Whose Theology Is It Anyway?

By Rev. Tameaka Reid Sims, 11^th Episcopal District

Seminary has a way of exposing assumptions. This spring, during a course on sexual ethics, I expected to sharpen positions I had held for years. Instead, I found myself wrestling with a different question altogether: Whose theology is it anyway? Not who wrote, preached, or defended it; rather, whose realities were present when it was formed? And perhaps just as importantly, whose experiences were absent?

Admittedly, I have lived comfortably shaped within the traditions of the church. Like many clergy, I inherited theological frameworks that helped make sense of Scripture, ministry, and the world around me. They felt settled. Reliable. Complete. Then Dr. David Fitch interrupted that certainty, not by telling me what to think, but by creating a classroom where long-held assumptions could be examined rather than merely defended. 

As we read, engaged, examined Scripture, and wrestled with thoughts surrounding gender, sexuality, identity, and ethics. What surprised me was not that I encountered perspectives different from my own. Seminary invites that kind of engagement. What surprised me was how often I found myself challenged to see simply.

I knew transgender, bisexual, and homosexual people existed. I have never wished harm upon anyone, nor have I ever preached hatred from a pulpit. I have loved people across many kinds of differences and genuinely believed I was doing the work the Gospel required of me. Yet, I began to realize there is a distinction between acknowledging someone’s existence and thoughtfully considering their experience. I had never slowed down long enough to think theologically about their lives – not as issues to be debated or positions to be defended, but as human beings created in the image of God. Human beings carrying stories, hopes, disappointments, questions, and realities. This realization is not a confession of malice. It is a confession of speed. Of assumption. Of a formation so complete that it quietly narrowed my theological imagination without my noticing. 

The deeper lesson of the semester had less to do with sexuality than I initially believed. It had everything to do with attention. I began to wonder: What do we miss when our theological conversations focus more on categories than on human beings? How often do we discuss people without ever truly hearing them? These questions feel especially significant within the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Our denomination was born because people refused to accept inherited limitations as the final word. Richard Allen and those who walked with him looked upon exclusion and envisioned something different. They challenged assumptions about who could lead, who could worship, and who was worthy of dignity. The founding impulse of the AME Church was not merely resistance to injustice. It was a profound theological affirmation of Black humanity in a society determined to deny it. We celebrate that story often, and rightly so.

What I am beginning to contemplate, however, is whether every generation is called to undertake a similar work of theological examination. Not necessarily to reach the same conclusions, but to ask whether the frameworks we have inherited are helping us see more clearly, or preventing us from seeing at all. Who remains absent from our conversations? Whose experiences have we failed to consider? What voices might deepen our understanding if we were willing to listen? And how do we distinguish between faithfulness to the Gospel and faithfulness to assumptions we have simply grown accustomed to holding?

I am not writing this to tell the church what to believe about gender or sexuality. I am not equipped to resolve in a few hundred words what theologians have debated for decades. What I am offering instead is a reflection on what happened when a classroom forced me to slow down and pay closer attention. 

Theology is never merely an intellectual exercise. It shapes how we welcome, how we listen, how we teach, and how we love. The Gospels are filled with people who lived at the edges of accepted categories: the woman at the well, the Ethiopian eunuch, and those who kept showing up at the margins of the crowd, hoping Jesus would not look past them. He never did.

The classroom did not leave me with easy answers. If anything, it left me with deeper questions about discipleship, humility, listening, and the ongoing work of theological formation. Perhaps that is the work before us. Not the pursuit of easy answers, but the courage to keep listening, learning, and making room for conversation.