yrieithydd (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yrieithydd) wrote2020-12-20 11:16 pm
yrieithydd) wrote2020-12-20 11:16 pm
Entry tags:
LLF mark 2 - Imago Dei and Disability Theology
Well I've now managed to finish reading LLF.
On the whole, I think it could be a good resource for the church to have the conversations she needs to have. However, I'm not convinced the conversations will happen.
It feels a bit basic to me in places, but that's because I'm someone who has read and thought and prayed about this stuff a lot over the last 20 years or so. It does a good job of setting out different perspectives fairly even handedly, although there are couple of places at least where they seem to be setting out something I expected I was going to agree with and then they'd go off at a different angle or in one case completely miss the point.
For example on the Imago Dei on p. 190
I thought that this was going to be about gender and God being beyond gender as God created humans, male and female in God's image. But I was wrong and they were referencing a view I've not come across before about it being about reproduction. I think it is a shame that they have not therefore tackled the issue of God and gender. In fact, it's more than a shame. I think it is a glaring omission. I don't remember anything on the subject and checking the index under God (no entry!),* under language (again nothing), under gender (it is there but none of the option are this) and done searches on pronouns (4 hits, but three of them are pronouncements and one is about social transition involving change to pronouns); inclusive language - nothing; language, a lot of hits but about people speaking languages, and the language we use to talk about marriage or sexuality.
We need to talk about the language we use for God and how it impacts on how we talk about people. Quite a bit of our disagreement on both women in ministry and sexuality comes down to our anthropologies - what does it mean to be human, how different are the sexes/genders, but our understandings of those are tied up with our theology.
A lot of people use Genesis 1 to argue that God made gender binary but those of us who don't fit the binary point to God being beyond that binary and that some of us are created as individuals "male and female". A facebook friend shared a link tonight about Metagender** which is perhaps the word I've been looking for. I struggle with trans because I'm not on the other side to the one assigned. I've pondered mid - if you can be trans atlantic one can also be mid-atlantic but have felt that rather to eccentric to be of use so to finding a word others are using that might encompass that is potentially liberating, though the Sounds like trans edu definition of "don't self-identify as trans" feels very complex to me. Trans doesn't quite feel like it fits, so I don't I'm not sure it's my id to claim. (but I have issues with feeling enough x to be part of the group - see also geek enough)
The place where I felt they spectacularly missed the point was over disability theology and I've shared this with a couple of disabled friends and they like me have gone, oh yes, this sounds good (and they had the prewarning that I thought they'd missed the point), yes, yes, oh no, that's not what we mean.
So on p. 199 they write (emphasis original):
They have not grasped the social theory of disability where the emphasis (AIUI) is on the fact that it is the way that society and the environment is structures which disables with barriers to access - so stairs rather than a ramp or a lift disables a wheelchair user (who unlike Daleks are unlikely to get jet packs to overcome the stair problem). "Differently abled" was one the terms of so-called political correctness of the 90s which was not a term called for by the people so described, although it possibly has some resonance in discussions of neurodiversity and recognising that for example autistic people are not deficient in social skills but that neurotypical and autistic people have different ways of interacting. (See for example the work Ann Memmott an autistic adult who works on these issues).
*To be fair, I suspect because God is mentioned passim rather than because God is not there)
** This is the site linked, but searching it finds other LGBTQIA glosseries, but also Wiktionary which posits two meanings:
And I'm concerned that these two meanings are potentially confusing. Because I want to use metagender for an identity which completely undermines the "patriarchal metagender" mentioned here. I can see how both have arisen from the ways in which we use meta as a prefix.
On the whole, I think it could be a good resource for the church to have the conversations she needs to have. However, I'm not convinced the conversations will happen.
It feels a bit basic to me in places, but that's because I'm someone who has read and thought and prayed about this stuff a lot over the last 20 years or so. It does a good job of setting out different perspectives fairly even handedly, although there are couple of places at least where they seem to be setting out something I expected I was going to agree with and then they'd go off at a different angle or in one case completely miss the point.
For example on the Imago Dei on p. 190
More recently, some have argued that when Genesis 1 says ‘in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’, the two clauses are meant to be kept closely together. In this view, the image is not something humans possess individually but is expressed in the relationship between male and female and in their capacity together – as the text goes on to say – to ‘be fruitful and multiply’.
This interpretation has, however, found little positive reception amongst biblical scholars. It is not required by the Hebrew syntax. Other animals are given the capacity to reproduce sexually without being said to be made in the image of God (though only of humans are the terms ‘male and female’ specified in connection with both the image of God and the capacity to be fruitful and multiply). In Genesis 5.3 the ‘image and likeness’ language is used again without reference to the male-female relationship: ‘When Adam had lived for one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth’ (Genesis 5.3).
I thought that this was going to be about gender and God being beyond gender as God created humans, male and female in God's image. But I was wrong and they were referencing a view I've not come across before about it being about reproduction. I think it is a shame that they have not therefore tackled the issue of God and gender. In fact, it's more than a shame. I think it is a glaring omission. I don't remember anything on the subject and checking the index under God (no entry!),* under language (again nothing), under gender (it is there but none of the option are this) and done searches on pronouns (4 hits, but three of them are pronouncements and one is about social transition involving change to pronouns); inclusive language - nothing; language, a lot of hits but about people speaking languages, and the language we use to talk about marriage or sexuality.
We need to talk about the language we use for God and how it impacts on how we talk about people. Quite a bit of our disagreement on both women in ministry and sexuality comes down to our anthropologies - what does it mean to be human, how different are the sexes/genders, but our understandings of those are tied up with our theology.
A lot of people use Genesis 1 to argue that God made gender binary but those of us who don't fit the binary point to God being beyond that binary and that some of us are created as individuals "male and female". A facebook friend shared a link tonight about Metagender** which is perhaps the word I've been looking for. I struggle with trans because I'm not on the other side to the one assigned. I've pondered mid - if you can be trans atlantic one can also be mid-atlantic but have felt that rather to eccentric to be of use so to finding a word others are using that might encompass that is potentially liberating, though the Sounds like trans edu definition of "don't self-identify as trans" feels very complex to me. Trans doesn't quite feel like it fits, so I don't I'm not sure it's my id to claim. (but I have issues with feeling enough x to be part of the group - see also geek enough)
The place where I felt they spectacularly missed the point was over disability theology and I've shared this with a couple of disabled friends and they like me have gone, oh yes, this sounds good (and they had the prewarning that I thought they'd missed the point), yes, yes, oh no, that's not what we mean.
So on p. 199 they write (emphasis original):
We can and must accept the equal dignity of all human beings, and we can and must celebrate their God-given diversity. We often, nevertheless, make judgements about what is healthy and what is not. We often judge that some of the particular forms taken by human bodies are a result of something not being right.
We do need to proceed with very great caution when saying this. One of the arenas in which people have explored most carefully what it means to say this kind of thing is in the study of disability. The voices of those of us who are disabled have helped us to discover just how complex, how fraught and how dangerous a matter it can be. When do we say that someone has different abilities (and acknowledge that the way we run our world constricts and disadvantages people with those particular abilities)? When, if ever, might it be appropriate to say that the person themselves is disabled? 281
They have not grasped the social theory of disability where the emphasis (AIUI) is on the fact that it is the way that society and the environment is structures which disables with barriers to access - so stairs rather than a ramp or a lift disables a wheelchair user (who unlike Daleks are unlikely to get jet packs to overcome the stair problem). "Differently abled" was one the terms of so-called political correctness of the 90s which was not a term called for by the people so described, although it possibly has some resonance in discussions of neurodiversity and recognising that for example autistic people are not deficient in social skills but that neurotypical and autistic people have different ways of interacting. (See for example the work Ann Memmott an autistic adult who works on these issues).
*To be fair, I suspect because God is mentioned passim rather than because God is not there)
** This is the site linked, but searching it finds other LGBTQIA glosseries, but also Wiktionary which posits two meanings:
1. The categories that one uses to conceive of gender; The possible ways in which gender can manifest itself.When I write of someone being a Woman or a Man, I mean to indicate the metagender assumption that they have, so to speak, all their gender building blocks incontestably in one metagender box, i.e. if you are l-, f-, p-, and j-female, then (and only then) are you a Woman. Deviation from the standards set for any of the four genders will cause your metagender to be questioned. Patriarchal metagender does not allow for any ambiguity -- Woman and Man are the only available divisions.
2. A gender identification that is neither male nor female; gender queer.
And I'm concerned that these two meanings are potentially confusing. Because I want to use metagender for an identity which completely undermines the "patriarchal metagender" mentioned here. I can see how both have arisen from the ways in which we use meta as a prefix.