In the second part of this blog post, Paul Kim continues to share insights from his colleagues Katie Douglass (practical theologian) and Brittany Tausen (social psychologist) about their co-authored book, Love Your Neighbor: How Psychology Can Enliven Faith and Transform Community.
PK: In a recent Christian Scholar’s Review article, you have written compellingly and thoughtfully about collaborating across disciplines as Christian scholars. What are the rewards and challenges? How can we (Christian scholars) teach students in a way that these collaborative efforts are incorporated?
BT: Interdisciplinary collaborations are so fun because they stretch you outside of your comfort zone and give you a new way of seeing the world. I’ve long viewed the world through a social psychological lens, but since working so closely with and learning so much from Katie, I feel like I also have a new set of theological glasses on that I cannot take off. For me, this new perspective creates an even richer and more meaningful scaffold for serving God and coming to know God in and through my work.
Working across disciplines can be challenging because, in many ways, we’ve been trained into an overreliance on one disciplinary way of knowing. Strong collaborations require an unlearning of hierarchical understandings of different disciplines in order to see the unique and critical contributions of each.
I’d encourage scholars to model interdisciplinarity early on for students in their classrooms – in the materials they choose to read, the guest speakers they invite into their courses, and in the ways they speak about the value of other ways of knowing. One interesting observation I’ve had from co-teaching with Katie is that our undergraduate students seem to be much more receptive to interdisciplinarity than our graduate students. The more deeply entrenched one becomes in specific disciplinary training, the more difficult it seems to be to appreciate the value of other disciplines or to see the need for conversations between disciplines. I think the earlier we can set the stage for students that interdisciplinarity matters not only for knowing, but also for the potential reach and impact our work can have, the better.
KD: For me, the biggest reward of this collaboration has been learning from an expert. I can call Brittany at any time and ask, “Is there a study on this?” and she is eager to teach me. I also think it’s more fun to work with someone who can enrich your own work. I don’t think either of us could have written this book alone because we try to tackle questions that are best answered with insights from multiple fields. To explain why we fail to love our neighbors is more complicated than a flat theological response of “sin.” Both Scripture and psychology offer more nuanced and complicated answers that help us grow in self-knowledge and offer us a path forward to love our neighbors better.
PK: How did you view psychology and Christian theology when writing this book, and more broadly, in your collaborative efforts? Equal partners? One field more as a foundation than the other? Or something else?
KD: This is a great question. I think both of us prioritize our field (as I think we should). You could say that theology is my native language, and so the questions I start with, the definitions of terms I use, and my assumptions are shaped theologically. For me, this means that my starting place and normative measure for all things are theological. I think (and hope) Brittany would say the same about social psychology. This means we actually spent a lot of time patiently defining terms for one another, disagreeing in the most earnest and loving way, and trying to understand one another. This type of risky collaboration resulted in enormous trust. I think we still have a lot to learn from each other, and some of our various questions are not resolved. However, the way we worked put us on equal footing, and my respect for Brittany and humility regarding my own expertise have only grown through our work together.
BT: I agree with Katie here! We both lean a bit more heavily into our disciplines, given our own areas of expertise, but I think from the beginning, the framing was one of mutual enrichment and respect for one another’s fields and unique contributions. We also recognize that the fields are distinct in important ways. Psychology is not intended to be normative or to provide a set of moral rules one ought to live by (though it can certainly offer guidance on what helps and harms individual and communal flourishing). It does, however, endeavor to pinpoint factors that promote or hinder particular mental processes and behaviors. Theology tells us to care about neighbor love and tethers us to a rich and transcendent why for doing so. Psychology helps us to unpack the most practical and efficient tools for getting to where theology is telling us to go. In that way, I would say we approached the book with the underlying assumption that theology is prominent for setting our trajectory (why we value neighbor love) and psychology is prominent in charting a course to getting to that outcome, though in ways that resonate with Biblical truths.
PK: We are living in a tumultuous time. How might some of the lessons in your book inform our engagement with current sociopolitical events?
KD: This is a hard question, and three years ago, when we started writing this book, we had no idea what was in store – in fact, we thought, “We should write this book to do our part to try to prevent dehumanizing language from turning into dehumanizing actions toward vulnerable groups.” I think the lesson for us today comes from Karl Barth, who wrote a theological anthropology during the Third Reich that focused on mutuality. He said we know we are treating people as the full human God made them to be when we see them and are willing to be seen, when we hear and listen to others and are willing to share our voice, and when we are able to serve others while also being served. I have major concerns when people hide their identity to do their job. I am also skeptical of those who are only benevolent “givers” who serve others but never need help. To be truly human is to be vulnerable enough to let other people see you, hear your honest thoughts, and help you. I think one of the most beautiful things about humanity is that we can feel and carry one another’s pain – this is proven in social science and also written about in Scripture. This is not possible without the vulnerability of mutual seeing, hearing, and serving. This is what Christ did for us, and it is into these kinds of loving, vulnerable relationships that I believe each one of us is called.
BT: One of the patterns that saddens me in this current moment is the way that definitions of neighbor appear to be narrowing to mean only those who think and act like me, were born where I was born, vote how I vote, or believe what I believe. The science we lay out in our book helps us to see how psychological phenomena like emotional or cognitive overwhelm and a scarcity mindset drive disengagement with and dismissiveness of others and fuel harmful stereotypes and actions against them. The mental gymnastics humans perform (often on a non-conscious level) to justify the strengthening of in-group benefits and out-group harm often boils down to trying to make themselves feel safe and secure. If we stopped at psychology, we could get stuck here – it’s nothing more than a psychological protection mechanism to prioritize one’s own needs of feeling safe and secure. But we don’t. We look to theology for a moral imperative – we are called to do more than love ourselves and prioritize our own needs – we are called to love our neighbors.
And that Biblical definition of neighbor we see in the Good Samaritan story? It is actually defined by difference and socio-political distance. There is no world in which these two men would have been physical neighbors, no meaningful similarities or connections to bind them together. Rather, they are two people who happened to be in the same place at the same time. One in need and the other a witness to that need. Attending to that need, even at a cost to himself, is what designates the Samaritan as a good neighbor. So maybe we don’t ask “who is my neighbor?” but, “am I being a good neighbor?” Am I loving those who are different than me, whose stories and needs God has given me an opportunity and responsibility to witness, even when it costs me? Am I accepting Christ’s expansive definition of neighbor that I believe Christians are uniquely positioned to respond to precisely because we can be still and know that God will care for us, that we do not need to prioritize our own needs, and instead, we have the incredible gift of participating in the radically inclusive and unfathomably self-sacrificial love of Christ Jesus?
