What does it mean to be a Christian in a world where so many of our systems are dehumanizing? What duties are incumbent upon us as Christians, as humans? How can we learn and share a global flourishing that respects and honors all? In this week's episode, Matt Croasmun interviews Fernando Segovia, the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is the author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. And as a Cuban American theologian and biblical scholar, he is devoted in elevating voices outside of the dominant Western culture, and advocating for a a truly global Christianity one that is relevant to lived realities across the world. In this conversation, he reflects on the importance of learning about Christianity as a set of global and multidimensional traditions. He discusses the duties of Christians to critique human culture and society, including their own; he suggests that utopian visions can and do inform the moral and spiritual imagination in our imperfect world, but must avoid naïveté and invite constant critique and correction.
As Christians around the world heard these words spoken on Ash Wednesday this past week, as an ashen oil was smudged to their brows, the world watched on in horror and grief over the brutality and aggression against Ukraine. In a swift movement of solidarity, we're all still are left with difficult and enduring questions. Why this war? What is at stake? How did we get here and what can we do? How can we stop this in a way that might hang on to a hope for peace?
But as finite, limited beings brought forth from dust, we quickly run to the end of our ability to explain. And like so many problems in our world, we're just left with further questions: What does it mean to be a Christian in a world where so many of our systems are dehumanizing? What duties are incumbent upon us as Christians, as humans? How can we learn and share a global flourishing that respects and honors all?
In this week's episode, Matt Croasmun interviews Fernando Segovia, the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is the author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. And as a Cuban American theologian and biblical scholar, he is devoted in elevating voices outside of the dominant Western culture, and advocating for a a truly global Christianity one that is relevant to lived realities across the world. In this conversation, he reflects on the importance of learning about Christianity as a set of global and multidimensional traditions. He discusses the duties of Christians to critique human culture and society, including their own; he suggests that utopian visions can and do inform the moral and spiritual imagination in our imperfect world, but must avoid naïveté and invite constant critique and correction.
Show notes
About Fernando Segovia
Fernando F. Segovia is Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. His teaching and research encompass Early Christian Origins, Theological Studies, and Cultural Studies. He is author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. As a biblical critic, his interests include: Johannine Studies; method and theory; ideological criticism; the history of the discipline and its construction of early Christian antiquity. As a theologian, his interests include: non-Western Christian theologies, especially from Latin American and the Caribbean; and minority Christian theologies in the West, especially from U.S. Hispanic Americans. As a cultural critic, his interests include: postcolonial studies; minority studies; Diaspora studies. Professor Segovia has served on the editorial boards of a variety of academic journals, has worked as consultant for foundations and publishing houses, and has lectured widely both nationally and internationally. He is also a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States.
Production Notes
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.
Fernando Segovia: What does it mean today to hold the principles as I do dearly of human dignity, of human freedom, social justice, human justice, peace. What does this all mean? As the world around us seems to be in profound turmoil, if not absolutely collapsing in some respects.
Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa, with the Yale Center For Faith and Culture.
"Remember thou art dust and to dust they'll shall return." As Christians around the world heard these words spoken on Ash Wednesday this past week as an ashen oil was smudge under their brows, the world watched in horror grief with the brutality and aggression against Ukraine. Is it crumbled to dust? In a swift movement of global solidarity, we're all still left with difficult and enduring questions. Why this war? What's at stake? How did we get here? What can we do now? How can we stop this in a way that might hang onto a hope for peace?
But as finite limited beings brought forth from dust, we quickly run to the end of our ability to explain, and like so many problems in our world we're just left with further questions. What does it mean to be a Christian in a world where so many of our systems are dehumanizing? What duties are incumbent upon us as Christians, as humans.
How can we learn and share a global flourishing that respects and honors all? In this week's episode, Matt Croasmun interviews Fernando Segovia, the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He's the author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies, a view from the margins. And as a Cuban-American theologian and biblical scholar, he's devoted to elevating voices outside of the dominant Western culture and advocating for a truly global Christianity.
One that is relevant to lived realities across the world. In this conversation, he reflects on the importance of learning about Christianity as a set of global and multi-dimensional traditions. He discusses the duties of Christians to critique human culture and society, including their own. He suggests that utopian visions can and do inform the moral and spiritual imagination of our imperfect world, but must avoid naïveté and invite constant critique and correction.
Thanks for listening friends. Peace be with you.
Matt Croasmun: What's right with theology these days? What gives you hope? What makes you excited to see in the work of your peers or the students that you teach? What's going really well in theology with the bright spots.
Fernando Segovia: By theology, I take it that we mean the complex fields of studies as a whole, including theological studies, biblical, historical, ethical, and in the Catholic tradition, Canon law as well. What I like about it today, what I would highlight today, is the fact that this discourse, the discourse of Christian studies, is now being pursued, conceptualized, as well as formulated at a global level. That is, these fields of studies now has participants, spokespeople, not only in the north Atlantic as was the case up to really even the time when I began my studies, but now from Africa to Asia to Latin America, and that this must be taken into serious consideration. It's essential that it be done at a global level and that it is being done at a global level. And in that I rejoice.
I think that's one of the great benefits, one of the great advantages that Christian studies, which has the word, I guess I'm using for theology has in the present that there are many voices, that there are many faces, and that they all in a sense, laid claim to, stand within, and talk about the Christian tradition as a set of Christian traditions. I think that particular movement and that particular process has been now a godsend, I would think. I certainly have benefited a great deal from that expansion. So I definitely, I would say that's one of the good things about the conduct and the practice or the thought and the practice of Christian studies today.
Matt Croasmun: That's encouraging, that's fruitful. That's dynamic is happening right now. What are some of the challenges as you see it to theology in the present moment or as we project into the future? Are there threats that it faces? So there are particular challenges of this moment.
Fernando Segovia: An immediate problem, I think, that follows from bad observation is that since that Christian studies is global, it's still not taken very seriously in the institutions of learning of the first world, of the north Atlantic. There was a time perhaps when there was an emphasis on it, the time following the sixties, seventies, eighties. But I think in more recent times that sense of communion with, participation in, engagement with the global south in Christian studies has not been as foregrounded as it should be, unfortunately.
So despite the fact that this is going on and has been going on now for several decades, institutions, many institutions still, even though they may call themselves globalized and conscious of this phenomenon, do not actually undertake the education of Christian studies at the global level, at which it should be undertaken. I think that would be one of the serious challenges, serious faults, and the serious challenges to theology Christian studies.
Matt Croasmun: So then what is it as you see it? What is the role then of Christian studies say in the education of an undergraduate in today's world, or what is the theological education or Christian studies education for? What is that supposed to be doing for the student? How is, what are we aiming at when, in terms of the intervention we're trying to make in the formation of a student's intellectual imagination?
Fernando Segovia: I should think that one of the main goals of not perhaps the main goal of an education in Christian studies is to let people know that they are part of a very standing wide ranging tradition, which is the Christian tradition made up of all sorts of variations and conflict and with enormous complexity.
But nonetheless, if you're going to call yourself Christian, you belong within, no matter what religious theological level you do this, you do belong to a tradition. And that tradition has meaning as multidimensional meaning. It's constantly shifting, constantly ongoing and does provide, I think, as complex and conflicted as it may be view on what life is all about and what the praxis of a Christian, somebody who calls himself or herself, a Christian should be, in the light of that tradition and the world today. And when that element is missing, of course, one can argue the same thing for the Hindu, for Hinduism or Buddhism.
But I'm arguing from the tradition that I most know. When that happens there's this tremendous ignorance of what one is a part of and how that part drives one and has driven one's ancestors, predecessors, societies and cultures with all of its faults, but also with all of its advantages. So again, I think it's a sense of the wholeness of education and how this particular discourse gives and should give orientation within society and culture.
Matt Croasmun: As you talk about that for the Christians or for someone who has some sort of Christian heritage, what about for the outsider to the tradition? What is the place of Christian studies in our, as we see more and more our situation, and more and more pluralistic world. More and more of our students aren't from this tradition, don't come from a heritage that has a connection to it. What is the role of Christian studies for them? And maybe that's a bit of a microcosm of what we could be thinking about more broadly out beyond academia and in society as a whole.
Fernando Segovia: Yes, and in a way, the role is the same. This is what the tradition stands for, whether you're an insider or an outsider. And if you're an outsider, then it's incumbent upon you to realize, to come to know and acknowledge the tradition within which you stand, because we all stand in traditions, whether we want to or not. And if it's a position of no association with any tradition that I would call a religious theological position in its own right.
So what are your gods? What is your vision of life? What is your practice? Where does it come from? Here we are, we have ours in very complex and conflicted fashion, but so do you. And what gods do you worship? Is it mammon that you worship? Is it the economy? Whatever it is, but you must bring it to expression and become aware of it.
Matt Croasmun: So your work, like the work of many liberationist scholars pays great attention to the impact of the expansive global systems, the scale of these systems that, be they political or economic or climatological, or even geological that we're thinking in that sort of impact now as a human species, when you think about those kinds of big systems, that it just seems so right. Okay this is the real material reality and of Christian theology has no impact on that. Then what are we doing?
Miroslav and I propose that perhaps the future theology might lie in an orientation around articulating convictions of the good life at first blush. I actually don't think necessarily, but at first the good life might sound individual, small, personal. It's at least that. Is a focus on the good life and necessarily missing the big kind of questions of systems or how would we think about systems within a Christian studies that's oriented around articulating visions of the good life?
Fernando Segovia: You mentioned liberation theology to begin with, and I'm very indebted to it. And it would be good to begin by recalling the three mediations that liberation theology brought to the task of theology. First of all, not necessarily in such a sequence, the need for critical analysis of society and culture as one's context. Secondly, as a theological, the need for critical analysis of the biblical and historical tradition of Christianity itself. And finally, a critical analysis of practice and life, life and practice.
All of these are related closely related to one another, very closely related that may be done sequentially, usually they're done at the same time. This was proposed in the seventies. And what was proposed then would need to be thoroughly re-conceptualized and reformulated today at all three levels. And the critical analysis of society and culture in terms of Bible and tradition, and also in terms of practices, because the world has changed and you cannot do the same analysis that was done in 1970 in the 2010s. And the liberationist method is in part constructed in order to force you to reevaluate this.
The approaches that you use have also undergone 40 years, whether it's a social sciences or the historical disciplines or the practical disciplines, they have all undergone 40 years of further discursive development. So the sense of where we are and where we stand as we do Christian studies and for what purpose. Always has to have in my mind, a profound analysis of a context, both discursive and material in which we stand. And the context in which we stand today is one which many people refer to as the size of in, even in terms of human history as such in the abstract, in the possibility of the finitude of the human species has not at all a dream or an exaggeration.
And so I think it's necessary for theologians. Those who engage in Christian studies to have a moment, a long moment of ideological clarity. What is it that is going on in this world of ours at a global level? Because this critical analysis involves not just the local context, it involves also the regional context and the global context.
So if we are to proceed to do Christian studies today, it is incumbent upon us to know that context that is on the line in ways that we realize, and in ways that we don't realize that we're not even conscious of. That includes, I think, paying attention to the many crises that have been going on in the world and seem to be getting worse as the time advances, not only in an individual sense, but also in a collective sense.
How these crises, how each crisis, affects the other. Not only affects, but multiplies the effect of the other crisis. And how together they began to form a crisis of the world system that we presently have, or do not have as we go from one world system to another. What then becomes in the light of tradition and the Bible, the proper response and the critical analysis of practice for Christian studies to do. Here I should think this would apply to all religious studies, how then to respond, how to lead one's life, I think that is absolutely imperative upon us.
Matt Croasmun: So how would a Christian studies oriented around articulation of visions of the good life, the flourishing human life? What would that look like? Informed by a realistic, honest engagement with our providers in this human situation?
Fernando Segovia: That is the question. What is the good life? Who defines the good life? For whom is the good life defined in terms of the crises that are taking place? What is the good life in the midst of profound and by this time, perhaps unending climate, ecological change.
What is the good life in terms of profound and growing inequality within nation states, as well as among nations states? What is the good life for international migration at this point, which is also growing more profound and more extensive and more global than ever before? What exactly do we mean by the good life? I think it's a fundamental question hat that really needs to be addressed.
That I would say what we have to look at is what does it mean today to hold the principles as I do dearly of human dignity, of human freedom, social justice, human justice, peace. What does this all mean? As the world around us seems to be in profound turmoil, if not absolutely collapsing in some respects and really actually collapsing as it is the case in the Middle East, with the impact on everything else, including Europe.
I think it's a fundamental concept in humanistic studies and global studies, but it's also been a fundamental concept in Christian studies as well. It Is not the first time, certainly that a Christian thinker has pronounced himself or herself as deeply worried by the world and as choosing for a solution to a crisis in the world system.
I think, in a sense, all of evangelists were doing this as was Paul and others in early Christianity. The world system that was constituted by the Roman empire was perceived maybe not as collapsing, certainly not as collapsing, but as having such consequences upon the human condition, that a destruction of that system was not only contemplated, but conditioned and desired so that a new world could be constructed along other principles along other laws.
So I think in that sense they pointed to what they saw as a fault in the world system, and also as a remedy to the world system that would come from outside the world system, rather than from within. In a sense it came from within through the figure of and the message of Jesus Christ.
But, as a conveyor from another system that would take over and allied and begin a new system, a new Jerusalem, Revelation 21, or the kingdom of God. All of this can be pursued in very humanistic fashion by saying that this vision is a vision of a utopian ideal or utopian society. These visions of utopia all were foreign parts of the human race. In a sense, we can say, what would be a utopian vision for our world today?
What would be a Christian utopian vision for our world today? What would be a Buddhist utopian vision for our world today so that these different crises and crisis of the world system can be addressed at least addressed? I acknowledged and addressed in and responsible fashion. I think that's a tremendous duty that is incumbent upon us.
Matt Croasmun: What's the role you started to speak about it, but I'd like to hear you say more about the role of the vision of the positive in writing wrongs, right? It can sometimes seem. I'll freely admit, especially as a white man, they can feel for me to Pollyannish or naive to say: can we envision the good isn't that a necessary part of resisting what needs to be resistant in the world? How would you resolve that tension? If you see it see a tension at all? On the one hand, should we be putting our energy into casting vision for the good that we want to see versus the energy that we should be putting in to resisting what is wrong and what needs to be changed.
I'm inclined not to see much of a tension there, but sometimes it feels in our discourse that there, there is that and how much wrong, how much energy should go into the negative as opposed to the positive.
Fernando Segovia: I agree. I think it is one thing to critique for the sake of critique and that's very normal. But I also think it's necessary to critique with a vision of an alternative in mind even with an utopian, because to critique for the sake of critique, does the job may do the job. But if you don't have a proposal to bring to the fore and say "this is where we can go," "this is perhaps at least a point of departure for where we can go, something is missing and one is not being responsible.
An example along these lines in some aspects of early liberation theology of the critique of society and culture was very closely linked to a critique of capitalism, which was industrial capitalism at the time, about to change into financial capitalism with a sense of utopia along socialist communist lines. Certain ideals societies that would resolve the issue and had resolved the issue. And among those societies, there was always in some segments, I'm not saying in everyone that a country like my own Cuba was a future, a future for a more egalitarian society.
Now I was born in Cuba. I lived in a socialist than communist regime, openly declared as such and from very early on from my mid teens, I know that that was not the answer. That system had to be critiqued as much and as the capitalist system and was not being critiqued. And in effect later on, we have seen now the critique of real socialism that has been emanating, even from leftist circles, the abuses of power and the development in a sense of a form of state capitalism that this supposed alternative was actually a different version of capitalism, not one in which the class formations were abolished and class relations were surpassed, but that actually the state became the owner of all things and the workers did not. And so state capitalism resolved this. And I think China's the most recent example of this.
So I think that critique has to be a comprehensive and very much aware of all systems. That doesn't mean you shouldn't put across a utopian vision, but that even the utopian visions themselves must be critiqued because they ultimately, they are also our constructions, but without a utopian vision, it is very hard to move. It is very hard to at least look for an alternative, but always, I think in the same with a sense that alternatives themselves, our ideological products and must be judged, evaluated ideologically as well. With age, I've become less and less naive. I realized that the world is full of conflict, but the conflict is at the micro level, even within the individual, certainly in family circles, we all know that.
And at the macro level as well, and that conflict has always been here, is there, and will always be here. And that if we use the term as what was used in certain circles, as liberation, as leaving behind conflict onto a paradise lost and regained, we're really becoming very naive. So utopia has to take into account the omnipresence of conflict and how to handle conflict at all levels.
Matt Croasmun: Hmm. Because discerning the good requires some contending because the moment it's left unchallenged, it becomes dangerous.
Fernando Segovia: Yes. And even to go back and realize certain things that that very utopian notion and very welcome notion of the kingdom of God, if you go with that route, that the biblical tradition, there is the tradition that the evil being comes from the kingdom of God, of rebellion within the kingdom of God, which means in effect that in that sense of the beatific vision that should have settled all things, one particular entity was not altogether convinced and decides to go its own way. It seems to me that in a sense deconstructs the ultimate efficient of all. But even in the kingdom of God, there is comfort and that conflict led to the opposite at a utopian vision of evil, the ultimate evil, the entity that was evil in every respect.
So that's a contradiction at the heart of the most utopian visions of it all, which means that it does need to be re-conceptualized and reformulated. Now how to do this with human dignity, with freedom, with justice is overwhelming, but it's also imperative. And I think that's what we're called to do.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured biblical scholars, Fernando Segovia, and Matt Croasmun. Production and editorial assistants by Martin Chan. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu. New episodes drop every Saturday. Sometimes midweek. If you're new to the show, welcome friend. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast listening app, and we'd love your feedback, ratings and reviews and apple podcasts are particularly helpful, but we're just as happy to hear from you by email, at faith@yale.edu, we read each comment and do our best to respond and improve the show, bringing you the people and topics that you want to hear.
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