Abstract
This essays returns to a question I explored years ago as a pregnant and nursing mother: What is the nature of tactile knowledge and how might the construction of theology take such knowledge into greater consideration? Feeling as a source and site for knowledge has been derided for centuries despite efforts of modern psychologists to rehabilitate its role and of feminist theorists to challenge its sexist stereotypes. This essay explores the relationship between feeling, bodies, and knowledge in theology, reviewing negative perceptions and viable avenues for positive reconstruction. It argues that the repression of feeling has troubling consequences for theological education and that theological studies has much to gain from the “affective revolution” in the sciences.
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Notes
The 1996 version is now reprinted in Miller-McLemore (2012).
There are interesting exceptions that merit further analysis. For example, Kinast devotes a couple of pages in Making Faith-Sense to paying “attention to feelings” (1999, pp. 12–13) and Killen and de Beer explicitly recognize that feelings “are an important component” in the “movement toward insight” (1994, p. 27). They include a section on the subject, arguing that knowledge of feeling demands knowledge of our bodies and constitutes a spiritual discipline. As important, ministerial books on feelings written by and for pastors, such as William Kondrath (2013), or books using the Myers-Briggs test (e.g., Baab 1998), the Enneagram (e.g., Rohr and Ebert 2001), or family systems theory (e.g., Richardson 1996; Friedman 1985) to analyze the emotional dynamics of pastors and congregations, represent another kind of exception that deserves analysis.
It is noteworthy that he is in his 80s when he delivered the Terry Lectures on which the book is based.
Jackson Carroll’s Ministry as Reflective Practice (1986) is a prominent exception.
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Dedicated to Beverly Harrison, author of a classic essay (1981) on anger and the work of love and an invaluable mentor during my early research on mothering. She died December 15, 2012. See http://www.utsnyc.edu/beverley-harrison .
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Miller-McLemore, B.J. Coming to Our Senses: Feeling and Knowledge in Theology and Ministry. Pastoral Psychol 63, 689–704 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-014-0617-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-014-0617-1