Dr. Courtney Goto delivers keynote at the 25th Anniversary 2019 Conference of the British and Irish Association of Practical Theology
Congratulations to Dr. Courtney Goto for presenting a keynote address at the British and Irish Association of Practical Theology Conference in Liverpool, England on July 10th. Her speech, “The Ubiquity of Ignorance: A Practical Theological Challenge of our Time,” addressed questions about ignorance amplified by Brexit, xenophobia, and rising populism in Britain and Ireland. Her keynote will be published in an upcoming issue of Practical Theology and its abstract is posted below.
Find more information about the British and Irish Association of Practical Theology and the 25th Anniversary 2019 Conference at https://www.biapt.org/events/conference-2019/.
“Although academics are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, few realize that as we construct knowledge, we simultaneously produce ignorance by habitually ignoring what we tend to ignore. When we do reflect on ignorance, we are more inclined to focus on other people’s ignorance than our own. In this paper, I take the case of Brexit as the “perfect storm” of ignorance to re-examine how practical theologians in the UK (and beyond) approach research. I explore the practice of demonization in caricatures from both sides of the referendum, using the work of Elaine Pagels. I then open up the practice by identifying related habits of ignorance, drawing on the theories of John Dewey. I challenge practical theologians not to leave ourselves to our own research devices intended to mitigate our ignorance, but rather to consider that our own fallibility requires methods that cultivate dependency on others not like us, so that we might help one another know what we would otherwise ignore.”