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“Though the Mountains Be Shaken”: Toward a Countercultural and Liberative Ecclesial Ethic for Appalachia (1)

“Though the Mountains Be Shaken”: Toward a Countercultural and Liberative Ecclesial Ethic for Appalachia (1)

Last updated on: August 17, 2007 at 5:38 pm by Iafrate Michael

“Though the Mountains Be Shaken”: Toward a Countercultural and Liberative Ecclesial Ethic for Appalachia (1) 2007-08-17T17:38:00-05:00 Iafrate Michael

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Part One – Introduction

“Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
“O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will build you with stones of turquoise,
your foundations with sapphires.
I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of sparkling jewels,
and all your walls of precious stones.
All your sons will be taught by the LORD,
and great will be your children’s peace.

“See, it is I who created the blacksmith
who fans the coals into flame
and forges a weapon fit for its work.
And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc;
no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and this is their vindication from me,”
declares the LORD.

(Isaiah 54: 10-13, 16-17, NIV)

About two years ago I was living in a “tri-state” area of my home state of West Virginia, an area that provided easy access to the neighboring states of Pennsylvania and Maryland. In this tri-state area, if one wanted to drive from Morgantown, West Virginia to Wheeling, West Virginia via the interstate, the road would take you through the southwest corner of Pennsylvania and back into West Virginia about sixty miles later. As I would make this trip often to visit family and friends, I knew the road well, and during one of my regular trips I was stunned to see that the familiar “Welcome to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia” sign at the state line had been replaced by another sign. Although the sign itself was more attractive and bore a beautiful image of rolling mountains dressed in the colors of autumn, the new text on the sign was troubling: “West Virginia: Open for Business.” West Virginia’s governor Joe Manchin had just unveiled a new set of state welcome signs, and with it a new openness regarding his political and economic ideals.

This anecdote serves as but one illustrative example of the ongoing reality of exploitation and oppression in Appalachia, especially under the current phase of savage capitalism and corporate globalization. The anecdote serves also as an entry point into a reflection on the possibility of a renewed ecclesial ethic of resistance that can emerge when the Roman Catholic Church’s thirty-year-old tradition of praxis-centered Appalachian contextual social teaching is brought into fruitful dialogue with two more recent phenomenon: 1) the insights of the “new ecclesiology,” a style of theologizing that focuses radically on the practices of the Church as the center of political life through the embodiment of a distinctive Christian social ethic, and 2) the experience of the radical “antiglobalization” movements of the 1990s and into the present.

“The United States is the site of multiple worlds, worlds contrasting and contradictory,” wrote a North American theologian in one of many collections of theology that brought Latin American liberation theology into dialogue with North American theology.[1] Smashing through easy categories of “Third World” and “First World,” these various dialogues brought to the Church an awareness of the complexity of socio-political and economic issues, especially the presence of oppressed sectors of society within the “First World” itself, for example women and people of color. The region of the United States known as Appalachia was one of many of the marginalized groups that were identified as part of “America’s Third World.” [2]

The Catholic Church in Appalachia has a rich history of social teaching that began to be developed over thirty years ago as part of these new liberationist reflections on North American reality. Much of this theology and social teaching was a result of the collaboration of the Appalachian bishops and lay social justice groups such as the Catholic Committee of Appalachia. Beginning with its inaugural pastoral letter This Land is Home to Me,[3] Appalachian theology and social teaching has provided a useful liberative method for the Church’s ongoing reflection on the social realities of the region and has inspired countless ministries and movements for social and economic justice.

Twenty years later, a second pastoral letter was issued, At Home in the Web of Life,[4] that continued the hermeneutical circle of contextual reflection to include insights in light of a new economic and political situation. The pattern shown in these two documents, and the ecclesial praxis that has flowed from them, encourages the circle to continue in order to discern the “signs of the times” in the region and how the Word and Spirit are speaking to God’s people in the present and calling them to deeper divine life in community.

This essay represents the beginning of my own contribution to this ongoing reflection on the Church[5] in the region called Appalachia, with particular focus on sketching an approach or method to doing theological ethics in this context. I write as one who identifies as Appalachian, having grown up from the age of two in West Virginia and who was raised within a parish and diocese that were strongly shaped by the vision of the first Appalachian pastoral letter. I will not attempt to start from scratch or attempt to articulate a “new” method for ethical reflection on the Appalachian reality. Rather, this reflection will be rooted in the documents’ praxis-centered model of theology, one of six models identified and described in Stephen Bevans’ framework of models of contextual theology.[6] After providing a general overview of this praxis-oriented method as it appears and functions in these pastoral letters, I will attempt to bring the documents into dialogue with another distinct method, the “countercultural” method[7] as it appears in the “new ecclesiology” as well as in theologies that draw from the experience of radical, countercultural social and political movements.

Why this dialogue? While the liberationist/praxis model of reflection has produced an outstanding and very radical body of social theology for Appalachia, Stephen Bevans notes that it is not necessary, nor is it desirable, for theological reflection to remain within one model only. In fact, in order to have a more complete understanding of the situation and of possible modes of pastoral and political action, several methods can and should be used in conjunction with one another: “[I]t is my contention that no one model can be used exclusively and an exclusive use will distort the theological enterprise.”[8] This essay will attempt to show that the stance of the countercultural theologians, while similar to the praxis-oriented theologians, can contribute new insights for a more radical ecclesial ethic for the region of Appalachia.

The “countercultural” model, as described by Bevans, bears some similarities to the praxis model in that its central concern is the lived practice of the Christian faith. The differences between the two models are many, but for the purposes of this paper we will focus on the difference between how each model understands “political action” as well as their attitudes toward structures of power such as the state and the Church. My own reading of the Appalachian pastorals will focus on their view of the usefulness of existing structures such as the state in working toward the common good[9] of both the local and global communities. While the first pastoral letter, This Land is Home to Me, strongly condemned structural sin and the institutional violence of modern capitalism, the tone of the letter is yet an optimistic one, speaking of “the birth of utopias,” and imagining a Church that calls the business and political worlds to become their best selves and collaborates with them in listening to the voice of the poor and helping them to make a choice in favor of justice and of the God of Life. I will note a shift of emphasis in the second pastoral letter which makes only a very brief mention of the state’s role in facilitating the common good, spending much more time discussing the notion of alternative social and economic experiments that foster sustainable communities. Of special note is the short section on those alternative structures developed and/or supported by the Church itself.

Next, following Catholic theologian William T. Cavanaugh who critiques the long held assumption in Catholic social thought that the state is the primary facilitator the common good, I hope to show, with additional help from Appalachian studies and the insights of recent social movements, that the problems with this assumption can be seen in increasingly vivid detail in the economic planning practices of Appalachian politicians and the increasingly devastating “imperial” reality of the War on Terror. This examination will then place us in the position to consider that—in light of these critiques of the state, and drawing from the insights of the “new ecclesiologies” that focus on the practices of the Church as embodying a distinct social ethic—continued efforts to articulate and put into practice a theology for Appalachia should continue to place its focus on the Church itself as a political entity in its own right, an alternative social space that serves as a witness to the world of another way of “doing politics” and of fostering true, life-giving community. The result will suggest an approach to a contextual theological ethic of resistance for Appalachia that draws from the best insights of liberationist and “ecclesiocentric” countercultural ethical approaches, offering a method centered on the possibility of radical ecclesial praxis on a local level which, rather than causing the Church to withdraw into a sectarian ecclesial mode, threatens the existing social order through these ecclesial practices themselves.

Next: Part Two – The Beginnings of “Appalachian Liberation Theology”

______________________________

[1] Mar Peter-Raoul, “South Bronx to South Africa: Prayer, Praxis, Song,” in Yearning to Breathe Free: Liberation Theologies in the U.S., ed. Mar Peter-Raoul, Linda Rennie Forcey, and Robert Fredrick Hunter, Jr. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 19.
[2] Ibid., 21.
[3] Catholic Bishops of Appalachia, This Land is Home to Me: A Pastoral Letter on Powerlessness in Appalachia (Techny, IL: Society of the Divine Word, 1975/2000).
[4] Catholic Bishops of Appalachia, At Home in the Web of Life: A Pastoral Message on Sustainable Communities in Appalachia (Webster Springs, WV: Catholic Committee of Appalachia, 1995).
[5] My use of the word “Church” in this essay will vary. As this essay concerns the tradition of Roman Catholic social teaching and the concrete practices of the Church in a particular context, in many instances the word “Church” will refer to the Roman Catholic Church. As will become clear later in the essay, however, my engagement with various forms of the “new ecclesiology” includes dialogue with several theologians of other ecclesial traditions, and thus “Church” in other parts of this essay will refer to the Church as a reality that is larger than the visible, institutional form of the Roman Catholic Church.
[6] Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, Revised and expanded ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002) The models described in the original edition of Bevans’ book were the translation, anthropological, praxis, synthetic, and transcendental models. The “countercultural” model was added in the revised and expanded edition of the book.
[7] Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 117–37.
[8] Ibid., 32.
[9] The concept of the “common good” is central to Catholic social teaching and liberationist ethical approaches, but the precise meaning and helpfulness of the term is debated. We will not attempt to address these debates here, but will assume that the concept is of central importance. For the debates about the meaning of the common good, see the collection Patrick Miller and Dennis McCann, eds., In Search of the Common Good, Theology for the Twenty-First Century (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005); and John A. Coleman, “The Future of Catholic Social Thought,” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries & Interpretations, ed. Kenneth Himes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 522–44.

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