Introduction
It hasn’t been a boring couple of years: A US presidential election, a papal transition, and continuing dynamism, to put it mildly, in higher education. A history-making synod on synodality coming to conclusion. A Jubilee year of hope. And closer to home, here at the College Theology Society, an internal visioning process in which we reflected as a society on our purpose and mission in our changing field.
Challenges and threats to our country and the world abound. We are facing constitutional crises, ever-expanding authoritarianism, increased political and economic instability and uncertainty, cruelty in immigration policy, violent suppression of opposition and free speech, a muscular white supremacy and male supremacy that declare racial equity and inclusion un-American and “your body, my choice” patriotic, attacks on the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, direct threats to academic freedom, and financial threats to academic research and to funding for our students. That’s all just here at home, although these trends find expression in many places in our world, which is also marked by devastating wars causing famine and untold suffering.
I’m sure I’m leaving quite a few things off the list, not the least because, perhaps like many others, I have done my share of trying to keep my head in the sand, to flee into escapism of various sorts of late.
In the face of all this, in this Jubilee year of hope, I want to focus my thoughts on hope and communion. It seems fitting to me in this time of transition between the papacies of Francis I and Leo XIV to focus on hope, the theme designated by Francis for this Jubilee year, and communion, a theme emphasized so much already by Leo.
I’m not going to offer a theology of hope or communion, but I want to speak in practical terms about the relationship of communion and hope and the ways in which, from my vantage point as president of CTS, I’ve experienced how what we do as a society—how our action in communion with one another—has helped to engender hope in me, and I trust has engendered hope in the varied contexts in which we work. Finally, I want to point to some new things in the life of the CTS in these past two years that I hope will continue to bear fruit into our future.
Which Comes First, the Justice or the Hope?
Pope Francis’s Bull of Indiction proclaiming the theme of this Jubilee year as Pilgrims of Hope, Spes non Confundit, Hope does not disappoint, makes a consistent connection between hope and the establishment of justice in our world, urging us to understand hope, at least in part, as the product of praxis for justice in community. In other words, our struggles for justice help to generate and sustain hope. What we do for one another sparks hope. Hope is relational. Hope is intersubjective.
Under the heading “signs of hope,” Francis begins with an exhortation to see in the signs of our times reasons to hope. He says, “We need to recognize the immense goodness present in our world, lest we be tempted to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence. The signs of the times, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence, ought to become signs of hope.”Footnote 1
But rather than being a listing of reasons to hope, as I thought at first it might be, this section goes on to survey situations in the world that work against hope, that cause hopelessness, such as ongoing wars, social and political realities that make it difficult for people to raise families, incarceration, hostility to migrants and refugees, illness, unemployment, lack of sufficient education, addictions, the loneliness of the elderly, and poverty. Francis is calling us here to act in ways that can bring about hope in these situations—to make peace, create societies that are family friendly, protect the dignity of prisoners, reject the death penalty, be present to the sick, strengthen the bonds between the generations in family life, forgive the debilitating debts of developing nations, work to end poverty and injustice of every kind, care for the earth, and so on.Footnote 2 In short, hope is an assignment. And it’s a group project.
On the other hand, political and liberation theologies have been teaching us for many years that hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises itself helps to fuel actions to establish justice in the world. These theologies teach us that hope prods action. Hope is an eschatological yearning for a future for all, including for the dead, the already defeated. With real expectation of the future promised by God, hope is what gives impetus and eschatological urgency to our praxes for justice and peace.Footnote 3
So which comes first, the justice or the hope? Taken together these two ways of thinking about the relationship of hope to praxis help us to see the two in a mutual, dynamic relationship. Our hope can engender and impel our actions for justice, and those actions can nurture greater hope in ourselves and in others. Fed by our hopes for an unimaginable future of goodness and lasting peace and justice promised by God, our scholarship, teaching, and ministries ought to be praxes that seek justice, peace, and human flourishing. And to the extent that they are, those actions can and do help sustain our hope and the hope of those around us.
I don’t mean to make it sound like we are generating all of this. Of course, hope and communion are gifts from God, and along with every grace, God makes these lavishly available to us through materiality: through one another. And we can live and act in ways, as Pope Francis makes clear in his Bull of Indiction announcing the Jubilee, that obscure these gifts or uncover them for ourselves and others.
A Biblical Model for Hope—Joseph of Arimathea
I have been thinking lately about Joseph of Arimathea as a model of hope, although that may seem counterintuitive. The Gospel of John tells us he had been a secret disciple of Jesus. Luke tells us that he was a member of the Sanhedrin, but that he didn’t agree with what they did in condemning Jesus and asking for his execution. We can imagine that he was devastated and disoriented after Jesus’s crucifixion, not knowing what was coming next and feeling that perhaps everything he had been hoping for had come to a decisive end. Torn up by the consent of his own group to this injustice that murdered his friend and teacher, we are told he goes to Pilate to ask for Jesus’s body. He does the next needful thing—the next loving and respectful thing, the next thing to remember and honor the dead—to give a dignified burial to one subjected to dehumanizing torture and execution. He resists by means of an act of love. In John, it is an act taken in community, with Nicodemus and “the women.”Footnote 4 Was this an action motivated by hope? Did it engender hope in them or others?
Signs of Hope at the College Theology Society: Commitment to Communion
Why is Joseph of Arimathea a model of hope for us? Amid the frightening and disorienting challenges of our current moment, the College Theology Society has continued to do that next needful thing. Our members engage in and share scholarship, convene sessions, serve on the board or one of its hardworking committees, convene our convention and edit the annual volume, edit Horizons, coordinate and host our convention locally, run elections, and run for election. From my perspective as president, I have seen as never before, how much work all of this is and how much commitment and energy it takes. In the past two years, especially this past year, in the face of the political crises we find ourselves in, I personally have found myself at times frozen in my tracks, with little motivation to move forward. It has been a grace in my life to be in the position to witness all of this communal work, all of these dedicated members moving ahead with the next needful things to allow our CTS to function in the midst of the disorienting, destabilizing, dehumanizing, demoralizing events that characterize our context.
But CTS has done this, soldiered on in this way, not only in the expected ways, but also in new and (to use the much-over-used word) “unprecedented” ways in these past two years. Our society has participated in official synodal discussions sponsored by the US Catholic bishops. We have hosted and participated in interguild dialogues with other theological societies in North America using synodal processes. CTS is just beginning an intentional process of considering what our own work as a society may be in decolonization in relationship with Indigenous partners, even as many of our members have engaged decolonization fruitfully in our publications for some time.Footnote 5 And of course our members have participated with openness and generosity in our own internal visioning process, so carefully and lovingly crafted and facilitated by our visioning working group. These are all new things.
As president of the College Theology Society, I was invited to participate in the General Assembly of the International Network of Catholic Societies of Theology (INSeCT). Although this is not completely new, given CTS has a history of participation with this group, we haven’t participated in many years. I attended with two other CTS board members, Cristina Lledo Gomez and Joseph Flipper. Twenty-nine people from member societies in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Africa participated in the General Assembly and reported on theological work conducted by members of their societies on the theme chosen for the past three years: decolonizing theology.
The meeting was held in Rome this year so that, in addition to attending the General Assembly of INSeCT, members could also participate in a conference hosted by the Vatican Dicastery on Faith and Culture entitled “The Future of Theology and its Necessary Conversations.” That meeting was attended by about 450 theologians from around the world. The conference began with an address by and audience with Pope Francis, who exhorted us to engage in theology that addresses the signs of the times and that is available and accessible to wider audiences. It was the first time the Vatican had ever assembled Catholic theologians from all around the world to discuss the nature and the future of theology. It was something new.
I find hope in these new avenues of dialogue, of relationship building, of realizing and strengthening our communion with other societies in the United States and with the wider church, including the hierarchy and the curia, as well as with our counterparts in theological societies in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and Europe. I’m using the word “communion” here, not in a technical way as a model of the church, although I gravitate toward that one, but more as a way of evoking our interbeing. The fields of theology, religious studies, and spirituality have used many different words (including “compassion,” “solidarity,” “intersubjectivity,” and “synodality”) to try to articulate what our scholarly work and our ministries strive to do and to be: incarnations of our praxes of love in the service of not losing one another; of holding on for dear life to one another’s histories while not being swallowed up in forgetfulness of one another’s pain, but being present to it and making it an interlocutor in our self-understanding, in our prayer, and in our work.
This requires humble listening in intentional dialogue. In a recent sermon, Pope Leo exhorts us to listen, “First and foremost … always listen to the Word of God. Then also listen to others, to know how to build bridges, to know how to listen without judging, not closing the doors thinking that we have all the truth and no one else can tell us anything. It is very important to listen to the voice of the Lord, to listen to it, in this dialogue, and to see where the Lord is calling us toward.”Footnote 6
Amid the polarities in our families, our churches, and our society that are becoming ever-more painful and ever-more dangerous, I find these new things that God has been doing among us, these new invitations to dialogue and to a greater realization of communion, to be profound experiences of hope—and resistance. The forces of authoritarianism dominating our current moment in our country and elsewhere are trying, and have been for some time, to divide us. They have and are succeeding to everyone’s peril. So yes, new conversations across any divide are acts of resistance and can nurture our hope.
My Hopes for the Future of the College Theology Society
Although these new efforts at synodality in various contexts have had their moments of joy and wonder, they have also had their difficult moments. They are not easy. There are moments of discomfort, pain, maybe even alienation. Nevertheless, I encourage the society to continue in these new avenues, these new, synodal ways for us to be together, and to express our communion with one another despite various forms of difference and disagreement. There will be no shortage of opportunities to do so as the society decides how to move forward with the results of our visioning process and to advance the dialogues this coming year about the possibility of occasional online conventions, or as we continue to nurture our new dialogue about what we owe to our Indigenous kin, and as we participate in interguild dialogues, especially with the International Network of Societies of Catholic Theology. These are some of my hopes for the CTS going forward.
One significant experience of communion for the CTS is our ongoing relationship with the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, At-Large Region. This is not new—in fact we will celebrate thirty years of this next year, but it is extraordinary and a great gift.
In openness and vulnerability (last year’s convention theme), in new and unaccustomed settings (this year’s convention theme), The College Theology Society considers all things in light of the gospel, especially the most dangerous challenges of our time: white supremacy, male supremacy, religious nationalism, the vilification and exclusion of the most vulnerable among us (next year’s theme). In the process we strengthen our bonds of communion with one another and with broadening circles of conversation partners. That is what I see the CTS doing, however imperfectly. I have personally experienced the witness of the CTS in these praxes as a lifeline in the past two years, as a prophetic witness to hope in communion. And for that, I thank all of you.
I want to end with a poem from Hafiz. I offer it as a way we can think about our work in theology, religious studies, and spirituality, and our work together as a society:
