The social imagination of the church in a racially divided society

Abstract

Based on the work of Graham Ward, this article distinguishes three distinct but interrelated forms of imagination, namely cultural imagination, cultural values, and social imagination. Social imagination is defined as the imaginative way in which we give meaning to our institutionalised social systems. How do agents within an institutionalised social system know how to act in accordance with their role and the cultural values upon which they are supposed to act? The article determines four different forms of knowing based on Ken Wilber’s integral theory of knowing, namely subjective, cultural (or intersubjective), individual objective, and interobjective. Finally, it addresses the fact that social imagination is affected by what happens within intergroup relations. People protect the status and entitativity of social identities. Related with this issue is the problem of prejudice and discrimination There are four different levels of dealing with racial prejudice and discrimination, namely essentialisation, racial ignorance, racial recognition, and beyond essentialism.