Attached to Paper Session
Meeting Preference
Even as robust attention has been given to place as a theological, biblical, and philosophical category in recent decades, practical theological approaches to place continue to be marked by hegemonies, occlusions, and romanticisms (Goto 2018, Kim-Cragg 2021). This paper will argue that the sermons of Indigenous communities displaced by the climate crisis provide a potent tool for identifying and disrupting these distortions. Growing out of two-year collaboration with the Fijian Methodist Church, this project looks to Indigenous sermons responding to imminent ecological crises to illumine grassroot theologies of place. In so doing, the project exposes reductive approaches to place in practical theologies that veer toward universal prescriptions, descriptive insularity, or constructive hubris.
The climate crisis presents a particular challenge to practical theological method. Scientific research on environmental catastrophe increasingly stresses the particularity of the challenges facing specific areas (i.e. foreclosing “one-size-fits-all” solutions), even as it emphasizes the global interconnectedness of the struggle (Martin, Nunn, Leon, and Tindale 2018; Jenkins, Berry, and Kreider 2018). The contextual specificity of place and place’s relation to the locations of others create a challenge for both the descriptive and prescriptive poles of practical theological research. The urgency of the crisis underscores the need for cross-contextual engagement, even as it highlights the dangerous insufficiency of methods that instrumentalize, essentialize, or exoticize the places of others (Weaver 2015).
Drawing on fifteen sermons preached by Indigenous iTaukei ministers in communities facing relocation following ecological disaster, the paper reflects on how the particular theological and ethical questions foregrounded in these sermons illumine grassroot theologies of place that resist universal norms, romantic materialisms, and technological fixes. Tensive theologies of relation emerge, impacting both the telos of climate science and the assumptions of practical theological method. How are the places of others distinct from each other and how are they related? More specifically, how do the ecclesial practices of communities impacted by climate catastrophe relate to the practices of more insulated communities? The paper will argue that the sermons of these displaced Fijian Methodist pastors reveal the limits of cross-contextual understanding, even as they call the practices of other ecclesial communities to account.
Ultimately, in engaging the sermons of Indigenous iTaukei ministers, the paper argues that these theo-rhetorical performances are significant material and formal interventions in the climate crisis. These preachers are, in the words of Amiria Salmond, “rebuilding their ships at sea,” subjectively entertaining “the possibility of ontological alternatives” (2021, p. 221, 223) and innovations. Such risks navigate toward a humbler, more relational theology of ecclesial practice and place in the face of environmental loss.
Sources:
Goto, Courtney. (2018).* Taking on Practical Theology.* Boston, MA: Brill Publishers, 2018.
Jenkins, Willis, Evan Berry, and Luke Beck Kreider. (2018). “Religion and Climate Change.” *Annual Review of Environment and Resources* 43: 85-108.
Kim-Cragg, HyeRan. (2021). *Postcolonial Preaching: Creating a Ripple Effect.* Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Martin, Piérick C.M., Patrick Nunn, Javier Leon, and Neil Tindale. (2018). “Responding to multiple climate-linked stressors in a remote island context: The example of Yadua Island, Fiji.” *Climate Risk Management* 21: 7-15.
Salmond, Amiria. (2017). “Re-building Ships at Sea: Ontological Innovation in Action.” In *Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses: Ontologies and Discourses and Practices in Oceania,* eds. Eveline Dürr and Arno Pascht, 215-226. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Weaver, Jace. (2015). “Misfit Messengers: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Climate Change.” *Journal of the Academy of Religion* 83, no. 2: 320-335.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
There are currently forty-two Fijian villages slated for relocation because of environmental catastrophes and rising tides. The majority of these villages are iTaukei Fijian communities that are part of the Fijian Methodist church. The sermons of these Indigenous communities describe rich and complex relationships with place (i.e. vanua) as a theological, biblical, and ontological category – often in response to place’s loss. They also resist reductive, colonial understandings of place that continue to haunt Western practical theological methods. In attending to the theological and ethical questions raised in iTaukei sermons, this paper interrogates approaches to place in practical theology that continue to marginalize displaced communities and argues for the environmental significance of the ecclesial practices of communities displaced by the climate crisis.