Intersectional Applications

NOTE - this entire article was generated with LLMs and is for mockup purposes only.

In our previous article, we proposed that intersectional analysis offers vital possibilities for expanding and enriching theological discourse.  Intersectional perspectives recognize that social locations shaped by interlocking systems of privilege and oppression influence all theology.  This article further explores the implications of intersectionality specifically for pedagogical practices and applications to ministry.  We contend teaching through an intersectional lens is essential for cultivating reflexivity, exposing blind spots, and moving toward more just classrooms and congregations.

Intersectionality recognizes power circulates through intersecting differences.  Pedagogy focused only on single identity axes like gender risks missing complexity.  Intersectionality examines mutually constituting relations between race, class, gender, sexuality, and additional differences.  This framework compels greater attentiveness to diversity and domination in all contexts, including theological education and ministry.

The presumed neutrality and universality of dominant Eurocentric pedagogy obscures biases that arise from privileged social locations.  Intersectionality rejects false notions that particular knowledge applies comprehensively across locations and reveals subjugated knowledges suppressed by power.   Teaching through an intersectional lens means recognizing all pedagogies are situated, shaped by context.

Classroom Dynamics and Hidden Curricula

Paulo Freire argued traditional education employs a “banking model” that deposits information into passive students.  This reinforces domination by silencing diverse voices and perspectives.1  Intersectionality aligns with critical pedagogy that seeks humanization through liberative collaborative knowledge production.

However, simply diversifying curriculum falls short without examining classroom power dynamics.  Ellsworth explains that contested sites of learning generate anxiety such that students retreat to familar ground.2  Intersectional pedagogy requires ongoing critical reflexivity regarding how social hierarchies operate unconsciously through instruction, discourses, practices, and unspoken rules.

Explicit curriculum outlines official course content.  Null curriculum denotes what is excluded or ignored.3  Hidden curriculum transmits tacit norms and values through subtle cues.  Intersectionality examines these layered dynamics, asking what knowledge is legitimized or erased and how power circulates.

Marginalized students frequently feel pressured to assimilate to dominant cultural norms to succeed.  Britzman describes how “the institutional imperative to normalize students displaces the radical potential of education.”4  Intersectionality rejects demands to conform that perpetuate injustice.

Dialogical collaborative learning guided by intersectional commitments can foster classrooms that honor plurality, distinctness, and equity.  This requires interrogating biases embedded in pedagogical models and course design.   Even critically oriented courses can unconsciously center privileged voices if not vigilantly intersectional.

Applications in Theological Education

Incorporating intersectional questions and materials expands theological inquiry:

• How do race, class, gender, sexuality, and additional differences shape religious experience?
• Whose voices and perspectives are missing from traditional theological discourse?
• How do social hierarchies influence biblical interpretation and applications?
• How might core concepts change if considered from marginalized locations?
• What multiplicity and dissonance do intersectional perspectives reveal?

Intersectional course design also demands examining dynamics of privilege and marginalization within the classroom itself.  Educators must foster liberative dialogical space where all students can participate equitably regardless of identity.

Identity caucusing, where students meet in spaces for those who share an identity, provides opportunity to articulate experiences often unheard in mixed settings.  Caucusing can illuminate assumptions needing interrogation.  Dialogue between caucus groups fosters solidarity across differences.5

Ongoing reflexivity is vital.  Educators must ask how their own social locations, conscious and unconscious biases, and institutional power shape pedagogical choices and discourse.

Intersectional ministry praxis similarly requires examining embedded norms and pedagogies.  Religious education centered only on dominant groups risks enabling oppression and domination even if content seems liberative.  Intersectional ministryasks how religious instruction empowers those facing intersecting marginalization.

Applications in Ministry Contexts

Applying intersectionality means recognizing complexity within congregations and communities.  People’s experiences arise from navigating interlocking systems of privilege and subordination related to identities.

For example, an older straight disabled white man faces marginalization due to disability and age along with benefits of being male, straight, and white.  A younger undocumented Latina lesbian mother encounters marginalization due to immigration status, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality alongside privileges of youth, ability, and language.

Intersectional ministry resists flattening or homogenizing groups.  It asks how each person and community negotiates distinct intersections shaped by power.  This compels ministry attentive to nuanced particularities in how individuals and communities experience spiritual and ethical questions.

Programming addressing only one identity axis like gender risks missing complexity.  Bible studies on passages related to women may overlook how interpretations depend on race, class, sexuality, or other differences.  Intersectional ministry examines scripture, traditions, and practices considering multiple perspectives.

Teaching children simply to be kind excludes analysis of injustice. Intersectionality cultivates critical consciousness regarding how difference becomes hierarchy.  Ministry must equip people to interrogate intersecting prejudices.

An intersectional approach means collaborating with marginalized communities as agents, not passive recipients of ministry.  People facing oppression often best understand needed change. Intersectional ministry follows their lead.

Congregations risk reproducing biases through unconscious norms.  Gendered leadership roles, lack of accessibility, racial disparities in hiring, or absence of LGBTQIA+ people in leadership can reflect internalized assumptions needing transformation.  Intersectional ministry involves continual collective reflexivity regarding how practices inadvertently enable oppression.

Ultimately, intersectional perspectives further liberative ministry that recognizes complexity, fosters critical consciousness, centers the margins, and works to dismantle interlocking systems perpetuating injustice.  Intersectionality provides conceptual tools to imagine and enact more equitable possibilities that honor diversity.

Conclusion

Intersectional pedagogy and praxis offer vital frameworks for classrooms and congregations concerned with equality and justice.  Attention to intersecting differences and power relations enhances reflexivity, revealing blind spots and biases.  Intersectionality enriches analysis, recognizing complexity missed by narrow focus on singular identity axes.  Applied collaboratively, intersectional commitments expand possibility for more inclusive religious education and ministry.  We hope these initial reflections demonstrate intersectionality’s potential for fostering greater consciousness, equity, and solidarity across differences.

1 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000).

2 Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy,” Harvard Educational Review 59, no. 3 (1989): 297-325.

3 Joe Kincheloe, “Introduction: The Power and Politics of Lesson Study,” in What You Don’t Know About Schools (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

4 Deborah Britzman, “The Very Thought of Education: Freud and After,” in Cultural Studies and Education: Perspectives on Theory, Methodology, and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2010).

5 Lee Anne Bell, Storytelling for Social Justice: Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching (New York: Routledge, 2010).