Doing Theology in the New Normal

Global Perspectives

Jione Havea

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780334060659
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Responses to the recent pandemic have been driven by fear, with social distancing and locking down of communities and borders as the most effective tactics. Out of fear and strategies that separate and isolate, emerges what has been described as the "new normal" (which seems to mutate daily).Truly global in scope, with contributors from across the world, this collection revisits four old responses to crises – assure, protest, trick, amend – to explore if/how those might still be relevant and effective and/or how they might be mutated during and after a global pandemic. Together they paint a grounded, earthy, context-focused picture of what it means to do theology in the new normal.

1. New but Old: Go and Do Otherwise

JIONE HAVEA

First, a prayer: May the ancestors receive the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, orphans and widows, lovers and strangers, homeless and neighbours, who passed on, drowned, in the waves of Covid-19. They no longer breathe, but each one of them was named – may their names be said and remembered in the hearts, lives and actions of survivors and grievers. And may we who can still breathe say and do something about the pandemics at hand. In other words, may we who can still breathe do more than simply say ‘amen’.

Next, some questions: What race were the wounded (on the side of the road) and frontline worker (at the inn) in the so-called Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.30–35)? Could they too have been Samaritans? Did they have companions or helpers? How old were they? Would they have been presented and read differently if they were of a different race, different gender, different class, different colour, different age? What would Jesus say?

On the one hand, my queries are inappropriate. The text is a parable which was told for a particular purpose – to answer the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ (Luke 10.29) – and it is (as parables tend to be) sparing of details. This was not a recounting of an actual event, so that i1 or other readers could decide which details are factual and which are fake.

On the other hand, simply because this is a parable, my queries tease the text to life. They pry the parable from the interrogations of the young lawyer, and put the young Jesus on the spot: why didn’t Jesus make the young lawyer, and many readers since, see and understand race, class, age, colour and companionship in and around the wounded ‘half dead’ traveller? Why didn’t Jesus make the Good Samaritan return and fulfil his commitment to the innkeeper, who was stuck with a patient rather than a patron? Didn’t the innkeeper too show mercy to the robbed and wounded traveller (cf. Luke 10.37)?

My queries, which may also be raised on behalf of the robbers (who are, thus designated, discriminated against by default), refuse to let the Good Samaritan, the young lawyer and/or Jesus, control how this parable is read. They have had their say, but as a parable this text says more than what they want it to say. If what those characters said are understood as versions of the ‘old normal’, my queries symbolically invite attending to concerns that arise with the ‘new normal’.2

Old Normal

At the outset, Covid has been somewhat epoch-making – it instigated the setting of the ‘old normal’ and the dawn of the ‘new normal’. The global community decided early in 2020 that, across the board, we need new ways of doing things – at home, in community and across public, domestic and national borders – so the primary response to Covid was to (pur)chase the essentials of life (which turned out to include toilet paper), and according to those – define the new normal that the pandemic has ushered in. The new continued to be essentialist like the old, and the ghost of Kohelet sighed over the global community: ‘Vanity of vanities. All is vanity’ (Eccles. 1.1).

As with the Millennium or Year 2000 bug (Y2K), Covid hiked fear around the world. But whereas the Y2K scare was related to computer programming expected to crash (but did not happen as proclaimed) when the calendar moved from year 1999 to year 2000, Covid was caused by a biological bug (SARS-Cov-2, Covid-19) that spread in human populations across the world from year 2019 to year 2020. Both ‘bugs’ incubated fear, but Covid-19 made real people (compared to real computers in the case of Y2K) sick and killed many of them. At the dawn of year 2000, Y2K proved to be superfluous; at the dawn of year 2020, the Covid-19 virus began to mutate into several strands and to go strong, sickening and killing real people. And the rampage of Covid will continue for several years into the future.

The infectiousness of the disease – reaching over 860,000 reported new cases worldwide in one day, 7 January 2021 (Statista 2021) – hastened the turn to the new normal. In haste, driven by fear, the global community turned to embrace the new normal without first assessing the old normal. Many people were pushed to the new normal with the expectation that at some point, whenever Covid eases up, the world will return to the old normal. Behind their expectation is the assumption that the old ways and old practices were ‘normal’ and thus acceptable. However, so much in the ways and practices prior to Covid were unhealthy and unhelpful, sickening and deadly.

Covid is one pandemic among many, and it has not (at the time of writing) reached the devastation and pandemic proportion of, for example, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This is not to say that one pandemic is worse than the other, but in order to see Covid in the frames of the old normal. By the end of 2020, seeing that the number of Covid deaths was disproportionately much higher among poor black and ethnic minorities (even within white societies), Covid began to appear very much like an endemic (disease found among particular people). Of course, the virus does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, gender, class or sexual orientation. But providers of protection and services do discriminate, and minorities do not have much of a chance with those who discriminate. At the beginning of 2021, with the rolling out of vaccination campaigns, whole nations of black and ethnic minority people face covid-discrimination – they are not counted among the essential or vulnerable people to receive the vaccine first. Sadly, they may not even get in the queue before the end of 2021 (see Wasuka 2021). In these regards, Covid shares the same endemic temperature as HIV/AIDS (see Chapter 9 by Beverley Haddad, and Chapter 10 by Volker Küster).

There are many ways in which the old normal was discriminating, unhealthy and oppressive. We should not want to return to those kinds of situation (see Chapter 21 by Anthony Reddie). But then, did we (in the new normal) really move away from the old normal? Is the new normal not the old normal with a mask, or in a different skin? Could Covid be an opportunity to also look back in order to see what might still be useful from the old normal? In terms of theology, the hope expressed in the last question can take place in several ways.

First, it can involve interrogating problematic theologies of the old normal (see Chapter 11 by Hadje Sadje) and re-engaging theologies meant to assist recovery from pandemic-like crises (see Chapter 7 by Gerald West). Second, it can also involve rereading and problematizing the normality of some scriptural texts, and old readings of those texts, favoured in the old normal (see Chapter 2 by Sung Uk Lim, and Chapter 23 by Juliana Claassens). Third, it can also involve reinvigorating methodologies belittled in the old normal, such as indecent (see Chapter 16 by Christine Pae, and Chapter 27 by Wanda Deifelt) and liberation (see Chapter 14 by Sithembiso Zwane) criticisms. Fourth, it can also involve affirming the teachings and voices that were marginalized in the old normal (read: modernity), maybe because of their sublime non-scientific (see Chapter 6 by Wei Huang) or spiritual (see Chapter 17 by Michael Mawson) overtones. Fifth, it can also involve learning from communities on whose shoulders the old normal have stomped (see Chapter 4 by Angelica Tostes and Delana Corazza, and Chapter 18 by Upolu Vaai). Sixth, it can also involve encouraging emotions such as grief (see Chapter 24 by Tat-siong Benny Liew) and rage (see Chapter 25 by Dorothea Erbele-Küster) that are usually judged to be unacceptable in so-called civil societies. Seventh, it can also involve accepting that in the worldwide web of life human beings are insignificant (see Chapter 20 by James Perkinson), vulnerable (see Chapter 13 by Kuzipa Nalwamba) and destined for the graveyard (see Chapter 28 by Tinyiko Maluleke). It can also involve other approaches, but i suggested the seven above in order to locate the voices in this collection within the frames of the old normal.

While this collection is intentional about suggesting ways of doing theology in the new normal, the contributors also engage with and interrogate the old normal. Put another way, Covid is somewhat epoch-making – but epochs inter- and over-flow. As with mutations and rites of passage, for all organisms and across all communes, there is something old and something new in every ritual, in every epoch, in every pandemic, in every movement, and in every theological imagination.

(dis)Integration

Emmanuel Garibay’s Healing and Hope (see Figure 1.1) shows a human figure in a state of disintegration or of coming together, of integration, depending on how one looks at it. In the sky is a hand among the clouds which suggests the presence of the divine, drawing upon Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco (c. 1508–12) on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The hand signifies that in spite of human intelligence, the divine has a hand in the fate of humanity. Garibay allows for the divine hand to heal and give hope to the disintegrating body, on the one hand, and/or to judge and even to disintegrate the human composition.

On the left side is a dandelion with its dried flower spreading seeds on the barren landscape. The choice of the dandelion is deliberate as it is regarded by humans as a useless and undesirable weed. The dandelion protests against humans’ arbitrary disregard for nature in terms of what agrees with their tastes, as opposed to allowing nature to take its course.

In the context of the massive environmental degradation caused mainly by human activities, this work suggests that healing and restoration of the land necessarily require repentance and disintegration of human constructions. This could be in terms of a radical change of our way of life from consumerism to prudent use of the earth’s resources, from greed to compassion, from conflicts to peace and justice.

In the context of Covid, Garibay invites viewers to see the multiplexity of the divine presence and to feel the (un)hopefulness of the human condition. All of those, without losing sight of the (dis)integration of the barrened planet. Garibay’s invitation is incitement for doing theology in the new normal.

At this juncture, another prayer: May the senses of smell and taste return to those who survive Covid-19 and, in another regard, may the senses of smell and taste overtake the keepers of the old normal so that they value the dandelions before them.

New Normal

For Jesus, the parable of the traveller who became a neighbour in Luke 10.30–35 was an opportunity to teach, to activate: ‘Go and do likewise.’ The young lawyer had to decide for himself which of the characters that passed was ‘a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers’ (Luke 10.36, NRSV) and then he was to ‘go and do likewise’. If he then went and did what he had learned from Jesus, a rabbi and an activist, the young man would have ‘infected’ his community to be good neighbours, good Samaritans.

The young lawyer was not precise in his response – the neighbour would be ‘the one who showed him mercy’ (Luke 10.37) – unlike many readers who assume that it is clear, and that there was only one character, who showed mercy to the robbed-and-wounded man. On the other hand, as the above musings invite, the privileged ‘rich’ Samaritan traveller was not the only one who showed mercy. The innkeeper also showed mercy to the robbed-and-wounded man, who may also have been among the ‘rich’ in his community.3

In the context of Covid, i suggest that it is not essential to determine who showed mercy or who was neighbourly but, in line with my reflection on the old normal, to name and hear those who have been wounded and robbed. In this context, the challenge is to let the wounded and robbed become one’s neighbour. In other words, Luke 10.30–35 is also a parable of the wounded and robbed. Doing theology in the new normal thus involves shifting positionalities from being (as theologians) privileged and rich travellers or saviours (who know the truth and the way) to becoming worthy of being neighbours to the wounded and robbed ‘Samaritans’. But the call is still the same, ‘Go and do.’ Go and activate. Incite. Infect.

I present the contributions to this collection below in the new normal frames of shifting positionalities and shifting personalities. The contributors, as a collective, invite readers to find ways in which the theologies that we do are in touch and in relation with the wounded and robbed, as well as have the courage to be (in)decent and protest.

In Touch

The robbed man, because of his placement and condition, touched the Samaritan traveller. He moved the Samaritan to touch and pour oil and wine on his wounds, and then put him on his animal and brought him to the inn (Luke 10.34). The robbed and wounded man engaged the pity of the Samaritan, and he as a consequence became a neighbour.

The five essays in this first section engage with the demand to be, and the costs of being, in touch with the robbed and wounded in the context of Covid. The essays flow from offering alternative readings...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Contributors
• 1. New but Old: Go and Do Otherwise
• Part 1: In Touch
• 2. The Touch of Jesus in a Time of Untact
• 3. Bodies in Covid: A Caribbean Perspective
• 4. Spiritualities in Resistance: Latin-American Social Movements and Solidarity Actions
• 5. intact
• 6. Heaven-Human Harmony in Chinese Philosophy and Theology of Impurity in the Hebrew Bible
• 7. Reopening the Churches and/as Reopening the Economy: Covid’s Uncovering of the Contours of ‘Church Theology’
• 8. out of breath 21
• Part 2: In Relation
• 9. Private and Public Pandemics: Theological Imperatives Summoned by HIV and Covid
• 10. Interpretation Against: What if not Punishment?
• 11. ‘Stripping the Thief in the Night’: Decolonizing Pentecostal Eschatology during Covid
• 12. out of touch
• 13. Vulnerability: Embodied Resistance During Covid
• 14. Solidarity Assurance: Reality, Faith and Action
• 15. out of hand
• Part 3: In Decencies
• 16. Indecent Resurgence: God’s Solidarity against the Gendered War on Covid
• 17. Speaking of God: Unruly God-Talk with Julian of Norwich
• 18. Lagimālie: Covid, De-Onefication of Theologies, and Eco-Relational Well-being
• 19. out of darkness
• 20. Coronavirus Cacophony: When the Dwarf Rebukes the Giant
• 21. Not Returning to the Old Normal
• 22. for everyone?
• Part 4: In Protest
• 23. An Infinite Present: Theology as Resistance Amid Pandemics
• 24. Good Grief: Mourning as Remembrance and Protest
• 25. ‘Today I Let My Rage Be Beautiful’: Po/et(h)ical Responses to the New Normal
• 26. nonplussed
• 27. Blame the Victim: When Systemic Injustice Ceases to be a Culprit
• 28. Beyond the Graveyard and the Prison, a New World is Being Born
• 29. new hope
• Acknowledgements