Locating Contextual Bible Study within praxis Gerald West, South Africa In the last issue of Diaconia (Diaconoa 2/12) Elia Mligo wrote a critique of the bible reading in the Ujamaa Centre. The following article is a response to Milgo, written by Gerald West. The main argument in this article is that every bible reading in the Ujamaa Centre and other places inspired by Ujamaa have to be situated in an emancipatory process. This makes every bible reading contextual, West argues. Still West writes, Milgo’s perspective is a very important perspective in the discussion on bible reading and liberation. Keywords: Bible reading, Liberation Theology, Ujamaa Centre, Contextual theology, HIV/AIDS Introduction Contextual Bible Study, as it has come to be known, has a history that goes back to the mid-1980s in South Africa, and even further back to the 1960s and 1970s in Brasil. Based on the work of the Bible movement in Brasil, especially the work of CEBI (Centro de Estudos Bíblicos), Contextual Bible Study was forged by the realities and resources of the South African context. In this brief article I will dialogue with a colleague, Elia Shabani Mligo, discussing with him how he understands the work of the Ujamaa Centre, from the perspective of his own participant-centred Bible study.1 The formation of Contextual Bible Study At the outset, it should be noted that ‘Contextual Bible Study’ did not originally have upper-case letters.2 What came to be called ‘Contextual Bible Study’ was an organic process driven by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, within which the Bible was a vital, but ambivalent, resource. It was from within this liberation praxis that a particular form of communitybased Bible study emerged, identified with the Ujamaa Centre. Amongst other formative factors, both South African Black Theology and South African Contextual Theology have made significant contributions to 1 (Diaconia 2/12). 2 Gerald O. West, Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context, Second Edition ed. (Maryknoll, NY and Pietermaritzburg: Orbis Books and Cluster Publications, 1995), 216–38. Diaconia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen the formation of Contextual Bible Study.3 Among the most significant contributions of Black Theology was the argument of Itumeleng Mosala (citing the work of Norman Gottwald) that the work of African biblical scholars often did “not carry sufficient structural analysis of biblical societies to make a proper comparison with the present possible”, which results in the risk that “an unstructural understanding of the Bible may simply reinforce and confirm an unstructural understanding of the present”.4 This analysis required that when we read the Bible in the struggle for liberation, that we read it critically, recognising the structural dimensions within a particular biblical text and the structural dimensions of the worlds that produced the biblical texts.5 So a critical reading of the Bible, in this sense of the term ‘critical’, became a key commitment of Contextual Bible Study.6 We recognised, as had CEBI, that in order to read the Bible critically we would need to draw on the resources of biblical scholarship. The ‘critical’ resources of biblical resources offered sets of questions that probed the structural and ideological relationships within and behind the biblical text. And while practitioners of Contextual Bible Study in South Africa differ on the weight they give to scholarly resources,7 there is a non-negotiable commitment to a critical reading of the Bible. While we recognise that ‘ordinary’ or ‘non-scholarly’ African ‘readers’ of the Bible do not read the Bible with the critical resources of biblical scholarship, we also recognise that the many contradictions in their struggles for survival, liberation, and life raise incipient questions about the biblical text. In a country like ours the Bible is present and prevalent in the public and religious realm. But as my dialogue partner in this discussion Elia Shabani Mligo notes, the Bible is often read ‘against’ them. So is the Bible against them? Their own experience of their own reading of the Bible and their own experience of God make it clear that the Bible and God are not against them. So what is going on, they ask, when the church uses the Bible to stigmatise those who are HIV-positive? It is just such contradictions that generate an invitation to the Ujamaa Centre to read the Bible ‘with’ them. Communities of the marginalised, in our context, are looking for ways of understanding the tension between their own readings of the Bible and the dominant ways 3 Gerald O. West, “Contextual Bible Reading: A South African Case Study,” Analecta Bruxellensia 11(2006). 4 Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 31–32. 5 West, Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context, 131-73. 6 Gerald O. West, Contextual Bible Study (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1993). 7 Sarojini Nadar, “ ‘Hermeneutics of Transformation?’ A Critical Exploration of the Model of Social Engagement between Biblical Scholars and Faith Communities,” in Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, ed. Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi, and Dora Mbuwayesango (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). Dakonia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen of reading the Bible. Our work ‘with’ such communities over the past twenty five years has enabled us to recognise that the critical resources of biblical scholarship have a role to play here. The most significant contribution of Contextual Theology, the theological trajectory that was given institutional form through the Institute for Contextual Theology,8 has been the See-Judge-Act process.9 Process is central to Contextual Bible Study. It is not a methodological technique, it is an emancipatory process. The importance of process is, again, a feature of Mligo’s “Christian social practice” in general and his “participant-centred Bible study” in particular, though he is not as clear about the elements of this process as he perhaps could be. The See-Judge-Act process, which emerged from the worker-priest movement in the 1930s in Europe, is the frame within which Contextual Bible Study in South Africa emerged and within which it remains located. This is our praxis, the See-Judge-Act cycle of actionreflection within which we work. The ‘See’ moment involves social analysis, in which organised communities of the poor, working-class, and marginalised analyse their reality. It is out of this analysis, it must be stressed, that the Ujamaa Centre is called to work with them. The Ujamaa Centre is not a missionary movement, it is an embodied set of resources with which to read the Bible critically with organised local communities for the project of liberation. We have identified the Bible as a “weapon”10 of struggle in our context, and part of its power resides in a critical reading of it. Both the process of critical reading and the products of critical reading are important. This is what takes place in the ‘Judge’ moment of the See-Judge-Act process. The ‘See’ moment uncovers reality, ‘from below’. The ‘Judge’ moment ‘judges’ this reality from the perspective of a critical reading of the Bible. What does the God who hears the cry of slaves say about this reality, is the key question of the ‘Judge’ moment. The ‘Judge’ moment has to be a ‘reading with’ process because ordinary readers must, following Mosala’s argument, participate in a critical engagement with scripture. While socially engaged biblical scholars do prepare for this engagement (somewhat similar to Mligo’s “first hermeneutic”), the primary engagement is a participatory encounter between the social analysis of the organised local community, the critical resources of biblical scholarship which are offered as potentially useful interpretive tools with which to ad8 James R. Cochrane, ”Questioning Contextual Theology,” in Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, ed. McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001). 9 McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann, “Introduction,” in Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, ed. McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001), 4. 10 T. Mofokeng, “Black Christians, the Bible and Liberation,” Journal of Black Theology 2(1988): 40. Diaconia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen dress this social analysis, and the diverse interpretive resources of the local community itself. Mligo worries about the unequal power relations between the facilitator (the biblical scholar) and the participants (ordinary, non-scholarly readers of the Bible). This is important, for power is at play in Contextual Bible Study encounters. There have been two responses to this recognition of power disparities. Some, like myself (and I think Mligo),11 have tried to find ways within our method of Contextual Bible Study to limit the role (and so the power) of the facilitator while still enabling a more critical engagement with the Bible. Others, like Sarojini Nadar,12 have insisted that the organic-socially-engaged-scholar-facilitator should use her power to conscientise ‘ordinary’ readers to both the structural dimensions of their reality and their Bibles. However, it is the praxis of the See-Judge-Act process, located as it is within the control of the local community, that ensures that power is present in more than one place.13 If the socially engaged biblical scholar is called by and works with organised groups, his/her power is circumscribed. What we as socially engaged biblical scholars bring to the ‘Judge’ part of the SeeJudge-Act process are particular resources to do with our training that equip us to identify and probe and structural dimensions of the Bible. Our interpretive tools offer additional resources with which to identify and deal with the structural and ideological dimensions of the Bible, dimensions that are not easily accessible to ordinary readers. These tools render the Bible more ‘other’ than it usually is, slowing down the process of appropriation and making appropriation more contextually accountable. We do not control the whole process, though we do make a significant and distinctive contribution to part of it. The ‘Act’ moment is perhaps the clearest indication of the local community’s control, for the impact of any particular Contextual Bible Study lies in the actions that a particular community might decide to take as their response to the ‘See’ and ‘Judge’ moments of the process. And while the socially engaged biblical scholar may participate, if invited, in the communitybased action, the control of the ‘action-plan’ is theirs. 11 Gerald O. West, “The Not So Silent Citizen: Hearing Embodied Theology in the Context of Hiv and Aids in South Africa,” in Heterotopic Citizen: New Research on Religious Work for the Disadvantaged, ed. Trygve Wyller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 12 Sarojini Nadar, “Beyond the ‘Ordinary Reader’ and the ‘Invisible Intellectual’: Shifting Contextual Bible Study from Liberation Discourse to Liberation Pedagogy,” Old Testament Essays 22, no. 2 (2009). 13 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Writings and Other Interviews 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980). Dakonia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Reading ‘with’ Mligo is not convinced by the preposition ‘with’ and what it entails in the Contextual Bible Study process (embedded as it is within the See-Judge-Act praxis framework). What the ‘with’ signals is the complex set of participatory processes discussed above. The socially engaged biblical scholar, theologian, or Christian activist (for the Ujamaa Centre uses all three as facilitators) does read ‘with’ those who have invited us. While we certainly bring resources to the process, our participation is framed by the community’s control of the overall process. Mligo envisions a three-step hermeneutic, each with its own discrete ‘place’. My worry is that the middle place, where the biblical scholar (Mligo) and the participants (those living with HIV and AIDS) encounter each other, is not described or interrogated clearly enough. We use the preposition ‘with’ and the rich theory that surrounds it to describe this ‘middle’ place, for the preparatory work that socially engaged biblical scholars do with the text prior to this place (Mligo’s “first hermeneutic”) and the reflective work that socially engaged biblical scholars do after this place (Mligo’s “third hermeneutic”) find their identity in this middle place. Indeed, much of our work within the Ujamaa Centre over these past twenty five years has been to be as clear as we can about the middle place, which we call “reading ‘with”’. Conclusion This discussion, precipitated by my reading of Mligo’s reading of Ujamaa’s praxis, is vital to the Contextual Bible Study project. Contextual Bible Study has been taken up by many across the African continent and across the world.14 In most cases it remains rooted within diverse forms of emancipatory praxis. In a few instances it has become merely another interpretive technique. But as long as Contextual Bible Study works within emancipatory projects it will be shaped by these projects, and so its form will shift from context to context. There remains a set of ‘family resemblances’, but there is also considerable difference. This is right and proper, for Contextual Bible Study is contextual. So the challenge to our dialogue amongst ourselves is not some mythical ‘Contextual Bible Study’ orthodoxy, but clarity as to what it is we are doing when we, in our particular locality, do Contextual Bible Study. 14 For the latter see for example John Riches et al., What Is Contextual Bible Study? A Practical Guide with Group Studies for Advent and Lent (London: SPCK, 2010); Louise J. Lawrence, The Word in Place: Reading the New Testament in Contemporary Contexts (London: SPCK, 2009). Diaconia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen References Cochrane, James R. “Questioning Contextual Theology.” In Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, edited by McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann, 67–86. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Writings and Other Interviews 1972– 1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Lawrence, Louise J. The Word in Place: Reading the New Testament in Contemporary Contexts. London: SPCK, 2009. Lees, Janet. “Remembering the Bible as a Critical ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’.” In Reading Other-Wise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with Their Local Communities, edited by Gerald O. West, 73–85. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Mofokeng, T. “Black Christians, the Bible and Liberation.” Journal of Black Theology 2 (1988): 34–42. Mosala, Itumeleng J. Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989. Nadar, Sarojini. “Beyond the ‘Ordinary Reader’ and the ’Invisible Intellectual’: Shifting Contextual Bible Study from Liberation Discourse to Liberation Pedagogy.” Old Testament Essays 22, no. 2 (2009): 245–52. —. “ ‘Hermeneutics of Transformation?’ A Critical Exploration of the Model of Social Engagement between Biblical Scholars and Faith Communities.” In Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, edited by Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi and Dora Mbuwayesango, 389–406. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Riches, John, Helen Ball, Roy Henderson, Craig Lancaster, Leslie Milton, and Maureen Russell. What Is Contextual Bible Study? A Practical Guide with Group Studies for Advent and Lent. London: SPCK, 2010. Speckman, McGlory T., and Larry T. Kaufmann. “Introduction.” In Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, edited by McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann, 1–14. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001. West, Gerald O. Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context. Second Edition ed. Maryknoll, NY and Pietermaritzburg: Orbis Books and Cluster Publications, 1995. —. “Contextual Bible Reading: A South African Case Study.” Analecta Bruxellensia 11 (2006): 131–48. —. Contextual Bible Study. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1993. —. “The Not So Silent Citizen: Hearing Embodied Theology in the Context of Hiv and Aids in South Africa.” In Heterotopic Citizen: New Research on Religious Work for the Disadvantaged, edited by Trygve Wyller, 23–42. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Gerald West west@ukzn.ac.za Dakonia, vol. 4, pp. 43–48, ISSN 1869-3261 © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen