This afternoon, I had the joy of hearing Rev. Jes Kast speak on how our theologies and doctrines about women and other minoritized members of the Church can be more healing and less damaging.
Divesting from all forms of social oppression is the Church’s long-term work. There’s nothing new about it that we need to hear from heaven; we already have all the Please Get It Together that we need to motivate action. We don’t have an information deficiency!
We may have an imagination deficiency if we’re so attached to the present order and our past claims about it that we’re willing to delay or deny the next stage in our moral development (e.g. life with pathways to substantive contribution for everyone).
Kast read a quote from Kwok Pui-lan’s book Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology that I loved:
Without the power of imagination, we cannot envision a different past, present, and future… What we cannot imagine, we cannot live into and struggle for.”
I think that’s absolutely right.