“The Land is Mine”: A Congregational Case Study of Affordable Housing Action as a Praxis of Political Revelation — Relations & Contradictions

This paper explores a case study of one congregation’s attempt to develop affordable housing on their land—their animating theological imagination and the widening web of political engagements and solidarities produced by their conscientization—as an example of “iterative orthopraxy” through which “the real” and “right action” are progressively revealed. Thinking with Freire, Sobrino, and Dussel, I develop a theory of action as a transformative-epistemological method. Foregrounding the iterativity of orthopraxy underscores that actors cannot a priori know which concrete collective actions constitute “the good.” Each subsequent action made in solidarity toward liberation and life is a refined best approximation. The humility required and instilled by the space of unknowing demonstrates the spirituality of such praxis. I proceed to reflect on the revised portrait of relations and contradictions generated by this case, particularly with respect to the political-economy of property, and the questions such revelations raise for practitioners.