invites us to respond to this act of repugnant injustice. 

In today’s world, the prelates and church officials use a double standard. On the one hand, there are high-level examples of the Roman Catholic Church being able to welcome back into its bosom groups on the far-right whose harmful history, especially with regard to adolescents and children is widely known. I think especially of Marcial Maciel, founder of the in the Legionaries of Christ (Mexico) or the religious followers of Archbishop Lefevre (Switzerland) whose disobedience to the pope and coercive methods of making disciples is verified by many. The same institutional church welcomes men who are interested in it for power and repudiates women that it wants to keep submissive. By means of this attitude, it exposes women to ridiculous criticisms that are voiced in the Catholic religious media in bad faith. Among these women, the prelates seem to formally recognize the merits of those whose actions are among those traditionally exercised by women religious in schools and hospitals. But is this all that we are? We know of very few instances in the United States where women religious were involved in the abuse of young children, adolescents and elders. No public denunciation tarnished their image. No one ever spoke of them allying themselves with major international banks for their own benefit. No complaints are found of insider-trading or the exchange of favors so as to preserve the silence of impunity. And yet, in contrast to men of power, so few of them have been beatified or canonized by Church authorities. Still, the recognition of these women comes from so many communities and groups, Christian and otherwise, who shared in the lives and works of so many of them. And of course, these groups will not be silenced by this unjust "doctrinal assessment" that touches them directly as well. 

Plagiarizing Jesus in the Gospel, I dare to say, "I pity these men" who do not know the contradictions and beauties of life up close, who do not allow their hearts to be broken open by the joys and sufferings of the people, who do not love the present moment, who still prefer to enforce strict laws rather than to celebrate life. All they have learned are the fixed rules of a doctrine determined by an outdated rationality from which they judge the faith of others, especially women. 

Perhaps they think that God approves of them and submits to them and to their lucubrations, so distant from those who hunger for bread and for justice, the hungry, the abandoned, the prostituted, the abused and the forgotten. How long must we suffer under their yoke? What attitudes and stances will inspire us as "the Spirit that blows where it wills" so that we may continue to be faithful to the LIFE that is in us? 

To my dear sisters in the United States of LCWR, my gratitude, affection and solidarity. If you are being persecuted for the good that you do probably your work will produce good and abundant fruit. Know that with you, women religious from other continents will not allow them to silence our voice. But, if they silence us by a written decree, it will give us one more reason to continue in the struggle for human dignity and the freedom for which we have been created. We will continue to proclaim in countless ways the love of neighbor as the key to human and cosmic communion present in the tradition of Jesus of Nazareth and in many others, though in diverse ways. In this historical moment, we will continue to weave together one more part of the vast history of the affirmation of freedom, the right to be different and to think differently and in through all this endeavoring not to be afraid to be happy. 

27 April 2012 

This post has been reprinted with permission of the author. 

Ivone Gebara is Brazilian and belongs to the religious order Sisters of Our Lady (Canoneses of St. Augustine). She had been a professor at the Theological Institute of Recife for nearly two decades, and worked among women in poor neighborhoods. Well known for her work on ecofeminism and liberation theology, her many books include Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation (2002) and Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (1999). 

Climate Change and Christian Faith

By Kwok Pui Lan

Today, the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care is convening a conference on “Scientific, Religious, and Cultural Implications of Global Warming” at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, DC. 

 Blessing of the Watertown Community Garden
on June 12, 2011.

This climate summit will bring together activists, scholars, scientists, and religious leaders to explore strategies to prevent the impacts of global warming. Renowned climatologist Dr. James Hansen, environmentalist Bill McKibben, Fr. Michael Oleksa of Alaska, and Brigadier General Steven Anderson, US Army (ret.) will be among the speakers.

The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, MDiv, EDS ’88, has been invited to speak about the Episcopal Church’s response to climate change. She is a long-time environmental activist and was the principal author of the Pastoral Letter, “To Serve Christ in All Creation,” issued by the Episcopal Bishops of New England in 2003. She has been a leader in Religious Witness for the Earth and is priest associate at Grace Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

Christian theologians have increasingly paid attention to the challenges of climate change. Sallie McFague, an Episcopalian, is a leading figure in ecological theology. She has published A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming. In his review of the book, John B. Cobb, Jr. said, “[McFague] calls Christians to new feeling, new acting, and new thinking. Perhaps as the threat to our world that she describes so well presses more obviously upon us, the church will begin to listen.”

Anne Primavesi, an Irish theologian, has been in conversations with scientists such as James Lovelock for many years. She has introduced Lovelock’s Gaia Theory to the study of the Bible and theology. In her book Gaia and Climate Change, she challenges Christian communities to change their theological climate. Instead of subscribing to over-powering and imperialistic images of God, Primavesi offers a nonviolent theological model to understand our relations with human beings, with sacred earth, and with God. 

Here at Episcopal Divinity School, I have taught the course “God and Creation” for many years and have introduced students to the works of these theologians who have written poignantly on climate change and environmental issues. My teaching and pedagogy have emphasized putting into practice what we have learned in embodied ways supporting African American cultural critic and theorist bell hooks’s views on education as practice of freedom. 

In conjunction with my courses, I have brought students to an organic farm to learn about the close relation between the soil, water, climate, and plant cycles. After the visit, three people, including myself, started a vegetable garden in our backyards. In the past two summers, I have grown tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, onions, and different herbs. This new practice has deepened my understanding of the symbiotic relationship between human beings and our environment. 

Last fall, I brought students to a community garden in Watertown, Massachusetts, started by the Rev. Louise Forrest, MDiv EDS ’80. The community garden enables children in the housing project to plant vegetables and tend to the garden. It provides fresh produce for several families. Some of the students who visited the garden want to introduce the idea of setting up a community garden at EDS and in their future ministries. 

I am increasingly convinced that we cannot just talk about global warming and other environmental problems without changing how we live and practice our spirituality. In my spirituality of healing class, I introduce healthy eating and healthy living as important spiritual disciplines. I am very impressed by Primavesi’s concept that human beings and the environment are co-evolutionary. Without collective metanoia (repentance) and deep solidarity with the earth, we cannot avert the disasters that global warming will bring. (Last winter was the second warmest winter in Boston since records began in 1872.)

EDS has received a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation of New York to help the school and faith communities learn about religious pluralism and engage in interreligious dialogue. Throughout the academic year, Professor Christopher Duraisingh has organized a series of interfaith table-talks. He has invited Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist practitioners to come to share with us their spiritual paths. The EDS community has also visited the Ramakrishna Vedanta Center in Boston. Swami Tyaganada of the Center has come to speak in the World Religions and the Search for Comminity course. 

Many Asian religious traditions emphasize the close relation between human beings and nature. Conversations with people of other faiths allow the EDS community to learn from and network with other faith communities to address common concerns, such as environmental issues and climate change.

The Sustainability Task Force of the American Academy of Religion has invited me to serve on a panel to talk about creative pedagogies in teaching religion and environmental issues at the annual meeting in November. I will be able to share some of my insights in teaching environmental racism, climate change, and ecological debt with the academic community and share what EDS has done in changing the climate of theology and theological education.

Kwok Pui Lan is the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School and her most recent book is Globalization, Gender, and Peacebuilding: The Future of Interfaith Dialogue. 

Your Handy Hermeneutic

By The Rev. Thomas Eoyang, Jr. '03

I scowl every time I hear someone say that what we learned in seminary—and especially those of us from EDS—is irrelevant to practical ministry. Nothing I learned at EDS—whether in the classroom or outside of it—has gone to waste. Everything has turned out to have an application: Scripture, of course, but also church history, pastoral theology, ethical reasoning, liturgical planning, all of it—and most especially what we learned about resisting oppression.

Even building issues. It only took a passing comment from the Rev. Canon Fred Williams, as we passed the scaffolding surrounding the chapel, to clue me in.  

Pointing up to the roof he said, “Pay attention to that. That’s what you’ll be doing.” And so I immediately knew that part of my job as a parish priest would be to oversee the maintenance and stewardship of a queer, beautiful, and antiquated building that was built for another time, another economy, and another understanding of church.

Well, perhaps one little thing has proved less than useful: not once since graduation have I said the word “hermeneutic” to any parishioner.  

In seminary we learned to use this word frequently and properly and to say “the hermeneutic of suspicion” with that knowing tone that marked us if not as one of Christ’s own forever, at least as a provisional member of the fellowship of the theologically learned. (For those without a seminary or literature degree, or who have blissfully forgotten, hermeneutics is the study of the theory and practice of interpretation.)  

It’s a difficult word to work into a conversation or a sermon unless one’s parish happens to be across the street from a major university. To most people in the “real world” the word hermeneutic must sound, as it did to one of my classmates, like a household appliance.

Yet, though I don’t use the word, I use the concept many times a day. In the Episcopal Church, and in many other branches of God’s church, good Christian folk have been engaged in a remarkably uncivil conversation claiming to be about Scripture—its sanctity, inerrancy, truth, accuracy, whatever word you wish to use. Of course what we’ve mainly been discussing are a few verses of Scripture, the ones that have to do with sexual expression between two men or two women. Our conversation drones on about what authority those few verses should have when two men or two women develop deep bonds of love and faithfulness, bonds of joyful, life-giving mutual flourishing.

The question of Scripture’s inerrancy seems only to apply to those few verses. We are certainly not discussing the plain sense much less the present-day applicability of, for instance, this verse from Leviticus: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Who’s arguing about taking this divine commandment “literally?” 

How we choose which fragments of Scripture are binding and authoritative and which ones are not is a principal result of our chosen (ahem) hermeneutic.  

As lay and ordained ministers, our membership in the fellowship of the theologically learned means that part of our job is to explain how we read Scripture, how we come to understand the word of God through it, how we hear what we hear and know what we know. We are called to model for others how faith—based on a deep, serious and nuanced dialogue with Scripture—is a viable way of knowing in an age where scientific understanding can be trivialized into materialistic reductionism. In short, we are all called to explain to others our choice of hermeneutic as it informs our life of faith.

And just as important is our responsibility to lead others to understand that they themselves are using a particular hermeneutic when they make choices about which Scripture verses to take seriously and which to ignore. We must remind people (without using the word, of course) that there is such a thing as a hermeneutic of oppression, and that Scripture has often been misused as an instrument of oppression.

These conversations are not, of course, primarily exegetical, but rather pastoral. Discussing thorny passages of Scripture with other people, we hear behind their concerns and opinions the struggle of another wayfarer on the journey of faith, another follower of Christ trying to know God in the best way he or she can.  

In listening to that faith narrative, just as in our reading of Scripture, we are called by our baptism and by our superb training at EDS to avoid using a hermeneutic of oppression ourselves and to choose instead to model and to teach a hermeneutic of grace, a hermeneutic of compassion, a hermeneutic of justice, a hermeneutic of love. I can’t think of anything I could have been taught that is more important, more relevant, or more empowering.

Thomas Eoyang, Jr. is the third rector of Grace Epiphany Church, in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his MDiv from Episcopal Divinity School and holds an AB from Harvard College in history and literature, as well as an MA in comparative literature from Stanford University. 

What I Don’t Know About Brittney Griner, NCAA Women’s Basketball Champion

By Joan M. Martin

I admit it. Although I have been a pretty good amateur athlete all my life, I am a lifetime wanna-be collegiate and WNBA basketball player! I am also a die-hard UConn Women Huskies fan. Yet, hats off to the Baylor University Bears who won the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship last night, under the leadership of Baylor post player, Brittney Griner. You can read all the game stats and those for Griner in your favorite sports media as I did on espnW.com. 

For the entire NCAA basketball season, we have been learning tons about Griner. Yet I realize I really don’t know much about the woman. For example, I don't know 

• which cereal she eats for breakfast (maybe it ought to be Wheaties, The Breakfast of Champions);
• which sports movie she watches over and over again, (since Hollywood hasn’t made a women’s basketball version of A League of Their Own);
• what her all time favorite song is, (it ought to be, “We Are The Champions”);
• which athlete is her role model, (but she may have just looked in the mirror last night and marveled at the woman returning her gaze, after all, this year she won the Wade Trophy, the Naismith Player of the Year and the WBCA’s defensive player of the year awards); 
• what her religion is, (but I am absolutely positive that God was watching the game and yelling Her head off saying, “Go on, with your bad self,” (all due props to Skyler Diggings)); and
• which WNBA team she dreams of playing for one day in the not-so-distant future!

The WNBA? Women's basketball? Oh, it seems I haven’t been reading all the nasty taunts about Brittney Griner’s height and shoe size, all the openly misogynist hatred, all the lesbian baiting, and the vitriolic jealousy of her ability to dunk a b-ball as well as the best.

What I do know is that once again, a woman of outstanding athletic talent has come under attack for excellence. Needless to say, Brittney Griner is an outstanding African American woman athlete of excellence.  All too often, the Brittney Griners, Venus and Serena Williams, or Sheryl Swoopes of the sports world cannot be gifted and at the top echelon of their sport without being besmirched in regard to their race and gender, and often their sexuality in the case of homophobia.  

We need only recall the comment by sportscaster Sid Rosenberg, reported in the November 20, 2001, Newsday article, “Rosenberg [allegedly] said on the air: One time, a friend, he says to me, ‘Listen, one of these days you’re gonna see Venus and Serena Williams in Playboy.’ I said, ‘You’ve got a better shot at National Geographic.’  Rosenberg also referred to Venus Williams as an ‘animal.’” If you cannot remember that long ago, just think back to April 2007 when, after the Rutgers Lady Knights met the Lady Tennessee Vols in the NCAA Women’s Championship Game, MSNBC talk-radio host Imus in the Morning called the Rutgers team, “nappy-headed hos.”[1]

Those who maintain that racism is passé do not understand, in the face of the murder of Trayvon Martin, the all-too familiar and common belief that African American life is “cheap” in America. And many believe that discrimination against women is no longer an issue in nearly all walks of life in the United States until one looks closely at the statistical reports of the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau. Recently, one of the students I advise wrote that marriage equality is rapidly increasing in the United States. With marriage equality striking at the heart of patriarchal heteronormativity, I am waiting for the next round of redoubled backlash that inevitably comes whenever civil rights in the United States are expanded to include those considered “second-class” citizens.

We could become cynical in light of such analysis.  That, however, is not my point. 

Just as we resist complacency and instead demand justice for Trayvon Martin, we must not let the verbal abuse and violence against the Brittney Griners of any day continue, especially at the end of the collegiate basketball season when “out-of-sight” means “out-of-mind,” that is social amnesia in America.  What happened to Brittney Griner and to Trayvon Martin are two ends of a dehumanizing, pernicious continuum that has been repeated much too often and too long in our nation. Just as we must fight for growth in meaningful employment opportunity for all in this presidential election season and not just ‘jobs,’ we must speak the truth and vote our consciences about the continuing redistribution of US wealth and resources from the working and middle classes and from women and children to the obscenely rich in our country. The wealth continuum is grossly imbalanced and out of whack, jeopardizing our economic future as well as our moral compass.  Just as we must continue to press for the full human rights for persons of every sexual and gender orientation, we, too, along with Coach Kim Mulkey, can proudly carry Brittney Griner on our shoulders as the best of the best in women’s collegiate basketball this year. In this respect, it does not take masterminds to see the continuum of bullying to hate speech and crimes.

What does all this mean? I didn’t even root for Baylor last night, but I will root for the Brittney Griners of the world every day of every season, and then some!

[1] Source for the information on African American women athletes as quoted: http://mediamatters.org/research/200704040011; accessed 4/04/2012.

The Rev. Dr. Joan M. Martin is William W. Rankin Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Episcopal Divinity School. 

Speaking for Women

By Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim

     When I was growing up, my dad would often speak for me. He would introduce me to his friends and then start talking to them on my behalf. He would answer questions that were directed at me and often responded in ways in which I would not have responded. He did this, at least in part, because my Korean speaking ability was very limited. However he also spoke for my sister and my mother.  

     I was recently invited to speak on “Business Matters” hosted by Tony Iannelli (Channel 69 in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania). I was one of the four panelists, joining Kate Wilgruber from Allentown Women’s Center, Dr. Larry Chapp, De Sales University, and Attorney Richard Connell, who were invited to debate the inclusion of coverage for contraceptives in health care packages. The two male panelists were against the inclusion of contraceptives in health care coverage and the two women panelists were for the inclusion.  The debate was lively and sparked good conversation as some spoke from their personal religious beliefs and encounters with women who are in need of good health care.

     I frequently disagreed with Dr. Larry Chapp who is a Roman Catholic Theologian teaching at De Sales University, a Roman Catholic college. He argued against the morality of using contraceptives and objected to the mandate of providing contraceptives within Roman Catholic institutions and based his argument on the First Amendment. I argued that the current Roman Catholic position on this issue went against Freedom of Religion. A person working in a Roman Catholic hospital, university, institution is not the same as joining a church and should be given the benefits of any employer working in a non-religious workplace.  A worker employed in a Roman Catholic institution does not have to ascribe to the teachings of the church or even need to believe in the Christian God to be employed there.  Thus, it would be against the First Amendment to impose Roman Catholic teachings on the workers and not cover the use of contraceptives for their women employers.

     Protestants believe that sex is not only for procreation as it is a gift of God. However this understanding is also inherent in the only sanctioned birth control method allowed by Roman Catholic Church, the ‘rhythm method.’ With this condoned method there is a recognition that sex does not always lead to procreation. If they truly believed sex was only for procreation why would they even permit the rhythm method?

     During Vatican II Pope John XXIII asked a commission to examine marriage. The commission consisted of women, laity, priests, and bishops and at the end of the study period the commission endorsed the use of contraceptives. It was later in 1968 that Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae which reported that contraceptives should be banned and overturned the commission’s earlier report. Why wouldn’t the commission—which included women and heard the important voices of women on a concern related to women’s issues, bodies, health, respect, dignity and well-being—have more validity than men speaking about women without consultation.  

     As I ponder the argument that the Roman Catholic Church is using today, I cannot help but think about how my own father used to speak on my behalf, answer on my behalf, and tell others how I felt.  I want to ask today, when will men stop speaking on behalf of women especially when it pertains directly to women’s issues?

     I am now a mother of three children and no longer allow my dad to speak on my behalf. I believe women of all faith traditions should speak up loud and clear on issues which affect their everyday lives and fight for our human rights.  

Grace Ji-Sun Kim is Associate Professor of Doctrinal Theology and the Director of the MATS program at Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of The Holy Spirit, Chi, and the Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Grace of Sophia: A Korean North American Women's Christology(Pilgrim Press). 

Abrahamic Traditions on the Silk Road

By Kwok Pui Lan

The Silk Road refers to the network of roads connecting Ch’ang-an (modern-day Xian), the ancient capital of China, to the Mediterranean, with spurs into the Indian subcontinent, the northern Eurasian steppe, and southern Iran. When caravans went East and West on the ancient Silk Road, trade and commerce brought people of different cultures and religious traditions into contact with each other.

The Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) organized a one-day conference on March 3 to explore the interactions and cultural exchanges of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam along the ancient Silk Road. Speakers of the conference included scholars in Hebrew Bible, New Testament, early Christianity and theology, Syriac-speaking Christianity, Armenian Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and Christianity in Asia. The big lecture room at Sherrill Hall was filled to capacity with some 100 scholars from other schools within the Boston Theological Institute, EDS faculty, students, staff, and alumni/alumnae, and other guests.

The theme of the conference “What Would It Take to Move the Map?” was provocative. As Professor Lawrence Wills, who organized the conference with Professor Patrick S. Cheng, said, “There is increasing evidence of a rich history of Christians, Jews, and Muslims who moved eastward all the way to China, at a time much earlier than was previously believed.” The conference aimed to broaden our understanding of this long history of interactions of Abrahamic traditions.

A map is a tool to look at the world and to organize and constitute reality. It takes vision, courage, humility, curiosity, and restless inquiry to move the map to include the religious exchanges along the Silk Road.

I was asked to comment on the proceedings from the day in a final session. Here are a few of my observations:

First, we have to expand our imagination of the Christian tradition to include the many branches of Christianities and their interactions of other religious traditions. In the United States, the teaching of church history tends to focus primarily on Western Christianity, with little mention on Greek and Oriental Christianity.

For example, in his survey of textbooks on church history, Professor Cheng pointed out that many leave out or mention in passing Nestorian Christianity in China. This narrow and selective way of understanding church history fails to do justice to the complex and multilayered Christian traditions and impoverishes our knowledge of the many expressions and experiences of the divine.

Second, in order to expand our imagination, we need to learn to decolonize our minds, such that we will not read history and create cartography based on Eurocentric lenses. In his concluding remarks, Professor Christopher Duraisingh spoke of cultivating multiple consciousness and developing the capacity to see maps as synchronic and not diachronic. This reminds me of what the late Edward Said, the pioneer of postcolonial discourse, has said of contrapuntal reading of history—reading history as intertwined and territories as overlapped.

Decolonization of the mind means that we have to be aware of the impacts of the Latinization of the world in the first “globalization,” in which the people in the Americas were brought into the orbit of Europe in the early modern period. The Roman Catholic Church played important roles in this remapping of the world. Those of us who are Episcopalians would do well to remember the consequences of the Anglicization of the world. The British Empire has shaped and remapped the cultures and histories of peoples under its colonial control and the Anglican Church has played a vital part in it.

Third, we have to learn to live in a multipolar or Post-American world, cognizant of the shifting geopolitics and the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, and China as key players in shaping global economy and world affairs. China’s phenomenal economic growth will change our ways of looking at East Asia and its long interactions with Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe.

China has developed a new Silk Road strategy in order to secure oil and gas from the Middle East to fuel its economic growth. Vast pipeline networks have been built in the region and the Iron Silk Road project, an ambitious Eurasian railway network is being built to connect China to Turkey, Iran, and the European countries.

The ancient Silk Road is being remapped by many powers to serve present economic and political purposes. Our awareness of cultural and historical interactions in the past will help us to live in this brand new world of the twenty-first century.

Kwok Pui Lan is the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School and her most recent book is Globalization,Gender, and Peacebuilding: The Future of Interfaith Dialogue. 

Religious Perspectives on Borders and Transnationalism

By Dr. Susanna Snyder

     Keeping up with immigration issues anywhere is like trying to catch an eel with your bare hands. Newspapers run a story about it almost every day, in one form or another, and just when you think you’re getting close to understanding what’s going on, new legislation or procedures are initiated or something happens to an immigrant somewhere you hadn’t imagined was possible.

     Take a look at what’s going on in Massachusetts at the moment. A bill currently under review in the State House—S2061 Act to Enhance Community Safety—is likely to have serious effects on immigrant communities if it is passed. Similar to laws passed in Alabama, Georgia and Arizona, it is designed to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport undocumented immigrants. Among other things, it would allow law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people arrested for certain offences—such as driving under the influence.

     But what has religion got to do with all of this, though?

     At one level, religious organizations are among the most prominent advocates for (and against) immigration inclusion. For example, Boston New Sanctuary Movement, a coalition of interfaith leaders and congregations that supports immigrants, states: “We people of faith support fair and just changes to our immigration system.  People who have worked hard here without documents for years deserve to have legal residency and a path to citizenship.”

     At another level, religion plays a large part in the daily lives of many immigrants. From providing a source of spiritual comfort, meaning, and community to practical support in the form of English language classes, accommodation, or legal advice, faith and faith-based organizations can be invaluable to new arrivals as well as those who have been living in the country for many years.

     The Migration, Theology and Faith Forum, based at Episcopal Divinity School, was set up to bring migrants, activists, and academics from different disciplines together to discuss these important issues. The MTFF will hold a symposium, “Borders and Transnationalism: Religious Perspectives,” on Friday, March 23, from 1pm to 4:30pm, to explore some of the intersections between religion and migration.

     Speakers at the symposium will explore such questions as how migrants are drawing on their faith and negotiating religious identity and practice—both on their journeys and after they arrive in the U.S. and what role faith-based organizations are playing in terms of practical support and advocacy—in support of and against immigrants? It will be multi-faith as well as interdisciplinary—with papers on Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. Some participants will reflect on the root causes of migration while others will discuss what happens at the border or when people have arrived in the United States.

     No matter how you feel about the complex issues related to immigration, it’s important that we come together to learn more, especially as the situation is changing every day.

Dr. Susanna Snyder is Assistant Professor in Contemporary Society and Christian Ethics at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.