T R A N S F OR M AT I V E R EC ON C I L E R S : LIVING INTO TENSIONS W H AT D OE S I T TA K E T O B E A RECONCILING COMMUNITY? B Y M A R C I A Y. R I G G S , J . E R S K I N E L O V E P R O F E S S O R O F C H R I S T I A N E T H I C S
Dr. Marcia Y. Riggs was named a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2017-2018. This article was originally delivered as a lecture to the CTS community during African American History Month 2017.
© 2001 Marcia Y. Riggs Please do not copy, reproduce, or distribute without written permission.
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HIS IMAGE REPRESENTS A CONSCIOUSNESS, A WORLDVIEW, A WAY OF LIFE, A WAY OF BEING AND DOING AS A MORAL AGENT THAT I HAVE BEEN COMMITTING TO INTENTIONALLY, DAY-IN-AND-DAY-OUT, FOR AT LEAST THE LAST 16 YEARS. THAT IS THE TIME WHEN I DREAMED THE IMAGE, THE PROCESS, AND THE NAME FOR THE PROCESS, RELIGIOUS ETHICAL MEDIATION (REM), INTO CONSCIOUSNESS. It has taken some time for me to embrace my dream of REM as an epistle from God than can benefit community. I continue to grapple to live as a religious ethical mediator and reimagine how I teach, how I do ministry, how I live religious ethical mediation. So, I share my REM dream for the benefit of this community. I do not offer these insights because I think they are right, but as an invitation to dwell in the space where the ethical emerges, in the overlap between deception and moral courage, caught up by the Holy Spirit during this dialogical moment in time. Succinctly, I am inviting you to affirm the following: • In the omnipresence of God’s justice, sustained within our contexts, by the working of the Holy Spirit (Spirit of God), in the omnipresence of violence, energies of conflict are transformed into energies that are generative and creative. SUMMER 2017 / VANTAGE /
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