In this course we will examine theological, philosophical, and literary resources that take up place as a primary concern. In particular, we will consider how specific places express and give shape to personal and communal life. For example, contemporary suburbia expresses a highly mobile, individualistic ethos (no front porches, reliance on automobiles). As a form of emplacement, suburbia also helps shape its inhabitants so that they understand their own living in individualized and mobile ways. Suburbia didn’t just happen. It was designed by some (because they felt it to realize what they thought valuable) and subscribed to by many others (because they accepted the values and priorities represented by the designers). How should suburbia be evaluated? What theological resources can be brought to bear on this important matter? As this one example suggests, places (often unknowingly) already shape the way we think and live. Given this reality, how can Christians and churches become more attuned to this fact, and then work for theologically informed changes in our world? How does God’s ways with the world shape our place-making in the world?
Description & Purpose:
Though clearly a caricature, the perception persists that Christian faith is primarily about one’s beliefs, while Christian spirituality is about ordering one’s disembodied soul toward an other-worldly heaven. The material contexts of faith, as well as the embodied dimensions of spiritual life, are thus passed over as being of merely “worldly” concern. This Gnostic presupposition about persons and reality is theologically problematic and practically destructive. From a theological point of view, this position does a great injustice to the doctrines of creation and the centrality of the incarnation. From a practical point of view, this position enables, perhaps even encourages, the destruction of habitats and the construction of ugly and degrading built environments. If “place” played a more central role in the church’s thinking and practice, would we see a more beautiful world and more just economies?
A central question of this course is, what does it mean, and what does it look like, for Christians to express their faith through the places—the homes, churches, neighborhoods, fields, economies, architecture, public spaces—they live? If Christian faith, love, and hope are not simply ideas or abstractions but also ways of life, then these ways must find expression in the physical places we design and inhabit. Why? Because God’s own love and delight in creating the world are continually made manifest in the physical gifts of food, shelter, energy and beauty. But above all, because God’s perichoretic and redemptive way of being became embodied in a particular person and place, Jesus in Palestine. Christian life, understood as a participation (however imperfect) in these Godly ways of being in the world, is therefore an opportunity to bear witness in our bodies and places to this God who creates, sustains, and redeems creation.
By the end of the semester students will be able to evaluate particular places from a theological point of view. They will understand how particular faith communities (monastic communities, for instance) made their faith visible in the places they lived and constructed. They will appreciate that the material expressions of faith, as reflected in design, architecture, art, and spatial configuration (zoning laws, city planning, land protection) matter because places embody the ethos and the culture of the people who live in them. Above all, students will be able to articulate key theological sources for a Christian understanding of place.
Required Texts:
Timothy Gorringe. A Theology of the Built Environment (Cambridge)
Craig Bartholomew. Where Mortals Dwell (Baker)
Eric O. Jacobsen. The Space Between (Baker)
bell hooks. Belonging: A Culture of Place (Routledge)
Wendell Berry. That Distant Land: The Collected Stories (Counterpoint)
May Sarton. As We Are Now (Norton)
Additional essays on Sakai
Recommended Text:
Douglas E Christie. The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology (Oxford) NB. An excellent reference for articles on the wide sweep of the study of place is The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (IEHG) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/referenceworks/9780080449104).
Course Schedule:
Week 1– Introducing Place – how to talk about it and why it matters. (T. Cresswell’s “Place” [from IEHG]; W. Berry’s “A Native Hill”; E. Zencey’s “The Rootless Professors”)
Week 2– Philosophical Questions. (Bartholomew, 167-188; McDowell’s “Spatializing Feminism”; Ingold’s “Against Space”; Christie, 1-69)
Week 3– Scripture on Place. (Bartholomew, 9-163; Genesis 1-2, Deuteronomy 11, John 1, Revelation 21-22)
Week 4– The Significance of the Doctrine of Creation. (Maximus the Confessor’s Difficulty 41 & Meaning of Creation; Gunton’s “The Doctrine of Creation”)
Week 5– Theological Reflection on Place. (Bartholomew, 189-248; Gorringe, 1-49; Wirzba’s “The Dark Night of the Soil”; Christie, 179-224)
Week 6– The Politics of Place (bell hooks, 1-105, 174-214; Christie, 141-178)
Week 7– The Meaning of Dwelling (bell hooks, 116-120; M. Heidegger’s “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”; Harrison’s “Dwelling”)
Week 8– The Making of Home (Gorringe, 79-113; bell hooks, 143-152, 215-230; Jacobsen, 135-156; Bartholomew, 268-284; Christie, 102-140)
Week 9– Wilderness/Country/City (Gorringe, 50-78, 114-137; Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”; Berry’s “The Agrarian Standard” [https://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/115/] )
Week 10– Rethinking Cities (Jacobsen, 29-130, 157-181; Gorringe, 138-162; Bartholomew, 249-267)
Week 11– The Nature of Design and Creativity. (Jacobsen, 239-269; Bess’s “Till We Have Built Jerusalem”; Benyus’s “Biophilic Design”; Christie, 269-312)
Week 12– Building Churches (Jacobsen, 183-238; Gorringe, 163-192; Christie, 225-268)
Week 13– Placemaking for Shalom. (bell hooks, 121-134, 162-168; Gorringe, 241-261; Jacobsen, 271-277; Christie, 313-353)
This syllabus pertains to when the course was offered in 2014