Liberating and Diversifying Theological Education: A Subversive or Empowering Aspiration?

Abstract

Liberating and Diversifying Theological Education: A Subversive or Empowering Aspiration? Amos Yong Historic institutions of theological education are struggling amidst the vulnerability and fragility that characterizes much of the higher educational enterprise. As a (practically ) tenured professor, however, I wonder to what degree such job security actually undermines rather than empowers my envisioning and then working toward a liberating theological education that can engage the opportunities and challenges of the twenty‐first century. Perhaps the underlying issue concerns whether theological education needs liberation in the present time and if so, from what, and what that means. To place the questions squarely on the table, I need to be honestly self‐reflective about issues related to diversity and context and perhaps enter into the vulnerability that assails the wider theological guild. I begin by reflecting about my recent visit to New York Theological Seminary (NYTS) just a week after the announcement (December 3, 2014) that the Staten Island grand jury had declined to indict the police officer under whose grip it appeared that Eric Garner had died (July 17, 2014). In part related to the release of my new book on Asian American evangelicalism in November of this year, my longtime friend and NYTS associate professor Peter Heltzel had invited me to address the NYTS community about issues of race and ethnicity. In the wake of the unrest related to the announcement, as well as the wider national issues related to police brutality and race relations (e.g., the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri), Peter continually urged me to press into issues regarding social justice and racial reconciliation from my Asian American evangelical location. Late Thursday, December 11, after having spent the afternoon and evening in discussion with NYTS faculty, staff, students, and others, Peter checked me into one of the Landmark guest rooms at Union Theological Seminary (kiddie‐corner from NYTS). A few minutes after he left, I heard a hurried knock on my door: Peter insisted that I needed to accompany him to join a rally a few blocks away. It was about 10 PM, I was almost in bed, and the temperature was in the low 30s Fahrenheit, as I recall. But Peter was persistent: I could not be in a hotel room in the City that night while things he cared so much about were unfolding down the street. Here, I have to digress and say a few words about Peter. Having grown up in Mississippi, he has been attuned to racial tensions from a young age. Although trained classically as a systematic theologian, since his arrival at NYTS almost ten years ago (at time of writing), he has been working intentionally at the intersection of racial reconciliation and social justice. But Peter is no armchair theologian. Deftly deploying his social and political capital as a white male anti‐racist/pro‐reconciliation ally with people of color and following the black leadership of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, Peter has facilitated strategic dialogues, written op‐eds, helped organize rallies, participated in protests and marches, mobilized activists, advocated to politicians, and worked collaboratively as a faith‐rooted organizer across racial, class, gender, and religious lines. Along the way, Peter founded the Micah Institute, which mission, “[i]nspired by the Hebrew prophet Micah's call to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God, [is] to inspire and educate faith leaders to fight poverty and injustice” (see http://www.nyts.edu/the-micah-institute/). The Micah Institute's work is guided by a faith‐rooted organizing, gathering people for social change shaped by the deepest wells of their faith traditions. In contrast to the instrumental approach of national organizing networks in the Alinsky tradition, faith‐rooted organizing mobilizes public resistance, while treating all God's children with love and respect. Over the last decade, Peter has emerged as a public theologian and activist in New York City, thereby not only retrieving but also transforming and extending the legacies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich through boldly confronting the “powers and principalities” of systemic racism as an anti‐racist leader in the growing movement for a prophetic, intercultural future in our racially charged North American context of the third millennium...