Writing Theologically

Eric D. Barreto

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781451483406
• eBook ISBN: 9781451496598
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Writing Theologically introduces writing not just as an academic exercise but as a way for students to communicate the good news in rapidly changing contexts, as well as to discover and craft their own sense of vocation and identity. Most important will be guiding students to how they might begin to claim and hone a distinctive theological voice that is particularly attuned to the contexts of writer and audience alike. In a collection of brief, readable essays, this volume, edited by Eric D. Barreto, emphasizes the vital skills, practices, and values involved in writing theologically. That is, how might students prepare themselves to communicate effectively and creatively, clearly and beautifully, the insights they gather during their time in seminary? Each contribution includes practical advice about best practices in writing theologically; however, the book also stresses why writing is vital in the self-understanding of the minister, as well as her or his public communication of the good news.

10

Writing Spiritually

Jacob D. Myers

Just in case nobody’s told you yet, allow me to let you in on an ineluctable consequence of pursuing a seminary education.

You. Will. Write. A lot!

Writing is to the seminarian what plowing is to the farmer; it may feel like painful, backbreaking work, but without it “don’t nothin’ grow,” as they say in my neck of the woods.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You just finished reading a dozen or so essays en route to learning how to write theologically, and here you find this essay on writing spiritually— tacked on at the end, little more than an afterthought. It’s that thing you’ll attend to if you have time, once all your other work is complete. Yet, unlike this essay, your spirituality is not something to get to when you have time, because you will never have time. You must take time. But where does one find the time when seminary already feels like an all-you-can-eat hotdog competition? Amidst Hebrew vocab lists, Greek paradigm charts, and troves of history and theology to read, what room is left for spiritual consumption?

I’ll show you, but you’ll have to be willing to be a bit sneaky. Are you ready?

To begin, you should know that I’m writing as someone who has been where you are now. I want to help you see that writing spiritually is far more than writing prayers, devotionals, or sermons. If you follow me through this essay, I’ll show you how all writing can become spiritual writing; in fact, it already is. I will help you to view your myriad précis, reflection papers, and essays to be less like hoops you must jump through in route to graduation and more like opportunities for spiritual invigoration.

Genus Spiritualis

To proceed, we must remove the dross surrounding the concept of spirituality. As Lucy Bregman aptly observes in The Ecology of Spirituality, the words spirituality and spiritual are so ubiquitous that they have come to mean almost anything one wants them to. It is unclear, for instance, whether one has spirituality or whether spirituality is something one attains. Some see spirituality as intrinsic to Christian faith and praxis, and others view it as a threat.^[1] So what do we mean when we talk about writing spiritually?

Ecclesiologist Tony Jones gets spirituality right when he observes, “No matter one’s theological disposition, it’s clear the protagonist in the relationship is God.”^[2] For Jones, as well as myself, a proper understanding of spirituality flows from this God-centered commitment, which is informed most concretely by Swiss theologian Karl Barth. It is a view of spirituality that resists a radically withdrawn, me-and-my-Jesus orientation as well as a human-centered we-can-save-the-world-all-by-ourselves approach.^[3] For Barth, spirituality marks the “special movement and act of God in the work of the Holy Spirit” in and through the thoughts and actions of Christ followers, and as such, it is only loosely related to religiosity.^[4] The spiritual transcends the mundane, even the mundanity of religious and theological discourse. Therefore, we could say that all seminary writing is inherently theological but that not all seminary writing is necessarily spiritual. Let’s talk about how we can change that.

The Spirituality of Discourse

Writing is a spiritual enterprise because it draws the individual into the matrix of language, which is socially constructed. And again, I’m not just talking about devotional literature or written prayers. Every act of writing constitutes a spiritual decision: you either open yourself to the “dominion of the Spirit,” as Gustavo Gutiérrez puts it, or you do not.^[5] Writing is inherently spiritual because it participates in the two poles of spirituality: the personal and the sociopolitical.

Every act of discourse is inherently political. It is never neutral. As discourse, writing is inseparable from systems of power and privilege to which you either acquiesce or resist. Likewise, your spirituality is inextricable from your politics (Prov. 21:13; Phil. 2:4; 1 John 3:17). If you accede to the governing powers and principalities—that is, the structures that legitimate and perpetuate violence and marginalization against some people while offering preferential treatment to others—then you participate in your own spiritual poverty.

On the other hand, a person can engage writing as a means to spiritual liberation. What this means is that the writer, recognizing the sociopolitical entanglements of her discourse, employs writing to liberate marginalized others and to exhort the powers and principalities to set people free—even yourself, even in seminary. “This is a spirituality that dares to sink roots in the soil of oppression and germinate the seeds of liberation.”^[6] Writing can facilitate such a spirituality.

We can, and we will through the course of this essay, flip this equation around. All discourse is inherently spiritual, and all spirituality is inherently discursive. Spirituality is structured like writing; it is made possible by the necessary gap between the self and God, the self and others, even the self with the self. Because spirituality and writing both participate in and are grounded by a certain otherness, they each open a path toward a way of thinking that calls into question the governing assumptions of systems of thought. This is also known as deconstruction, which is another word for justice.^[7]

Writing Spiritually

What does it mean to write spiritually? Said differently, what does it mean to write in such a way that the truly spiritual is able to shine through our religious discourse? As we move forward, let me be clear: first, writing, even spiritual writing, cannot guarantee union with the Divine. Writing functions as a summons. It opens a generative space where God can work in and through our words and according to God’s good pleasure transform them into God’s Word. Second, writing spiritually is not a one-size-fits-all program. Let me explain.

Writing spiritually relates differently to marginalized people than to people who are born into positions of power and privilege. It is incumbent upon those of us who are born into power and privilege to employ our discourse in the service of liberation. This requires a conversion to human and nonhuman others, a striving to open oneself to the lived experiences of other people and a yearning to seek justice on their behalf. Such is the mantle of responsibility placed upon those with power and privilege (Luke 18:18-25). For such—which I myself am as an educated, white, straight, American male—it is imperative that we divest ourselves of our power positions in order to create space for the other. Jon Sobrino writes about such divestment as a political holiness that conjoins with a kind of sociopolitical ascesis or self-divestment. Not unlike the Christian concept of kenosis, people like me must willfully strip themselves of power in order to “denounce and unmask oppression.”^[8]

Obversely, those who are marginalized on account of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender may use their writing to liberate not only themselves but also others who share their struggles. The boldness of deconstruction is just as much of a spiritual act for marginalized persons as divestment is for those with power.

We need not strain to witness the spiritual fervor emerging from the voices of those writing from societies’ margins. For instance, observe how novelist and playwright Pearl Cleage captures the two poles of spirituality—the personal and the sociopolitical—in her introductory essay to Mad at Miles:

I am writing to expose and explore the point where racism and sexism meet. I am writing to help understand the full effects of being black and female in a culture that is both racist and sexist. I am writing to try and communicate that information to my sisters first and then to any brothers of goodwill and honest intent who will take the time to listen. . . . I am writing to allow myself to feel the anger. I am writing to keep from running toward it or away from it or into anybody’s arms. I am writing to find solutions and pass them on. I am writing to find a language and pass it on. I am writing, writing, writing, for my life.^[9]

This is how I want you to write in seminary, to write as if your life depended on it, for your transformation ought not begin at graduation but at matriculation.

At base, spiritual discourse—speech as well as writing—demands that we write out of our lived experience, and this is something that may encounter resistance from some of your seminary professors. Do not succumb. Do not allow the academic powers and principalities to stifle your spiritual development, your movement toward political holiness. Embrace who you are. Name your privilege along with your pain. Novelist Flannery O’Connor once explained, “I write the way I do because and only because I am a Catholic. I feel that if I were not a Catholic, I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even enjoy anything.”^[10] Like O’Connor, you should write out of your lived experience and theological commitments.

Spiritual writing arises out of what Sobrino labels a “spiritual mentality—not because ‘spiritual’ means pure interiority here, as opposed to history, but because it is the fruit and expression of the Spirit; and it is the Spirit that time and again proposes the ideal, refusing to let us strike a compromise with the factual.”^[11] Likewise, in his book We Drink from Our Own Wells, Gutiérrez writes about the importance of grounding one’s spirituality in one’s lived experience. He urges his Latin American sisters and brothers to lean into the pain and atrocities they have experienced, because out of them a “new spirituality” is emerging. Such is a “new and different way of following Jesus, . . . different means proper to Latin America and shaped by the real experiences of the Latin Ameri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Writing Basically
• Writing Persuasively
• Writing for the Ear
• Writing Briefly
• Writing Creatively
• Writing Publicly
• Writing Digitally
• Writing Purposefully
• Writing Personally
• Writing Spiritually
• More Writing
• Bibliography