BEING GREATLY REDUCED in income due to the Covid epidemic and the devastation it's had on my profession I haven't yet ordered this book but it's one I will get as soon as used copies start appearing on the online small-bookstore sites. I don't usually talk about a book before I've read it but just as The Gospel In Solentiname filled a huge gap in my understanding of the Scriptures, commentary by Nicraraguan peasants living more as the image of God than any academic theologian do, I'm expecting Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People without Homes By Susan J. Dunlap will fill in yet more of those big gaps.
This interview with the person who is credited with producing the book is pretty revealing by itself. It starts with a description of her work and how the book became an expression of that.
Durham, N.C. — Three mornings a week, Susan Dunlap holds a half-hour prayer service for the overnight guests at Urban Ministries of Durham, a shelter for people without homes.
Unlike other shelters, some of which often require attendance at such services, there's no sermon here, no order of worship, no hymnal.
The idea is to allow shelter residents to create a zone of belonging and recognition that is not controlled or scripted by others, she writes in her new book, Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People without Homes.
The description of the book in the introduction in terms of "anthropology" almost put me off of it but this doesn't sound like a traditional condescending "study" where the People who are the center of the book are "interpreted" to make them safe for elite, polite, academic digestion. Like the irreplaceable Jonathan Kozol, the author is obviously aware of why that's especially wrong when it's a white professional doing it.
RNS: You write that, as a white clergy person, you hesitated for a long time before writing this book. How did you overcome that?
Dunlap: There are risks trying to represent people different from you, particularly if they're very vulnerable. You risk violating them. It can be an act of violence. But it can also be an act of violence not to represent them. I thought to keep hidden what I learned about their insights and theology and lives was also wrong. My teacher, Mark Lewis Taylor, said these representations can be justified if you're actively involved in changing the circumstances that victimize them. The whole time I've been working with them, I've been involved with Durham CAN [Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods] to build affordable housing. That also justifies telling the stories of vulnerable people on the margins.
You refrain from calling the shelter's guests homeless, for the most part. Is there a new style around that?
It's become accepted to call them unhoused or people without homes. I prefer "people living without homes." It's a people-first language. I prefer saying they don't have homes rather than saying they're unhoused, because a home is a place of safety and nurture, more than just a house.
You talk about the horror of homelessness. Describe what you mean.
One of the things that symbolized that for me was walking down the street and one of my guides who lived at the shelter said, "That's where Black people go for sex. That's where white people go for sex. You see that pile of rocks? That's a good place to hide for drug deals." There's a place under a railroad trestle where there was an old mattress, and he said, "That's where you go to trade sex for drugs." To me, that's horror.
You have to wonder how many of the people talked about in the Gospels lived the first century equivalent of that. I think the lives of the destitute throughout time must have similar qualities, far more so than the lives of the rich and famous of today. These People are the ones who are presented as identical to God, in terms of how we treat them by Jesus. The Lord trading sex for drugs, I think I should meditate on that for a month or a year to see what I learn from it. I have a beloved member of my extended family who lived a lot like that for several years. I don't think I know her nearly well enough.
What did you have in mind when you created the prayer service and what did it become?
I had in mind creating a space that was not a place for my agenda, but theirs. They would walk into a quiet room and bring their own prayers to the front and light a candle, and meditative music would play in the background. It would be a place of nurture that affirms their connections to the divine. But they brought their religion with them, which is mostly Southern evangelical Black church. The music evolved from being instrumental to being gospel and organ music and singing. Rather than long spaces of silence, people gave testimony, they gave sermons, they encouraged each other, they praised God using common African American prayers like, "I thank God for waking me up this morning!" The music I felt was calming, they didn't like. One woman told me, "It sounds like a funeral."
It's tempting to just post the entire interview but I hope I've given enough to make you want to read the rest of it and the book. I expect it will jar me a lot, maybe even more than I have been by the interview. I am jarred out of the comfortable idea of morality and religion that is so tempting, calming like the music described. What good is that to people who are forced to live such dangerous, chaotic lives? It's enough to make me question even my musical life in a shattering way. Who is it who needs 18th century counterpoint and who is it who needs music that doesn't sound like a funeral? Maybe I should have been serving them instead of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment