A small group of around 24, comprising members of MUC along with visitors from other churches, gathered to learn about the Theology of Visibility from visiting Cato Lecturer Rev Dr Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a Korean American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. She brought with her copies of her latest books, ‘When God became White’, ‘Surviving God’ and ‘Invisible’ which were available for sale at morning tea time with many people availing themselves of the opportunity. At least one of the books was purchased for our library.
In the first half of the morning Grace highlighted ongoing ways people are made invisible based on gender, race, sexuality, economic status etc. both in society and in the church. She especially highlighted the invisibility of Asian American women.
She illustrated her talk with slides while speaking without any notes! Having been recently at the 17th Assembly of UCA, she noted favourably how the Uniting Church is tackling some of these issues.
One of her interesting points is that perhaps the bible should come with some warning labels- as appears on cigarettes for example. Warnings that it endorses violence, is written by men, may cause racism and sexism, causes discomfort, challenges, encourages homophobia, condones hatred and genocide, condones slavery, etc!
After a delicious morning tea prepared and served by Kay and Hilary, Grace introduced her theology of visibility through four Korean concepts
OU-RI, meaning ‘our’
HAN, translated as ‘unjust suffering’
JEONG, means ‘sticky love’
CHI, an Asian concept that signifies the spirit
which serve as steps toward escaping an invisible society and eliminating the evils of racism, discrimination, sexism and xenophobia and challenges our metaphor of God as an old, white man with a beard!
At the conclusion of the morning, Zoe thanked Grace with the words,
“I would like to sincerely thank you, Grace for sharing so much of your knowledge and scholarship on the subject – not to mention lived experience. So often, us healthy white Anglo-Saxons, just don’t think about the lived experience of so many people who are different ethnically, physically,intellectually, psychologically, financially, socially etc, etc. to mention just a few. We wonder why they complain, can’t they just assert themselves and “get on with it??” Grace has explained why they are often unseen – so feel powerless.
Then we read the Bible on Sunday and realise that Jesus’ mission was predominantly to the ‘powerless’ of society and gave the message that they had as much right to live with dignity and to develop a relationship with their God as anyone else. As dis-ciples of Jesus, this is a large part of our mission, so thank you Grace for stimulating our thoughts and hopefully, actions, to make sure everyone in our orbits are visible to ourselves and others.
Grace, we wish you all the best for the rest of the tour here in Australia and for your continued exploration of this subject and others and, no doubt, writing.”
Many thanks to the Learning and Discipleship Portfolio for organising this event.