Theologian as Witness to Dispossession
“We need to be present to the people in the Occupy camps and marches.” The theologians who gathered for Saturday’s Boston meeting voiced this charge repeatedly. We easily agreed on this basic obligation as members of the Occupy movement, but I left our gathering wondering about a theologian’s obligation to offer presence to the movement. Is presence really a theological task? Not exclusively, I concluded, when one colleague asked, “Shouldn’t every human being in the country be present to this movement—not just theologians?” I wondered if theologians offer a unique type of presence to the movement. I’m not convinced of this either, especially in view of the pastors, chaplains, and ministers offering a more pastoral presence than I ever could. There are plenty of academics outside of theology who offering an intellectual presence in the movement.
This has led me to another type of question about the task of presence in the vocation of the theologian: If theologians are obligated to be present to this movement with all human beings, then how might it affect our vocation?
This question led me to fellow Occupy theologian, Tom Beaudoin. In his monograph, Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian (Orbis 2008), Beaudoin reflects on presence, or exposure, in the vocation of the theologian. In the introduction he writes, “[Johann Baptist Metz] counseled relentless exposure to the catastrophe [of the Holocaust] and to its survivors as a condition for ever making theological claims again.” Beaudoin calls this exposure an “intellectual form of penance.” Penance, “is the kind of argument that starts with attention to the incisions made by the other in what were considered settled, essential, or nonnegotiable aspects of the theological whole, and proceeds ‘ad intra’ about what is happening in regard to the incisions that are marking up our theological fantasies.”
Considering the ongoing practice of exposure for today’s theologians, Beaudoin cautions analogies between the catastrophe of the Holocaust and anything else. We know, however, that it ought not take such an unthinkable catastrophe to incise our otherwise nonnegotiable theological fantasies. With Beaudoin, I agree that theologians need to be available and present to the catastrophes of today in addition to those of the past, even if they will never match the terror of the Holocaust, I pray.
“Metz teaches contemporary theology the absolute importance of exposure as an act of theological penance, as condition for theological survival,” Beaudoin writes. “Theological penance fosters an affective and intellectual availability to deep challenges to the faith, to think of faith only in face of those challenges, and in so doing, to hand over everything about the previous theological life that fed into the theology that helped create a profoundly intolerable situation for human beings.”
Beaudoin uses the term “dispossession” to describe the experience of the theologian whose vocation is altered by her exposure to the world—its catastrophes as well as its surprising beauties. She can find herself dispossessed of truths, affiliations, or categories she once held for her vocation and place in the world. Has exposure to the lament of our communities rendered us dispossessed? Will genuine availability to the movement soon render us dispossessed? Although a theologian’s presence to the people of Occupy Wall Street may affect her in innumerable ways, Beaudoin’s description of exposure and the language of dispossession fit well many experiences of the Occupy Movement recorded by other theologians on this site.
This has leads me to wonder: might one role of the theologian in this movement be “witnessing to dispossession”? Testifying to the ways our theologies, vocations, and Christianities have been disrupted by this movement? Exhorting others to be present and courageous when confronted with dispossession of this sort, too?
