Theological Wounds

Healing and Liberation in Theological Education 2

This is the main building of my alma mater, Central American Theological Seminary (SETECA). I took this picture a couple of days ago.

In a recent reflection, I shared about my journey within theological education. The theme has evolved into short 3 piece series after a couple friends encouraged me to dive deeper into my experience and learning. What opened the possibility for further reflection was a quote written by Willie James Jennings. He argues that education in the West, especially theological education, is aimed to reach a very specific kind of person and outcome. The objective is to serve and produce “the image of a white self-sufficient man, his self-sufficiency defined by possession, control, and mastery.”¹

When I was in Bible college, I was shaped by this mentality. I wanted to become a “white self-sufficient” scholar. My desire was to have possession, control, and mastery over theological content and people. That is why I want to take the time to share how I have been invited into a different way of doing theology and formation, which I will do in a following post. First, I must share what my experience was as a young student, and how I was formed by this type of academicism.

During my seminary years, I had professors from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, México, Chile, The United States, and many other countries in the Americas. Some fulfilled their vocation with love, respect, and academic rigor. Others wanted the replicate white self-sufficient scholars in brown bodies. That is why, when I read Jennings’s book After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging for the first time, I realized that his experience within theological education in the US is relevant and transferable to the Latin American context.

For the most part, evangelical theological education in Latin America has been an import. In the evangelical world, we learned our systematic theology categories and ideas mediated by missionaries from the US who taught in our seminaries. We learned not only the content of their theologies, but also their self-sufficiency. The professors were the owners of the content. It was theirs and they exerted control over how, when, and where to deliver it. In addition, mastery was front and center in two ways. First, the professors were expected to have comprehensive knowledge in a subject to transfer it and deposit it in our heads. Secondly, as students we experienced our relationship through their control and superiority over us. This dynamic was even more noticeable with professors who came from the US. They were deemed as better than the Latin American professors, for they had direct access to the institutions that we regarded as superior.

As I went through Bible college, I saw many of my classmates become just like our professors. Many became very arrogant as soon as they got to teach, present papers, and do theological research. I saw cliques form around specific personalities, and we all flocked the classes with the more renowned professors. Our academic and institutional culture lifted this figures putting them on a pedestal.

Things got even more strange as some of our classmates started getting scholarships to go to universities in the US and Europe. I vividly remember somebody who was a good friend at one time—I will call him Arturo to preserve his anonymity. We used to sit together in the library to share notes and learnings. We were friends and he helped me with my Hebrew and Greek studies. Arturo is an extremely gifted scholar in ancient languages. My friend got a scholarship to study in a European university, and he excelled as a scholar there.

After he was done with his PhD, he came back to Guatemala for a season before getting a position at a renowned university in the US. After his return, I found him in the halls of our alma mater. I got really excited to see him and ran up to him. I gave him a side hug and called him by his nickname, just like a friend would. He turned around, and his demeanor drastically changed. He looked me straight in the eye, put his arm out to create space in between us and said: “I am not just Arturo to you. I am Dr. Arturo.” His reaction caught me completely off guard. For a moment, I thought he was joking. However, it soon became clear that he was being serious. He turned around, walked away and never spoke to me again. Years later, I read some of his articles and writing, and he showed control, possession, and mastery over his ideas. He also perpetuates theologies that hurt people and sustain the status quo. Even though he is Guatemalan, he turned into the epitome of the white self-sufficient scholar.

Jennings tells us that “theological education in the West was born in white hegemony and homogeneity, and it continues to baptize homogeneity, making it holy and right and efficient.” (p. 15). In other words, we all have to conform to something, we have to become something we are not. We have to be the same, believe the same, and look the same. Sameness, homogeneity, comes with a price, for the illusion of whiteness demands the denial and annihilation of who we truly are. It always wants something in exchange, even from white people.

Many of us have been wounded by this way of doing theological education/formation. However, there are ways in which we can resist and open new paths for reflection, community, and bearing witness to the kingdom of God. For starters, we can acknowledge that if we have the privilege to speak in front of people, write, and reflect, that puts us in a position of power. How we see power, however, makes all the difference. We can see it as an object we need to grab and fight for, or we can see it as the relational unbounded dynamic mediated by the Holy Spirit as we encounter each other in theological reflection, everyday action, and constant discernment.

Note: In the next post of this series I will engage in the healing and liberation that happens in communal theology.

1. Jennings, Willie James. After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2020. p. 14