Structural evil

Abstract: Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation. By Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2013. xix + 309 pp. $22.00 (paper).Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda presents Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation as a wake-up call to people who feel stuck by the current, seemingly impossible conundrum of the ecological crisis. The result is a theological ethics that can be utilized to navigate various economic and ecological ills in a responsible way.Moe-Lobeda's argument consists of three distinct steps. First, she sets the parameters for what she views as structural sin. Essentially, she collapses everything into a structural account, understanding sin as participation in structures that cause violence, whether to other people or to animals or to the earth. This participation is unavoidable. At times, the account also seems to point to the fact that these sinful structures will never be overcome. Thus, part of her task is to provide an account for navigating structural evil rather than simply overcoming it.The second part of her argument is the proposition of a framework for thinking through these issues, which she terms "critical mystical vision." This critical mystical vision contains three aspects necessary for thinking through how to confront structural evil in our world. First, this vision contains an account for what is actually happening in the world through the articulation of structural evil. Second, the critical mystical vision needs to be able to see what could possibly be, what the possibilities are for confronting such structural evil. The third part of this framework necessitates seeing the "sacred Spirit of life coursing throughout creation and leading it . . . into abundant life for all" (p. 112). This second part of her argument receives the most attention as it gives the paradigm in which Moe-Lobeda wants to proceed.The third section of the argument is explicitly ethical, turning on the construction of a neighbor-love. Moe-Lobeda uses the Christian exhortation to "love your neighbor as yourself' as the ethical guide for her framework. Love provides the impetus and moral framework for making decisions and constructing actions that help us navigate structural evil. Love is the moral framework that gives the action necessary in a "critical mystical vision."Moe-Lobeda's argument suffers from what I view as a single major flaw: her unwillingness to locate herself or her argumentation into a group or community. She tries to write for everyone from no specific place. This flaw manifests itself in two ways. …

Abstract: The 2016 American presidential campaign raised awareness of structural evil among segments of the population whose privilege has protected this knowledge, both making them self-conscious of their vulnerability as persons and revealing the role that the liberal narrative of progress has played in establishing and perpetuating structural evil. This moment of opportunity to shift both the political and the theological narrative demands liberal conversion: overcoming the temptations of anger, denial, and paralysis to embrace solidarity in vulnerability and power. An early liberationist narrative that embraces utopian praxis rather than utopian ideology is both more theologically honest and more effective than the liberal narrative of progress.

Abstract: Social theory can help Christian ethics respond to structural evil, both by accurately naming "what is there" and by precisely specifying "what to do." William Cavanaugh and Katie Grimes, representing distinct neo-Franciscan and Junian approaches, draw extensively on social theory to confront structural evils of nation-state violence and racism. Yet they fall short of an adequate account of how social structures and individual agency interact. Their works obscure the actual mechanisms of social change, call for overly heroic actions, and offer rival formulations of the church–world relationship. I use critical realist social theory to offer an alternative approach that better accounts for the interaction of structure and agency needed for effective Christian responses.