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ABSTRACT
The Anthropocene Age will usher in more frequent natural and political disasters. These looming catastrophes invite critically reimaging our theologies. This article sketches out a radical pastoral theology for the Anthropocene Era by first addressing and illustrating the existential dynamics of care. Here it is claimed that care is radical because it founds agency, as well as subjectivity and intersubjectivity. This sets the stage to demonstrate the connection to the political reality of care and its connection to other species and nature. The concluding section builds on the previous sections, while shifting to the theological rendering of radical care as the indeterminate, infinite care of a non-sovereign God revealed in creation and in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 352.
2 Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction. Jason Moore has argued that a more accurate term for the current era we are in is Capitalocene because capitalism is the system that is responsible for global warming over the last two centuries. See https://jasonwmoore.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/anthropocene-or-capitalocene/.
3 Davenport, “Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change.”
4 Chakrabarty, The Climate of History.
5 Terry Eagleton, in remarking about Antonio Gramsci, notes that Gramsci was seeking “out what was already critical in a form of life,” which would include both critique and a transformative possibility. Care is a concept that is associated with everyday practices and that can serve both as a critique and a transformative possibility, which is another way of saying radical. Eagleton, Materialism, 154.
6 LaMothe, “The Least of These: Political-Economic Dimensions of Roman Catholic Pastoral Theology.”
7 See http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. It is important to mention here that this and other documents, while laudable, continue to contain the grammar of patriarchy, which, as mentioned above, is an obstacle to justice and cooperation.
8 See Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America.
9 See, Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective. Doehring, The Practice of Pastoral Care. Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care. Gerkin, An Introduction to Pastoral Care. Patton, Pastoral Care in Context. Scheib, Pastoral Care.
10 See Flesberg, The Switching Hour. Lester, Pastoral Care with Children in Crisis.
11 See Scheib, Challenging Invisibility.
12 See Poling. Render unto God. van Deusen Hunsinger, Bearing the Unbearable. Grand Rapids.
13 See Marshall, Counseling Lesbian Partners. Sanders, A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth.
14 Kelley, Grief. White, Saying Good-bye.
15 Smith, The Relational Self.
16 Graham, Care of Persons, Care of Worlds.
17 Miller-McLemore, Also a Mother.
18 See Helsel, Pastoral Power Beyond Psychology's Imagination. Johnson, Race, Religion, and Resilience in the Neoliberal Age. LaMothe, Care of Souls, Care of Polis. LaMothe, Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship. Ramsay, “Compassionate Resistance.” Rogers-Vaughn, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age.
19 A brief definition of care and its relation to the political may be helpful to readers. Care is everything we do to help individuals, families, communities, and societies to (1) meet vital biological, psychosocial, and existential or spiritual needs of individuals, families, and communities, (2) develop or maintain basic capabilities with the aim of human flourishing, (3) facilitate participation in the polis, and (4) maintain a habitable environment for all. I add to this definition that care and pastoral care are political concepts that necessarily involve shared critical and constructive reflection on how the structures (and their accompanying narratives and practices) of the state, governing authorities, and non-state organizations (e.g., businesses, labor unions, religious and secular communities, etc.) and actors meet or fail to meet the four features of this definition of care. LaMothe, Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship, 8.
20 Horsley, Covenant Economics, 14.
21 Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory, xiii.
22 Care as a political concept has been explored by feminist scholars and pastoral theologians. See Hamington, Embodied Care. Noddings, Carin. LaMothe, Care of Souls, Care of Polis. Robinson, Globalizing Care. Robinson, The Ethics of Care. Tronto, Moral Boundaries. Tronto, Caring Democracy.
23 There is a political distinction between care and love. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their book, Commonwealth, argue that love is an essential concept for politics, because it is central in the establishment of what they call the common—the shared material and created resources. In other words, recognizing persons in their suchness. Similarly, Terry Eagleton and Martha Nussbaum contend that love is a necessary political concept. While I view love and care as related but distinct concepts, the focus will be on the more general term of care. Briefly, it may be helpful to say a few words about these two terms. Love includes care, but to care does not necessarily include love. I can care about people I have never met, while sending them aid. The Samaritan cared for the injured man, but I do not think he loved him. Some might try to make the case that he did love him, but this is love in the abstract. A physician or nurse can care for someone who she thinks is despicable. There is care, but no love. Care, then, from my perspective, is more a fundamental human reality and a more fundamental political concept. I believe, then, that developing and maintaining caring attitudes, behaviors, and relations in society are more realistic goals than love. Care for others, for neighbors, is more likely and more common than love. See Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, 179–88. Eagleton, After Theory, 168–70. Nussbaum, Political Emotions.
24 There are two important points to make. First, Hobbes’ and Rousseau's political philosophies rely, in part, on an idea of the state of nature. That is, they imagine, like Freud, some early state of human nature that preceded civilization and is something that is to be avoided or recovered. By reflecting on the parent-child relationship as a starting point for constructing a political philosophy or political theology, I am suggesting that the “state of nature” is not in the distant past, but present in every generation in the form of parent-child interactions. A second and related point is that using parent-child relations in political theorizing is not new. Scottish philosopher John Macmurray's relies on illustrations of parent interactions with children in his political philosophy. See Macmurray, Persons in Relation.
25 Aristotle's work on politics addresses the differences between the household and the polis, yet Aristotle views these as connected in the sense that the care of children is a necessary feature of their development into citizens. In this article, I am arguing that there are parallels between parental care that creates a space of appearances and the space of appearances in the public-political realm wherein individuals are recognized as citizens-persons. Barker, The Politics of Aristotle.
26 Macmurray, like Kant, Hegel, Mounier, Levinas, and others, located personal recognition as a central feature of his anthropology. Indeed, Macmurray argued that personhood was the central question for the 20th century, and the ancillary claim, for him, is that personhood emerges out of and in community. It is easy to see that Macmurray's anthropology fits well with Christian theologies and the emphasis on imago dei. Macmurray, Person in Relation. It is also important to mention that the relation between care and recognition has been explored by numerous psychoanalysts, such as Donald Winnicott and Christopher Bollas, as well by pastoral theologians like Bonnie-Miller-McLemore and Catherine Keller. Winnicott, Playing and Reality. Bollas, The Shadow of the Object. Keller, From a Broken Web. Miller-McLemore, Let the Children Come.
27 Agamben, The Coming Community, 96
28 Ibid., 2.
29 Agamben, Homo Sacer.
30 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 251. Sergei Prozorov that inoperativity “is the process of becoming or rendering something inoperative, deactivating its functioning in the apparatus and making it available for free use.” He stress that to “affirm inoperativity is not to affirm inertia, inactivity, or apraxia.” Inoperativity, which will be used throughout this book, is an action. Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 31, 33.
31 Prozorov, Sergei. Agamben and Politics, 134.
32 Ibid., 24.
33 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 214.
34 Agamben, The Coming Community, 105.
35 Hannah Arendt used the term “space of appearances” when depicting life in the polis, wherein citizens ideally speak and act together toward a common good. I am using it here to talk about the space between parents and children, which is a pre-political space, not in the sense of Aristotle's pre-political space of the household preparing (in this case, male) citizens to engage in public-political life. Instead, I see this pre-political space of care as having parallels and links to the political space, which I endeavor to explicate below. Arendt, The Human Condition.
36 Jessica Benjamin uses an analogous phrase to convey this dynamic—personal recognition involves difference in likeness and likeness in difference. Benjamin, “Sameness and Difference.”
37 Margalit, The Decent Society.
38 Benjamin, “Sameness and Difference.”
39 Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth recognize that failures in personal recognition in a polis are accompanied by undermining material conditions needed to survive and thrive. So, failures in personal recognition are not simply about the failure of an individual to care; it involves forms of social carelessness that accompany and are supported by institutions, collective narratives, and disciplinary regimes that deprive Othered people of the resources to thrive. Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?
40 Agamben, The Open.
41 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 80.
42 Plessner, Political Anthropology, 26.
43 I am not implying here that we recognize other species as persons and this somehow include them as citizens. That said, other species can be seen in terms of their singularity and treated as such.
44 Waggoner, Unhoused, 82.
45 David Gauthier, in discussing Heidegger's philosophy, points out a term used by Heidegger (Gestell/enframement) to indicate how human beings “impose a framework on nature in order to force it to produce consumable material,” which obstructs nature from appearing as it is or of its own accord. This establishes an adversarial attitude that is a type of violence. Enframement, then, would reflect the collapse of the dialectical tension between determinate and indeterminate knowing. Gauthier, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Politics of Dwelling, 8.
46 Schell, “The Human Shadow,” 19.
47 Redfield-Jamison, Exuberance.
48 All parents fail and these failures in caring for their children require reparative actions, which children learn to participate in. See Safron and Muran, “The Resolution of Ruptures in the Therapeutic Alliance.” Schore, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self.
49 Hannah Arendt addresses the importance of forgiveness in the polis, repairing relations broken by the failure to keep promises. Arendt, The Promise of Politics.
50 See Winnicott, Playing and Reality.
51 See Honneth. The Struggle for Recognition.
52 This painful realization is noted in Malcolm X's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s autobiographies, as well as in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me. This pain is present precisely because of the care experienced in their families, which can be a source of insurrection, revolution, and/or resistance, which will be discussed below. King, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Coates, Between the World and Me.
53 David Gauthier addresses the notion of dwelling in the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. For Heidegger, human beings are thrown into the world and our anxiety reveals our sense of homelessness. Gauthier argues that Heidegger “interprets homelessness as a symptom of the abandonment of Being by beings.” Philosophy, then, is an attempt to aid human beings to be at home in the world. By contrast, for Levinas homelessness is the “failure to meet [one's] obligation to the Other,” which is an ethical not an ontological problem. Levinas considers that “the home rises to the fullness of dignity when it is used as an instrument of welcome.” From a psychological developmental view, it is feasible to consider the child's first experience of being unhoused through the process of birth, which could be deemed to be the experience of existential homelessness. However, I side more with Levinas and suggest that parental care/welcome provides pre-representational experiences of dwelling in one's body with another. In other words, the root of parental care is welcome or hospitality so that Others can appear in their embodied suchness with Others. Gauthier, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Politics of Dwelling., 129. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 11.
54 One could say that in the womb a child has a pre-representational embodiment that is not in relation to the Other. Before birth, there is no gap between need and the meeting of the need, which to my mind suggests there is no sense of the Other. After birth, after being unhoused, there is a gap, which accompanies a nascent consciousness of need and Other. A welcoming, caring parent provides the child with embodied experiences of being at home with the Other.
55 Erikson, Childhood and Society.
56 Bowlby, A Secure Base.
57 Waggoner, Unhoused, 26.
58 Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 5.
59 Benjamin, Illuminations.
60 Caputo, The Weakness of God, 38. While I understand Caputo's use of the adjective “weak” because of its rhetorical links to Paul's theology, I prefer the term “vulnerable.” To choose to be vulnerable (in some, not all instances) for the sake of Others signifies psychological and spiritual strength.
61 Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology, 5. What is interesting and important here is that the sovereign possesses the supreme (legal) authority to set aside laws, because s/he is given the legal power to decide on the exception. Add to this the idea that the state of exception is at play in the very creation of the law itself. Put another way, the establishment of the law already reveals the state of exception. I stress here that the state of exception does not mean the law is invalid, but rather that in the exception, the law simply is not applicable. The law remains in effect, but is set aside. That is, for Agamben “it is the sovereign who, insofar as he decides on the state of exception, has the power to decide which life may be killed without the commission of homicide.” Enslaved persons would be included in this category of exception. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 142.
62 See Patterson, Slavery and Social Death.
63 Caputo, The Weakness of God, 32–7.
64 Ibid., 12.
65 Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 32–7.
66 Ibid., 144.
67 Benjamin, Illuminations, 53.
68 Prozorov, 24.
69 Ibid.
70 Agamben, The Coming Community, 85.
71 Prozorov, 79.
72 Agamben, Means Without Ends, 15.
73 Dickinson, “Gestures of Text and Violence,” 59.
74 See Crossan, Jesus. Crossan, God and Empire. Horsely, Jesus and Empire.
75 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 83.
76 Girard, Violence and the Sacred.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ryan LaMothe
Ryan LaMothe is a professor of pastoral care and counseling. He is currently working on a book entitled, “A Radical Political Theology for the Anthropocene Age.”