444 - A Conversation

A Conversation
Notes for a Socio-Political Biography
By Gibson Winter and Mark K. Taylor

"Liberation movements and hermeneutical approaches follow a common path, the way of challenging ideologies that preserve oppressive structures and of sharing in transformative struggles for justice and peace…. Our task as liberation theologians in North America has its immediate locus in the field of urban renewal. This is the place of suffering to which the ministry of Christ is being summoned. It is also the place of renewal of humanity and celebration of life."

Taylor: In his article entitled, "The Example of Gibson Winter," noted Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian, Bernard Lonergan, suggests that theologians, by following your example, might be able to relate "empirical religious studies" to theology. Lonergan was thinking especially of your book, Elements of a Social Ethic (l966). Would you extend Lonergan's observation to apply to your career generally? Has it been one your primary concerns to bring together empirical religious studies and theology?

Winter: Whatever our differences on specifics and method, Bernard Lonergan and I are of a mind that empirical, normative and foundational thought are interrelated. My own work has attempted to spell out these internal relations without obscuring the distinct ways of being and thinking that characterize human science, ethics and theology. So long as the epistemological subject,¹ the ego consciousness, is the ultimate

Gibson Winter is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor Emeritus of Christianity and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary. An ordained priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Winter is a graduate of Harvard College, Cambridge Episcopal Theological School, and Harvard University, where he received the doctorate in Social Relations. He has served as Rector of St. Mark's Church in Foxboro, Massachusettes, and of All Saints Church in Belmont, Massachusetts. From 1956 until 1976, he served as Professor of Ethics and Society at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago before serving at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1976 to 1984.
THEOLOGY TODAY is pleased to feature this conversation with Dr. Winter, together with an accompanying bibliography of his publications.
¹ [Editor's Note: At several points, Professor Winter refers to the "epistemological subject" or to a "liberal tradition of the epistemological subject." By this phrase, he refers to a tradition of thought in the West that views truth and knowledge as governed by an ideal value-free subject engaged in observing, measuring and ordering, to produce evidence sufficient to draw inferences, substantiate hypotheses, purge bias and verify true representations of the world. As his remarks here suggest, Winter prefers to focus instead on the subject's "dwelling" in the world and on the ways that subjects are always already implicated in what they study.]

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datum of a meaningful world, these modes of being and understanding remain discrete. Once this epistemological subject is reincorporated into the symbolized world of dwelling and praxis, a way is opened toward a more wholistic understanding of thought, action, and passion. This more wholistic understanding is the transdisciplinary work of religious social ethics.

Taylor: What factors have led to your emphases on "wholistic understanding" and "transdisciplinary work?"

Winter: My earlier studies in the sociology of the urban church disclosed the normative character of urban sociology. Although they were exploring common data, urban sociologists were producing radically different interpretations of the metropolitan situation. It soon became clear that the different perspectives and methods of the social sciences were concealing normative proposals concerning the nature of person and community as well as the nature of science. These initial studies were formulated in Elements for a Social Ethic and articles on social science and public policy.

The human sciences were not ready to discuss their implicit norms a few decades ago, but much has changed in recent years. It is now common to read about social science as moral inquiry, largely as a consequence of critiques of the human sciences coming from French deconstructionists and the critical philosophy in Germany.² This is not a discrediting of the value of social scientific inquiries, but an attempt to relocate those studies within the moral context that constitutes human dwelling and its observers. Ethical inquiry, on the other hand, is emerging very slowly from the confines of a linguistic philosophy that has been more concerned with cleaning up statements than dealing with the socio-political realities dividing and confusing the peoples of the world. This period of linguistic analysis may prove useful in the long run, if its work can be brought into the context of a full-blown religious social ethics.

Taylor: How do you see theology to have fared in this context?

Winter: Theology has suffered most from the fragmentation of disciplines that came with the triumph of the epistemological subject. Biblical and historical studies became the handmaidens of objectifying studies of language, historical "facts," and non-theological interpretations of the tradition. This was not always the case, to be sure, but the pressures of the "scientific" guilds restricted the theological work of these disciplines, impoverishing theological inquiry. Edward Farley calls this fragmentation of theological studies the reduction of theology to a "faculty of studies."³ Attempts were made to go around this situation, as

² [Editor's Note: For introductions to these two movements, see Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Methuen, 1982), and Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Science: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)].
³ Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).

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in the primitive Barthianism of the Word which simply dismissed the critical sciences, but the crisis remains and can only be resolved by criticizing directly the displacement of thought and life to the solitary, epistemological subject or subject of faith.

Taylor: Where do you see evidence that some are trying to deal with this crisis?

Winter: There are many signs that social science, ethics, and theology are in process of breaking through the impasses created by the liberal tradition of the epistemological subject. Some social scientists, as noted above, now recognize the valuations that enter into the preunderstandings of all inquiries as well as the institutional entanglements of all sciences and humanities. Ethicists such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Stuart Hampshire are challenging the recent tradition of moral inquiry. Hermeneutical projects are emerging in biblical, historical, theological, and even practical studies. These transformations, so far as they are occurring, may reflect the growing crisis in the economic, political, moral, and spiritual life of the West and the Third World. The problems of human dwelling can only-be addressed through wholistic approaches that take the interrelatedness of life seriously.

Taylor: Let me shift our focus to the institutional contexts of religious studies and theology. The faculty posts you've held (including one at the University of Chicago and another at Princeton Theological Seminary) have involved you in the worlds of both university and seminary. Do you view these two educational settings as engaged in a common task? How has it been different for you to teach and reflect in a seminary context as distinct from a university divinity school or religion department?

Winter: American universities have been dominated by the liberal heritage of the Enlightenment. Whatever the virtues of this heritage, it has dichotomized faith and thought, understanding and action, thought and desire, individual and community, and, in general, intellectual responsibility and normative considerations in the human enterprise. This has not been true of all academic teaching, to be sure, and many outstanding professors have resisted this tradition. Nevertheless, the tradition has held sway in most fields of the university. This situation makes the divinity school and religion department an anomaly in the university setting. The danger of this situation for theological inquiry is that faculties may play the liberal game in order to gain a spurious credibility in the universities.

On the other hand, these university faculties have provided resources for students who are pressing more fundamental questions about the meaning of their lives and the future of our human enterprise. So far as these faculties continue this contribution, they represent an important challenge to the research university, because failure to recognize the values that are promoted in university studies only obscures their involvement in the American military-industrial-governmental-educational

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enterprise. Not all that is promoted in this enterprise is destructive, but it cannot come under critical scrutiny by our intellectual community if our sciences and humanities are viewed as neutral inquiries.

Taylor: And the world of the seminary?

Winter: The seminary context is at once easier and more difficult for critical inquiries. The dissipation of theological studies into a "faculty" of discrete sciences, as I mentioned earlier, weakens the theological enterprise. At the same time, seminaries have become preoccupied with technical training of pastors by default. So far as theological studies are imparted to the students, they are expected to apply these through their technical skills. This is the negative side of the situation which inhibits critical theological work in the seminary setting.

On the positive side, seminary faculties still have direct contact with the praxis of ministry through their students. In most seminaries, though not all, this contact with praxis is confined to classroom discussion. If and when theological inquiries are brought directly into touch with the praxis of ministry, the theological disciplines will find new modes of integration, and preparation for ministry can be liberated from technical training. The pressures of the academic guilds restrict moves of this kind, since theological education is defined primarily as an academic process on the model of the university. Seminaries in Argentina and Nicaragua have broken with this tradition, but that may well be a consequence of the traumatic struggles through which these peoples and churches have gone.

Taylor: How do you assess the North American seminaries in this regard? Are they moving toward a more direct engagement with "the praxis of ministry?"

Winter: Whether our seminaries can be liberated remains to be seen. It may take some comparable crisis to break the hold of the guilds and the university model. This liberation has to do with much more than professional education of a ministry. Seminary faculties have responsibilities not only to the churches but also to the intellectual and spiritual life of our people and our world. Detachment from the agonies and struggles of this world, as well as encasement within the institutional privileges of American educational institutions, impoverish this critical contribution. Actually, many faculty members experience the agonies of our time through their personal lives, and, consequently, may carry on a significant theological work; however, this remains for most of them one step removed from the engaged struggle to which the liberation theologians have been summoning them.

Taylor: What for you have been the most significant trends in philosophy and the social sciences? How do you interpret the significance of these trends for theology and religious life?

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Winter: The emergence of a comprehensive hermeneutics⁴ is the most promising trend in philosophy, human science and theology from my perspective. It signifies a break with the epistemological subject and the preoccupation of Western thought with the mastery of nature and human life through objectifying methods. This term "mastery" is significant, for it bears the imprint of sexist domination which has characterized this tradition from its inception. As Evelyn Keller has pointed out in various articles, this whole project has viewed nature as a female to be dominated and overcome. The real question is whether the interpretative methods that operate in hermeneutics can break through the disciplinary restrictions that now fragment our sciences and humanities.

Taylor: By "hermeneutics," you mean something more than interpretation of texts. In what sense do you mean.. that hermeneutics is "comprehensive?"

Winter: For its part, hermeneutics is moving rapidly beyond the confines of literary and textual interpretation, though these remain normative for hermeneutical methods. Several important developments set the stage for this new era in hermeneutics. The historical and linguistic nature of human dwelling has gained increasing acceptance. This means that there is no point X from which, nor point Y at which, the historical scene can be viewed and subsumed. There is, moreover, no place above or below the linguistic heritage of a people and its preunderstandings from which the nature of human dwelling can be determined. The search for absolutes through linguistic models, positive methods in science, and idealistic methods of the ego-consciousness, have all proved futile and diversionary. We are peoples of many languages and traditions who can find our way only through testing experience, sharing in mutual dialogues and finding common ground for more humane ways of life.

Taylor: In what sense is this new era of hermeneutics a promising trend, or is it?

Winter: This liberation from absolutes sets the stage for a world of dialogue, although it also lures states and religious movements to promote absolute claims in response to the anxiety of living in an historical world. This is a very dangerous time, as is all too evident from the outrageous escalation in militarization throughout the world. The refusal of dialogue leaves only the alternative of conflict between the national security states of East and West. Hermeneutics is a small hedge against this growing crisis, but it does open the way for wholistic theological work and the development of a political ethics. The dichotomies of the liberal heritage-thought versus desire, theory versus practice, individual versus community, private versus public, begin to

⁴ For commentary on this movement, see Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), and Roy J. Howard, Three Faces of Hermeneutics. An Introduction to Current Theories of Understanding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

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dissolve in an historical world in which all people, things, and meanings are internally related. There are many ways of being in the world, from poetic and meditative to practical and objectifying, but they are all one I as the ways-to-be of peoples and persons.

Such understanding also opens the way to a recovery of practical wisdom in our communities and neighborhoods. It breaks the hold of Western imperialistic thinking in economic, political, and religious terms. Peoples are particular, enjoying their own traditions and faith perspectives. These faiths may contribute to one another in an enriching way, but claims to absolute truth, usually backed up by economic and military power, are no longer credible in such an historical world. Clearly, the core powers of the world capitalistic system, including the socialist state systems, will not yield their controls until people like the Nicaraguans break away from the system of dependency and forge their own, cooperative societies. Unfortunately, these are regional tasks, and core powers, such as the United States, dominate the Central American region just as South Africa dominates the region of Southern Africa.

Taylor: In your earlier analysis of North American church life, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches (1961), you lamented the exodus of the church from the central city as a betrayal of its call to be inclusive and to nurture the kind of interdependencies that the metropolis needs. As you assess the varied life of North American churches today, to what forces do you think the church is still captive?

Winter: The churches of the mainline denominations prospered with the industrialization and urbanization of the United States. Following World War II, the government underwrote the suburbanization of upper and middle strata people through tax deductions and highway grants. This process led to deurbanization of the denominations and disinvestment by the churches. The central cities became the repository of vulnerable and expendable peoples-minorities, single parent families of women and children, older folks, the handicapped, and all those for whom the safety net was a political fiction. Many churches and denominations have made valiant attempts to continue their ministries in the central cities, sharing in the struggle of Black and Hispanic churches to provide a ministry for central city people. All of these ministries are battling against the exploitative forces that speculate in urban properties and draw services away into the affluent malls. The renewal of these ministries and urban areas will require, consequently, the rebuilding of urban America.

Taylor: What are your hopes for North American Christian communities?

Winter: The churches and cities can learn much in this struggle from the experience of liberation movements in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Churches and peoples in these regions have learned that the hope of the Gospel and a fuller humanity is borne by the poor and oppressed. As the churches share this agony of Christ's body, they begin

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to find their way into the living Gospel. This is a biblical insight that has come to life again in the liberation movements, the awareness of the divine option for the poor. It has its corollary in the hermeneutical movement for which challenging and negating experience is the beginning of wisdom. For this reason, liberation movements and hermeneutical approaches follow a common path, the way of challenging ideologies that preserve oppressive structures and of sharing in transformative struggles for justice and peace.

The practical consequences of these insights for the churches bear on their relationship with the neighborhoods and communities of the urban areas. There can be no church without some kind of community, and healthy community needs faithful ministries. The two belong together, yet our economic way of life has put them apart in the cities. The churches are thus called to the rebuilding of urban communities through neighborhood and community organization movements. This is not an extra in their ministries, but the center of the spiritual renewal for which our central cities yearn. Our task as liberation theologians in North America has its immediate locus in this field of urban renewal. This is the place of suffering to which the ministry of Christ is being summoned. It is also the place of renewal of humanity and celebration of life.

PUBLICATIONS BY GIBSON WINTER

Books

Love and Conflict: New Patterns in Family Life (New York: Doubleday, l958).

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches (New York: Doubleday, 1961).

The New Creation as Metropolis (New York:, Macmillan, 1963).

Elements for a Social Ethic (New York: Macmillan, 1966).

Religious Identity: The Formal Organization and Informal Power Structure of the Major Faiths in the United States Today (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

Social Ethics: Issues in Ethics and Society, ed. Gibson Winter (New York: Harper Forum Books, 1968).

Being Free: Reflections on America's Cultural Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1970).

Belief and Ethics: Essays in Ethics, the Human Sciences and Ministry, ed. W. Widick Schroeder and Gibson Winter (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, l 978).

Liberating Creation (New York: Crossroad, 1981).

Articles

"The Church's Suburban Captivity," Christian Century, September 28, 1955.

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"Pastoral Counseling or Pastoral Care," Pastoral Psychology 8/71 (Feb.1957): 16-24.

"Marriage and Family in Christian Thought," Chicago Divinity School Register, January, 1958.

"The Conception of Ideology in the Theory of Action," Journal Of Religion 39/1 (January 1959): 43-49.

"What Industrialization Does to People," Report on Christian Responsibility In The Emerging World Economic Situation, March 9-l2, 1959, Center for the Study of the Christian World Mission.

"Pastoral Counseling in the Community of Faith," Pastoral Psychology 10/98 (November 1959): 26-30.

"Ritual and Worship in Family Life," Pastoral Psychology, 11/l02 (March 1960): 29-34.

"Identit? nationale et buts poursuivis par la nation," Christianisme Social 71/9-12 (1963): 605-624.

"Society and Morality in the French Tradition," Review of Religious Research 5 (l963): l1-21.

"The Churches and Community Organization," Christianity and Crisis 25/9 (May l965).

"Theology and Social Science," in The Scope of Theology, ed. Daniel T. Jenkins (New York: World, 1965).

"Theological Education for Ministry: Central Issues in Curriculum Construction," Theological Education 2/3 (Spring l 966).

"Man and Freedom in a Technological Society," Occasional Paper, Detroit Industrial Mission, l967.

"Coercion and Counter-Coercion: The Campus Revolt," Christianity and Crisis 29/4 (March 1969).

"Toward a Comprehensive Science of Policy," Journal of Religion 50/4 (October l970) 352-371.

"Human Rights in a Technological Society," Philosophy in Context, The Cleveland State University, 1972.

"The Crisis of Democracy: Further Reflections on Human Rights," in Philosophy in Context, Supplement to Vol. 1, 1972.

"Human Science and Ethics in a Creative Society," Cultural Hermeneutics, Vol. I (l973): 145-176.

"Amnesty: Necessities of Reconciliation and Remembering," Plumbline 1/2 (August 1973).

"The Question of Liberty in a Technologized World," Anglican Theological Review, Supplementary Series, July 1973, pp. 76-94.

"Exploring the Meaning of Liberation," by Chicago Reflection Group, in Theology in the Americas, ed. Sergio Torres and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, l 976).

"Einde of ein nieuw begin," Wending 31/8 (l976): 380-390.

"A Theology of Creative Participation," in Belonging and Alienation, ed. Philip Hefner and W. Widick Schroeder (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, l 976).

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Alvin Pitcher and Gibson Winter, "Perspectives in Religious Social Ethics," Journal of Religious Ethics 5/l (Spring l977): 69-90.

"The Seminary in a Metropolitan Society," Princeton Seminary Bulletin (l978).

"A Proposal for a Political Ethic," Review of Religious Research 2l:87-107 (l979).

Roger Hutchinson and Gibson Winter, "Toward a Method in Political Ethics," in Perspectives on Political Ethics, ed. Koson Srisang (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, l983).

"Hope for the Earth," Religion and Intellectual Life I (Spring 1984).