The Locavore Dilemma

Sem­i­nar­i­ans Become Jus­tice Locavores

When jus­tice becomes as real as the incar­cer­ated man sit­ting across from you, when jus­tice becomes some­thing we can touch, feel, then jus­tice will be done… then we will find the time… then we will risk even con­flict, because now the very per­sonal rela­tion­ships, which were pre­vi­ously lead­ing us to avoid con­flict, neces­si­tate it.

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Patrick David Heery, Unbound Edi­tor and Prince­ton Sem­i­nary Graduate

Tell some­one you go to sem­i­nary and you’re likely to hear, So… uh… what’s sem­i­nary? Those who have heard the term before, on the other hand, often con­jure up images of medieval monas­tic life and 5 AM prayer calls (I don’t know if I ever got up at 5 AM dur­ing sem­i­nary and if I did, it wasn’t for prayer). Church­go­ers who live near a sem­i­nary will know that it is a place of spir­i­tual, intel­lec­tual, and prac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion for min­istry. But ask even them about social jus­tice train­ing on these cam­puses and you will prob­a­bly encounter blank stares.

Sem­i­nar­ies are seen to be just about as rel­e­vant to jus­tice orga­niz­ing as churches are these days—which isn’t say­ing much.

So Unbound went on a mis­sion to talk with sem­i­nary and divin­ity school stu­dents about their expe­ri­ences of jus­tice advo­cacy and min­istry. We asked them: What chal­lenges do you face? What issues do you care about? What would you like to say to the wider church? What are your con­cerns for enter­ing ministry?

Over three months later, we have col­lected inter­views, arti­cles writ­ten directly by stu­dents, and a cou­ple arti­cles writ­ten to stu­dents. These stu­dents come from all across Amer­ica and rep­re­sent such schools as Union The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in New York City, Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Pasadena, Cal­i­for­nia, McCormick The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Chicago, Austin Pres­by­ter­ian The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Texas, and the Inter­de­nom­i­na­tional The­o­log­i­cal Cen­ter in Atlanta, Georgia.

I want to thank all of the stu­dents who took the time, energy, and some­times risk, to write for Unbound about jus­tice on their cam­puses. It was just under a year ago that I myself grad­u­ated from Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and I know that it is not often easy, or encour­aged, to speak up. On the one hand, my three years at Prince­ton rooted me in my call to social jus­tice min­istry, pro­vid­ing me oppor­tu­ni­ties (and an impec­ca­ble edu­ca­tion) I never thought pos­si­ble, but it was also a time of frus­tra­tion and lone­li­ness, as I encoun­tered a cul­ture that val­ued jus­tice but was often not will­ing to risk much for it. I recall one admin­is­tra­tor advis­ing me not to get “too involved” with those extracur­ric­u­lar social jus­tice projects because I was there “to study.”

I am now hon­ored to know so many stu­dents who reply with vigor: Those social jus­tice projects are my education.

What excites me about this jour­nal issue is that it, we hope, will serve as the entrée to resourc­ing a national net­work of the­o­log­i­cal stu­dents com­mit­ted to social jus­tice. It won’t be some­thing oth­ers design for them; it will be their cre­ation, their vision, much like this jour­nal issue.

A New Cul­ture on Sem­i­nary Cam­puses
Emerg­ing cul­tures on our sem­i­nary cam­puses present new chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for effec­tive, national orga­niz­ing. Chris Iosso, Gen­eral Edi­tor for Unbound, recalls that, in the late 1970s, it was South Africa divest­ment that gal­va­nized stu­dents into a move­ment across sem­i­nar­ies and col­lege cam­puses. For bet­ter or worse, that kind of issue-based orga­niz­ing is not likely to be suc­cess­ful anymore.

Many sem­i­nar­i­ans are increas­ingly, what I am call­ing, “jus­tice loca­vores.” Loca­vores are peo­ple who eat only locally pro­duced food as a way to reduce envi­ron­men­tal impact and to deepen their com­mit­ments to the local com­mu­nity. The local foods move­ment is also deeply rela­tional: you get to know the peo­ple who pro­duce your food; you visit their farms and homes; and, you form friend­ships with other reusable bag-toting peo­ple as you saunter through the local farm­ers’ markets.

As loca­vores, sem­i­nar­i­ans are focus­ing their jus­tice efforts on local com­mu­ni­ties, and they are doing so often because of the rela­tion­ships these efforts offer. In these arti­cles, you will find Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents sup­port­ing the union­iza­tion efforts of undoc­u­mented immi­grants; Geor­gia stu­dents labor­ing to stop the Geor­gia exe­cu­tion of Troy Anthony Davis; New York City stu­dents focus­ing on urban poverty and access to fresh, healthy food; and Texas stu­dents min­is­ter­ing with immi­grant detainees. And, those Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents are not just sup­port­ing any work­ers; they are sup­port­ing the food work­ers who had served in their cafe­te­ria for years—they are fight­ing for their friends.

It is pre­cisely for this rea­son that LGBTQQI[i] equal­ity and issues of sex­u­al­ity are so preva­lent among many of our stu­dents’ reports: because this is less about an issue and more about people—about friends. In fact, “issues” con­ven­tion­ally defined are often not the moti­va­tors or uni­tors here: sem­i­nary issue-based orga­niz­ing has tended to cre­ate silos of jus­tice inter­ests with lit­tle campus-wide coor­di­na­tion. Issues are eas­ily pushed to the mar­gins of our sched­ules when faced with more imme­di­ate pres­sures like papers to write. Friend­ship, how­ever, is much harder to marginalize.

When explain­ing why Har­vard Divin­ity School stu­dents got so involved with the Occupy move­ment, Kather­ine Pater explains that stu­dents joined less because of the issues and more because of the oppor­tu­nity to form rela­tion­ships and to join a com­mu­nity of peo­ple sim­i­larly frus­trated and called to take action.

The focus on local jus­tice needs (as opposed to more abstracted inter­na­tional issues), in other words, is often a pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of per­sonal relationships—and is a dis­tinc­tive trend when com­pared with many con­gre­ga­tions’ focus on inter­na­tional short-term mis­sion and char­ity, while they ignore, or even par­tic­i­pate in, local oppres­sive structures.

The loca­vore dilemma asks whether these “inside agi­ta­tors” can con­nect and orga­nize for impact beyond the local.

National orga­niz­ing will need either to model itself after the Occupy Move­ment with its loosely con­nected string of local com­mu­ni­ties (though Occupy’s effec­tive­ness remains uncer­tain) or to iden­tify issues, like LGBTQQI equal­ity, that empha­size per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Other issues, like incar­cer­a­tion or envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, can be reframed. For instance, at Prince­ton, when we were found­ing our eco-justice group, we framed sus­tain­abil­ity as rela­tional: with the earth, with God, with each other, and with the grounds and cus­to­dial staff who cared for our imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment and yet who were often con­fined to invis­i­bil­ity on the cam­pus. We got to know those staff and built friend­ships. We worked side by side with them as we planted trees for Earth Day, did cam­pus clean-up, and con­structed a com­post site and com­mu­nity garden.

But effec­tive orga­niz­ing will require start­ing not with issues, but with the chance to build rela­tion­ships among one another, across cam­puses, because ulti­mately it will be that sup­port, trust, and friend­ship which will sus­tain a movement.

A New Gen­er­a­tion of Young Adults
While many sem­i­nar­i­ans are sec­ond or third career stu­dents, this obser­va­tion reveals some inter­est­ing dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties when com­pared with Amer­i­can young adults. For instance, while these stu­dents’ engage­ment with jus­tice dis­tin­guishes them from other young adults (who tend to be pre­oc­cu­pied with an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic con­sumerism), their empha­sis on the for­ma­tion of per­sonal rela­tion­ships (as opposed, say, to civic ties) is con­sis­tent with their peers.[ii] This pri­or­ity presents impor­tant pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing. The gen­er­a­tions of Ella Baker and Saul Alin­sky have long told us that we must orga­nize by being, first and fore­most, relational.

But it also presents a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. If one’s chief objec­tive is to main­tain per­sonal ties, con­flict, even if for the pur­poses of jus­tice, is a threat. Chris­t­ian Smith and his team of soci­ol­o­gists posit, in fact, that this conflict-avoidance is a strong moti­va­tor for young people’s avoid­ance of reli­gion and pol­i­tics, which invite pas­sion­ate, occa­sion­ally ugly, dis­agree­ment.[iii] Sem­i­nar­i­ans have clearly made it over that first hur­dle: they have stayed in the church; they are not rel­a­tivists. But like their peers, many pri­or­i­tize peace over jus­tice, unity and har­mony over truth-telling conflict.

Take, for exam­ple, a let­ter from the Colum­bia The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Stu­dent Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil pres­i­dents, who invite stu­dents to ask them­selves, “Does God want me tak­ing binary oppo­si­tion against another over hous­ing? Is the deter­mi­na­tion of my Chris­t­ian love a hous­ing pol­icy?” They are refer­ring to Columbia’s hous­ing pol­icy, which cur­rently does not pro­vide hous­ing to same-gender cou­ples. The impli­ca­tion seems to be that cam­pus har­mony is more impor­tant than ensur­ing fair hous­ing for all. Fur­ther­more, the let­ter seems to con­strue oppo­si­tion itself as bad. Now of course the Colum­bia com­mu­nity is strug­gling to mend rela­tion­ships, and so the plea is under­stand­able. But I think it reflects a larger trend among our sem­i­nar­ies and, if soci­ol­o­gists are cor­rect, among young adults in general.

Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary stu­dent, Josh New­ton, says as much when he asks whether diver­sity is enough. He writes, “In hasty attempts to have healthy com­mu­ni­ties now, insti­tu­tions engage conflict-avoiding diver­sity prac­tices that often ignore top­ics such as priv­i­lege and hege­mony, because such dis­cus­sions cre­ate ten­sion and dis­com­fort. But, ten­sion and dis­com­fort for whom?” Dr. David Aba­los sim­i­larly observes that many of our sem­i­nar­ies are teach­ing “secu­rity, con­ti­nu­ity, and coop­er­a­tion” but not con­fronta­tion. The objec­tion is not to hav­ing healthy, uni­fied communities—as if that could be a bad thing! The objec­tion is to a super­fi­cial unity that merely masks deeper con­flict, often sac­ri­fic­ing the mar­gin­al­ized to some gen­er­al­ized “com­mon harmony.”

But if sem­i­nar­i­ans increas­ingly become jus­tice loca­vores and empha­size the “local” (where pri­vate and cor­po­rate inter­ests inter­sect), we may begin to see new pos­si­bil­i­ties for orga­niz­ing. Clare­mont School of The­ol­ogy stu­dents are risk­ing con­flict, along­side food work­ers, by protest­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in civil dis­obe­di­ence. Stu­dents are risk­ing con­flict as they fight for les­bian and gay equal­ity at Colum­bia The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, for the hir­ing of Latin@ fac­ulty at Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and for eco­nomic jus­tice at Har­vard Divin­ity School and elsewhere.

When jus­tice becomes as real as the incar­cer­ated man sit­ting across from you, when jus­tice becomes some­thing we can touch, feel, then jus­tice will be done… then we will find the time… then we will risk even con­flict, because now the very per­sonal rela­tion­ships, which were pre­vi­ously lead­ing us to avoid con­flict, neces­si­tate it.

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Notes

[i] LGBTQQI refers to Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­ual, Trans­gen­der, Queer, Ques­tion­ing, and Inter­sex iden­ti­fy­ing individuals.

[ii] Chris­t­ian Smith, et al. Lost in Tran­si­tion: The Dark Side of Emerg­ing Adult­hood. New York City: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011, p. 223.

[iii] Ibid. 203–4.

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The Rev. Patrick David Heery is the Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of Unbound and staff­per­son for the Advi­sory Com­mit­tee on Social Wit­ness Pol­icy. He is a recent grad­u­ate of Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary with a Master’s of Divin­ity, and is also newly ordained in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (U.S.A.). Dur­ing his time at sem­i­nary, Patrick helped found ECOS (Envi­ron­men­tally Con­scious Orga­ni­za­tion of Sem­i­nar­i­ans); co-moderated BGLASS (the LGBT and allies stu­dent group); led the Sem­i­nar­i­ans for Peace and Jus­tice sub-group devoted to prison reform and the abo­li­tion of tor­ture; did prison min­istry; served on the exec­u­tive board of the Coali­tion for Peace Action; served as an orga­nizer for faith-based com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing in Mer­cer County, NJ; and did con­gre­ga­tional orga­niz­ing and wor­ship through a local Pres­by­ter­ian church.

 

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