She argues that the popular methods are primarily conceptual and depend on theory to do their hermeneutical and strategic work.
This is problematic, since the theory-driven models are not equipped to deal with the particular concrete experiences of those who exist on the margins of society. What's more, prevailing notions of social ethics are created within the context of the very social worldviews and agendas that are harmful to the socially marginalized and oppressed. Thus, in the traditional method of Christian ethical analysis, the prevailing cultural assumptions that support marginalization and social ethics wind up being divinely sanctioned ideologies. The most common of these ideologies is white supremacy. West spends time on this notion, describing it as "racial parochialism". She discusses this in the context of feminist studies with reference to Reinhold Niebuhr's realism. She argues that Niebuhr saw sin as the denial of finitude -- pride and over-reaching arrogance. Yet, feminists argue that this view does not apply to women who in fact, need to assert themselves; for the prevailing sin of women is not the same as that of men. Feminists who speak for women in general claim that, for women, the prevailing sin problem is the abdication of responsibility -- a passivity, not aggressive over-reaching which is a masculine problem. West argues that this is a racial parochialism perpetrated by white women who falsely claim the ability to speak for all women. They are blind to the fact that their argument is steeped in whiteness, and do not take into account their white racism; white women's racist behavior towards black women. As such, this racial parochialism winds up being a theoretical abstract that is incapable of seeing the concrete experiences of minority women on the margins of society. The same can be said of class, and gender issues. Whiteness, maleness, wealth, these are privileges that can hinder our ability to form community unless we take the margins into account (pp 26-28).
Niebuhr's example sets the stage for her argument in favor of reasoning from particular to universal for the sake of social change as an "analytical strategy where the particular experience of women helps to give meaning to the universal ethical principle about maintaining the well-being of all people" (p 32). Within the Christian church community, West talks about the process of ritual and ritualization (Chapter 4), to explain how dominant worldviews become dominant and oppressive. Ritualization emphasizes the making of new forms through which expressive behavior can flow, while ritual connotes an already known, richly symbolic pattern of behavior. With the notion that Christianity is a universal good, Christians fail to pay attention to the dominant perspective and worldview that constructs the universal Christian perspective. Indeed, they may not even be aware that a perspective is present in their construction. By enforcing the notion of Christian universality and denying the influence of cultural particularities, Christians ritualize white supremacy within the worship rituals that Churches practice, and thus reinforce notions of white dominance within worship rituals. Her argument would have us probe the process of ritualization and ritual (pp 122-123) within our Christian contexts, and the overarching themes that guide our wider social communities. If they are guided by a deductive reasoning, working from universal to particular they are hegemonic and oppressive, sacrilizing the worldview of the oppressor into the lives and experiences of the marginalized. Instead, West argues that we must practice an inductive approach, that is, a particular to general method of Christian ethics that sees from the margins and disrupts the functioning of the oppression, in favor of a more just and caring community.