Opening the Field of Practical Theology by Kathleen A. Cahalan

Author:Kathleen A. Cahalan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

U.S. Hispanic Catholic Theologies: Theology as Liberative Hermeneutical Praxis

Ada María Isasi-Díaz

As a mujerista theologian, Ada María Isasi-Díaz (1943–2012) described theology as liberative praxis, a kind of liberative hermeneutics. A longtime professor of ethics and theology at Drew University, Isasi-Díaz brought a hermeneutics of suspicion to bear on practical theology as she also offered a constructive vision of a liberative hermeneutics centered on Latina experience. For example, she read claims of scientific “objectivity” with a hermeneutics of suspicion—seeing oppressive power dynamics underlying such claims. Instead, she argued for the importance of self-location whenever interpreting biblical texts. Her biblical and theological hermeneutics was deeply shaped by her experience of ethnic prejudice as a Cuban exile in the United States; her work with the poor in Lima, Peru, which shaped her commitment to a preferential option for the poor; and her experience of oppression as a woman in the Catholic church. Her hermeneutics focuses on the lived experience of Latinas, lo popular, the realities of oppression, and the goal of liberative praxis and moral agency: “My biblical hermeneutics, then, has as its central focus the binomial oppression-liberation.”[35] Lo cotidiano, the every­day experience of Hispanic women, plays a central role in seeing, interpreting, and knowing: “In mujerista theology, then, lo cotidiano has descriptive, hermeneutical, and epistemological importance.” Still, every­day experience is not an ethical or theological norm, principle or criterion; rather, liberative praxis is the norm by which experience is judged: “It is only insofar as lo cotidiano is a liberative praxis, a daily living that contributes to liberation, that lo cotidiano is considered good, valuable, right, salvific.”[36]

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