Wolves in the airport : Jesus’ critique of purity as a challenge to twenty-first-century surveillance
Abstract
This article draws on Jesus’ critique of holiness as purity to build a Christian theological challenge to unjust twenty-first-century surveillance. Categorical suspicion is directed against populations deemed to be risky. The Temple of Ezekiel’s prophecy is set alongside the contemporary airport. Using the analogy of the management of the flows of people into and through sterile spaces, it is argued that purity paradigms have a functional equivalent in the twenty-first-century attempt to control a chaotic world through surveillance by social sorting. The importance of scrutinising those with the power to name categories and the dispersal of notions of ‘risky persons’ into broader social imagination form one direction of critique. The church is challenged as to its reinforcing of unjust stereotypes, particularly of Muslims, and the call of compassion to reach over boundaries, without ignoring the existence of actual dangerous people.
Citation
Stoddart , E 2018 , ' Wolves in the airport : Jesus’ critique of purity as a challenge to twenty-first-century surveillance ' , Practical Theology , vol. 11 , no. 1 , pp. 54-66 . https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073X.2017.1414483
Publication
Practical Theology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1756-073XType
Journal article
Rights
© Contact Pastoral Trust 2017. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073X.2017.1414483.
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