Foreword

An occupational hazard of so-called academic theologians is that our scholarship will become, indeed, merely “academic.” This very real danger weighs particularly heavy on those of us who claim to be contextual or practical theologians, whose theological reflections claim to be rooted in the praxis of flesh-and-blood communities, especially marginalized communities. (Indeed, the constitutive link between theology and communal praxis is the responsibility of all theology, but that’s a topic already addressed at length in many books and articles elsewhere.) Ultimately, then, our scholarship must answer to el pueblo, to those communities which the Gospel proclaims are the privileged bearers of God’s Word in the world. This responsibility implies that, precisely as Christian scholars, we must accompany those communities in practical, everyday ways. We must also collaborate closely with those grassroots pastoral and community leaders who so often function as a bridge between el pueblo and academic and ecclesiastical institutions. Our first task is to listen: to the poor, to those community leaders immersed in the everyday lives of the poor, and ultimately to the living God revealed in a preferential way among the poor, in the lived faith of the poor. Dr. Paul Farmer’s life and work were the embodiment of this dynamic, this preferential option for the poor. As Jorge José Ferrer argues in his chapter herein, Paul Farmer was the epitome of what Antonio Gramsci called an “organic intellectual.”