It was good to do a lecture this week on Ministry and the Institution and revisit the notion of ‘Habitus‘ and particularly Bourdieu who sees us as part of and not just influenced by our sociological settings (family, geography, race etc) ie also influencers. Not rocket science I know, but I wonder how conscious we are of the potential interplay, and how controlled we allow ourselves to be due to how we were located and raised in any particular setting. This was why I used it the lecture as my experience is there is plenty of space to play and unfold a new habitus in the institution, but not everyone does. Indeed it is part of what we called to do as christians, so even when there are authority figures that seek to constrain, we can challenge or as Bob Marley might sing “emancipate yourself from mental slavery”.
One of the sociological (maybe philosophical) issues we need to unpack in this mini series is the notion of “other, and othering”. “Othering” is a term that not only encompasses the many expressions of prejudice on the basis of group identities, but we argue that it provides a clarifying frame that reveals a set of common processes and conditions that propagate group-based inequality and marginality.” Powell and Menendian. So whilst this a huge issue in society at large, and particularly in relation to groups, I would suggest it is rooted in the individual.

Othering is an issue for people generally (and perhaps particularly for people of faith) because we are not always that honest about the stories we tell ourselves. We talk a lot about wholeness and integration in faith terms (not just christian faith), notions of power, set apart, chosen, even redeemed buy into ideas that there is other, perhaps going right back to the garden, where instead of seeing ourselves as rooted, from and connected to the soil, creation and one another, we read the text to see ourselves as other. This lack of connectedness could be at the root of our othering so I think one way forward is recognise that we in ourselves are other. Lets be honest, if the me I think myself to be, and the me you think I am, and the me I actually am, ever met I doubt they would recognise each other. So lets co-create the new habitus, that recognises we can be influencers in how that unfolds, and our start point is not that we have the answer and everyone else is other.