S1 A1 Assignment | Reflective Questions: The Self
January 14, 2026 7:21 PM
After you have spent time reviewing the recorded lecture and lesson readings, reflect on what you have learned and answer the following questions:
- How does Cannon's concept of the "home point of view" resonate with your own experience?
- What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr's account of sin? How does Nelson Dunfee's critique expand our understanding?
- In what ways might our "home point of view" both enable and limit ethical reflection?
Discussion (33)
Clark Kellogg
Introduction to Christian Ethics
Prof. Lisa Asedillo
L1A1 Reflective Question
Katie Cannon’s concept of the “home point of view” resonates with my own lived experience. I sometimes use the phrase, “advanced common sense,” to describe things that I have embodied over the decades. I also know what advanced common sense to me may not be so for anyone else. My own ethical lens has been shaped by the communities and roles that have formed my life. I have spent much of my time teaching and practicing design thinking and innovation. A core practice is listening deeply to peoples lived experiences. Cannon’s insight is important to me because it decenters the dominant point of view (which I come from).
I’ve also been part of a family that has gone through highs and lows. At times, raising our children felt like Niebuhrian trench warfare between nature and spirit. Niebuhr’s framework is radically improved by Dunfee’s insights about context and women’s (male assisted) self-erasure. Having a daughter and a son in this culture brought this into sharp focus for my wife and me. By nature, I am inclined toward curiosity and dialogue, but Cannon reminds me that even this posture grows out of a particular social and cultural location.
Reinhold Niebuhr’s account of sin is compelling in its sober realism. His description of pride as the overreach of human freedom rings true when I look at history, politics, and leadership in most organizations. People—and institutions—often convince themselves that their vision, greed, and/or power is justified. Yet the very real limitations of Niebuhr’s thinking are clarified by Dunfee. Her critique shows that pride may not be the dominant distortion for everyone. In some contexts, particularly for those socialized to defer or serve others, the more pressing temptation may be the sin of hiding—the reluctance to claim one’s voice, agency, or calling.
Taken together, the lecture and readings remind me that my own “home point of view” can both open and constrains my ethical reflection. I have a new view into certain human dynamics—especially collaboration and empathy from the dominant paradigm. This has been a good reminder to remain aware of my own biases and experiences, and to value the voices from the margins (or anywhere else that don’t map to my own well-trodden point of view. Ethical understanding requires humility and the ongoing willingness to learn from perspectives beyond my own. This is an easy-to-understand intellectual construct. And hard to consistently do - even for someone, like me, who knows better.
Clark Kellogg
I appreciated your description of “advanced common sense.” That phrase captures something important about how experience shapes our ethical instincts over time. Cannon’s idea of the home point of view helped me see something similar in my own life—that what feels obvious or faithful to us is often the result of the communities that formed us.
Your reflection on raising both a daughter and a son also stood out to me. Dunfee’s idea of the “sin of hiding” helped me recognize how easily certain voices can be encouraged to shrink rather than speak. I also appreciated your honesty in naming how difficult it can be to stay open to perspectives beyond our own, even when we value that in theory. That humility feels like an important part of ethical reflection.
How you use Dunfee and test it against your own experience is exactly what this kind of reflection requires. The "advanced common sense" framing also caught my attention as a way into Cannon -- capturing how formation shapes perception, consciously claimed and yet always partial. Questions to consider: Where did your version of "advanced common sense" come from, and whose knowledge(s) got built into it? What does your formation in design thinking make easier to see, and what might it make harder?
How does Cannon's concept of the "home point of view" resonate with your own experience?
Canon’s concept of the “home point of view” makes total sense to me. One example of how this has played out in my life is in my point of view as a woman who chose child development as a career. I chose a field that fit with society’s idea of what a woman could and should do. And society made it clear about how little it values that kind of work through the low salary and little recognition I received. Child care employees are some of the lowest paid workers and yet, the work of caring for and educating the youngest of our children is, in reality, one of the most important work that can be done. During my years as a child care provider I was involved in advocacy for workers and for the children we cared for. Our voices were strong and our message was clear. Noone else could speak that same kind of truth to power.
What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr's account of sin? How does Nelson Dunfee's critique expand our understanding?
Niebuhr falls into the trap that NelsonDunfee warns against. He does not take into account his home point of view. He is a man. His identifying sin with pride and sensuality is coming from a male point of view. Men are tempted to take control, to shine as an individual, and they are continually applauded for doing so. This is not the case for Women. Dunfee points out how this definition of sin only traps women in the “sin” of self-denial, the sin of denying one’s full humanity. They cannot dare to assert their needs in the way that men do.
In what ways might our "home point of view" both enable and limit ethical reflection?
When we bring our “home point of view” to the table, we may offer a unique perspective that helps to expand the understanding of others for what is right and just. However, when we assert our own view without making room for the views of others, we may not only miss out on that expansion, but may also cause harm. For instance, for many years I worked with Chinese immigrant families. One of the children in my daycare program came to school with switch marks on their thighs. We suspected that the child had been hit by one of their parents. As mandated reporters we were obligated to call social services. Luckily at that time, there was a social worker in the children’s services department that came from the same culture as the family. She understood that the discipline used by the parents was an accepted practice in the culture and country they came from. Rather than removing the child from the home, she used this as an opportunity to educate the parents on better parenting practices and the laws of the State in regards to child abuse.
Judith Kriege
Thank you for sharing this example from your work in child care. Your reflection helped me see Cannon’s idea of the home point of view in a very concrete way. The way you describe the advocacy work of child care providers also resonated with me. Sometimes the people closest to the work—and closest to the children—are the ones whose voices are least valued, even though they understand the realities most clearly.
Your story about the child with switch marks was especially striking. It shows how quickly harm can happen when people assume that their own cultural framework is the only lens for interpreting a situation. What stood out to me was the role of the social worker who shared the family’s cultural background. Her response created space for understanding and education rather than immediate punishment. That feels like a powerful example of how recognizing different “home points of view” can lead to more thoughtful and humane ethical decisions.
I love how you were able to use your upbringing to bring aid to a child. If you're like me, I didn't always understand the reasoning behind my parents' teaching and training but I still hear their voices of instruction and it clicks now.
Your child care example shows how your location produced a kind of authority and knowledge tied directly to your experience in that field. And your critique of Niebuhr gets at something precise: he doesn't name his own home point of view, which means his account of sin gets to travel as universal when it isn't. Questions to consider: whose knowledge resolved that situation, and what does that tell us about what happens when our own formation runs out? You’re getting at something important about how different home points of view relate to each other, opening up questions of power, history, and what actually lives in the boundaries between us, including within ourselves.
M. Cross
Introduction To Christian Ethics
Dr. Lisa Asedillo
Christian Ethics & The Self
Lesson1, Assgn1
Reflection Questions
- How does Cannon’s concept of the “home point of view” resonate with your own experience?
It’s as if the author used my life as the basis for this concept. The idea that this is based on experience passed down from generation to generation is reality. The ethics learned at “home” provided the guidebook for navigating family, church, neighborhood, work environment, and even social surroundings.
2a. What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr’s account of Sin (centralized in pride)?
I see the strength is pointing out the idea that mankind does not always realize, acknowledge, or accept that we are limited beings, that we don’t all the answers, nor do we know everything.
A weakness in his concept could be that realizing our limitations we become fearful of trying because we’re not good enough. That can keep us from reaching our full potential.
2b. How does Nelson Dunfee’s critique expand our understanding?
Here we are made aware that Niebuhr’s concept (like most) is slanted toward a male dominated society. Dunfee point’s out that women in this type of male dominant structure tend to be encouraged in the opposite direction of pride and thinking highly of themselves.
3. In what ways might our “home point of view” both enable and limit ethical reflection?
Depending on the point of view in the home the direction given and the subsequent affect can be either negative or positive. Either of these points of view can provide:
-moral grounding vs immorality, or skewed moral views
-a sense of belonging vs rejection
-survival wisdom vs failure
-freedom to express ideas and opinions vs silence (self-suppression, or imposed suppression)
The opening line that Cannon seems to have used your life as the basis for the concept is a strong way in because it names something Cannon is modeling: write from and toward lived experience rather than above it. And your list in the third response captures how the same formation can cut in opposite directions. Questions to consider: your response to Niebuhr gestures toward the idea that recognizing limitation can itself become paralyzing. That tension sits close to what Dunfee is tracking, and close to your own list. I invite you to stay with that thread as the course continues.
I appreciated Cannon’s descriptive, detailed reporting of her people and their beliefs, and how those beliefs were conveyed to her throughout her childhood. It is something that is easy to take for granted as “baked in” and never really examined. To define my own home point of view requires a sharp and perceptive examination. There are the tangible obvious “facts” and then the underlying values and histories that brought those “facts” into being.
Niebuhr’s account of sin is presented very rationally in an organized manner with footnotes and relevant Biblical passages. He argues his point well and it seems tight and impenetrable, until you consider his singular point of view: white educated male with the privilege and power that that comes along with his social location. Niebuhr presents sensuality as a sin of escape from reality. Dunfee reframes his sin of sensuality as a sin of hiding which she says “focuses more on the act, or nonact, of escaping rather than on the locus to which one escapes.” In her feminist reframing, Dunfee shines a light on how women respond to patriarchal conditioning by submerging their identities in service to others and then internalizing guilt for asserting themselves. Dunfee writes: “Rather than guilt leading to confession of sin, the knowledge of pardon, and the transformation into a new life, guilt has led woman into the very cycle of bondage to guilt and patterns of destruction that the Christian faith is supposed to shatter.”
Home point of view enables ethical reflection by grounding it in what we know to be the beliefs and values that formed us. There is clarity in knowing who we are and why we might act the way we do. Paradoxically the limit of a home point of view is the same thing that enables it: by having a point of view strongly grounded in who we are, we are not considering those with different backgrounds and experiences. We might be (mis) using our own power over marginalized communities. We might not be aware of our own blind spots.
Kathryn--From Deborah
Your discussion of Niebuhr and Dunfee is strong. I appreciate your articulation of how Niebuhr’s argument can appear complete until we consider his social location, and Dunfee’s idea of the “sin of hiding” added an important perspective on how guilt and self-silencing can function in women’s lives. I agree wholeheartedly. Thanks
Your reading of Niebuhr lets his argument build on its own terms before naming what it can't account for. The paradox you close with is well framed: the same groundedness that makes ethical reflection possible is what limits it. Questions to consider: you describe home point of view as something easy to take for granted and never examined, and then you do examine it, carefully. How might the act of examination itself change what the home point of view is, or how it operates? Cannon seems to suggest that consciousness of our partiality doesn't dissolve it — we're still looking through the lens even as we name it. How might that sit alongside the careful examination you're already doing?
What struck me most about this week’s material was the decision to begin Christian ethics with the self. Before we start deciding what is right or wrong, we are asked to consider the lens we bring to those questions. In the Week One lecture, Dr. Lisa Asedillo explains that Christian ethics is not simply about labeling actions as good or bad. It involves reflecting on moral claims in relation to the life and teachings of Jesus while also paying attention to the contexts in which those claims emerge (Asedillo). That idea resonated with me because my understanding of morality has always been shaped by where I come from and the communities that formed me.
Katie Geneva Cannon’s idea of the “home point of view” helped me name that reality. Cannon describes the home point of view as the interpretive lens shaped by one’s upbringing, community, and lived experiences (Cannon). My own home point of view was formed in the Church of God in Christ tradition. My earliest memories of faith include altar calls, long sermons from the King James Bible, and a strong emphasis on holiness and obedience. In that environment, faithfulness often meant staying within clearly defined behavioral boundaries.
That formation gave me a deep reverence for Scripture and a sincere desire to live faithfully. But it also meant that questioning inherited interpretations felt dangerous. Cannon’s framework reminds me that ethical reasoning never starts from a neutral place. It grows out of the communities that shape our moral imagination. Recognizing my home point of view helps me see both the gifts and the limits of the theological world that formed me.
Niebuhr’s understanding of sin adds another layer to this conversation. He argues that pride is the central form of sin because human beings try to secure themselves through control or self-assertion rather than trusting God (Niebuhr). I can see the truth in that. Pride often shows up in religious communities when moral certainty becomes a way of claiming authority over others.
At the same time, Susan Nelson Dunfee offers an important critique of Niebuhr’s framework. In her essay “The Sin of Hiding,” she argues that many women have not been socialized toward pride but toward invisibility and self-effacement (Dunfee). Instead of overestimating themselves, many have been taught to suppress their voices in order to maintain harmony or meet expectations. In that case, the moral struggle is not overcoming pride but reclaiming one’s sense of self.
That insight landed with me in a personal way. In many church settings, humility was emphasized so strongly that it sometimes blurred into silence. Questioning authority or speaking from personal experience could easily be interpreted as rebellion rather than faithful reflection. Dunfee’s concept of the “sin of hiding” helped me recognize how easily faith communities can unintentionally reinforce that pattern.
Thinking about ethics through the lens of the self makes these dynamics visible. My home point of view gave me a deep love for God, Scripture, and the church community. At the same time, it shaped how I understood obedience, authority, and belonging. As my life expanded beyond the boundaries of my childhood church, I encountered people whose experiences challenged the assumptions I had inherited.
That part of my story continues to shape how I read ethical questions today. My lived experience of moving between different communities, sometimes feeling fully welcomed and other times feeling the need to hide parts of myself, has become part of the lens I use to interpret faith, justice, and moral responsibility.
Beginning ethics with the self does not mean centering personal experience over theology. Instead, it means acknowledging that our ethical reflection always happens within particular histories, communities, and identities. Recognizing that reality, for me, creates space for humility and deeper listening as we wrestle together with what it means to live faithfully.
References
Asedillo, Lisa. “Christian Ethics and the Self.” Video lecture for Introduction to Christian Ethics, Week 1: Self. Course lecture.
Cannon, Katie Geneva. Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Dunfee, Susan Nelson. “The Sin of Hiding: A Feminist Critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Account of the Sin of Pride.” Soundings 65, no. 3 (Fall 1982): 316–327.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941–1943.
Sondra,
A phrase you wrote jumped off the page. "...humility was emphasized so strongly that it sometimes blurred into silence." Wow. That is, for me, an insight the size of a boulder. Thank you for writing it just that way. So much to think about.
Sondra from Deborah
Sondra, I appreciate how thoughtfully you reflected on beginning Christian ethics with the self. I was particularly struck by your observation that questioning inherited interpretations could feel dangerous. That insight speaks to how deeply our communities shape our moral imagination. Thank you for sharing your story so openly—it helped me think more deeply about how our formation shapes the way we approach ethical questions.
You locate Dunfee's argument in a specific ecclesial context where humility and silence became hard to distinguish, and this is beautifully said: "In that case, the moral struggle is not overcoming pride but reclaiming one's sense of self." That precision takes the reflection somewhere particular rather than general. Something worth sitting with as you continue: you describe moving between communities where you sometimes felt welcomed and other times felt the need to hide parts of yourself. You mention that this experience now shapes your ethical questions today, creating space for humility and deeper listening, honing your ability to think contextually. Pressing further, you might ask: what kind of ethical perception does that negotiation itself produce? How might that movement between communities, rather than any single home point of view, be shaping the ethical lens you're describing?
Christian ethics has so many perspectives, and I am enlightened in multiple ways be everyone's impressions. One thing that strikes me the most is how we all intersect at being shaped by our upbringing and backgrounds. In this regard, we are very similar although we are different people. This is the nucleus of our humanity, experience.
Amanda Weaver
Cannon’s concept of the “home point of view” is something that I took for granted for a good portion of my life but never named. More recently, I have put a good deal of work into overcoming the aspects of my home point of view that led to bias and reinforced my place in the dominant culture. Cannon’s work made me realize that I should look more carefully and preserve the good while working to overcome the bad.
Niebuhr’s account of sin is strong in that it captures humanity’s drive and its blindness – always striving to be more/have more and at the same time not knowing what we do not know. However, when you look past the dense scholarly tone and tight arguments, Niebuhr is guilty of the same sin that he accuses others of. He is trapped within his own viewpoint, not seeing what he does not know.
Dunfee’s critique helps us to take a step back and find a different perspective. It challenges a view that does not expand beyond Niebuhr’s own social location (white, male, intellectual) and brings forward the perspective of women. The sin of pride is reframed as the sin of hiding, which is unnamed in Christian tradition.
Our “home point of view” grounds us and is our first exposure to morality in its simplest form. It gives us our starting point for engaging in ethical reflection. However, for deep reflection we must deliberately look beyond our “home point of view” and consider the points of view we did not get at home. If we do not do this, we will always be limited to only what we know.
Amanda,
You wrote a sentence that has me thinking more deeply about my own life experience. The sentence is, "Our “home point of view” grounds us and is our first exposure to morality in its simplest form." The phrase "morality in its simplest form" will stay with me. I don't have anything more to say about it - yet. Reflection needed. For now, just thank you for writing it.
Your observation that Niebuhr is caught in the same bind he diagnoses in others is a sharp analytical move, applying his own framework back to him. Something worth pressing further: you frame the work of ethical reflection as overcoming the limiting parts of your home point of view while preserving the good. Cannon is doing something adjacent to that but also somewhat different: the home point of view isn't a problem to be solved or (only) a bias to be corrected and left behind. It stays with us, always partial, always in motion. The work might be less about overcoming it and more about learning to live honestly with what it shows us and what it can't — while remaining genuinely open to what other situated knowledges make visible. What might it look like to hold the ongoing partiality and genuine call to expand, together?
After you have spent time reviewing the recorded lecture and lesson readings, reflect on what you have learned and answer the following questions:
How does Cannon's concept of the "home point of view" resonate with your own experience?
While we can never fully know another person, perhaps just as we can never fully express ourselves, this concept of “home point of view” is an invaluable way to establish context—to describe the soil—from which our stories, including our various proclivities and perspectives, grow. In my own ministerial context, sharing our home points of view have been a powerful way for me to connect across difference in culture, ethnic background, class, and so many other aspects of social location. Rather than seeing one another as simply “good” or “bad,” holding these contexts alongside interactions and relationships allow us to navigate our communities with more care and intention.
What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr's account of sin? How does Nelson Dunfee's critique expand our understanding?
I was particularly struck by Niebuhr’s analysis of the cyclical conceit of humanity’s epistemological achievements. One of my undergrad teachers and dear friends, Steve, expressed this notion in a comically southern way: “the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know.” That said, the bi-polar or perhaps even binary understanding of sin as pride (freedom vs. finitude) left me with an unsettled feeling that Dunfee’s critique eloquently articulated by indicating how this explanation reinforces systems of domination, leaving little to no room for liberation for those who are already forced to live lives of shame by systems of domination.
In what ways might our "home point of view" both enable and limit ethical reflection?
“Home point of view” enables us to convey information from our own lived experiences and perception, and in this way it shares truth, albeit partial and biased by the many personal factors that influence our notion of morality and ethics. We may be able to look back on the many factors that contribute to our point of view, and with care, we might be able to see some of our opportunities for growth. Perhaps the deeper value in “home point of view” comes from hearing that of others. Listening to and participating in another person’s story can help us to understand them better Something I struggle with personally in cultivating empathy and understanding in this way, however, is that if we take it too far, then any activity, no matter how atrocious or harmful, can be justified (moral relativism).
The image of home point of view as "the soil from which our stories grow" names formation as generative and constitutive, the ground from which moral perception grows rather than simply a bias to correct. And your reading of Dunfee lands well - naming how a binary account of sin forecloses liberation for those already living under systems of shame gets at the structural stakes of her critique rather than just the gender critique. The tension you close with, between empathetic understanding and moral relativism, is one I hope we keep returning to. Worth sitting with: what if Cannon's account of partiality isn't a slide toward relativism so much as an insistence that all moral claims, including universal ones, are made from somewhere? How might that reframe the tension you're already naming, not necessarily as a problem to solve but as a condition ethical reflection has to work within?
Shiree Dyson
Christian Ethics
Prof. Lisa Asedillo
Lesson 1A
My Fishertown roots are the Wiley and Dyson families. I come from two family lines with different relationships to survival, respectability, and faith. On one side were educators and revolutionaries. On the other were ministers and morticians—people who made their living tending to what others avoid: death and grief. That side was present at both the beginning and end of life. Both family lines had their own struggles with addiction and violence. My families show how systemic pressure doesn't just limit people from the outside; it also works its way in and causes harm within. I was raised by mothers and aunts who kept the household together through style, faith, and high standards. Saturday cleaning and weekday cooking weren't just chores; they shaped who we were. Like Canon, I learned to care for a space before I even understood why it mattered. My perspective on home isn't about nostalgia. It teaches me what labor means, what beauty costs, and what community needs.
Reading Canon’s essay struck a chord with me because I also come from two sides—one blue-collar, the other white-collar. They had different perspectives, but shared similar struggles. I can see the blind spots of the educated side because I know the other side, and the same goes the other way. I used to judge both sides for how they handled life. As I got older, I learned to respect their determination. Now, I try to hold those tensions and appreciate each side for how they showed up.
Niebuhr's framework makes free will seem like a sin, which I see as a problem in his view of humanity. He assumes people are mainly tempted to overreach, to seek more power and importance than their situation allows. But this assumes someone already has freedom and is recognized as a full person. It doesn't consider the child who cooks dinner four nights a week because survival depends on it, or the community whose labor built structures that still carry their enslaved name. Niebuhr's idea of the sin of pride doesn't fit someone who was never allowed to feel proud. His framework was made for someone with an unquestioned sense of self—not someone who is Black, not someone who is female, not someone shaped by the hard work my grandmothers did. Dunfee's correction helps but doesn't go far enough. She points out that asking for self-sacrifice from someone already taught to disappear only keeps them captive instead of offering freedom. But making self-assertion the answer can also become a problem. My grandmothers weren't hiding or failing to stand up for themselves. They worked from before sunrise to after sunset as housekeepers, hairdressers, and school cafeteria workers, giving back to their communities and passing on everything they knew. So for me, neither framework fully fits their lives.
The most honest thing I can say is that my home point of view is a center I return to, not one I live inside continuously. I drift back, across, and sometimes crave it. I carry it as a grounding I can find with others who came from similar formations, a sense of pride alongside the knowledge that many of those experiences came directly out of the limitations systemic racism imposed on Black life. That drifting isn't loss, but a center.
This paper describes your home point of view, but you're also analyzing its internal structure: the two family lines, the different relationships to survival and respectability, and what it means to hold both without collapsing them. You're doing what Cannon models: centering the lives and labor of Black women as crucial source of ethical knowledge, refusing to let inherited frameworks stand without testing them against what those lives actually looked like. The line "my home point of view is a center I return to, not one I live inside continuously" refuses the static model of formation as a fixed location you either inhabit or leave. Instead it describes situated knowledge as a gravitational center - something you can move away from and return to, something that grounds without enclosing. Your pushback on both Niebuhr and Dunfee is rigorous. Naming that neither framework accounts for your grandmothers' lives - women who were neither hiding nor overreaching but laboring, giving, transmitting - opens a question worth carrying into the rest of the course. If Niebuhr's ethics are for those with the freedom and power to overreach, and Dunfee's for those conditioned to disappear, what is Christian ethics for when neither of those is the primary struggle? How can ethics reflect/honor the moral weight of what was transmitted, tended, and kept alive against all odds? Great work.
Deborah Anderson
Christian Ethics / Prof. Lisa Asedillo
Week 1.1 Reflection on Self
March 6, 2026
1. How does Cannon's concept of the "home point of view" resonate with your own experience?
Cannon’s concept of the “home point of view” is affirming and inspiring. She helped explain something I have been learning through both life and ministry: none of us approaches Scripture, theology, or other people from a neutral place. My own perspective has been shaped by my social location as a white, educated Protestant woman in the United States, as well as by personal experiences that have brought me close to suffering and vulnerability in ways I did not expect. Each time I have been open and honest about that location, I am strengthened. Naming my home point of view invites greater honesty the next time and the next. It encourages deeper listening all around and opens the possibility of seeing how God is at work in the lives of people whose experiences are very different from my own.
2. What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr's account of sin? How does Nelson Dunfee's critique expand our understanding?
Reading Niebuhr’s account of sin helped me see the strength of his analysis of pride and the tension between human freedom and human finitude. When we feel vulnerable and limited, we may try to secure ourselves through power, knowledge, or moral superiority and/or it becomes easier to see this dynamic also in communities, nations, and yes, even churches. Niebuhr’s insight that pride often disguises itself as virtue is especially compelling in places where moral conviction can become self-righteousness.
At the same time, a limitation of Niebuhr’s account is that his focus on pride assumes a posture of self-assertion often associated with those who hold social power. Dunfee argues that while Niebuhr saw pride as the central human sin, many women are shaped instead by the sin of hiding—a distortion occurs when individuals--especially women—have been culturally “trained” to conceal their gifts, avoid claiming their agency, or remain silent in situations where they should speak or act. Ultimately, Dunfee’s critique calls for a more inclusive theology of sin—one that recognizes both the sin of pride (over-assertion) and the sin of hiding (self-erasure) as distortions of human freedom and responsibility before God.
3. In what ways might our “home point of view” both enable and limit ethical reflection?
The “home point of view” gives us a starting place. It shapes our moral instincts, values, and sense of responsibility. Family, faith traditions, culture, and community teach us what is good, what is harmful, and what it means to care for others. These frameworks would nurture compassion, justice, and accountability. In this way, our home point of view can ground our ethical thinking and motivate us to act for the good of others. It also gives us a community and tradition that helps interpret moral questions and guide our responses.
At the same time, our home point of view can narrow our vision. Because it feels normal or “natural,” we may not recognize the assumptions or biases embedded in it. We may interpret ethical questions only through our own experiences and fail to see how others experience the same situation differently. This can lead to blind spots—especially regarding power, privilege, or systemic injustice. What appears fair or reasonable from one social location may look very different from another.
Recognizing this tension is important for ethical growth. Becoming aware of our home point of view does not mean rejecting it but rather holding it with humility and allowing it to be expanded through listening to other voices and perspectives. Ethical reflection deepens when we remain open to having our assumptions challenged and our moral imagination broadened.
You name something crucial in Niebuhr's argument that pride often disguises itself as virtue, and your integration of Dunfee is accurate and fair to both thinkers. You name race, gender, Protestant tradition, and United States context together (US-Americanness is part of a home point of view that often goes unnamed). Your closing distinction between rejecting the home point of view and holding it with humility tracks the nuance carefully — it resists the temptation to treat situated knowledge as simply a problem to solve. You write that naming your home point of view strengthens you each time you do it, and that honesty invites more honesty. Pressing further: Cannon seems to suggest that the home point of view isn't just a starting place we hold loosely and then correct through listening, but a specific, partial, and irreducible lens that shapes what we can see even when we're trying to see past it. How might that deepen what you're practicing, moving from honesty about location into the work of noticing what your home point of view makes harder to see?
Christian Ethics - Week 1 - Reflection - Ogundipe
- How does Cannon's concept of the "home point of view" resonate with your own experience?
- What are the strengths and limitations of Niebuhr's account of sin? How does Nelson Dunfee's critique expand our understanding?
- In what ways might our "home point of view" both enable and limit ethical reflection?
1
Cannon’s concept of “home point of view” seems to be the experiences that had a foundational impact on shaping her as a person and on shaping her social compass. As an African-American many of Cannon’s experiences are similar to my own personal experiences and the experiences of my family members. Many of the same experiences that shaped Cannon have shaped me and that of my elders and ancestors.
2
As expressed by Nelson Dunfree’s critique/analysis, the strength of Niebuhr’s account of sin is that he identifies something more than pride as a form of sin, he identifies the idea of “sensuality,” or “seeking to hide in the finite”. Yet Nelson Dunfree also identifies Niebuhr's handling and conceptualization of “sensuality” as a limitation. In essence, Nelson Dunfree appears to identify that Niebuhr only approaches the surface of his own thought. She appears to root the reason for this halting in Niebuhr’s social location.
Nelson Dunfree identities the social structures and ideologies that saddle women with guilt and encourage them to hide. This lived experience goes beyond Niebuhr’s surface and somewhat theoretical view of “sensuality”. In the full and lived experience of the lives of women, we can clearly see the “sin of hiding,” where one is pushed to give one’s sense of self up oneself, not as a result of genuine spiritual experience, but as a playing out of a social script rooted in social power and control. This is a sin not inherently or intrinsically specific to women, but rather one that in many ways they are most poignantly confronted by in a patriarchal society. In essence, the crucible of what spiritual self-sacrifice looks like in a society that already demands it to reify the existing and oppressive social order.
3
Our “home point of view” can be both harmful and helpful depending on how we hold it. On one hand, knowing our “home point of view” reveals many truths about us. On the other hand, it is important that we are not overly attached to our “home point of view” as the only view, or inherently correct or superior to other views. It is a view, an important view, a necessary view, and yet at the same time, an extremely limited view.
"The crucible of what spiritual self-sacrifice looks like in a society that already demands it" names a structural trap with precision: it's not just that women are asked to sacrifice, but that the demand arrives dressed as virtue, making it harder to name as a distortion. Your point that the sin of hiding isn't intrinsically specific to women but is the form they most acutely face in a patriarchal society is a careful and precise formulation. Your opening names a shared formation with Cannon across generations and ancestors without collapsing the differences between your experiences. That layered sense of lineage, shaped by similar forces but not identical ones, is itself a knowledge claim. Questions to consider: your third response holds the home point of view as both necessary and limited. The analytical move you make on Dunfee — pressing Niebuhr past the surface of his own thought by bringing in what his location kept him from seeing — is available to apply to your own formation too. What did your particular lineage make you able to see, and where might it stop short of its own implications?
Leonard Bailey
Intro to Christian Ethics 3/6/26
Reflective Questions: The Self
Cannon’s idea of the “home point of view” makes a lot of sense to me because it basically says we all come into these conversations from somewhere. None of us are neutral. The way we think about ethics, faith, and even the Bible is shaped by how we grew up, the people who raised us, the neighborhood, church, culture, all of that. As a young Black man, I definitely feel that. A lot of how I look at the world comes from watching the people around me navigate life—how they carry themselves, how they deal with struggle, and how faith shows up in everyday life. So when Cannon talks about learning from family stories and community experiences, that feels real to me. Some of the biggest lessons about right and wrong didn’t come from a classroom. They came from watching how people treated each other, how they handled hard situations, and how they held onto dignity.
I also like that Cannon pushes back on the idea that the only “real” knowledge is academic knowledge. She’s basically saying that the experiences of Black women, families, and communities matter too. That hits home because sometimes it feels like the academy only values certain voices. Cannon reminds us that where we come from actually gives us insight into things like power, race, class, and survival that other people might overlook.
With Niebuhr, I think he does a good job explaining how pride can mess people up. His point that humans try to make themselves bigger than they really are still feels true. You see that in politics, religion, and even everyday life—people thinking they’re always right, or trying to control everything around them. So I think he’s onto something when he says pride is a deep human problem.
But at the same time, Dunfee’s critique helped me see that Niebuhr’s idea doesn’t fit everyone the same way. If you tell everybody that pride is the main sin, you might miss the fact that some people have been taught the opposite—to stay small, quiet, and invisible. Dunfee’s idea about the “sin of hiding” really adds something important. For a lot of women, and honestly for a lot of marginalized people in general, the struggle isn’t being too proud. It’s feeling like you’re not allowed to fully be yourself. So her critique kind of balances Niebuhr out and makes the conversation about sin more realistic.
I think our home point of view works the same way. It helps us see things that others might miss because of where we come from. Our experiences give us insight. But at the same time, it can limit us if we assume our perspective is the only one that matters. That’s why it’s important to listen to other people’s stories too. Ethical reflection gets better when different perspectives are in the room.
So for me, the takeaway is that where we come from matters. It shapes how we think and what we notice. But it shouldn’t trap us either. The goal is to stay aware of it, learn from it, and still stay open to other perspectives. That’s where real growth happens.
The observation that some of the biggest lessons about right and wrong came from watching how people held onto dignity locates moral knowledge in community practice and embodied witness rather than in formal instruction. That's what I see Cannon doing too. Your extension of Dunfee is worth noting: you move her argument past women specifically to marginalized people more broadly, framing the sin of hiding as the experience of not being allowed to fully be yourself. That's a generative move. Questions to consider: the paper closes with the goal of staying open and avoiding being trapped by your home point of view. Cannon seems to be after something alongside that - not just openness and humility about limitation, but the specific knowledge your formation carries that others can't access from where they stand. How might centering that, rather than moving past it, change what ethical reflection looks like?