Contextual Bible Study, as mentioned above, embraces three interconnected forms of consciousness, firstly “community consciousness,” followed by “critical consciousness” and finally “community consciousness”. West explains this connectivity using the method of
“See-Judge-Act”. West argues,
Contextual Bible Study works within the framework of the “See-Judge-Act” approach to social transformation, a process that was developed by Father Joseph Cardijn in the 1930s in Belgium, where he was working as a chaplain among factory workers. The See-Judge-Act method has been “one of the basic genres of contextual theology propagated in South Africa”. This method “meant starting with a social analysis, then proceeding to the reading of the [biblical] text and then to action”. “See” involves careful social analysis of a particular context “from below” by organized groups of the marginalized. This “reality” is then “judged” by the biblical and theological tradition of ‘God’s project’. “The shape” of God’s will for the world, on earth as it is in heaven, as reflected in the Bible when re-read from the margins, is used to interrogate “lived”
reality. The discrepancies between the shape of God’s project and the shape of lived reality for the marginalized give both the energy for and a shape to the “action that must be taken to transform lived reality so that it conforms more closely to God’s project”.133
Hence, regarding West's argument, the focus point of the constructed questions in CBS is
“in front of the text”. This is because the Bible study starts and ends with the “voice of the ordinary people”, which includes the “lived experience of and the embodied theology of the participants themselves”.134 CBS ends with the “Action-plan” question which engages participants to change and transform their society. I will unfold this process later in this section.
133 Gerald West, ‘Do Two Walk Together? Walking with the Other through Contextual Bible Study’, Anglican Theological Review,. Vol. 3, no 93 (2011), 431-449.
134 West, ‘Contextual Bible Study’, 2007, 8.
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The aim of Contextual Bible Study is to use the Bible as a tool for transformation in terms of empowering people, equipping them with resources and enabling them to make a difference in or impact on their environment and conditions of life.
Taking into consideration the prejudice of society concerning the disability issue,135 the offense and pain that some churches have caused to people with disabilities through and during the healing prayers,136and the “self-annihilation”137 of people with disabilities who underestimate their value as God’s creation, I have found that the CBS is a useful instrument to empower people with disabilities in the DRC and to train church leaders and lecturers of religion courses to become involved in the social transformation of people with disabilities and those around them in society.
Contextual Bible Study from a disability perspective starts with the experience of the
“organized poor and marginalized”138 which includes the members of IMAN’ENDA, the people with disabilities who are organized in training centers and church groups.
There are five steps in CBS’ construction which I apply in the context of this study from a disability perspective:
The first step is to “choose a theme”. CBS begins with the contextual concerns of the community; hence it always follows “the issue or theme” that the community deals with. In this study, the focus or concern of IMAN’ENDA, as I mentioned above, is to change the image of PWDs through re-reading the Bible for social transformation.
135 Paul Lindoewood, ‘Were There Disabled people in the Garden of Eden?’ Unpublished paper (UK, 2007), 3- 4. 136 Sam Kabue, Chairperson of the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network, EDAN, conducted a survey to discover why people with disabilities are seldom in church. Three-quarters of the group interviewed admitted that they do not often go to church because they felt that most sermons, especially those based on the Gospels, condemn them as the “poor wretched and cursed that cannot receive God’s mercy, because they have no faith”.
(EDAN Newsletter July-September 2005), 2-5.
137 Karl Marx’s terminology is quoted by James I. Charlton when he develops the third component of his definition of disability oppression, stating that it is “psychological internalization” which creates “false consciousness and alienation”, making people with disabilities feel like they are “less normal, less capable than others, …[leading to] self-pity, self-hate, shame…” (J. I. Charlton, Nothing About Us Without Us, 1998, 28).
138 One of the Ujamaa Centre’s principles when conducting Bible studies is to work with organized groups because they “have a stronger sense of identity than unorganized groups”. Organized groups have also a “clear idea of what they want from a particular project” and they may bring their resources to it(West, ‘Doing Contextual Bible Study’, 2007, 5; West, The Academy of the Poor, 2003, 94; West, ‘Do Two Walk Together?’
2011, 444).
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The second step is “finding a biblical text”. According to the Ujamaa Centre, the biblical text has to relate to the context of the participants and involves two approaches: reading the familiar text in unfamiliar ways and reading unfamiliar texts. West says, “While we can and do read the texts that the group chooses, we also bring to them texts and resources with which they are less familiar. In other words, we read familiar texts in unfamiliar ways (by approaching them differently), and we read unfamiliar texts (those texts that are neglected or forgotten)”.139In this study, I selected the biblical texts according to my own disability experience and the concerns of the wider community of people with disabilities.140 Of the biblical texts selected in this study, the first two texts were “unfamiliar texts” (Exodus 4, 1- 17; and 2 Corinthians 12, 1-10). By “unfamiliar texts”, I mean texts that are not familiar in relation to the issue of disability. These texts were not well known to the participants, especially IMAN’ENDA members, because most preachers have not given deep thought to the concept of disability. The third text I selected was a “familiar text”, but read in an
“unfamiliar way” (Acts 3, 1-10). The text was well known especially as it deals with
“healing” and “miracles”. The common interpretation of the text focuses on the spectacular nature of the event described. The approach of connecting the context of community with the context of text was a new discovery for the participants.
The third step is “questioning and reading”. There are two kinds of questions that are used in CBS: “Contextual questions” (linked to community consciousness) and “textual questions”
(linked to critical consciousness). “Contextual questions” constitute the framework of the Bible study as described above, in the sense that the Bible study starts and ends with community concerns. “Textual questions” are further aspects of CBS. These involve participants in looking at the text itself.
There are many and diverse approaches to reading the text in a liberation hermeneutic.141 There are, among others, the “three modes of reading and their respective relationships with
139 West, ‘Doing Contextual Bible Study’, 2007, 7.
140 As I stated in chapter 1 of this study, the last two biblical texts - 2 Corinthians 12, 1-10 and Acts 3, 1-11 - are the basic teaching texts of IMAN’ENDA as they deal with themes such as “acceptance”, “self-awareness” and
“community responsibility”.
141 Many scholars of liberation hermeneutics based their reading on the struggle for liberation of the poor and marginalized. “Liberation hermeneutic in general uses the Bible as a resource for the struggle against oppression of kind based on the biblical witness that God does not sanction oppression but rather always stands on the side of the oppressed to liberate them”. (West, Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context. 2nd Edition (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1995), 148; Ukpong,
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the situation of struggle: reading the text, reading behind the text, and reading in front of the text. Each of these modes of reading is used within contexts of liberation”.142
The mode of reading, labeled “in front of the text”, “became particularly relevant in liberation theology. The point of departure of liberation theology was the actual experience of discrimination, oppression and exploitation. The aim was liberation, equal dignity, social justice and human rights”.143 It is a “contextual approach”, as Ukpong states,
which focuses on the context of the reader in relation to the text. It uses the reader's context in various ways as a factor in making the meaning of the text. All the approaches to biblical interpretations in Africa discussed above (and indeed all Third World approaches to biblical interpretation) belong to the last approach. Their point of departure is the context of the readers, and they are all concerned with linking the biblical text to the reader’s context.144
This mode of reading is the one around which Contextual Bible Study is constructed in the sense that, in the Ujamaa Centre questionnaires on Bible study, the first and last questions are focused in front of the text. This entails that the first question asks participants to give their impression on “what is the text about?” Such questions allow participants to connect their realities and concerns to the text. The last question turns back to the same aspect by asking participants to examine what the text now projects for them.145 The question would be “how does this text challenge us?”
In the middle section of the Bible study, between first and last questions, there are textual questions which bring the participants closer to the text through literary analysis and, sometimes, “probe the world behind the text”, in both cases by using the resources of biblical scholarship.
'Development in Biblical Interpretation in Africa: Historical and Hermeneutical Directions' in West and Dube (eds), The Bible in Africa, 2000, 19.
142 West, Biblical Hermeneutics, 1995, 131; Klaus Nurnberger, Biblical Theology in Outline: The Vitality of the Word of God. (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2004), 32.
143 Nurnberger, Biblical Theology in Outline, 2004, 32.
144 Ukpong, ‘Developments in Biblical Interpretation’, 2009, 19.
145 West, ‘Doing Bible Study’, 2007, 8.
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My Bible studies begin (and end) in front of the text. This involved participants in looking at the text itself: “It [focuses] on the text and its underlying structure, and sees the meaning of the text as attained by decoding the text, and which also focuses on the reader in interaction with the text, and sees the meaning of the text as emerging in the encounter between the reader and the text”.146
However, some questions were designed on the basis of the socio-historical and cultural background of the text and to provide a means to offer input about this. Patricia Bruce says,
“A great deal has been written about the miracles, but the focus has not been on disability or reconstructing the lives of people with disabilities in the New Testament period…Knowledge of disability in the first century will be helpful in understanding the text…”147 However, in composing my questionnaire for Bible studies and in analyzing and interpreting data, I also took into account the psycho-spiritual perspective adopted by Wayne G. Rollins in his article,
“The Bible in Psycho-Spiritual Perspective: News from the World of Biblical Scholarship”
where he states:
Psychological biblical criticism sees the Bible in part as a history book that tells us about the past, but even more as a book about the perennial nature and experience of the human soul or psyche, its trials, troubles, successes, and victories, employing a vast array of literary genres, from myth and legend, to psalm, parable, and sermon to discern and describe the soul’s nature, origin, habits, powers, and destiny. It is a text that informs us about histories and societies of the past, but it is also a text that from time to time transforms its readers and catalyzes new insights and powers.148
In other words, the mode of reading I used when conducting Bible studies was the literary approach from a psycho-spiritual perspective, as the value of this study lies in its development of holistic education for people with disabilities, focusing on the emotional side which includes spiritual and psychological aspects.
The fourth step is “Articulating and owning”. “The Power of the Contextual Bible Study process is that it allows participants to articulate and own a theological understanding of their
146 Ukpong, ‘Developments in Biblical Interpretation’, 2000, 25.
147 Patricia Bruce, ‘A Daughter of Abraham’, 2005, 17
148 Wayne G. Rollins, ‘The Bible in Psycho-Spiritual Perspective: News from the World of Biblical Scholarship’, Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 51, No 2(2002), 101-118.
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context”.149 This means that CBS enables participants to own their Bible understanding and to address issues which have earlier alienated them from the church and led to their isolation and exploitation. West, quoting Gutierrez, states: “…We must realize that there will be no qualitative leap forward to a different theological outlook until the alienated and exploited become the artisans of their own liberation and make their voices heard directly”.150 Referring to liberation theology for disability Lees argues: “Its purpose would be that disabled people would be sparkling themselves, doing theology from their own experiences, teaching church and society what life is like from their perspective and working towards its transformation for justice for all people”.151 Contextual Bible Study helps people with disabilities to understand some issues in the Bible related to disability such as, healing, acceptance, questions of body and suffering, and provides sufficient resources for a determined pursuit of their transformation.
The fifth step is “Developing a plan of action”. “Contextual Bible Study ends with action.
Each small group, and the larger group which they make up, is required to develop an action plan. Contextual Bible Study is not merely about interpreting the Bible; it is about allowing the Bible to equip us to change our world so that the kingdom of God may come on earth, as it is in heaven!”.152 Referring to the previous point - that CBS empowers “participants” to
“articulate” and “own local contextual theologies” and makes them ready to act - I concluded my Bible study sessions by asking for an action plan, following on and resulting from what had been learned during the CBS. The question was, in other words, related to transformation. I found that this step helped me to observe participants’ reactions whereby I noticed that they were not only interested in Bible studies as such, but that they showed commitment to personal transformation and a desire to engage the church in practical action.
The last two questions of each Bible study session referred to these last two constructive steps of CBS. Reactions helped me to analyze and assess the findings in order to respond to the main question of the research, “How can the Bible be used as resource to contribute to a holistic education for people with disabilities?”
149 West, ‘Doing Contextual Bible Study’, 2007, 10.
150 See West, Biblical Hermeneutics, 1995, 214.
151 Lees, ‘Interpreting the Bible’, 1997, 14.
152 West, ‘Doing Contextual Bible Study’, 2007, 10.
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