If some theory has liberative implications, it is because there is a story told about hard-won experiences in deepening democracy followed by thoughtful insights. This taught braid of theory informed by praxis and praxis experimenting with theory is what makes up Aaron Stauffer’s political theology of broad-based organizing, cleanly presented in his work <em>Listening to the Spirit</em>. Like any good organizer, he shows us how our relationships, when deepened and enriched through social practice, brings power that we already have, but are often unaware of, to bear on our own communities.

In this sense, we might understand Stauffer as a <em>relational reductionist</em>. Rather than the vulgar economic reductionism of “some early Christian socialists” who argue that “bringing about socialism will solve the race and gender problem,” (11) Stauffer’s work spins an ontology that can only be understood through the relational. And thereby, the reader finds themselves swimming in an ontological sea of relational imagery and language: “relational meetings,” “relational fields,” “relational root,” “hierarchy in relation,” “relational networks,” “relational practice,” “power relation,” “relational fabric,” “relation of domination,” “critical relation,” “relational power,” “relational perspective,” “relational category,” “relational ontology,” “relational organizing,” “relational bonds,” “relational process,” etc. In short, Stauffer demands that we accept a fundamental insight: “. . . power is relational. Power exists in relationships.” (70) To this point, in order to address the root of injustice (for Stauffer, the work of the radical), one must attend to problems as “<em>intersectional</em> and <em>interlocking</em>” (11); or more dramatically put (to play with Hegelian language for a moment) it means tarrying in the relational.

For the purposes of this particular symposium, one of the major commitments of any serious intellectual is not only that their ideas be capable of engaging an audience, but that those ideas are, in fact, worthy of that audience. In Stauffer’s work we find sophisticated thinking about “the political role of sacred value in broad-based organizing” that is indeed worthy of an audience. In turn, what follows this brief introduction is an audience of scholars and organizers worthy of that thinking.