The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, First Edition. Edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 17

Emancipatory Theory and Method

Nancy J. Ramsay

Since its emergence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, liberation theology has proven to be remarkably signifi cant in shaping contemporary practical theological

disciplines. Liberation theology refl ects infl uences of political theologies and theologies of hope that preceded it. It emerged as a part of a global confl uence of resistance to modernist assumptions that supported hierarchical exercises of power and authority over whole populations in the “ two - thirds world ” oppressed and marginalized by the legacy of colonialism. For many, it also gave voice to resistance to pervasive practices of sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, and a widening array of other oppressive forms of “ difference ” from dominant and privileged embodied social locations. The increasing presence and infl uence of voices of scholars from minoritized groups who valued the telos and methods of liberative theologies also clearly contributed to the infl uence of liberation theology.

In this chapter I will review chronologically the evolution of the infl uence of libera-tive theologies on the interdisciplinary, methodological trajectories of practical theo-logical disciplines. Due to constraints of space, I will use illustrations from Protestant and Catholic scholars in the Americas, Africa, and Europe to describe the pervasive infl uence of liberation theology.

Themes and commitments identifi ed with the origins and vision of liberation theol-ogy are easily traced across the past 40 years of scholarship in practical theological disciplines. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who subsequently served as a consult-ant to the World Council of Churches, articulated these themes well in his highly infl uential book published in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed .

1 All persons are subjects with the right and ontological vocation to exercise trans-formative agency in “ naming ” their world (Freire 1970 : 12).

2 Dominance is progressively dehumanizing for both the oppressed and the oppres-sor, though only the resistance of the oppressed will allow for the possible rehu-manization of the oppressors (42).

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3 The goal of education or conscientization for the oppressed is freedom to reject the internalized oppression of the dominant interpretations of reality through the exercise of critical consciousness and agency (53 – 54).

4 Praxis is this conscientized refl ection and action upon the world in order to transform it. Permanent liberation requires ongoing emancipatory revision by former oppressors and oppressed (36 – 39).

5 Dialogue, the relational context in which persons name the world and critically refl ect upon it, cannot exist without deep love for the world and for each other (77 – 78).

These fi ve central claims highlight themes of liberation as humanization, agency as critical consciousness, asymmetries of power as dehumanization, and the importance and power of love for the world and for each other.

From the outset, liberation theology such as that of Freire and related liberative theological approaches such as feminist, black, and womanist theologies clearly dem-onstrated an early synergy that fueled increasing clarity about the implications of lib-erative methodology for reshaping practical theological disciplines. Contexts, relational systems, themes of justice and power, political structures, and transformative change replaced a more individualized and apolitical rationality. Within two decades, practical theologians were using liberative theologies to reconceive the defi nition and telos of practical theology and the relation of scholarship to the work and witness (practices) of communities of faith. These changes are concurrent with the infl ux into practical theological disciplines of scholars identifi ed with minoritized groups previously absent or unheard – white women, and women and men of color, as well as scholars from previously colonized regions of the world. The infl uence of liberation theologies con-tinues to be dynamic and recognizable in now familiar methodologies such as critical social theory and critical gender, race, class, and sexuality studies, poststructuralism, and postcolonial critiques. A lively, critical engagement between practical theologians and scholars associated with these evolving methodologies continues to demonstrate the deep infl uence of liberative motifs.

The Early Years (1970 – ?1985): The Personal Becomes Political and Relational

Letty Russell, on the faculty at Yale Divinity School, was one of the earliest voices to articulate the implications of liberation theology in her book Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective: A Theology (1974) . Freire and liberation theology infl uenced her decision to move beyond the ordinary bounds of systematic or doctrinal theology toward practical theology and shaped the remainder of her career. Russell not only uses Freire; she also engages the concurrent works of contemporary US scholars writing from the perspectives of black theology and feminist theology and biblical studies to revise foundational themes in ecclesiology and related ministerial models in ways that refl ected the political commitments of liberation theology. For example, she retrieves the image of “ servanthood ” from its hierarchical interpretations ( 1974 : 140), and she

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retrieves the ethical import of imago Dei for mutuality in ministry (152). Partnership in ministry becomes a principal theme in her ecclesiology and includes not only con-gregational practice but global conceptions of the church ’ s vision for ministry. She writes: “ God ’ s action in the polis (society) sets women and men free to join Christ in representing what it means to be human. In this light it is possible to speak of the church as a theopolitical event of liberation toward a new humanity ” (158). She also develops further Freire ’ s theme of conscientization as including both the oppressed and oppressors alike and the need for self - styled liberals to adopt the priority of liberation (170). In these concerns she anticipates disciplinary shifts to follow in the 1980s and 1990s respectively.

In the fi eld of pastoral care, Edward P. Wimberly, an African American, was the fi rst to name the importance of liberation as a lens through which the classic categories for care (healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling) should be understood in his book Pastoral Care in the Black Church ( 1979 : 20 – 21). He names the economic, political, and social oppression of African Americans as the context for his proposals and illustrated the ways a liberative lens reshaped more privatized notions of care. He proposes that liberation is the norm of pastoral care for persons and for social transformation (74 – 75). His work was prescient for the evolution of new insights and skills in the fi eld of pastoral theology and care across the subsequent three decades.

Peggy Way, feminist pastoral theologian and one of the fi rst women to earn a doctor-ate in the fi eld in the second half of the twentieth century, refl ects a deep engagement with liberation theology as she voices an early recognition of its limits and the value of its vision for the shape of pastoral theology and pastoral care. In her 1980 essay in Pastoral Psychology she notes the urgency of shifting the fi eld ’ s center from the clinic to an ecclesial focus. In part she argues this on the grounds of the privatized ethical con-sequences of pastoral reliance on the clinical. She wants pastoral theologians to prepare pastors to address theological diffi culties such as the nature of human freedom and responsibility within US faith communities in the context of oppression and marginali-zation lifted up by various liberation perspectives (Way 1980 : 53). She critiques the universalism in many versions of liberation theology just as she also argues for a com-munal rather than individual ethic (55). Way notes that attention to the personal experience of parishioners is not the parameter of the fi eld ’ s interpretive lens but its preparation (56). Her argument represents an early and careful critical engagement of liberation theology, allowing it to inform a revised orientation for pastoral theology and pastoral care that continues to have resonance in debates about current communal contextual and intercultural paradigms.

It is not surprising that Freire ’ s work would have particular resonance among Christian educators. Thomas Groome, a Catholic scholar, critically and appreciatively engaged Freire ’ s work in his 1980 book, Christian Religious Education , a classic work in practical theology and its 1980s revitalization. He helpfully locates Freire ’ s proposals on education ’ s political nature in a historical context and names “ critical memory and creative imagination ” as equally important as Freire ’ s attention to the present and future (Groome 1980 : 186). Groome ’ s attention to imagination allows him to explore the importance of hope as a human capacity and to recognize the simultaneity of past, present, and future. Likewise, his attention to memory supports critical engagement

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with the past so as to limit its control over the present and future. He welcomes Freire ’ s interpretive lens of the kingdom of God and shows what it means for the Christian faith community (193).

In the fi eld of homiletics, liberation theology is introduced by Justo and Catherine G. Gonz á lez in their 1980 book, Liberation Preaching: the Pulpit and the Oppressed . The authors seek to bring the work of Central and South American liberation theologians to preachers in the United States. They link the oppressions of persons marginalized by colonialism, whether in other countries or the “ internal colonies ” in the United States, such as blacks, Chicanos, and Native Americans (Gonz á lez and Gonz á lez 1980 : 12). Furthermore, they acknowledge that, rather than a universal liberation theology, preachers need to listen to the politically concrete theologies voiced by blacks, Latin Americans, and feminists. Like Russell, they also address problems plaguing theology by lifting up a positive interpretation of imago Dei , widening interpretations of sin beyond the private frame, and refusing to spiritualize oppression (23 – 26). They explic-itly introduce the importance of preachers ’ self - awareness about asymmetries of power in relation to gender dynamics, for example. They also note the importance of differ-ences between oppressed groups, such as the oppressions experienced by white women and women of color (95 – 99). For the next 15 years the contribution of their book was central for homileticians attending to liberative themes.

In 1982 Archie Smith, Jr., in The Relational Self: Ethics and Therapy from a Black Church Perspective , broke new ground in articulating the interdependence of personal and systemic oppression and the importance of a liberation that addresses both ( 1982 : 14 – 15). He recognizes the deeply relational character of human identity. Each of us is embedded in “ a web of relations and historical circumstances ” (51). The personal is necessarily communal and political. This dialectical notion of interrelatedness allows Smith to develop further the implications of ideology. The totalizing power of a domi-nant culture reproduces itself through “ particular power arrangements and relational patterns of discrimination ” at the expense of those it constitutes as marginal – psychi-cally as well as materially – as it also privileges others (172 – 174). Smith ’ s dialectical analysis of human interconnectedness in contexts of oppression was helpful ground-work for subsequent developments in practical theological disciplines on the use of critical theory and on several oppressive forms of difference, such as gender, race, class, and sexuality.

The Middle Years (1985 – 1995): Revising Telos , Scope, and Methods

In every practical theological discipline, liberation theologies sparked recognition of the need to revise previous epistemological and theological assumptions to accommodate a wider and more dynamic understanding of the web of relations – cultural, political, historical, global, and so forth – that constitute human experience. A signifi cant factor in this shift included the infl ux of women and men of color and white women as schol-ars in practical theological disciplines. The complexity of difference in embodied social identity was multiplied as asymmetries of power were named and strategies for resist-ance explored. By 1990, practical theologians across a range of fi elds were turning to

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various critical theories as analytical resources in their interdisciplinary work and engaging the asymmetries of power apparent in categories such as intimate violence, gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Rebecca Chopp ’ s incisive and constructive critique of liberal theological correlation methodologies represents well the decisive turn in practical theological disciplines in this historical period. She uses liberation theology to revise the telos , epistemology, and methods of practical theology away from issues of meaning associated with modernity toward critical refl ection on transformative action in worldwide contexts scarred by power asymmetries that have material, political, and economic consequences. Her cri-tique, of course, also revises theological and ethical assumptions by giving attention to sin as systemic and structural and giving prominence to justice.

In Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology , Daniel Schipani describes con-scientization as creating “ a grammar of transformation ” ( 1988 : 51). The liberative notion of “ praxis as an epistemology of obedience ” means for him that Christian educa-tion must take on a performative posture (128). Writing around the same time, Mary Elizabeth Moore explicitly explores how feminist theology and womanist theology offer new directions and shape to religious education. These voices offer new ways to “ remy-thologize ” God ’ s power and goodness as well as human sin and salvation ( 1990 : 73 – 74). Feminist theology challenges Christian education to widen its sources for truth, to use a hermeneutic of suspicion regarding patriarchal biases in texts, and to widen interpretations of traditions to correct pervasive patriarchal biases (78). She also picks up Russell ’ s image of partnership to describe the teaching ministry, her hope for wider participation by women in leadership roles, and her readiness to include a wider range of leadership styles and more inclusive understandings of ministry (78 – 80).

Two homileticians in the mid - 1990s illustrate how liberation theology thoroughly reshaped the telos and practice of scholars in that fi eld. In Preaching Liberation James Harris clearly embraces the dialectical relation of persons and the social context. He wrote, “ Liberation preaching is preaching that is transformational . . . it is intended to effect change in the nature and structure of persons and society ” ( 1995 : 8). Christine Smith ’ s essay, “ Preaching as an Art of Resistance, ” describes preaching as “ an exercise of power in constructing ‘ personal, social, and ecclesiastical reality ’ ” ( 1996 : 39). She suggests that the urgency of preaching informed by liberation theology lies in that it discloses systems of oppression, injustice, and violence (41). She draws directly from liberation theology to construct three metaphors to frame her understanding of femi-nist preaching: “ weeping ” connects hearers with the consequences of injustice and suffering; “ confession ” puts truth - telling before resistance; and “ resistance ” enacts justice as an expression of hope (44 – 46).

Pastoral theologians were especially active in articulating the oppressive interrela-tion of personal, social, ecclesial, and political evil. For example, in the early 1990s they broke a long - standing silence about epidemic levels of intimate and domestic violence through constructive theological proposals on power, justice, and themes such as sac-rifi cial love and God ’ s omnipotence (see especially Poling 1991 ). Similarly, they drew on critical theory to address the import of socially constructed differences and the oppressive impact of patriarchy, racism, classism, and heterosexism for the practice and goals of care with women and with men (as an early example, see Glaz and Moessner

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1991 ). In the mid - to late 1990s Carroll Watkins Ali (1999) , like Wimberly and Smith before her, insisted on recognizing racist oppression, the political dimensions of suffer-ing, and the importance of resistance and empowerment in pastoral care. In a similar fashion, British pastoral theologian Stephen Pattison (1994) argues for revising indi-vidualistic models for pastoral care and proposes a thoroughgoing model shaped by the resources and methods of liberation theology.

When Larry Kent Graham claims that “ relational justice ” or “ emancipatory libera-tion ” ( 1995 : 230) has emerged as the proper telos or criterion of care, he voices well the paradigmatic shift underway in pastoral theology. He widens the horizon of long-standing attention to ecclesial and individual issues to engage the realities of domina-tion and subordination. In a 1993 Christian Century essay on the state of the fi eld, feminist pastoral theologian Bonnie Miller - McLemore elaborates a parallel theme through her attention to the role of pastoral theology as engaging in public theological discourse and her proposal that an ecological metaphor was needed to guide the future of the fi eld. This metaphoric shift captures well the recognition of interdependence between personal and political or public well - being (Miller - McLemore 1993 : 367) and the importance of engaging issues of public policy and debate. Drawing on Archie Smith ’ s identifi cation of the political dimensions of care and Miller - McLemore ’ s incisive proposal to revise the fi eld ’ s guiding metaphor from “ living human document ” to “ living human web, ” Graham proposes the need for a psychosystemic paradigm in pastoral care to signal the shift in telos . Such a paradigm would incorporate inter-dependent “ communal - contextual ” systems ( 1995 : 227).

Recent Developments (1995 – 2010): From Power and Identity to Cultural Criticism and Epistemology

The magnitude of change between 1985 and 1995 was not always evident to those in the midst of the storm. So, for example, when the groundbreaking Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling appeared in 1990 the entries of many of its authors did not acknowl-edge the transformations that surrounded them. Pastoral Care and Counseling: Redefi ning the Paradigms , an important book published in 2004 to update the Dictionary , makes the changes more evident (Ramsay 2004 ). It provides an excellent bibliography and overview of the shift in telos , scope, and method that occurred in these middle years, partly as a result of emancipatory theory, not only in pastoral care and pastoral theol-ogy but also in other practical theological disciplines.

New developments continue to shape liberationist theory and practical theology. The advent of critical cultural theory provides important resources for joining the concept of praxis as a liberative theory of transformative agency with resources recognizing the theory - laden character of Christian practices that embody and enact communities ’ values and norms. In Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty , British practical theologian Elaine Graham notes that this attention to practice allows practical theologians to lift up the signifi cance of the role of the laity. She draws on feminist and critical gender and social theory to argue that “ Christian practices might be imagined as the bearers of living principles of hope and obligation ” (Graham 1996 :

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111). As Chopp (1987) had encouraged a decade before, epistemology becomes situ-ated orthopraxis in Graham ’ s critical theory of practice, so that “ ethics and politics therefore become processes and practices, rather than applications of metaphysical ideals ” (Graham 1996 : 6). Refl ecting on the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in her native South Africa, Denise Ackermann pursues a similar trajectory, situating healing praxis in communities that practice awareness of human suffering and long for whole-ness, accountability that presumes mutual relation and is signifi ed by repentance, and forgiveness that is a way of life that cannot be demanded – only hoped for ( 1998 : 90 – 93).

Among homileticians, John McClure (2001) demonstrates another methodological trajectory when he proposes an “ otherwise ” homiletic informed by the emancipatory ethical commitments of liberative thought found in the critiques of deconstructive postmodern methodologies. He illustrates how attention to radical alterity helpfully decenters the preacher and opens the possibility of preaching as “ testimony ” to the glory of the infi nite revealed as obligation to the vulnerable other in the nexus of the interhuman.

Costa Rican practical theologian Sara Baltodano is familiar with developing coun-tries in Latin and South America deeply shaped by liberation theologies. She critically engages economic and postcolonial theories to demonstrate how contexts of pervasive poverty and political marginalization call for close, nondualistic attention to economic, political, sociological, theological, and psychological analysis (Baltodano 2002 : 215 – 216). She describes the “ popular pastoral care ” movement in Latin and South America which aims to provide both: “ (a) personal care through grass - roots communities, and (b) care for societies ” (213). She proposes a “ liberating pastoral care ” approach shaped by an “ eco - systemic ” perspective (215) that focuses its attention on poor families and presumes their agency in affecting change at both contextual and family systems levels. This effort in theory building for care that is responsive to an oppressive context also fi nds resonance in Emmanuel Lartey (2003) . His theory of intercultural care rightly decenters Western practices and methods for care and corrects the cultural, political, and economic hegemony of Western norms and practices. Liberative themes are easily discerned in the three interdependent principles of intercultural care: contextuality, multiplicity of perspectives, and authentic participation (2003: 33).

Feminist pastoral theologian Christie Neuger draws on two other postmodern tra-jectories informed by emancipatory ethics – narrative theory and critical gender studies – in order to construct a model for pastoral care and counseling with women. As she notes, her work benefi ts from the increasing scope and depth of analysis of hierarchi-cally constructed gender relations in gender studies that include refl ection on episte-mology and culture (Neuger 2001 : 7). In her theory for a pastoral counseling grounded in emancipatory practice, she attends to the intersectionality of oppressive difference across various forms of embodied experience that is increasingly common in practical theological disciplines.

Mary McClintock Fulkerson (2007) , a constructive theologian with increasing inter-est in practical theological methods, introduces place theory as an effective, postmod-ern approach to disclosing the complex situatedness of congregational experiences and practices in her ethnographic study. Her research is also clearly shaped by liberatory,

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transformative commitments. She locates her study in a congregation whose members are “ marked ” by the “ wounds ” of racism and ableism. The harm is heightened by the social obliviousness of those who experience privilege with regard to these forms of difference and thus are complicit in the congregants ’ marginalization and oppression (Fulkerson 2007 : 15). Drawing on place theory, Fulkerson constructs a practical theo-logical method better able to alter these conditions by creating a conceptual “ space ” in which those who are privileged in the dominant culture can better recognize the other and themselves differently (21).

Methodological and Thematic Contributions

Across 40 years the emancipatory motifs and critiques of liberation theology have informed the evolving telos and methodological approaches of scholars in various prac-tical theological disciplines and have moved the work of many systematic theologians, such as Russell, Chopp, and Fulkerson, toward a more practical theological approach. Moreover, as this review suggests, the infl uence of liberative theological resources has guided practical theologians in their use and critical adaptation of various postmodern methods and critical social theory to ensure, for example, that the consensus undergird-ing communicative ethics does not obscure the need to adjudicate between competing commitments to justice and to discern the greater obligation (Graham 1996 : 153). The infl uence of emancipatory practices, commitments to justice and resistance, and the goal of transformation are also apparent in current trajectories of methodological innovation across the various fi elds of practical theological disciplines.

Current methodological innovations, such as those noted above in the work of Fulkerson, McClure, and Neuger, demonstrate that liberation theology prompts practi-cal theological researchers to locate, adapt, or construct methodological approaches to ensure that the structural, political, relational, and internalized dehumanizing conse-quences of asymmetries of power are disclosed for critique and that new and more just proposals are offered. Obviously, emancipatory theories arising from liberation theology will not be contained in any one particular method or another. They will require con-tinuing methodological innovation to ensure that practical theological research dis-closes with deepening perspicacity both critical social analysis of the intricate and pervasive webs of oppression in church and culture, and critical theological analysis of the distortions in theological and biblically informed commitments to love and justice.

This means that emancipatory theories function as stimuli for the critical adaptation of practical theological methods, such as case study, ethnography, ritual theory, and congregational studies. Their infl uence is seen in the insistence on adapting such theo-ries or discovering new theories to deepen “ seeing ” and analysis (Neuger 2001 ; Fulkerson 2007 ). Their infl uence is also seen in constructive practical theological pro-posals that shift and revise less adequate theological metaphors (Miller - McLemore 1993 ) and constructions (Groome 1980 ; Graham 1995 ; McClure 2001 ).

Emancipatory theory urges attention to research and the construction of methods for such research that insist on attention to issues of justice that disclose structural, political, relational, and personal possibilities with constructive and transformative

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proposals for redemptive and restorative change. As Chopp (1987) demonstrated inci-sively, emancipatory theory provides the ethical vision to revise the telos , methodolo-gies, epistemologies, and theological perspectives of current theological approaches when they fail to offer redemptively transformative proposals. Because practical theo-logians bear a particular responsibility for methodological research that contextualizes theological proposals, emancipatory theory is a valuable resource for testing the telos and adequacy of every practical methodological and theological proposal.

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Ali , Carroll A. Watkins ( 1999 ). Survival and Liberation: Pastoral Theology in African American Context . St. Louis : Chalice Press .

Baltodano , Sara ( 2002 ). “ Pastoral Care in Latin America . ” In James Reaves Farris , ed., International Perspectives on Pastoral Counseling . New York : Haworth Press , pp. 191 – 224 . Also in American Journal of Pastoral Counseling 5 ( 3 – 4 ): 191 – 224 .

Chopp , Rebecca S. ( 1987 ). “ Practical Theology and Liberation . ” In Lewis S. Mudge and James N. Poling , eds., The Promise of Practical Theology: Formation and Refl ection . Philadelphia : Fortress Press , pp. 120 – 138 .

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Oxford University Press . Glaz , Maxine , and Moessner , Jeanne Stevenson , eds. ( 1991 ). Women in Travail and Transition :

A New Pastoral Care . Minneapolis : Fortress Press . Gonz á lez , Justo L. , and Gonz á lez , Catherine G. ( 1980 ). Liberation Preaching: The Pulpit and the

Oppressed . Nashville : Abingdon Press . Graham , Elaine L. ( 1996 ). Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty .

London : Mowbray . Graham , Larry Kent ( 1995 ). “ From Relational Humanness to Relational Justice: Reconceiving

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Counseling , 2nd edn . London : Jessica Kingsley . McClure , John S. ( 2001 ). Otherwise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics . St. Louis : Chalice

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Neuger , Christie Cozad ( 2001 ). Counseling Women: A Narrative, Pastoral Approach . Minneapolis : Fortress Press .

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