Abstract
Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes embodies liberation theology's notion of accompaniment or walking with people in their struggle for survival. From her position as a shelter chaplain, Susan Dunlap reflects on the theological beliefs of those she is accompanying—people who are unhoused and live in extreme poverty ($13,000 or less for a family of four; $6,000 for an individual)—to offer insight for others doing the work of accompaniment. While the bulk of the book is focused on the theology, experiences and stories of the primarily African American members who attend the tri-weekly prayer services at Urban Ministries of Durham in North Carolina, Dunlap situates their experience of homelessness in a broader framework, naming the idolatries of white supremacy and neoliberalism and explaining the ways in which larger systems and structures of oppression put some groups more at risk than others.
Dunlap is aware that as an educated white woman with class privilege she must check her assumptions of superiority as well as any propensity to romanticize the poor, and that there are legitimate questions about her authority to speak about a culture different from her own (primarily Black Pentecostal in contrast to her Reformed Presbyterian background). She nevertheless takes the risk of doing so in the hope that she can support other chaplains from her demographic who work in prisons, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and the military with people who hold similar beliefs. Dunlap attempts to represent the people she serves while also being actively involved in advocacy to address the poverty they face.
An analysis of both structural racism and neoliberal late-stage capitalism are central for understanding why 90 percent of the prayer service participants are Black. Dunlap outlines both local and global factors that have caused their poverty, such as exploitive work in textiles and tobacco and a loss of jobs to deindustrialization; historical policies such as redlining and disinvestment in minority communities; racism in education, the criminal justice system, and other institutions; and the current affordable housing crisis and increasing gentrification. She also outlines the ways neoliberalism currently affects people without homes, namely, low wage jobs, cuts in social services, privatization of mental health services, and the interconnectedness of the criminal justice system and poverty. In her words, ‘Jail becomes a backup for neoliberalism's inadequate social safety net’ (p. 15).
While Dunlap clearly outlines the structural factors that are at the root of the suffering of individuals who are unhoused as well as communities that are precariously housed, she notes that the people she accompanies are more likely to blame themselves for their poverty. She explains that the hyper-individualism of neoliberalism casts racism and sexism as individual prejudice, not as systemic and structural oppression. Thus, the dominant societal solution is to fix individuals through psychotherapy or rehabilitation, not change unjust structures in pursuit of social justice. She ends chapter 1 by claiming that as a society, we have abandoned people who are unhoused, causing not only their suffering but death. Their lives have been ‘ungrievable’, according to Dunlap, a term that ‘highlights our national blindness, numbness, indifference to certain deaths because the people who died were not considered fully human in the first place’ (p. 23, emphasis original).
The larger structural framework that Dunlap outlines is important for anyone accompanying people in extreme poverty to avoid the individualistic emphasis on changing people over challenging unjust structures. While Dunlap's focus is to support good pastoral care, she is also employing an ‘ethics from the margins’ that centres the lives and stories of those most negatively affected by unjust systems and attends to intersectional analysis of and resistance to them. She doesn’t claim to be doing liberation theology but her outline of ‘theology in proximity to the margins’ (p. 133) and her focus on both structural sin and an option for the poor follow in that tradition.
In chapters 2 through 4, Dunlap outlines and reflects on the words and forms as well as the living beliefs that the prayer service participants hold. She claims that their beliefs ‘enable survival in the midst of harsh circumstances, and they function as a form of resistance to powers that would dehumanize them and deprive them of the means to survive and thrive’ (p. 62). The content of the prayer services is provided by whoever is in attendance on any day, and according to Dunlap, the sacred space is a ‘zone of belonging and recognition’ as well as a ‘site of creativity and generativity’ (p. 32). Participants appreciate the grace and peace of the services, and actively work to keep the negativity of the streets outside the space.
While all faith traditions are honored, a Black version of southern Evangelicalism predominates. Dunlap depicts the prayer service participants as active practical theologians drawing from a deep religious tradition. She outlines several forms that predominate, namely, sayings, proverbs, testimony, sermons and music, all of which she claims are relational. That is, they connect participants to one another, offering hope and belonging. Dunlap is aware that she cannot speak the way the participants do; that the participants draw from an oral culture and tradition, using familiar forms and words that offer shared meaning.
Speakers in the service employ sayings and proverbs and will often preach brief sermons using metaphor, repetition and rhythm. Participants often offer testimonies that witness to the ways in which God acts in their lives with the intent of giving God glory and renewing hope in others. Music is spontaneous and an ‘embodied sensual form of theologizing’ that serves to ‘decenter the deprivations and humiliations of poverty’ (p. 49). The forms they use and the stories they share in the prayer service reveal God's presence in their lives as well as their personal piety and continued hope despite their often ‘thin, fragile, and fleeting’ (p. 61) relational connections in the midst of severe poverty.
Affirming their beliefs in a communal context offers a sense of belonging and affirms participants’ worthiness to live flourishing lives. Dunlap writes of the context of their theological responses: ‘The deep archives of beliefs had their origins in the context of what Blacks have endured for centuries: slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, deep poverty, and other forms of focused, violent racism’ (p. 62). Not only do their beliefs offer hope but also the energy to persist in finding shelter or endure living without.
As a participant ethnographer, Dunlap identifies and describes some of the ‘living beliefs’ of the prayer service participants. The first is the belief that God will provide. With limited power and restricted choices, belief in God is not an abstract statement of God's existence but is a deep trust in God's presence and provision. Second is a gratitude for God's activity in our lives; ‘to continue to claim God's sovereignty in the face of such powerfully threatening forces’ (pp. 71–72). Third is a belief that the devil is an active reality, sometimes tempting people with bad choices and, at other times, throwing obstacles in one's way. Evoking the devil as explanation, according to Dunlap, is not to shirk responsibility for one's actions but a way to mitigate personal shame. Some participants will also refer to evil spirits in relation to larger-scale societal problems.
Key in many of the personal testimonies is that God has a purpose for one's life and suffering is not wasted. Many participants give testimony to near-death experiences with a claim that they lived to achieve their purpose and that suffering does not have the last word. Prayer and Bible reading are central to their personal relationship with God and offer companionship, protection and healing. Music is the communal element of their spirituality.
In chapter 4, Dunlap shares two testimonials, or what she calls ‘resistance narratives’, that offer honest counter-stories of the narrators’ lives. These stories serve both to help others and to resist the demeaning stereotypes that our dominant culture has of them. For example, Joyce offers a counternarrative to the stereotypes of her as a prostitute, addict and slouch. She shares the different ways that she has asserted agency in her life (counter to the notion that she is a passive victim) and claims divine authorization of her words. Darryl employs popular and traditional sayings as well as Scripture to offer credence and complexity to his story, dignifying and humanizing who he is as a person despite his bad behavior due to trauma.
Both Joyce and Darryl connect their identities to God's immanent power while also bearing witness to and offering subversion of the larger systems of oppressive power of which they have suffered. Dunlap argues in her final chapter that these injustices are manifestations of two reigning idolatries in our nation, white supremacy and neoliberal capitalism. The latter ‘discards human beings’ when they are ‘no longer useful commodities as laborers or consumers’ (p. 136) and the former institutionalizes who is sacrificed. The ‘religion of the poor’ that Dunlap outlines offers sustenance in the face of death-dealing forces, an affirmation that God is in control and that one's life is worth saving.
Dunlap concludes with a ‘plea for proximity’ (p. 146), that is, for the privileged who are in bondage to white supremacy and neoliberal capitalism to learn from those who suffer the most from unjust systems. Only in proximity to people who suffer, she claims, will the privileged find God and be empowered to challenge these idolatries. The poor are already resisting these powers. The privileged can gain from them an understanding that God alone is our source of security, life is precarious, and the idols of whiteness and wealth are futile. And finally, that the presence of evil needs to be clearly named, resisted and dismantled.
This book should have broad appeal. I can see it being used in an undergraduate ethics course I teach on homelessness, and it would be an excellent text for seminary courses. It would also be useful for congregations who work with the poor and/or are committed to social justice. Dunlap does an excellent job of identifying and explaining the theological beliefs that enable the people without homes who she works with to persevere, find hope, and resist the inhumane conditions they face. She focuses on accompaniment with those in extreme poverty without falling into the hyper-individualism of neoliberalism that discounts structural oppression and emphasizes changing individuals instead of unjust systems. She realizes the importance of communal safe and sacred spaces for people who suffer from these systems, while also challenging the idolatries of our culture that cause suffering and extract sacrifice from people living on the margins. As she writes, people need an income and a home, but they also ‘crave work, purpose, respect, and community’ (p. 25).
I question whether Dunlap's work is more an ethnography of unhoused Blacks in the South from the Evangelical/Pentecostal tradition than it is an ethnography of the unhoused poor. I think the focus on one group, however, is useful for its particular insights, and a focus on African Americans is especially important considering the structural racism that has put this demographic most at risk of homelessness. It would be interesting to compare ethnographies of other racial/ethnic groups of people who are unhoused to see common and/or different theological themes.
While Dunlap says she wrote this book to support other chaplains from her demographic who work with people in extreme poverty, she doesn’t offer much in-depth reflection, apart from one short section on cross-cultural pastoral care, as to how her ethnography will support other chaplains. In that brief section she identifies several challenges: how to accept beliefs while also identifying what is not of God (e.g., violence, shame, resignation) and how to deal with beliefs counter to one's own (e.g., cancer serving God's purpose). Dunlap's concluding chapter is a call for privileged parishioners to learn from the poor and challenge white supremacy and neoliberal capitalism, not about how chaplains should approach their work with the poor. Her reflections and conclusions are nevertheless insightful for all of us who seek to dismantle unjust structures while simultaneously accompanying those who are most negatively impacted by these systems of power.