Neighbor-love from a margin: a pastoral theological construction employing class analysis

Abstract

"Neighbor-love from a margin: A pastoral theological construction employing class analysis" conducts an interdisciplinary conversation between sociology, theology, and contemporary experience in order to construct a novel definition of neighbor-love and recommend correlate pastoral practices appropriate for mission contexts. This dissertation uses a mixed qualitative research method to access perspectives arising from intergenerationally poor and uneducated persons who regularly participate in mission contexts. The dissertation brings these perspectives, Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, and theological trajectories arising from the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition into a nuanced critical correlational conversation in order to critique former constructions of neighbor-love and construct a definition of neighbor-love and pastoral practices that foreground a marginalized perspective.