ABSTRACT
Eileen Barker has stood midway between a number of communities. She has therefore been a prophetic figure, whose liminal presence reminds each community of its limited possibilities and vision. That is enough to make anyone suspect among all true believers, whether they are theologians, sociologists or members of any religious community, and especially suspect among those who know where God is and is not to be found. Eileen Barker has reminded sociologists that their explanations do not explain very much and that they beg the ontological question, just as she has reminded theologians that their explanations are more easily threatened when they are presented as complete in themselves. She has taught us that there is a lack of density in theological and sociological theories that allows them to exist in, with and under each other. Even when you put them all together, they still only point to what might be truly there. If this is what Eileen Barker calls methodological agnosticism, so be it. To stand in the middle between so many communities that would like to be more confident of their own ways of looking at things is to disclose all the disbelief that each community harbours in its own midst but nevertheless denies. Like Simmel, Eileen Barker has helped us to understand the role of the sociologist as a stranger in our midst, whose presence brings out the best and worst in other people, all of which might remain hidden were she not there. Eileen Barker, her courage and her grace have made us proud of the vocation of the sociologist.
