While in seminary at Garrett-Evangelical, I learned two things that arose above the rest of my education, due partially to the Methodist denomination of the seminary. First, that the perceived disconnection between body and soul rose early in the history of the Christian Church, a wound that has caused much pain over the centuries. Second, that the theology taught/learned at seminary was drastically different from both the inherited theology I grew up with in Sunday School as well as the theology many of my peers were going to be allowed to preach upon graduation: another wound that has caused much pain over the centuries. My current project seeks to find ways to bring these two wounds into reconciliation and begin to heal some of the hurt the church began inflicting upon the world so many years ago and which some churches continue to this day.
The body/soul dichotomy is not a new problem. Many theologians and philosophers have commented upon the issue before, although without resolution it seems. It seems counter-intuitive to me as a Christian: if Jesus the Christ, the Incarnation of the transcendent God, was supposed to be fully human and fully divine, shouldn’t we embrace the entirety of what it means to be human? It’s not as though Jesus was an entity of pure spirit, nor a vacant empty shell mind filled with some holy divine essence. These were rejected as heresy millennia ago. I believe that philosophically re-connecting our body and spirit is the key to healing many of the carnage done to the human race ever since the Christian religion separated them. Seeing all humanity as one human race is a beginning that cannot be acknowledged if you decide that those with certain spirits are above those without said spirits.
Studying at a Methodist seminary gave me keen insights about the mundane bureaucratic aspects of the denomination applicable to most Protestant denominations. Chief among those insights were the necessary constraints placed upon Divinity students attempting to find work at churches outside of urban city centers, especially when they discuss theology with their new congregations. Surely, I thought, they would be able to bring the theology of the academy with them to any number of congregation types. Quite the opposite is true, as I was to learn. In most Protestant denominations, clergy persons are hired by a committee of laypeople, members of the local church who have (often) volunteered for the position of deciding whose voice will be spoken in their naves on a weekly basis. The average theological education required for membership on these boards and committees is Sunday School level at best; hearing the Scriptures on holidays only at worst. Yet these are the ones in charge, these laypeople who hold the purse strings of each church’s coffers. How could a freshly graduated minister expect to talk about white privilege or the Deuteronomic Historian or biblical criticism with those who have never heard these topics before? And what if, especially in the case of racial equity and white privilege, those laypeople patently disagree with the teaching of such subjects they know nothing about? One could find doors slammed shut in one’s face at every turn, while trying to find a way to pay off thousands of dollars in school loans borrowed on the premise of gainful church employment.
There must be a way to reconnect the body and mind in the hearts of Christianity. There must be a way to bridge the gap between Sunday School theology and academic theology. My project seeks to use these two wounds as a way to heal all of the church, and the world along with it.
Embodied Theology 