Abstract
This book should be considered essential reading for any Christian ethics classroom, especially in our time's increasing awareness of—and outcry against—the abuses of religious and moral authorities and the legacy of colonisation and race. Karen Guth tends to the difficult question of how to ethically respond to ‘tainted legacies’ inherited in our public spaces, institutions, and theological discourses. Drawing upon theological insights from feminist, black feminist, and womanist research as well as trauma studies, Guth addresses a range of objects, histories, and theologies with tainted legacies—including Confederate monuments, educational institutions built with slave labour, and John Howard Yoder's troubled history of sexual abuse—with an eye towards offering and demonstrating Guth's own compelling constructive account.
Guth's beginning chapters set up her terms, framework, and methodology for approaching a range of ethically compromised inheritances. This review dedicates a significant amount of time to that beginning with the goal of providing the reader greater understanding and assessment of Guth's method.
In the introduction, Guth explains that behind the challenge of tainted legacies is the age-old question of what to do with indispensable, incontrovertible, and yet compromised goods (p. 13). These goods ‘contribute to human inquiry, reflection, expression’, ‘habituate persons in certain ways of life’, and ‘contribute to just and prosperous societies’ (p. 15). They are not only objects which can be received or rejected, but also entire frameworks which are necessary and inescapable. Yoder's troubled history of sexual violence is a prime illustration, as Guth points out that excising his theology from a syllabus does not erase its impact on Christian ethics, communities, and practices (p. 15). After providing examples such as the ‘entire political tradition of the US’ and educational institutions whose formation and operations have participated in slavery and sexual violence, Guth declares that in these stained legacies are goods that are worth recognising and preserving (pp. 15–16). I will revisit this claim later.
Guth warns that centering the issue around the authority and goods of tainted legacies tends to diminish attention to the question of future flourishing downstream of those legacies (p. 14). With future flourishing in mind, she asks, ‘how do we engage legacies that wield irrevocable influence or make invaluable contributions and cause unjust harm?’ (p. 14). Drawing upon trauma studies, Guth explains that tainted legacies involve the trauma of moral injury and institutional betrayal. Moral injury can be perpetration-based or betrayal-based and occurs when an individual ‘themselves violated what was right or witnessed a legitimate authority betraying what is right in a high-stakes situation’ (p. 16). Tainted legacies can be individual or institutional, or more often than not, both (p. 17). Institutional betrayal involves institutions with ‘strict membership requirements, the prioritization of the prestigious institution's reputation over members’ well-being, and heightened stakes for when said reputable institutions “fail to meet professed moral commitments”’ (p. 18). Tainted legacies involve ‘remainders’, described as ‘text, bodies of work, monuments, buildings, institutional practices’ which serve ‘as reminders of the original trauma and represent deeper structural injustices’ (p. 18). Guth insists that dealing with remainders, including current practices rooted in unjust practices, is part of the process of reforming unjust practices—as tainted legacies carry ‘wounds from past traumas’ and, without intervention, risk re-traumatising the original recipient of traumas or their current heirs (p. 19). Clarifying that ‘engaging with tainted legacies is not the same as endorsing’ those legacies, Guth provides justification by referring to a parallel claim provided by psychiatrists, who have noted the importance of trauma victims facing their trauma ‘in a safe way in order to incorporate the experiences into their lives in ways that promote recovery’ (p. 19). Guth seeks an ethical response which communicates both ‘censure towards the evil-doing contained in tainted legacies’ and also ‘fosters human flourishing’ (p. 19). For, ‘we need have not done anything wrong to bear the responsibility of grappling with a tainted legacy’ (p. 20).
In chapter 1, Guth describes four elements that constitute a tainted legacy (p. 27). First, the tainted legacy offers invaluable resources needed for human flourishing. Second, it bears marks of trauma which ‘continually return’. Third, this trauma is compounded by the reality of moral injury and institutional betrayal. Fourth, the legacies confront us with the question about how to respond to ‘remainders’ which ‘not only threaten continuous harm but also produce practices and dispositions that detract from our well-being’ (p. 27). In chapter 2, she summarises five types of responses which often arise in response to tainted legacies, whether the conversation is about Confederate flags, disgraced public figures like Bill Cosby, or aspects of theological doctrine such as the atonement (pp. 62–63). ‘Deniers’ reject the premise by refusing to recognise what tainted the legacy in the first place, by ‘minimizing or contextualizing the violations’, or by responding that all legacies are tainted. ‘Separationists’ acknowledge the taint, but separate the goods from the thinkers and institutions which produced the goods.
‘Abolitionists’ (bearing no connection to historical abolitionism) acknowledge the harm and ban it all—the authority of thinkers and institutions and their ‘remainders’. ‘Revisionists’ reassess and reinterpret the legacy, and such reinvestigation may lead to the identification of new authorities. ‘Redeemers’ ‘try to salvage goods from the ashes through memorialization, learning, or putting the tainted goods to life-saving work’ (p. 63). Guth offers the incisive observation that all of these responses, including the latter two's emphasis on the remainders, fail to address larger ‘formative and structural elements of justice’ and ‘do not necessarily pursue justice for survivors’ (p. 63). Guth then presents her original type of response, the ‘Reformer’, which moves beyond the question of how to handle material ‘remainders’ towards a call ‘for repair of the legacies themselves and the systematic injustices that produce them’ (p. 28). The reformer approach encompasses both retrospective and prospective elements: learning from and addressing the past, and pursuing justice with an emphasis on future flourishing (p. 87).
Chapters 3 to 6 serve as four case studies in which Guth demonstrates the limitations of the first five common responses to tainted legacies—and their lack of address of necessary structural reform. In chapter 3, under the rubric of ‘cultural texts of terror’, Guth compares public discussion in the #MeToo movement about responding to the work of disgraced artist-authorities with discussions of what to do with ‘biblical texts of terror’. She demonstrates how the first five types of responses to #MeToo fail to serve women's liberation and fail to transform the industry. Drawing upon feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and womanist Renita Weems, who both offer distinct approaches to biblical accounts of violence to women often ignored by male interpreters, Guth emphasises that only a reformer approach engages the necessary next steps of (1) recognising women ‘as subjects, agents, and producers of knowledge’ and ‘authorities in their own right’ and (2) transforming oppressive structures (p. 113). The agency of survivors remains an important thread throughout.
In chapter 4, Guth examines the Confederate monuments debate in conversation with womanist ethical critiques. She demonstrates how the debate circles around the merely symbolic and fails to tend to issues of structural injustice. Put simply, tearing down a statue does not adequately address the forces and systems that allowed it to be established in the first place. Leaning upon Emily Townes, Guth asserts her reformer position, calling for not only the interrogation of false narratives which accompany monuments, but also the dismantling of discriminatory practices in education, health, and civil rights (p. 164).
In chapter 5, Guth reviews the first five common responses to the tainted legacy of educational institutions tainted by slavery and demonstrates how they also run into challenges when seeking reparation for past participation in slavery. With Georgetown as her example, she demonstrates how despite the institution's commitment to truth-telling and remembering the past, Georgetown failed to learn from that past and did not honour the agency of victims and their heirs in the offering of what Guth identifies as a symbolic gesture of reparation. The institution did not thus adopt an effective reformer approach.
Finally, chapter 6 deals with responses to Yoder's tainted legacy—a matter salient to Guth, a teacher of theological ethics. After discussing the limitations of the five common approaches, Guth draws on psychiatrist Jonathan Shay's research on moral injury and clinical treatment strategies for moral injury to present her reformer approach for why and how she chooses to teach Yoder in the classroom—understanding that this is not limited to Yoder, but to many tainted legacies. She teaches Yoder with the aim of reform: beyond identification of remainders alone and instead towards critical study and discussion of authority; towards a sober critique of cultural normalisation of sexual violence and the practices needed to counter such; into naming problematic conceptualisations of violence in peace church theology as they are brought into conversation with feminist, black feminist, and womanist analyses of structural violence; and towards the study of the work and struggle needed in reparations, with the survivors of Yoder's abuses serving as ‘powerful moral leaders who held Yoder and the Mennonite institution accountable’ (p. 220). There is a striking humility in her unwillingness to settle for trigger warnings or even pledges of ‘creating a safe space’ when she teaches about Yoder's problematic biography—as she acknowledges that she cannot anticipate what will trigger whom. Instead, professors ‘should be transparent about the construction of the course, choice of course materials, and pedagogical goals’ and honour the agency of students (p. 209). She demonstrates how the moral injury framework ‘not only alerts us to traumas students bring with them into the classroom, but also highlights conceptions of authority, what is right, the potential stakes for those involved’—and ‘most importantly, it directs learning in religious ethics towards practices of repair’ (p. 206). Here, Guth's reformer approach most clearly demonstrates its strength not only in addressing the remainders of tainted legacies, but also proposing repair and structural change.
Guth demonstrates a striking willingness to locate and connect her particularity as a white woman. Her embodied reflection is commendable. As much as the issues are about theological and ethical stakes, they are also personal and deal with her embodied life and heritage. She is a Northerner transplanted in the South, the alumna of an institution built by enslaved hands, and a theologian who works at a Jesuit institution, teaches Christian ethics, and was shaped by peace theology. Despite her lack of personal responsibility for the wrongdoing in these legacies, she says, ‘I inherit them all the same’ (p. 20). She not only interrogates her inheritances, but she also demonstrates her own negotiation of those confronting legacies, including her striking conception of the educator as someone who promotes healing in the face of trauma.
I offer two brief critiques here. First, while Guth speaks of the opportunity for Yoder's theology to be brought into conversation with the critiques of feminist and womanist theology, there is little discussion of the details of Yoder's actual theology, particularly as it pertains to dynamics of power and notions of reconciliation. Since Yoder's deployment of his own theology about reconciliation confused and stymied attempts by Mennonite leaders and survivors in pursuing accountability and reconciliation, this book could have been strengthened by a demonstration of theological reform and repair in Yoder's own thought. The stakes are that many stand downstream of Yoder's thought and may also utilise reasoning and practices which obfuscate reform that leads to structural change. Second, I question Guth's assertion of noble ideals and goods that are not only influential, but also deserve preservation. This assertion of ‘nobility’ deviates from Guth's robust interrogation of legacies. It is not clear to me if all would speak of the political tradition of the US or its institutions as possessing noble ideals, as diverse voices have contested across time. Guth's argument might have been strengthened by a less idealist and more pragmatic framing of ‘goods’ as influential—presenting instead an emphasis on the irrevocable ways goods and remainders are at play, as opposed to defending their value which must be preserved.
Nonetheless, Guth's work is to be commended for her robust engagement of contemporary and highly relevant ethical issues.
