Caring for Souls and Polis in the Age of Terror

Violence and injustice are being levied against immigrant groups, black and brown bodies, and LBGTQ+ persons in the current sociopolitical environment. A kind of reactionary terror has taken on a greater intensity over the last several years, and is being normalized and justified as an effort to restore law andorder, giving a rise to a political slogan such as ‘MakeAmerica great again.’Pastoral theologians question what it means to be living in an age of terror andwhat it means to care for souls and our polis. Aptly, the theme of the 2019 study conference of Society for Pastoral Theology (SPT) held in Denver, Colorado from June 12–15 was Resistance and Resilience in an Age of Terror: Care of Souls, Care of Polis. The plenaries, work-in-progress, and workshops in this conference highlighted scholarship and theological praxis that centered on personal/communal resilience and resistance to terror. An important feature of the 2019 study conference was an immersion experience to the Greater Denver Interfaith Alliance (GDIA), a nonprofit organization under the leadership of Dr. Carroll Watkins Ali. In this excursion, members were able to witness and experience a firsthand example of the kind of resistance and praxis that is possible in relation to the care of souls in the current sociopolitical environment. Dr. Mary Moschella was an invited ethnographer of the 2019 study conference, providing an overview of the immersion activities and experience. According to Moschella, the visit to the GDIA offered a compelling example of the integration of theory and praxis. Reminding pastoral theologians of our accountability to those who are suffering and/or exist at themargin,Moschella claims, ‘if we are called to care and to promote resistance and resilience, this experience demonstrated both how it can be done and that it can be done.’ Informed by his work in Embracing Hopelessness, Dr. Miguel De La Torre poses a provocative question to the participants of SPT: Can pastoral theology celebrate hopelessness? Outlining a history of abuses perpetuated against Black and Latinx bodies, by the western medical profession and society at large, De La Torre establishes a prima facia case for mistrust of the western Eurocentric establishment. He is ‘convinced that the production of all Eurocentric philosophical thought – across academic disciplines – are oppressive and repressive to those of us who occupy colonized spaces.’ De La Torre invites pastoral theologians to consider if their commonplace usage of the concept of hope is in fact doing more to undermine (than assist) the overall pastoral theological project. Examining the history of abuses perpetuated against Black and Latinx bodies by the western Eurocentric polis, and given that the guild of pastoral theology is also a production – in large part – of Eurocentric philosophical thought, De La Torre invites us to consider his concept of hopelessness as a redemptive praxis. De La Torre is positing hopelessness over and against hope as ‘a methodology which propels the marginalized towards concrete actions.’ Dr. Leanna Fuller offers a pastoral theological response to De La Torre. According to Fuller, while the field of pastoral theology (or any other guild) has been unduly informed by a Eurocentric interpretation, it does not necessarily follow that all pastoral theologians have subscribed to the deleterious understanding of hope that De La Torre outlines in his project. For Fuller, this would ignore the significant scholarship and work done by pastoral theologians over the past several decades –work and scholarship informed by Black theology, womanist theology, postcolonial theology, and a host of other resources designed to challenge hegemonic ideologies. Yet, in her response, while Fuller recognizes the methodological commitment to begin pastoral theological reflectionwith lived human experience, she challenges the guild to ask of itself: ‘Whose lived experiences aremost frequently deemedworthy of theological inquiry?’With such a provocative question