The Turning House 5.2 Released!

I am pleased to announce the release of this semester's second issue of The Turning House, the student journal of Union Theological Seminary. You can read all of the articles for this issue - entitled a stock-taking - as well as the semester's first issue on the Turning House blog. I was privileged to be the centerfold for this issue, with a piece (below) that is bound to stir many feelings and probably heat up the waters a little. But then, who would I be without some good controversy? It has been a great pleasure to work with an outstanding editorial team of HMR, AED, JTS. Enjoy!

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From the ‘Jesus Question’ to ‘Evangelical’ ‘Safe Space’:
A Commentary

   By Jeremy D. Posadas

   In classrooms, on Blackboard, in loud Pit conversations or silent eye-rolls, it’s clear that a current defining the community’s life has subtly but significantly changed. Last year, the ‘Jesus Question’ loomed in many forms among many people at the seminary; in discussions surrounding this question, some invoked ‘evangelical’ to express their frustration at having to leave Jesus outside the classroom. ‘Evangelical’ helped engage questions of spiritual and intellectual modes of learning, as well as the relationship of Christianity and other faiths in a Christian seminary. And for many students of color, ‘evangelical’ was, and continues to be, one of the only ways to address painful issues of race that abound unspoken and unhealed.

   Now, however, in this election year ‘evangelical’ is championed or challenged as a decidedly (if often implicitly) political identity. This year, largely following the patterns set by media portrayals, the lines drawn around ‘evangelical’ by most people at Union have not been in the shapes of head and heart – with some shading in black and white (but the barest brown and rainbow) – but brightly in the colors of red and blue. Moreover, ‘evangelical’ this year has been largely, limitedly contested as a category of white identity, again following much of the public representation. In this shift a specter has arisen that, at its best, repeats Union’s own worst failings at good intentions and, at its worst, threatens the very purposes for which a place such as Union should exist at all.

   Rather than choosing a name for this specter, I want instead to relate some of the phrases by which it has manifested itself. I do not mean to represent or criticize specific individuals, groups, or events; at the same time, each of the following has been fully present in conversations throughout the semester. At base is the claim, both by some who identify as evangelicals and some who don’t, that “Union is not a safe space for evangelicals” or “At Union, it’s evangelicals who are oppressed / discriminated against.” A frequent add-on is “I’m not an evangelical myself, but I think that....”  Translated into institutional terms, we hear that “Assumptions are made here,” either about Union’s progressive identity or about the politics or faiths of evangelicals. And turned towards advocacy for the oppressed is the appeal “If this is supposed to be a diverse place...” or its cliché cousin, “Religion should not be so polarized / politicized...”; again, these are offered (though of course with different nuance) by people across the theo-political spectrum.

   In whatever guises this specter appears, to my mind it has three causes, each of which has consequences that harm Union’s integrity for its mission. The first cause is misguided or incomplete power-analyses, by which ideas of privilege and marginality are simplistically applied within the boundaries of the seminary while wholly divorced from the socio-political realities of all the worlds beyond the seminary. Thus, the language of ‘safe space’ or oppression is appropriated mostly by or for white evangelicals, without accountability for the broader, real structures of evangelical power.

   Such structures include, for instance, an electoral evangelical base that expressed its power in the US election; or an ecclesiastical evangelical base that colludes with fundamentalist church leaders across the world to continue to oppress queer people and women and non-Christians. Whether individual students at Union are personally involved with these efforts is secondary; what is primary and ignored is that naming oneself as evangelical relates one to structures that, implicitly or explicitly, identify as evangelical. Any claim about ‘evangelical oppression’ at Union must recognize the power structures at work both inside and outside of Union. Evangelical Christianities do not have political and social power in the United States and world simply on account of numbers, but networks of power-relationships. And such relationships, deeply entrenched in our current social matrix, do not become less powerful within Union through some magic of numerical reversal.

   The second cause is a misrepresentation of this seminary’s mission, which imposes a knee-jerk inclusivity to strangle the seminary’s progressive, transformational commitments – a mistake corrected in the new mission statement for a ‘progressive’ Union, not a ‘liberal’ one. Again, personal and structural roles are confused: the ‘safe space’ for professions of personal faith and commitment is different from the ‘safe space’ Union also seeks to be, where unjust power structures can be overturned. Too often, criticism of the political and social power of evangelicals is taken – and allowed to be taken – as a personal attack against evangelicals at Union. Yes, Union must be a ‘safe space,’ if ‘unsafe’ means being systemically disallowed from participation or directly attacked with regard to one’s humanity. Yes, Union must be a ‘safe space,’ if ‘safe’ means safety for those whose experiences of oppression have been theologically undergirded by some (admittedly not all) of the same worldviews that define evangelical faith. But Union should not be a ‘safe space’ for all political perspectives: precisely because it seeks transformation in the world, it challenges the powered assumptions of that many Christian theologies make, particularly evangelical theologies. In this sense, Union cannot be a safe space – it must be a transformational space.

   This leads to the third cause: misidentification of what a seminary is for. A seminary, as distinct from a religious studies department or divinity school, seeks in part to transform its students and enable them, in turn, to transform the world. The particular values of Union in its teaching and living include preparing students for the fight – in churches, academies, and societies – against unjust uses and structures of power, the fight to end poverty in all its dimensions, and the fight for a Gospel that does or sanctions no violence against the humanity of each and all.

   Union sits in the nexus of many institutions – religious, social, political, academic – and each of us comes to Union out of the power-relations that dominate those institutions. But Union’s duty, at times utterly derelicted, is to transform those same power-relations, first within its walls, then outside. If such work of transformation is to continue in a New Union, then we all must resist the specter of easy claims for ‘evangelical’ ‘safe space.’