From within the Anglican Church comes a new book exploring the nature of church in light of what some prominent philosophers, particularly Foucault, have to say about power.
Author and theologian Steven Ogden is an Adelaide parish priest and research fellow at Charles Sturt University’s Centre for Public and Contextual Theology.
It’s a timely investigation.
We see around us the outworking of the power and power imbalance that has mired many churches in child sexual abuse and ruined many victim’s lives. We see continued reluctance among some church groups to genuinely seek redress for their victims (and a flawed political scheme trying to ensure they do). Overseas we see nationalists and churches work hand-in-hand to persecute vulnerable minorities.
Those who still find relevance in church and theology must dare to hope there is a future for the Churches beyond these obscene distortions of the religious impulse. The Church, Authority, and Foucault: Imagining the Church as an Open Space of Freedom may be a step towards hope.
Disclaimer: views represented in SOFiA blog posts are entirely the view of the respective authors and in no way represent an official SOFiA position.
Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash
I have spent most of my life being told: “You are not qualified to speak!”
Those in power, the Establishment, the authorities, dictate who has the legitimate right to speak. And it is they who grant the qualifications.
This is not just a problem for churchgoers, but a general one.
Who is qualified to speak? Surely the first need is to have understood what was said! But understanding requires interpretation; and interpretation is culturally dependent: it depends on where you are “coming from”. (you can only win a race that you are already running!).”
This condition does not imply that all discourse is fatally flawed by being reduced to subjective commentary, but rather it does imply that no “truth” can be regarded as “final” or beyond challenge from within it’s context. said”Being qualified to speak” is surely internal to what is actually said.l