The Window of Vulnerability: A Political Spirituality

Abstract

This book, which takes its title a concern expressed by United States military strategists regarding a perceived weakness in this country's security system in early 1980s, collects some of Dorothee Soelle's writings over past eight years. Her purpose is present vulnerability as a sign of relationship, receptivity, and communication, and therefore to open that window as wide as possible. To do so, Soelle inspects alternatives militarism, sexism, and some forms of organized religion. The chapters on militarism reflect themes that Soelle has repeatedly embraced in other writings. The goal of state should be peace and not security; majority of armaments are not intended ensure survival, but rather for purposes of overkill; bilateral disarmament negotiations have lost all credibility and therefore only solution crisis is unilateralism. The Christian must be willing risk through nonviolence and civil disobedience, and in so doing, destroy god of this world, bomb. Closely linked militarism is sexism, since the women's movement has repeatedly uncovered connections between male dominance and war, between maleness and self-identification with warrior, between lust and violence. To offset this horrendous situation, feminism calls for both equal rights and a new and different culture. A form of liberation theology, feminism seeks change any system that oppresses people, especially economically, as movement incorporates a new language for God (mother), a new sense of sin as self-denial, an appreciation of praxis as first step toward change, and a hope that Christian from below will participate fully in feminist agenda. The final major section of Soelle's work evaluates New Right religious movement, liberal theology, and liberation theology. Concerned that political debate in United States has become increasingly theologized, she denounces electronic church, which has linked money and religion and exploited values of nation, work, and family. Liberal theology, which Soelle terms helpless, is too individualized and therefore disregards plight of suffering masses throughout world. The only valid theological op-