The Mestizo/a Community of the Spirit

A Postmodern Latino/a Ecclesiology

Garcia-Johnson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878191
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This work models a creative exercise in ecclesiology based on a Latino/a practical theology of the Spirit, which designs theological discourse based on its encounter with the Spirit in human culture. Hence, it is a theology appreciative of and attentive to the multiple matrices and intersections of the Spirit with cultures. Garcia-Johnson offeres an appreciative and critical analysis of the uses of culture among Latino/a theologians, followed by the proposal for a postmodern Spirit-friendly cultural paradigm based on the narratives of the cross and the Pentecost. He develops a practical theology for a Latino/a postmodern ecclesiology based on three native Latino/a theological concepts: mestizaje, accompaniment, and mañana eschatology. The resulting ecclesial construct-The Mestizo/a Community of Mañana-reflects a transforming mañana vision and models the visible cruciform community in which the transforming praxis and historical transcendence of the Christ-Spirit works from within. The work sets forth practical guidelines for implementation of the ecclesial construct in the urban context of devastated communities and offers suggestions for further development in Latino/a theology.

1

Practical Theologies and the Call for a Latino/a Theology of the Spirit

Practical Theology-in-the-making

Practical theology is becoming a context wide discourse. Several features have contributed to this phenomenon. First, practical theology allows for diversity. For instance, when referring to practical theology one finds that this discipline may point to pastoral theology (Farley), pastoral action (Oden, Nadeau), a form of theological ethics (Browning), or ecclesial action (Rahner, Anderson, Floristán).1 Second, although practical theology allows for diverse expressions of the same, its methodological composition is common and resides in the binomial theory-practice (praxis).2 Third, there is a growing consensus that practical theology is about church action in the world. This particular emphasis and common theological intention is expressed, for instance, in terms of theories of action,3 theology of praxis,4 and Christopraxis.5 Finally, practical theology tends to be local and contextual. The fact that practical theological approaches gear toward pastoral theology, liberation theology, and political theology underlines the strong ties practical theologizing maintains with contextual issues.6 In addition, academic rigor in practical theologizing is deemed as crucial as in “traditional approaches.”7 Critical reflection, as we have indicated, tends to be context-based and action-based and in dialogue with several interlocutors such as the church, tradition, the academia, and public life.

Due in part to different contexts and agendas, practical theologians may be said to manifest (at least) two movements when elaborating practical discourse: from theory to practice and from practice to theory. These movements describe, in our opinion, the immediate analytical framework from which these theologians exercise their discourses, while they maintain the primacy of practice (praxis) in relation to theory.8

From Theory to Practice: A Theoretical Framework for Practice9

In Germany, for instance, influential theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann and J. B. Metz with other pastoral theologians have “politicized” theological discourse and, in a way, have “renovated” the so-called pastoral theology.10 This “renovated theology” has being invigorated by the binomial pattern “theory-practice” and the emphasis on ecclesial action as a forward movement beyond the self-edification of the church. More than applied theology, these theologians see practical theology as the critical reflection of ecclesial action in society. Herein, one of the main tasks of this practical theology is to verify the action of the church in society.11

In France and Canada, practical theology has taken a “sociocultural emphasis.” R. Marlé and J. Audinet have proposed the “epistemological rule” when elaborating theology. In this methodology the important question is not “how to do theological reflection” but “why”? Practical theologians, in this school, tend to use the paradigm theory-practice to produce a theological discourse able to “give an account of faith and the God this theology confesses within the context of social practices and cultural diversity.”12

In Italy and Spain the dichotomy “doctrine-(pastoral) practice” has extended to the field of practical theology. Pastoral theology has been diluted into church practices without much (critical) reflection involved. Having acknowledged that, we must mention the impact of Latin American liberation theology on Spain. Some clerical and academicians have begun to revise theology and ecclesial action in dialogue with Latin American liberation theology. Spain is becoming, in the Spanish-speaking world, an important locality for the development of practical theology. Practical theologians such as Casiano Floristán and J. J. Tamayo have contributed to this fact, fostering an academic environment suitable for research and inter-contextual dialogue.13

In the United States of America, particularly in the Anglo-American theological context, there is a consensus that practical theologies have gone from a clinical-psychotherapeutic model of pastoral theology to an interdisciplinary-critical-ecclesial-action model.14 Hiltner, Don Browning, David Tracy, among others, have contributed greatly to this field. Don Browning, for instance, develops his understanding of practical theology from the ethical-pastoral perspective operating methodologically with an understanding of the binomial theory-practice in terms of practical thinking or phronesis.15 David Tracy tends to see practical theology as critical correlation of theory-praxis interpreted within the inner logic of the Christian truth and human situation. For Tracy the two main sources of practical theology are Christian tradition and human experience and language. Correlating both sources is the task of theology. Depending on the emphasis given in elaborating this correlation, ecclesial action emerges as the self-actualization of the church or the construction of social reality (society).16

Methodological Shift

We have descriptively insinuated that practical theology as a discipline shows accentuated differences from traditional (academic) theologies such as historical theology, biblical hermeneutics, Christian philosophy, and systematic theology. These types of theological discourses have clear affiliations with formal (scientific) methodologies that prioritize theory over practice in the elaboration of theological discourse.17

Traditional theologies use theoretical-critical reason as a basis for inquiry and knowledge. Reality is grasped through a dialectic operation where objective data and interpretation produce understanding by following a method. This method, in Bernard Lonergan’s words, is a “normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results.”18 In this sense, theories are seen as containing objective understanding about a particular reality (the studied matter), which then are used to propose practices or action toward that reality. This has been, more or less, the way to construct theological discourse in the modern sense.

In which way is practical theology as a discipline different from traditional theologies? Three main differences, in our judgment, can be listed: methodology, location, and theological agenda.

With regard to theological method, practical theology includes critical or theoretical reason in the theological process but knowledge is not mediated by it. Instead, it is practical reason obtained from praxis which mediates truth. The primacy of praxis over theory does not undermine the role of critical reason for they co-exist in dialectical- mutual relation. Practical theologians differ in the way the binomial theory-praxis operates but would agree that the basic methodology of any practical theology must include an interaction between praxis and critical reflection, giving predominance to praxis in their methodology.

While traditional theologies have been produced from within the “academic environment” or “university,” practical theology’s first moment occurs in the context of ministry, culture, and society. This change of social location in theologizing constitutes, some argue, a clever move toward recovering theology as a scientia practica.19

Another distinction between traditional approaches and practical theologies is the emphasis on ecclesial action in the latter. Traditional theologies focus on particular fields of ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Practical Theologies and the Call for a Latino/a Theology of the Spirit
• Chapter 2: Latino/a Culture and the Spirit: Toward a Spirit-Friendly Postmodern Perception of Culture
• Chapter 3: The Pentecost and the Cross as the Authoring Narratives of the Cruciform Community of the Spirit
• Chapter 4: The Mestizo/a Community of Mañana: Imagining a Latino/a Postmodern Ecclesiology
• Conclusion
• Bibliography