How Diverse Is Contemporary Theological Education? Identity Politics and Theological Education

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2008 by Paa, Jenny Plane Te

I am always glad to visit Canada because in so many ways we as nationals of vastly different countries-Canada and New Zealand-actually share so much in common in terms of the kinds of national societies we each yearn to establish and maintain. Our societies are founded on the principles of liberal democracy. They are open societies where pluralism by any definition is to be celebrated. They are redemptive societies committed to reconciling and healing the devastating enduring outcomes of the colonial experience, especially as this has had an impact on indigenous peoples. They are also societies that must address tribalism and globalization. And the Anglican Church must be part of that discussion. But I confess that, even after much traveling in God's universe, I am not particularly confident in addressing the complex and ever-contradictory issue of globalization.

Tribalism I can address-especially after living in a still highly tribalized indigenous community for just on fifty years, and especially as I have become an increasingly unapologetic irritant, an "insider" critic of some aspects of the less than godly behaviors emanating from within the communities with which I am most familiar. Identity politics and theological education I can most definitely address: they have been my life's work as a privileged, pioneering, lay, indigenous woman. So I will focus this discussion on the theme of contemporary identity politics and theological education.

But first a glimpse into identity politics. One of the questions I always ask myself is, Who am I, to be addressing a global audience? There are various descriptions of me in circulation. And personal biographical pieces are always contrived: we are obliged in so many ways to make ourselves look impressive and credible, especially in the church, the academic world, and other monolithic institutions within which we struggle to pursue our professional careers. We endeavor always to appeal to others to be taken as acceptable, to be taken seriously, to feel a sense of belonging. And so in the politically laden process of self-definition, or identifying ourselves to others, we very selectively appropriate bits and pieces of identity-based data in order to build an attractive (or at least agreeable) image of ourselves. And we do so in such a way that we instinctively position ourselves advantageously against others. What we are asserting, of course, in snapshot form, is our current unique sense of identity. This is what differentiates me from you, in fact, from all others. Unself-consciously I am asserting that my identity is what prevents me from being identical to anyone else. Were I to consider every single dimension of my identity, it is impossible for there to be another me anywhere on God's earth.

So identity politics is what emerges out of this milieu of identity-making through the claims and counter-claims for recognition, and for the rights for individuals and groups of similar individuals. If we were the tolerant and open societies we hope to be, these politics would remain relatively benign. But we live now in increasingly pluralistic societies characterized by complex layers of difference across religious, ethnic, gender, sexuality, and class divides (to name just a few popularly asserted signifiers of difference). But what a heavily loaded phrase "identity politics" has now become!

I understand identity politics at its heart to be about the wide range of ways in which political activism and theorizing are consolidated around shared perceptions of the experience and/or the perception of injustice among members of certain social groups, such as women, gays and lesbians, indigenous people, people living with disabilities, and so on. These groups have been and generally still are marginalized, alienated, or oppressed within the larger sociopolitical context. These groups are committed to reclaiming their distinctiveness from the characterizations pressed upon them by a dominant group or system. The goal of identity politics is to achieve and maintain a greater degree of self-determination and self-definition, as part of resolving or redressing historic injustice.

Public education in our respective nation-states has been one especially important site within which the relentless indigenous yearning for sovereignty and self-determination has played itself out. This yearning has at its heart the identity politics project, or the insufficiently contested assertion that indigenous interests will only ever be truly honored once the authentic and necessary aspects of ethnic identity are fully restored across all aspects of the educational enterprise. And so indigenous language, tradition, art, and spiritual practices form the basis of a sustained cultural recovery project.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Maori people have been variously blessed, challenged, inspired, enriched, and sometimes frustrated and troubled by the emergence and development of those educational initiatives now so legendary among those of us privileged to be indigenous educators. The Aotearoa New Zealand and Canadian models have been at the forefront of the international indigenous educational project, so it is not surprising that there are very close levels of collaboration between and among our professional educators. At all levels of public schooling, beginning at preschool and extending through to university, there now exist full indigenous curricula taught and studied in indigenous languages.