RESPONSE TO CHARLES J. SCALISE, “DELINEATING DIFFERENCE: EXPLORING SOME CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TWENTIETH CENTURY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LIVED EXPERIENCE”

Abstract

Thank you for a comprehensive presentation of pluralistic character of North theology. In your verbal presentation, you speak about your experience of having taken Professor Robert Johnson's theology class at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s, which has significantly shaped your understanding of the North American theologies. (See http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v30.n23/storyl4.html for more information about the late Professor Johnson.) I also took the same course from Professor Johnson when I attended Yale Divinity School (from 1980 to 1983). You remember much more content from Professor Johnson's class than I do. My not remembering as much reflects, in part, the difficult time I had at Yale Divinity School, which essentially privileged the European American experiences over my own Korean American experiences. Studying Eurocentric theologies, I often felt that my identity did not matter, if valued at all. This was a critical time for me when I learned a glimpse of how a politics of theological representation is carried out in theological institutions. Professor Johnson, a Presbyterian pastor himself, had a clear bias for the Presbyterian theologians. He often spoke in a non-generous spirit how Wesleyan theology (my own tradition) fell short of a dogmatic or systematic standard of theology.