Friday, 13 February 2015

Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation,
Miroslav Volf, Abingdon Press, 1996, page 19

In a new (well, written in 1996 but new to me) book that I reading for my next essay, Miroslav Volf asserts:

The politics of difference rests on two basic persuasions. First, the identity of a person is inescapably marked by the particularities of the social setting in which he or she is born and develops.

This starts things from the very beginning. Volf continues:

In identifying with parental figures, peer groups, teachers, religious authorities and community leaders, one does not identify with them simply as human beings, but also with their investment in a particular language, religion, custome, their construction of gender and racial difference, etc.

All this comes in our assessment of people, often our first impressions of the way people present.