Thus far the chapters in Part 1 of the Companion have remarked on the importance of mining the reality of the experience of oppression as the source and ground of the theologian's task. In Chapter 4 (The social sciences and the rituals of resilience in African and African-American communities) Linda E. Thomas gives a preliminary demonstration of how this can be done.
Thomas begins by asserting that "historically and presently, traditional academic theological inquiry does not adequately address issues and methodologies related to the social sciences." But there's more:
Theology, by [its traditional] definition, focuses on the discussion of -- and rational and systematic inquiry into -- concepts and issues that theologians choose to associate with God. ... Theology is focused almost exclusively on the study of ideas -- of systematic conceptual frameworks -- for understanding questions of religious interest ... It has not, generally and in terms of historical practice, been a field of academic inquiry that is interested in, or familiar with, issues affecting daily life.
A couple of observations. The criticism of over-intellectualization of academic theological education is nothing new. It's been part of the American fabric of theological critique since at least the Second Great Awakening. Already two centuries ago, American Christians were anxious to jump on the pragmatic bandwagon. And as far as studying issues affecting daily life (or, at least using studies of daily life), that too is nothing new as can be seen in Evangelicalism's deployment of successive fads of managerial theory and marketing and entertainment practices. Professor Thomas is certainly correct, however, if her point is re-framed as the ill-effects of uncritically deploying noxious analyses of daily life.
The second obvious yet noteworthy reality of academic theology is that most of the theologians included in its course syllabi inhabit the cliched, but searingly accurate, category of old dead white men ... such as Augustine [sic], Aquinas, Luther, [but not Calvin?!], Schliermacher, Barth, Tillich, and others of the same sex and race.
Did "race" exist before modern times? I'm not sure. And an unnecessary winnowing of "theology" if it is understood as a practice including conversation among past and present. In other words, these dead white guys are important because, well, they're important if one wants to understand how we got from the close of the NT canon to today. Even the American pragmatic push cannot be fully understood without reference to its past. And, anyway, anyone who reads more than textbook anthologies of what these guys wrote would find lots about "issues affecting daily life." Or, as Thomas cites James Cone, these guys did consider "social reality" as at least part of "the appropriate focus for theological inquiry".
Thomas's goal, however, is not to balance the historical with the experiential but to privilege a particular limited form of the study of the experiential: "The focus must shift from God's theoretical saving of souls to the far more concrete imperative to save hungry, dying, oppressed people." Ignoring much of what traditional theologians did with respect to these very issues, while also doing their "academic" thing, Thomas goes on to describe her field work in two places--a township in South Africa and the South Side of Chicago--where black churches manage to do the latter while holding onto the former.
Thomas's description of her field work in Guguletu and Chicago are the best parts of her chapter. Without a sense of irony she describes the work that churches in both communities have done to provide "food and shelter, child care and other services, and, most importantly, a sense of community" while at the same time "holding biblically based Christian theology." As Thomas concludes,
Why are so many people drawn to these churches? One hypothesis is that the cultural experience of oppression ... continues to members' uneasiness and disquiet ... and has a negative impact on their sense of security. ... By providing food, shelter, and clothing to people, these churches help women and men to "be somebody" -- a person made in God's image -- in a world that tires to destroy their humanity.
Amen.
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