Todd D. Whitmore - Böcker

Shortlisted for the American Academy of Religion's Book Award 2020 Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology achieves two things. First, focusing on indigenous Roman Catholics in northern Uganda and South Sudan, it is a detailed ethnography of how a community sustains hope in the midst of one of the most brutal wars in recent memory, that between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Whitmore finds that the belief that the spirit of Jesus Christ can enter into a person through such devotions as the Adoration of the Eucharist gave people the wherewithal to carry out striking works of mercy during the conflict, and, like Jesus of Nazareth, to risk their lives in the process. Traditional devotion leveraged radical witness. Second, Gospel Mimesis is a call for theology itself to be a practice of imitating Christ. Such practice requires both living among people on the far margins of society – Whitmore carried out his fieldwork in Internally Displaced Persons camps – and articulating a theology that foregrounds the daily, if extraordinary, lives of people. Here, ethnography is not an add-on to theological concepts; rather, ethnography is a way of doing theology, and includes what anthropologists call “thick description” of lives of faith. Unlike theology that draws only upon abstract concepts, what Whitmore calls “anthropological theology” is consonant with the fact that God did indeed become human. It may well involve risk to one’s own life – Whitmore had to leave Uganda for three years after writing an article critical of the President – but that is what imitatio Christi sometimes requires.

Shortlisted for the American Academy of Religion's Book Award 2020 Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology achieves two things. First, focusing on indigenous Roman Catholics in northern Uganda and South Sudan, it is a detailed ethnography of how a community sustains hope in the midst of one of the most brutal wars in recent memory, that between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Whitmore finds that the belief that the spirit of Jesus Christ can enter into a person through such devotions as the Adoration of the Eucharist gave people the wherewithal to carry out striking works of mercy during the conflict, and, like Jesus of Nazareth, to risk their lives in the process. Traditional devotion leveraged radical witness. Second, Gospel Mimesis is a call for theology itself to be a practice of imitating Christ. Such practice requires both living among people on the far margins of society – Whitmore carried out his fieldwork in Internally Displaced Persons camps – and articulating a theology that foregrounds the daily, if extraordinary, lives of people. Here, ethnography is not an add-on to theological concepts; rather, ethnography is a way of doing theology, and includes what anthropologists call “thick description” of lives of faith. Unlike theology that draws only upon abstract concepts, what Whitmore calls “anthropological theology” is consonant with the fact that God did indeed become human. It may well involve risk to one’s own life – Whitmore had to leave Uganda for three years after writing an article critical of the President – but that is what imitatio Christi sometimes requires.

Using ethnographic research, The Work of Inclusion brings the standpoints of people with intellectual disabilities to the forefront of the theological conversation around disability, inclusion, grace, and sin.In a world shaped by interdependency, developing a theological attunement to intellectual disability helps us to understand that human agency is both enabled by and limited by dependency relationships. Only by recognizing the kinds of complex layers of agency seen in this ethnographic study can Christian ethics more broadly address the place of hope, grace, and resistance against structures of sin and injustice.

Using ethnographic research, The Work of Inclusion brings the standpoints of people with intellectual disabilities to the forefront of the theological conversation around disability, inclusion, grace, and sin.In a world shaped by interdependency, developing a theological attunement to intellectual disability helps us to understand that human agency is both enabled by and limited by dependency relationships. Only by recognizing the kinds of complex layers of agency seen in this ethnographic study can Christian ethics more broadly address the place of hope, grace, and resistance against structures of sin and injustice.

Public theology is an emerging constructive tool. In its inception, public theology was largely contextualized as the ‘public church.’ However, this thoughtful and empathetic book situates our publics everywhere. Smallwood contends that those who have been harmed by violent rhetoric from speech actors who would ‘other’ them retain the capacity to have and hold a theology. This different entry point allows for people of faith, those who are and those who are not associated with a particular communion of faith or denominational affiliation to claim public space for theologizing. Here, public theology is about the capacity of those who are ‘othered’ to affirmatively express their faith and to critically engage with those who would deny and denigrate their ontology. ‘Enduring hardship as a good soldier’ does not mean exposing oneself to verbal abuse week after week. Many LGBTQIA+ persons are assaulted, degraded, humiliated, and derogated from the pulpits and podiums of places of worship. This abuse caused many to turn away from their faith. Those who withstood protracted verbal abuse turned it inward and began to hate themselves. Through ethnography, Smallwood tackles these tough truths and engages with LGBTQIA+ persons. This book critically examines both the harm done to them and the help that is to come from a paradigmatic shift in care. Smallwood emphasises how spiritual self-assessment, ritual, and indigenous spiritual practices offer a way to wholeness and healing. Drawing from Yoruba epistemology, this work offers a framework for rebirth, renewal, and reclamation.

Public theology is an emerging constructive tool. In its inception, public theology was largely contextualized as the ‘public church.’ However, this thoughtful and empathetic book situates our publics everywhere. Smallwood contends that those who have been harmed by violent rhetoric from speech actors who would ‘other’ them retain the capacity to have and hold a theology. This different entry point allows for people of faith, those who are and those who are not associated with a particular communion of faith or denominational affiliation to claim public space for theologizing. Here, public theology is about the capacity of those who are ‘othered’ to affirmatively express their faith and to critically engage with those who would deny and denigrate their ontology. ‘Enduring hardship as a good soldier’ does not mean exposing oneself to verbal abuse week after week. Many LGBTQIA+ persons are assaulted, degraded, humiliated, and derogated from the pulpits and podiums of places of worship. This abuse caused many to turn away from their faith. Those who withstood protracted verbal abuse turned it inward and began to hate themselves. Through ethnography, Smallwood tackles these tough truths and engages with LGBTQIA+ persons. This book critically examines both the harm done to them and the help that is to come from a paradigmatic shift in care. Smallwood emphasises how spiritual self-assessment, ritual, and indigenous spiritual practices offer a way to wholeness and healing. Drawing from Yoruba epistemology, this work offers a framework for rebirth, renewal, and reclamation.

The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s was a movement led by white religious liberals that housed Central Americans fleeing dictatorships supported by the United States government, giving them a platform to speak about the situation in their countries of origin. This book focuses on the movement’s whiteness by centering the voices of recipients of sanctuary and taking their critiques seriously. The result is an account of the movement that takes seriously the agential limitations of sanctuary and the struggles for agency by recipients. Using interviews with participants in the movement as well auto-ethnographic research as the white pastor of a church in the New Sanctuary Movement, this book situates the sanctuary as site for theological reflection on some of the most pressing issues facing the Church today – the possibilities of testimony, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and mercy. In doing so, it proposes a new theoretical framework for thinking about practice by introducing readers to Judith Butler’s theories of subjectivation and arguing for ethnographically engaged theology that is able to think beyond virtue and excellence towards an understanding of fugitivity.

The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s was a movement led by white religious liberals that housed Central Americans fleeing dictatorships supported by the United States government, giving them a platform to speak about the situation in their countries of origin. This book focuses on the movement’s whiteness by centering the voices of recipients of sanctuary and taking their critiques seriously. The result is an account of the movement that focuses on the inherent the agential limitations of sanctuary and the struggles for agency by recipients. Using interviews with participants in the movement as well as auto-ethnographic research as the white pastor of a church in the New Sanctuary Movement, the author situates sanctuary as a site for theological reflection on some of the most pressing issues facing the church today – the possibilities of testimony, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and mercy. In doing so, the author proposes a new theoretical framework for thinking about practice by introducing readers to Judith Butler’s theories of subjectivation and arguing for ethnographically engaged theology that is able to think beyond virtue and excellence towards an understanding of fugitivity.

How does the life, arrest, trial, conviction, execution, and release from state-supervision of Jesus Christ enact the salvation of the cosmos? How does that one carceral life-in-death link up with life in the face of prison death today?Jobe explores the spiritual and religious life contained within America’s prison systems as it shows up in the profession of prison chaplaincy. The theological foundations of the text coherently link Barth’s experience of prison chaplaincy and his Christological theology with the theological understandings in the chaplains' interviews; and Jobe’s “practical soteriology” emerges in a thoroughly intricate and compelling contextualized vision. This book weaves careful ethnographic work, the systematic theology of Karl Barth, and biblical interpretation to craft a textured exploration of life-after-death work.

How does the life, arrest, trial, conviction, execution, and release from state-supervision of Jesus Christ enact the salvation of the cosmos? How does that one carceral life-in-death link up with life in the face of prison death today?Jobe explores the spiritual and religious life contained within America’s prison systems as it shows up in the profession of prison chaplaincy. The theological foundations of the text coherently link Barth’s experience of prison chaplaincy and his Christological theology with the theological understandings in the chaplains' interviews; and Jobe’s “practical soteriology” emerges in a thoroughly intricate and compelling contextualized vision. This book weaves careful ethnographic work, the systematic theology of Karl Barth, and biblical interpretation to craft a textured exploration of life-after-death work.