Transforming the community from which the theology arises – a response to Dr. Clint Le Bruyns – by Margriet Westers
Dr. Clint Le Bruyns, in his article, mentions a critically important aspect of theological science, namely, it’s relevance to the societies and worlds we live in. Theology should always be public theology, aiming to speak about and to God in and out of the ugliest and most beautiful circumstances of our lives. This is the Kairos consciousness: the awareness of God’s time, kairos, in our earthly time, chronos, kairos intervening and transforming chronos time.
At the end of his article, Dr. Le Bruyns mentions the question of how seriously public theology assumes this responsibility of being a transformative power for society and creation. Great examples of such theology are seen in both the South African Kairos Theology and the Palestinian Kairos Movement.
If we do want our theology to be more public, more liberating, more transformational towards society, and probably even more political, I believe we should rethink the way we build our Christian communities, as theology, I believe, arises in the Christian community. The problem here is that unfortunately, too many (western) Christian communities never meet marginalized people. Those communities bring forth theologians that have never met marginalized people and therefore their theologies do not reflect their experiences with them. I witness in The Netherlands that many graduated theologians reflect their own upbringing in a white, educated, middle-class, Christian community.
If we want our theology to be more public, more transformative and more liberating, it should arise from our encounters with the people in the margins of society. Such encounters are the encounters that have most shaped and influenced my own theology: the encounters in Palestine and Israel; the encounters with the stateless asylum seekers in my home country, The Netherlands; the encounters with the homeless. We need to learn that true worship might be seen more in the coffee we drink with a homeless person on a sunny Sunday morning than in the safety of the church building’s walls, while singing another Hillsong song. Rightly, the Palestinian Kairos Document invites us to “Come and See” – there is a dynamic transformative power in the simple encounter with someone whose life is so different – and sometimes so much more difficult – than yours.
Margriet Westers graduated in Theology and Arabic Language and Culture at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She lived in East Jerusalem for half a year in 2010, volunteering with Sabeel (www.sabeel.org). Her main interests are liberation theology, Christian-Muslim encounter and political religion. She writes as a columnist for CV Koers, a Dutch Christian news magazine. In September 2012, she will start a Master of Divinity at the Protestant Theological University in The Netherlands.