The Regular Contributors to WIT are participating in a round table series, titled “Haunted.” This series will appear every (or every other) week throughout the Fall 2024 semester. Each current contributor to the blog will spend some time reflecting on what they are “haunted” by in their theological project.
In many ways, “haunted” feels like an apt description of my PhD experience thus far. Haunted by word counts, haunted by deadlines, haunted by theobros, haunted (in my more insecure moments) by the achievements of others. But more disturbing than any of these academic apparitions, and more profound, has been the haunting realization of how difficult it can be for a person of conscience to remain in faith communities.
Last week, on her ever incisive and wise Black Liturgies Instagram page, Cole Arthur Riley posted this quote from Howard Thurman:
“There are two questions we must ask ourselves. The first is Where am I going? and the second is Who will go with me? If you ever get these questions in the wrong order, you are in trouble.”
Riley then adds her own warning, “Be careful what company you allow to shape your conscience or orient you on the journey. Not all are adequate guides.”
Thurman’s questions and Riley’s caution resonate strongly with me and my experiences over the last several years, as I have re-evaluated where I am going and who with. I have realized that many of those who were tasked with shaping my conscience were inadequate guides (at best).
I am grateful that there is a lot of good theological work being done right now to critically evaluate the church and the ways in which we engage with theology. It feels like there is a movement afoot to dismantle the racism, patriarchy, nationalism, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, and other evil systems that are embedded in our Christian institutions (both church and academy). Deconstructing is an apt word for this process, as it reminds us that our sets of beliefs and practices are cobbled together to create a way of moving through the world. It is a reminder that, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez writes hopefully at the close of Jesus and John Wayne, “What was once done might also be undone.”[1]
But it sure takes a lot of undoing. In the meantime, I feel haunted by the way that abuse of power is baked into the bones of both church and academy and by how many willingly capitulate to these systems, even when the harm is apparent and galling. Almost more than I am haunted by those who do great evil, I am haunted by those who look away from it, slipping into a comfortable habitus of silence. Where am I going? Who will go with me? These are choices that we all must make. We cannot choose neutrality now so that maybe down the road we will be in a position where we can really make a difference and change things. Such bargaining is a delusion; power, when attained, has already been bought at a price.
I am haunted in a different way by the witness of Franz Jägerstätter, whose story is so beautifully depicted in Terrence Malick’s 2019 film A Hidden Life. Jägerstätter was a conscientious objector in Austria who chose to die rather than fight for the Nazi army or make an oath to Hitler. Jägerstätter was urged by family, friends, even his Bishop, to comply. It would do no good, he was told. Why make such a choice when it couldn’t even change anything?
Jägerstätter is a guide for my conscience that I can trust.
I’m not always sure what to do with these hauntings, with the things I have seen and cannot unsee. I only know that I cannot pretend that the harm perpetrated by Christian institutions is made up of random aberrations caused by a few bad actors, rather than harm that is deeply embedded in our institutions themselves and upheld in various ways by our theology and our worship.
James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”[2] I am haunted by my own choices, too, and the harm I have caused. But I hope I am facing things, that I am asking myself, Where am I going? Who will go with me? and finding better answers than I used to.
And I can’t help but hope that in whatever theological work I undertake I might end up doing a little haunting myself.
[1] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2020), 304.
[2] James Baldwin, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” The New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962.
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