Meet an innoFaither: Sarah Hansman
Meet Sarah Hansman, a doctoral student in theological ethics at Boston College, hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center-Brighton, and a prison minister. Sarah is passionate about bringing together the worlds of theology, ministry, and community organizing. Her interests include the role of imagination in shaping moral agency and lay authority especially as it pertains to sex and gender, immigration, politics, and carceral justice.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? How does your tradition and/or spiritual practice inspire or influence you as an innovator?
I am Catholic…which I have historically qualified with adjectives like queer, feminist, and leftist (all of which are true), cognizant of the assumptions and (rightful) baggage people bring to the label. Right now, I am practicing simply describing myself as Catholic, without caveats. In doing so, I claim the Catholicism I practice as valid and claim the Catholic Church as one I have a place in. I call the label to be catholic in the original sense of the word: all-inclusive, diverse, universal.
Catholicism is an expansive, manifold, tapestry of a tradition. The institution has done harm, which we remain accountable for. And there is so much radical, liberative, and life-giving theology and witness that can be hidden behind the curtain. Today, I am inspired by the tradition of liberation theology in Latin America, especially Saint Oscar Romero, woman mystics like Hildegaard of Bingen, and social activists such as Dorothy Day.
What are you currently working on?
This year, I have been organizing locally in Boston with a national movement called Catholics in Communion, a coalition that seeks to strengthen the Church’s witness and engagement in public life. Too often, Christianity has been distorted for political gain and against our most vulnerable communities, especially our migrant siblings. Too often, Catholics have ceded the public square, either by recklessly focusing on a single issue or waiting on “the hierarchy” for direction.
We hope to build an ecosystem of parishes, schools, and organizations to empower inter-parish relationships, wisdom sharing, and authority; to foster sustainable and dynamic responses to the signs of the times, rooted in our Catholic faith; and to stand together in solidarity to affirm the human dignity of all and stand against violence in our public policies.
What can we find you doing when you’re not working?
Rooting myself in nature: enjoying long runs along the Charles River, harvesting eggplant and tomatoes from my garden, and discovering magical trees, birds, and wildlife in Mount Auburn Cemetery.
What is piquing your curiosity these days?
The most Catholic answer I can give right now is Magnifica Humanitas, the new encyclical from Pope Leo XIV. As a minister and theologian, I see our creatureliness and vulnerability as central to what it means to be human: a reality I encounter during end-of-lifes in the hospital, in the solidarity between incarcerated individuals who humanize themselves in a system built on dehumanization, and communities refusing helplessness in the face of ICE. Yet, especially for the most powerful and privileged in our society, it’s a reality we so often try to deny.
Magnifica Humanitas centers human finitude: Everything that appears as a ‘limit’ — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship…Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others.
How might a sense of our own precarity help us shift from hyperfixation on control and unlimited freedom to a greater sense of our interdependence and care for the whole of creation? What sorts of communities and experiences might foster these grapplings?
What is something you’d like help on?
I engage in doctoral work with the express intention of bridging the gap between the pulpit and the pews, the academy and the public, the theological and political. One should not need an advanced degree to encounter theologies or religious communities that are liberative and politically motivating. This is my north star. While I have experience with public speaking, podcasting, writing, organizing, and teaching, much of this work has arisen organically. I’d love to learn from fellow innoFaithers’ experiences with public theology (think pitches, channels, op-eds, communities of learning).
What is something you can offer others in the innoFaith network?
A commitment to and experience in the “translation” work between theological and practical, academic and public, especially within and across differences.