The Monthly Roundup

A recap of April 2024 from Kait Dugan

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

I have been thinking about writing this roundup for the past few days. My student asked me yesterday—as courageous seminary students were arrested on the Princeton University campus for protesting—if the Center for Barth Studies could make an official statement about the current conflict happening in Gaza. My response was that the center could not make an official statement, because as an academic research center, we do not represent any particular view and try to facilitate the broadest conversation possible. We also can not speak for the institution as a whole. I mentioned that several of our contributors to this online magazine have written about the conflict and lamented/protested the violence and death reigning down in Gaza. This critical topic has not been absent from our platform.

Ironically, in the same week, I received critical feedback from readers that our online magazine has become too partisan and has been advancing a political agenda that does not give proper concern or attention to the suffering that Israelis endured on October 7. To many, it is clear where the center stands on this particular issue. Perhaps this feedback stems in part from my own political sympathies which one can probably discern through my social media. In this current situation, if you protest the violence in Gaza, many assume the person denies the suffering of the Israelis and does not care about the hostages. Holding multiple things to be true at one time seems impossible and out of grasp to many.

Navigating these kind of political complexities has marked my time working at the center since 2013. In my work, I have tried to facilitate an open-ended and critical conversation that invites as many people to the table as possible, a kind of radical hospitality. And I have attempted, however imperfectly, to keep my own particular research interests to a minimum in the conversations hosted at and by the center. As a result, over the years, many on various sides have not felt as though a place has been created for them at the table or, perhaps worse, that their place has been removed from the table. One of the most difficult parts of my work is hearing from others that they do not find a seat at the table when my singular intention has been expansion, not exclusion or erasure.

As I have been reflecting on all of these dynamics, it is not clear to me what to say in this particular moment. Nothing seems remotely adequate to address the complexity of what has unfolded since October 7, since the 2006 Operation Summer Rains, since the 1967 Six-Day War, since May 14, 1948, and so on. In the midst of this on-going dizziness, I have been returning to Barth’s conversations with students when he visited Princeton Seminary in 1962. One student asked Barth about Reinhold Niebuhr’s criticism of Barth’s silence on the Hungarian revolution. Barth responded by saying that he did not feel as though anything he could have said would have been helpful to the people who were concretely suffering in the situation. He goes on to ask: “And it seems to me that certainly for Christians the big question must be in every occasion: ‘Can what I do now or what I say now, can it be some help for others?’” As both a Christian and one who directs the Barth center, this has been the question circling in my mind over and over again—not just since October, but well before with the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the crisis in Yemen, the rise of antisemitism, the increased violence against the Asian American communities in the US, the climate crisis, and on and on…

I must confess that I still do not know what I can do now or what I can say that will be meaningful for those suffering in Gaza or the families in Israel desperate to find their loved ones. Nothing about this conflict is simple, and most online discourse I read leaves me dissatisfied and often frustrated, on every side. This is not because I think that I am the only person with enough nuance and precision to correctly assess the situation. And it is also not because I think both sides share equal blame. But I always have this unwavering instinct that the reality is more complex than what is admitted. Adding my own voice to a sea of digital voices often seems rather pointless and self serving.

And yet, one thing I keep going back to is Barth’s clear and sobering words when he asserts that “God always takes [God’s] stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”¹ Perhaps this is what the Barth Center should be known for, unconditionally: standing with those who have no rights, no privileges, and with those who are denied and deprived of freedom and life—wherever and whenever this concretely manifests.

During the month of April, there were several incredible reflections on this platform: the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the powerful witness of Cecilia Gentili’s life, the "Scholasticide" in Palestine, and the complex task of conversing with dead theologians, among many others. If you have missed any of the contributions from this past month, I hope you might find time to read them.

I am grateful to each of you who continue to read and critically engage this online magazine, especially when you may not agree with what has been written. We are all struggling to make sense of what is happening in the world right now, and I hope we can continue to bear with one another as we seek to stand, however imperfectly, with those whom God loves and has not forgotten.

— Kait Dugan

A free one-day hybrid event celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration. Women end up doing the academic housework. A pivotal upcoming conference: “Asian Exclusion and the Church: Ripples from the 1924 Immigration Act.” A new online postgraduate diploma in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Aberdeen. Marilynne Robinson talks about Genesis. A Spirit of Water event to highlight the care and responsibility involved in protecting and sharing valuable water resources. The 2024 Scottish Dogmatics Conference is a month away. After Babel: Digital Theology and Contextualities conference that will explore the interrelation between theology, contextuality and digital technology with particular focus on intercontextuality. Poet Christian Wiman against despair. Candler School of Theology will host the 2024 Summer Institute for Global Charismatic-Pentecostal Studies on campus June 27–29.

God Here and Now is an online magazine and newsletter from the Center for Barth Studies. If you would like to support our work, you can donate to the center here. All donations are tax-deductible. Questions? Ideas? Email us: barth.center@ptsem.edu

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1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (London: T&T Clark, 1975), 386.