STANDING NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER YET REMAINING APART

A friend wrote that he was re-organizing his library and put Where We Stand, an Assemblies of God's textbook on doctrine, next to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He figured I would enjoy the humor in that shelving juxtaposition.

I responded:
Nice juxtaposition! I am mostly familiar with Freire through my study of August Boal (THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED) - Paulo Freire was a major influence on Boal’s teachings.

It is interesting to note that the A/G and Freire worked with very similar populations of people. The main difference was the perception of oppression. The A/G insisted and insists still that the major source of oppression was/is neither political nor educational but spiritual. I happen to agree and thus continue to prefer the A/G over other more politically-oriented institutions.

Why I like Boal's THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED is the practical approach to working with oppressed populations. I can apply my theological theory of theatre using his program of workshops and interactive performance. It is challenging not because of Marxist theory behind Boal's theatre but the "Marxists" who put Boal's program into practice - in working with these practitioners I have to call on God's grace to help me not be the one who brings too much friction into our working relationship. I have come to appreciate what they can teach me and hope that they have learned something reflecting God's grace from me.

My friend commented:
While I agree with elements of Freire's "praxis," I don't necessarily agree with his world-view. I found his concept of teacher as facilitator and fellow student quite profound. The symbiotic relationship of student and teacher as co-learner and co-educator is, in my opinion, a better philosophy of education than the teacher as expert.

I responded:
I, too, find the cooperative nature of teaching and learning to be profound. Willi Marxen, commenting on Philippians 3:17 [in which is found Paul's Greek coinage summimetai from which I coined symmimesis to describe my theology of theatre],considers mimetes as "one who shapes further" and reasons the "only people who have been shaped themselves and pass on their received shape through their own acts of shaping are mimetai." This idea is behind my concept of symmimesis, performance in the company of one another whereby one's performance shapes the persona of the other while becoming shaped personally by the other's performance, the whole peformance being done before an audience of One who shapes all things according to His own will.

Perhaps this is the difference between a mimete and a hypocrite. Both Greek words could refer to an actor but the latter word came to be associated with deception, action which concealed rather than revealed character. Might one's willingness to be shaped by another matter in how one acts in the presence of another? The less I am willing to be open to you knowing/forming/reforming who I am, the more I will tend towards hypocrisy. Teachers unwilling to learn from students or stubborn in refusing to step aside while another teaches may well be the worse for it.