The Pentecost as a Resource for Democratic Politics

According to Kristen Deede Johnson, Augustinian theology provides resources for overcoming debates about the consolidation or protection of difference in plural society. Johnson’s Augustine invites us to unite with others in loving and humble interactions with difference. I seek to further concretize the kind of communication that Johnson’s theology entails, putting it in conversation with Iris Marion Young’s theory of “communicative democracy.” Drawing on Willie James Jennings’s interpretive work on Pentecost in his magisterial commentary on Acts, I trace in the event of Pentecost a paradigm for communication between divergent communities that respects difference and underscores possibilities for union. The community born at Pentecost is comprised of divergent constituencies, and yet is nevertheless integrated by communicative practices. The paper invites reflection on how divinely granted visions might be translated into conversations that facilitate what Jennings calls “joining.”

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