May 4, 2001
Kim Whitney, Place and Moral Imagination/s: An Inquiry into Sacred Place

By way of definition, Kimberly started out by defining what exactly a "theology of place" means and from what context she approaches the subject. What does place mean in the discourse of an emerging eco-theology?

So often in the eco-theology discourse and in our struggles to understand and make sense of reality we hear talk about a "grand narrative" that undergirds all smaller (personal/communal/societal/etc.) narratives. A theology of place contends that there is no universal grand narrative. Rather, answers to ultimate questions arise out of the process of particular struggles. Likewise, much eco-theological discourse is built around the idea that there is an environmental crisis. A theology of place would like to challenge the idea of an "environmental crisis" because such language assumes what Kimberly refers to as a binary opposition. In this case, rhetoric about the "environmental crisis" posits a natural world against the cultural world. We should begin to talk more of the "envro-socio-cultural crisis." A theology of place is helpful in deconstructing the binaries found in: theology-eco-theology, theology-feminist theology, eco-feminism-womanism, etc.. Finally a sense of place signifies a turn from the "how" of theology to the "where." In religious studies, there has been so much focus on the "how" we do things that the "where" we come from, and "where" we are have been all but lost. The rubric of place provides multi-disciplinary focus on the "where," it allows us to explore place and displacement from multiple fields.

Kimberly then went on to identify her own context from which she began looking at theologies of place. Her own roots were in cultural geography. Cultural geography provides a context to talk about felt experience in terms of place, culture, and society. Her own point of departure is a farm in Upper State NY. Growing up there, she witnessed the development of the area, the disappearance of flora and fauna, the replacement of small farmers with larger ones, etc.

Agriculture provides a profound connection to the land, a strong sense of place. Important to note here is that "theologies of place" are about certain places rather than "Nature" as an abstract concept. Kimberly believes that movement towards sustainability will happen only when the West stops using Nature and Culture as points of departure, and start using place instead. This move to place reveals the interconnection of aspects that contribute to placegeography, mind, spirit, culture, society, etc.thereby ending the binary way in which we tend to look at life.

The notion of place provides us with a tool to deal with the complexity of an interrelated reality; it provides us with a specific place in space and time to which we can bring a multi-disciplinary analysis of "what is going on." We can perform a power analysis, a socio-economic analysis, and a theological analysis of one place in a way that is all but impossible when dealing with the "Whole."

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