Eucontamination: Enacting a Centered-Set Theology in a Multicultural World

This article addresses ways that the logic of disgust has left the church vulnerable to colonialism, western ethnocentrism, and racism. The authors present the concept of eucontamination as an inversion of contamination logic, wherein the impure is made pure through contact with the Divine rather than the pure needing to be kept separate. Purity metaphors in the Bible have often been read by the white, western church in such a way that the pure is experienced as fragile and kept apart from the contaminating, powerful impure. Eucontamination, however, upends this power balance in such a way that the dirty is left fragile and the clean robust. This, then, facilitates the enactment of centered-set theology by removing fear and disgust, which unconsciously reinforce the boundaries of an exclusionary, bounded-set theology. In this way, eucontamination is presented as a corrective lens through which the church can reimagine its role in the world. By addressing the psychological impact of disgust and the way in which the gospel of Christ inverts the controlling purity metaphors, this article posits a more embodied faith that embraces the other. Eucontamination thus allows for Christians to address their own internalized systems of oppression and confront the ways in which disgust has allowed ethnocentrism and racism to reign over their imagination of the gospel. The authors explore practical applications of liturgies of eucontamination like the Eucharist, foot washing, and the love feast as basic formational practices for Christians to begin to deconstruct their own disgust reactions.