The Significance of Postcolonial Thinking for Mission Theology

The Significance of Postcolonial Thinking for Mission Theology Dr. Benno van den Toren. Professor of Intercultural Theology, Protestant Theological University, Groningen Centenary Annual Meeting, German Society for Mission Studies, 12 September 2018 [Published as: Benno van den Toren. “The Significance of Postcolonial Thinking for Mission Theology”. Interkulurelle Theologie. Zeitschrift Für Missionswissenschaft 45, no. 2–3 (2019): 210–28. Page numbers in the text] [210] When we lived in the city of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), I went one afternoon to visit Jean, our house help. He had been home for some time because of prolonged problems with swollen and painful feet, which did not seem to respond well to Western style medical diagnosis and treatment. While we sat together and talked in front of his house, I noticed a bundle of different types of barks and herbs just around the corner from the entrance to his house. I had come to ask how he was doing health-wise and guessed that this might be part of his treatment, so I asked him what it was. He answered in the local variety of French: ‘Je n’en parle pas, parce que vous, les blancs, vous ne comprenez pas ces choses’ (‘I won’t talk about this, because you whites do not understand these things’). This is an example of the diplomatic evasiveness that was common in local evangelical Christian circles and illustrates how difficult it was to learn about and understand forms of knowledge that postcolonial theory would call ‘subaltern’. Traditional perspectives on health and healing had been pushed to the margins by dominant missionary and traditional Christian discourse. Christians with an African background had stopped sharing their personal stories of their search for healing, because they had been condemned too often and for too long. Nevertheless, their traditional experience of illness and approaches to healing were so real and powerful to them, that they could not simply deny them. They did not find the missionary discourse convincing, but were unable to share their own story without being condemned or at least experiencing deep misunderstanding. In the end, they simply and politely stopped talking about these things when whites were around. This is an example of what Homi K. Bhabha, a postcolonial theorist would call “duplomacy”: a form of duplicity which is not meant as hypocrisy, but [211] is rather a way of dealing politely with 1 the persistent lack of recognition by the dominant voices. 1 This is one of the reasons why in the language of Walter Hollenweger ‘[d]ie herrschende Kultur […] immer die Kultur der Herrschenden [ist]’. 2 In this paper, I address the question of whether and how we should move beyond postcolonialism in intercultural theology, which for the sake of this discussion I define fairly loosely as the discipline which orchestrates theological conversation between Christian communities located in different social and cultural settings. 3 Postcolonialism is a continuously expanding field of research and I therefore limit myself to one crucial and decisive aspect: its focus on power relationships. According to Musa Dube’s definition: As an umbrella term, a post-colonial approach is best understood as a complex myriad of methods and theories which study a wide range of texts and their participation in the making or subversion of imperialism. 4 In the first section, I share and explore some of my experiences in the CAR, the UK and the Netherlands, not merely as an autobiographical introduction, but because our theology will remain stale if it is not earthed in concrete contexts and struggles. In the second section, I argue that these encounters with the church in Africa and my wider explorations of the theology of the Global South show that a number of the dominant ways in which postcolonial theology is developed are still too strongly tied up with dominant Western academic discourse. In the third section, I argue for a number of theological desiderata, which I consider crucial if intercultural theology wants to move beyond the limitations inherent in dominant forms of postcolonial analysis. The difficulty of moving beyond neo-colonial attitudes in academic theology Our family, my wife and I, together with our three boys, lived in the CAR from 1997 to 2005, where we worked as missionaries for the Dutch Reformed Churches, [212] teaching at the Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui (FATEB) and the parallel Bible School for spouses of students who did not have the bacaleureat required to study university level courses. In that social and cultural environment that meant that the Bible School was all female. FATEB was a pan-African school started by the Evangelical Alliance of Africa and Madagascar for all of francophone Africa, which meant that we had students from a range of national and cultural backgrounds, from Senegal via Mali, Cameroon, the two Congos and 1 Robert JC Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 141. 2 Walter J Hollenweger, Erfahrungen der Leibhaftigkeit, Interkulturelle Theologie 1 (München: Kaiser, 1979), 33. 3 Cf. Benno van den Toren, ‘Intercultural Theology as a Three-Way Conversation: Beyond the Western Dominance of Intercultural Theology’, Exchange 44 (2015): 125. 4 Musa W Dube Shomanah, ‘Toward a Post-Colonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible’, Semeia 78 (1997): 14. 2 Rwanda to Madagascar. 5 This is a huge region and the Christians, particularly the Protestants in the sixteen French-speaking sub-Saharan countries, by far outnumber those in Frenchspeaking Europe (i.e. France, Belgium and la Suisse Romande). We arrived well after the end of the colonial era, but neo-colonial power dynamics were ever-present, in politics, in economic relations and in culture and language politics. Apart from the rule of the self-crowned emperor Bokassa, the CAR had been a relatively stable country compared to its direct neighbours Chad, Southern Sudan and the two Congos. In 1996, ’97, ’99 and 2001, however, it experienced a series of mutinies in the army and attempted coups. In both 2003 and 2013 successive rebel groups took over the central government, and after the 2013 coup it effectively became a failed state. Since then a new democratically elected government has been able to bring only limited and very fragile stability to the area around Bangui, the capital, but two-thirds or three-quarters of the country is outside of its control and even the blue helmets of the MINUSCA are unable to police the militias in Bangui itself. Neo-colonial power games are very real here, with France, the former colonial power, still being perceived as the kingmaker and heavy-handedly protecting its own economic interests, while other regional powers such as Chad and Sudan vie for influence. 6 What is particularly sad is that neo-colonial relationships not only characterize those who are overtly pursuing their own interests, but also those who believe that they are there to help one of the poorest nations in Africa. You only need to compare the battered Corolla’s used as local taxis with the shiny new [213] Land Cruisers used by the UN and the development and aid organisations, which constantly underline the message that the locals do not know how to run their country and should entrust themselves to the successful foreigners. During one of the conflicts we met a Danish negotiator at the airport, flown in from elsewhere. Apparently international organisations have less confidence in local leaders, who have put their lives on the line in efforts to bring warring groups together, than in an outsider with very little understanding of the local situation and, from what we gathered, a total lack of respect for the local population. The cars of the development workers and the use of foreign mediators send out messages and, in doing so, they disempower local agency and suppress local perspectives and epistemologies, confirming an important postcolonial insight. 7 We arrived in the CAR not only after the end of formal colonial oppression, but also after the end of the great efforts of Western missionary outreach. Roman Catholic missions in the CAR started at the turn of the nineteenth century and Protestant missions arrived in the 1920s. In 5 Since then, Rwanda dropped of this list as part of a move that was both cultural and political, it declared itself an Anglophone country in 2009. 6 For a social and political analysis of the crisis, see: Tatiana Carayannis and Louisa Lombard, Making Sense of the Central African Republic, 2015; Louisa Lombard et al., State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic, 2016. 7 F. ex. Young, Postcolonialism, 20. 3 the following decades, the number grew and at the high point there were hundreds of missionaries from North America and Europe running churches, schools and hospitals in many provincial towns and reaching out to remoter villages with teams of catechists and evangelists. These mission efforts were amazingly fruitful and according to David Barret’s World Christian Encyclopedia, the number of Christians grew from around 50 in 1900 to around 64 percent of the population in 1970. 8 When we arrived, except for one, all of the Protestant denominations were independent. Particularly among Protestants, the few missionaries left worked in para-church ministries and in supportive roles. We ourselves worked in a theological school under African leadership. Even before independence, missionaries generally did not see themselves as colluding with the colonial administration, in part because most Protestant missionaries were not French and because they saw themselves as bound to a different and higher divine authority. 9 Their relationships with the colonial powers were strained in certain respects, because the colonial administration put limits [214] on their work if they felt it undermined the colonial project. 10 This did not mean that there were no links between missionaries and ‘les colons’, as they were called. Because of cultural similarities, they built friendships with the wider expat population and they associated themselves with a number of moral values that the locals would perceive as white and that in certain cases – but not always – would indirectly support colonial rule. Postcolonial analysis also helps us to be aware of the power relationships that were still present when we arrived in the late 90s, influences that went well beyond the general heritage of Western culture. Mission organisations that funded projects would often read the formal reports of their partner organisations or sister churches in the light of the informal information and impressions they received through the expat missionaries. There was much talk about the need to develop a contextualised local theology, but there were probably implicit boundaries set by the funding organisations. As one of my African colleagues once joked, ‘The moment FATEB no longer depends on external finances from the West, the President will become polygamous.’ It is hard to know whether this is actually true, but it points to the real influence of financial support on theological reflection. A significant number of these complex power relationships were integral to the very existence of the institution of which we were a part. FATEB was set up as an academic institution in Africa. The current shape of academic institutions and training has developed over centuries in close relationship to the cultural and social context of the West, and has both been shaped by and helped to shape this context. Consequently, the whole structure 8 David B Barrett, George Thomas Kurian, and Todd M Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, Second Edition, vol. Volume 1: The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Ministries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 179. 9 Cf. for a similar reflection with regards to India under British rule Vishal Mangalwadi, Missionary Conspiracy: Letters to a Postmodern Hindu (Mussoorie: Nivedit Good Books, 1996). 10 See f. ex. Göran Janzon, ‘Relations entre les autorités politiques et les missions chrétiennes en Afrique Équatoriale Française’, Svensk Missionstidskrift 98, no. 2 (2010): 239–58. 4 and shape of the institution was ill at ease on African soil. This was not only the case because both primary and secondary education were dominated by rote learning, thus producing incoming students with relatively undeveloped skills for the kind of critical reasoning we expected as an institution. Though there is a risk of over-generalisation here, overall the book-culture of this academic institution was ill at ease with the orality of traditional culture. Linear academic forms of reasoning stood in a strained relationship with narrative forms of reflection; the evaluation of individual students did not sit well with collective traditions; the tendency to neatly separate the theological disciplines stood in tension with more integrated approaches to [215] life and knowledge. In order to become part of a global academic conversation, students needed to train themselves in ways of reasoning that were heavily dominated by a different yet more powerful culture. However, the time and resources spent on this training could not equally be used to develop more African modes of reasoning. A constant problem for me, as a teacher raised and educated in the West, was that I often did not know when my students’ papers were reflecting ways of reasoning different from what I was used to or whether they were simply examples of sloppy reasoning. I have worked very hard to get a grip on different cultural modes of reasoning, but even after eight years of full time teaching in the CAR and many yearly teaching trips since, I feel that I have a limited ability to adequately judge the quality of the work of many of my African students. If I am honest this feels like a failure for someone whose job it is to teach intercultural theology and orchestrate intercultural dialogue. The role of power relations in shaping academic knowledge, and knowledge in general, was equally tangible, yet hidden, when we moved to Oxford, where I took up a teaching position in Wycliffe Hall, an Anglican college that was a Permanent Private Hall of Oxford University. In such a powerful university, we saw more clearly than elsewhere what Kwok Pui-lan with reference to Michel Foucault calls ‘the political economy of truth’. 11 It could be sensed in the way that Oxford University set its own programs and saw little need for adapting them to others. It could be sensed in how it continued to do theology in very classically modern ways with little interest in voices from the margins. In an important sense theology in this world class university felt more provincial than in Bangui: in Bangui we were always listening to voices from other continents and other cultural contexts; Oxford was also very international, but simply assimilated the academics from elsewhere into the dominant discourse. This exemplifies Vinoth Ramachandra’s observation, concerning the astonishing ‘insularity of most Western theological institutions’. 12 In Oxford, the political economy of truth could be sensed in the relationship between the theological faculty and colleges related to the churches and involved in ministerial training, such as ours. It felt as if ministerial degrees were not considered truly academic and as if our links with the church somehow tainted our academic stature. 11 12 Pui-lan Kwok, Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995), 9. Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths (London: SPCK, 2008), 258. 5 Here it seems that the postmodern notion of “intersectionality” can help our [216] analysis. 13 This notion refers to the fact that we can all be categorised in different ways; we may be part of the powerful in one category, but subaltern in another. In this way, postcolonial theologians from the South such as Musa Dube have pointed out that Western feminists may understand gender oppression, but may miss equally real power dynamics that coloured women face, not only because of gender but also because of race. 14 There is of course a risk here of claiming that we are all in some way oppressed. I have often worked and in many respects still work in a context in which I have a lot of labels that count me amongst the powerful voices: I am male, white, I have a doctorate, a university chair and an institutional support system. I definitely do not have to fight the same battles as Dube or, for that matter, a Pentecostal theologian in a rural Central African Bible college. And yet, postcolonial discourse also helps me to understand the mechanisms I have to face, where I myself belong to the more marginal voices, such as being a Christian voice in a predominantly secular society, a pastor involved in ministry training at Oxford University, an academic who believes in the value of theology in an environment where Religious Studies approaches have the upper hand, an evangelical theologian in an academic environment where liberal or pluralist voices are dominant. In these positions, I sometimes feel something of what many of my African colleagues must feel so acutely: that others think for me and know what I have to contribute – or what not – even before I have begun to speak. One of the complexities of my current role as Professor of Intercultural Theology in Groningen is that I myself also speak for others and that I do so particularly for marginalized voices. It is my desire to let them be heard for themselves, yet in doing so it is I who select these voices from my powerful academic position. In particular, when I teach BA courses and need to introduce new voices in the limited space of an hour I pick texts that I as a Westerner experience as typically African, or Asian or Latin American, and texts that are easy for undergraduate students to digest. Even when I am much more nuanced I still frame these voices as ‘theology from the South’. In doing so, I constantly risk turning them into easily digestible “takeaways”, to use an image of Sugirtharajah’s, like dishes from a local Indian restaurant that homogenizes the great variety of Indian [217] dishes, adapts them to Western taste, and frames them as exotic. 15 In the process, teachers of intercultural theology in the West unavoidably organize these voices in a framework shaped by their own theological interests, be they liberationist, postcolonial, evangelical or Pentecostal. Reflecting on these and other experiences, my first thesis is that postcolonial analysis provides a sophisticated tool for detecting how power relations influence what we consider plausible and worthy of consideration, yet postcolonial analysis itself cannot solve the problems it reveals. Postcolonial analysis shows how some voices, such as that of Jean our 13 Cf. Eleonora Dorothea Hof, Reimagining Mission in the Postcolonial Condition: A Theology of Vulnerability and Vocation at the Margins (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum Academic, 2016), 156–63. 14 Dube Shomanah, ‘Toward a Post-Colonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible’. 15 Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology (London: SCM Press, 2003), 162–75. 6 house help, and certain minority positions in the Western academy are pushed to the margins. Yet, some social structuring of intellectual debate is necessary. We simply cannot listen to all voices at once, so we need to work out which voices are worth studying in depth and how to look for them. Postcolonial analysis helps us understand how our Western understandings and ways of doing academic theology may block out other voices and how we can become aware of other forms of theological reasoning. Yet, the analysis of power relations is in itself not enough to develop a theology that is at the same time truly intercultural and solidly academic. When we teach intercultural theology, we need to select the voices that are worth studying and teaching. Postcolonial analysis will help us become aware of hidden voices and understand them, but will not help us select those that are most fruitful in contributing to a better theology, a more faithful church and a better world. In order to do so, we not only need to recognise and understand other ways of reasoning, we also need to somehow judge their respective and combined value with respect to the question of how they help us understand reality in all its complexity. More specifically, when we talk about theology, we need to ask how these different culturally embedded ways of reasoning contribute to understanding the multi-facetted splendour of God in his relationship to us. In order to do so, we first need to realise that truly listening to other cultural voices is not only helped, but also hindered by dominant forms of postcolonial analysis and we secondly need a properly theological account of intercultural theological encounter and exchange. [218] Obstacles to intercultural dialogue in postcolonial analysis In this section, I argue that while postcolonial analysis can be a great help in enabling marginal voices to be heard in intercultural theology, it can itself also be a hindrance. The reason for this is its focus on power relationships, which is both its crucial contribution and its weakness. In so far as postcolonial analysis focuses on power relationships, it will by definition have less attention for other factors that shape the discourse. This is explicit in forms of postcolonial analysis that remain closest to its Foucauldian origins, in which all claims to truth are deconstructed as expressions of hidden power plays. When in postcolonial theory ‘[c]ulture is something to be construed rather than discovered, and it is constructed on the stage of struggle amidst the asymmetries of power’, 16 other factors that shape culture will be pushed to the background as a matter of principle. Other forms of postcolonial analysis are less ideological in their focus on power and do not claim that power is the one or even the decisive influence that needs to be analysed in order to understand how cultures, and theologies as cultural formations, are shaped. Yet, the focus on power struggles still diverts 16 Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997), 54. 7 attention from other factors. In terms of postcolonial analysis in theology, theological positions are framed in terms of power struggles and other perspectives and voices are thereby marginalized or even excluded. This does not do justice to the complexity of the selfunderstanding of many believers who shape their beliefs in concrete social contexts and intercultural encounters. Let me illustrate this with the help of two examples. From 2014 to 2017, a team from the Protestant Theological University in Groningen did field research on the discourse on science and religion amongst graduate students and academics in three university cities in French-speaking Africa. 17 We wanted to explore what the local discourses on science and religion looked like and whether these discourses, which were shaped in the context of a particular confluence of cultural and social influences, could contribute to the global discourse on science and religion that has so far been dominated by North [219] Atlantic questions and perspectives. We discovered that the populations studied in Abidjan, Yaoundé and Kinshasa indeed looked at science and religion in the context of power relations: science was seen as a colonial enterprise imported by European powers for the sake of European interests. Furthermore, the students and academics also understood their involvement in the university in terms of other power-plays, for example, in discussing the role of secret societies in the university establishment, the influence of the Africanist perspective, and the way Christian students negotiated their identity between the demands made on them by the church, the university, and their extended families. This is an important contribution to the Western science and religion debate. Although Western sociologists in the wake of Thomas Kuhn’s influential study on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 18 have studied the social realities that shape the scientific enterprise, this has so far had relatively little influence on the science and religion debate. Yet, although these African students were very aware of power relations behind the introduction of Western science in Africa, they did not simply reduce the conflict between Western science, Christian faith and African culture to a power struggle. Science itself was not only seen as a useful instrument to relate to the Western world, but also as a source of truth, even of divine revelation. 19 They would agree with most Western scientists that science is not merely a human construct, but an effort to discover the structures of reality that cannot be reduced to social and cultural constructs. Similarly, African traditions, for example, with regard to healing, were not only defended because they were part of their identity, but because they believed that many of these insights opened a window to reality, to the nature of reality beyond their cultural understandings, and were therefore valuable 17 Some of the initial findings have been published in Klaas L. Bom and Benno van den Toren, ‘A Contribution to the Debate on Science and Faith by Christian Students from Abidjan’, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 52, no. 3 (2017): 643–62; the full report and analysis will be published as Klaas L. Bom and Benno van den Toren, Context and Catholicity in the Science and Religion Debate: Intercultural Contributions from French-Speaking Africa, forthcoming. 18 Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 19 Bom and van den Toren, ‘A Contribution to the Debate on Science and Faith by Christian Students from Abidjan’, 651–55, 658. 8 for all. Their Christian faith was equally understood as being grounded in the reality of the existence of God and the Lordship of Christ and represented for them not merely a part of a power struggle but a truth they had discovered rather than constructed. Let me use a second example that shows how crucial elements of local discourse may be missed if the analysis focusses too exclusively on the role of power struggles. One of my doctoral students, Thandi Soko-de Jong is currently researching Christian perspectives on Jesus as Healer in relation to incurable, yet [220] treatable disease in Malawi, nowadays exemplified by HIV. As part of this project, she explores how different Christian communities themselves shape and orient their theological reflections. In doing this, their engagement with neo-colonial powers does indeed play a role, yet these are not the only or possibly not even the most dominant factors that shape the espoused theologies of these communities. In their self-understanding, these communities also orient themselves to the Scriptures, making an effort to ground their reflections in the biblical stories in which they encounter Jesus as Healer. They search for the guidance and activity of the Holy Spirit, orienting themselves to what they see as powerful revelations of this healing presence. They let themselves be guided by an understanding of the liberating presence of God, a presence which cannot be reduced to what the Christian community can itself construct, but which is first of all the reality of the Kingdom that God himself has inaugurated in Christ and in which the community itself is invited to participate. 20 By supposing that such discourse on healing is mainly shaped by neo-colonial power struggles, Westerners may well be making themselves too important, as if the struggle with Western empire is the main challenge that people are facing and the main interest they have. On the ground this is just one of the many questions that are shaping the discourse and an important drive is the desire to be true to who God is and how God relates to us. What these examples show is that on the ground the formation of local theologies is not experienced as merely or even mainly driven by power struggles. The examples I have given are from the espoused theologies of local communities, but similar examples could be given from many scholarly theological contributions from the South. This means that postcolonial theology is itself a way of framing the debate that excludes many voices from the South – probably the large majority of voices. It does so by framing theological voices in terms of empire, which ‘has the risk of falling into the trap of a monocausal interpretation pattern of a situation that needs to be analysed from multiple perspectives.’ 21 Furthermore, it especially draws on voices from the South that understand their theological reflection as mainly or first of all an expression of power struggle. This then leads to a preference for Minjung theology or Black theology, neglecting [221] many other voices from Korea or South 20 Cf. also the classic Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation : History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973). 21 Volker Küster, ‘From Contextualization to Glocalization: Intercultural Theology and Postcolonial Critique’, Exchange 45, no. 3 (2016): 206. 9 Africa. 22 It also frames the debate in the sense that other voices are often not allowed to speak for themselves, but are seen as an expression of a power struggle, expressing either the interests of those who are holding on to power, or the subjugated consciousness of the oppressed, or the voice of a resistance against empire. Such voices are not empowered to become critical subjects in the conversations, but become objects of study and in this way they are effectively silenced. In this respect, postcolonialism is not postcolonial enough and not true to its own principles. These reflections lead me to my second thesis: in order to be truly postcolonial, postcolonial analysis needs to listen even more intently to other and marginal voices and let them speak for themselves. In particular, it needs to move beyond the presupposition that power struggles are the only or most important factor in understanding marginalised discourses. If it does let other voices speak for themselves, it will amongst other things discover that much subaltern discourse also understands itself as an appeal to truth and justice and it is precisely from that perspective that it can and does challenge the dominant powers. In search of a theological account of intercultural theology under post-colonial conditions In his Theology and Social Theory, John Milbank argues that social theories as developed in the modern West reflect a secularized outlook on reality. In particular, postmodern social theory presupposes a metaphysics in which power struggle is the ultimate reality and is therefore not neutral with regards to Christianity – or a number of other religious perspectives – but rather presents an alternative secular theology. 23 I would probably not go as far as Milbank in his condemnation of Western social theories and think that many methodological tools and theoretical insights from the social sciences can be integrated in Christian theological research. Yet, Milbank is right in pointing out the metaphysical presuppositions of social scientific research (and for that matter of other sciences as well). Unless these are critically assessed, they present themselves as neutral and are themselves expressions of the hegemonic tendencies of the Western academy. In the [222] case of postcolonial studies, according to Ramachandra, ‘it appears to critique the universal pretensions of Western knowledge systems’ [yet] ‘ends up […] with a return to another First World language with universalist epistemological pretensions’. 24 22 Cf. Henning Wrogemann, Interkulturelle Theologie und Hermeneutik Grundfragen, aktuelle Beispiele, theoretische Perspektiven (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2012), 31–34. 23 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006). 24 Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths, 214; the second half of the quote is a citation from Arif Dirlik, ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism’, Critical Inquiry 20, no. 2 (1994): 328– 56; see for theinfluence of the Western cultural context on the broader project of intercultural theology also Werner Ustorf, ‘The Cultural Origins of “Intercultural” Theology’, in Intercultural Theology: Approaches and 10 If social theories in general and postcolonial analysis in particular are based on a theological understanding of social relations that are at odds with the Christian understanding of how people come to understand the world, we need a critical Christian theological account of these realities that is shaped by the Scriptures yet sharpened by postcolonial sensitivities. This is my third thesis. Let me propose seven theological insights that should guide the use of postcolonial analysis in missiology and intercultural theology. These insights obviously provide no more than a sketch that will need much further reflection and elaboration, particularly regards the questions implied by these statements and how they themselves need to be shaped in a postcolonial world: 1. A Christian intercultural theology under post-colonial conditions should first of all be a theology ‘des Leibes Christi’ according to Hollenweger, 25 a theology of the worldwide church as the body of Christ. In the context of globalisation with our growing awareness of the multiculturality of this worldwide body, the catholicity and ecumenicity of the church is not only a function of the encounter of different confessional traditions, but more fundamentally of the different cultural and social expressions of the Christian faith. 26 Postcolonial reflection resonates with the biblical attention for marginal voices that are too easily drowned out by the dominant ones. Jesus and Paul agreed that the Gospel of the Kingdom was hardest to grasp by the rich and the powerful of this world and revealed to children, to the weak and to those we are considered foolish by the dominant voices (Matthew 11:25; 1 Corinthians 1:18-29). As far as I am aware, there has been limited theological reflection on the question of what from a Christian perspective would be the marginal voices that need most attention in order to profit from [223] their theological insight. Further work needs to be done here, but an initial overview of the book of Acts as one canonical voice would suggest at least two indicators: those who are involved in cross-cultural mission and those on whom the Holy Spirit has fallen. The recognition that God has given the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his family is a decisive argument pushing the theological conversations in Acts 15 (v. 8). Furthermore, the book of Acts draws constant attention to those disciples of Jesus who cross cultural and religious boundaries in sharing their faith in Jesus of Nazareth and who in the process become the avant-garde in the theological development away from a mainly Jewish and Jerusalem centred practice and theology (Acts 6:8; 8:38; 11:20). Such a perspective would possibly invite us today to look at local evangelists who share the Pentecostal experience by praying for the healing of their neighbours 27 and to the so-called Insider Movements 28 as crucial theological voices. Themes, ed. Mark J. Cartledge and David A. Cheetham (London etc.: SCM Press, 2011), 11–28; van den Toren, ‘Intercultural Theology as a Three-Way Conversation: Beyond the Western Dominance of Intercultural Theology’. 25 Hollenweger, Erfahrungen der Leibhaftigkeit, 36; passim. 26 Cf. Schreiter, New Catholicity. 27 See f. ex. Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2014). 11 However, these are not necessarily the marginal voices that would be seen as most relevant from a secular postcolonial perspective. 2. Such an understanding of intercultural theology should also recognise the abuse of power in abusive ideologies. As Jesus himself noted, according to Luke: ‘The kings of the gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority are called benefactors’ (Luke 22:24, NRSV). A biblical theology would deepen this understanding with a reflection on sin that takes both its personal and social aspects into account. 29 This means that the development of a postcolonial theology not only demands attention for social location, but also for virtue. Good theologising demands the nurturing of the appropriate epistemological virtues: an awareness of how one’s personal interests may bias one’s perspective and reflections, a desire to justice to God for who God is, a desire to understand and live out of God’s plan of salvation in a way that is shaped by the heart of God and by an awareness of the multifaceted needs of the world around me rather than for how this God might serve my personal needs. A Christian intercultural theology therefore should share the postcolonial interest in moving beyond the separation of theory and practice, which is itself a [224] modern Western rift. 30 It should therefore be rooted in the praxis of intercultural encounter and dialogue within the global church at all levels. This is of course a major challenge for academic theology. Although we may believe in the close interrelation of theory and praxis, the social shape of a contemporary Western academic career makes it very difficult to be deeply involved in such encounters within the global body of Christ and through in-depth interreligious encounter, in sharing faith in Christ across social and cultural boundaries, and in the struggle for liberation and sharing of healing. This praxis is also important because as postcolonial reflection has pointed out, truly listening to others is very different because we have deeply ingrained practices for understanding others in terms of our own framework and in ways that serve our own interests. Here we return to the role of virtue, for virtue epistemologists have argued, true understanding demands the development of appropriate character, 31 which in Christian terms will be marked by virtues such as epistemological kindness, epistemological patience and epistemological love. Such virtues only grow slowly over time and demand extensive practice. 3. A Christian intercultural theology under post-colonial conditions should not equate every claim to truth with an inappropriate claim to power. In the Scriptures, certain claims to truth are intended to challenge the powers, such as when, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus challenged the authority and power of Pilate not by calling his 28 See f. ex. William A Dyrness, Insider Jesus: Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016). 29 Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths, 249. 30 Cf. Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 31 See f. ex. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, ‘Religious Knowledge and the Virtues of the Mind’, in Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, ed. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Library of Religious Philosophy ; v. 10. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 199–225. 12 followers to fight for him, but by appealing to the authority of truth (John 18:36, 37). 32 We do need careful reflection here not to equate this understanding of truth with Greek or Enlightenment understandings. Nevertheless, it seems that this understanding is grounded in the emet or faithfulness of God, who exists independently and before our grasp of God, who unguardedly encounters opposition and precisely in doing so resists deconstruction of this truth as a mere human construct. 4. [225] In line with the Christian tradition, such an intercultural theology would need to be Trinitarian. It would recognise that the whole universe and all of humanity is created by the Father of Jesus of Nazareth and therefore in the words of the Areopagus speech ‘he is not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17:27, NRSV). It would recognise that the Spirt of God moves through the whole earth drawing everyone everywhere into the history of this God. It seems to me that against postcolonial questioning by pluralist theologians such as Sugirtharajah, this also means holding on to the crucial role of the second Person of the Trinity. Ultimately it is in Christ that the purpose of the one Trinitarian God for his creation is decisively revealed and for whom, according to the great Christological hymn in Colossians 1, all is created (v. 16). Certain postcolonial thinkers would equate the belief in monotheism with an abusive power claim that suppresses other voices. However, for Deutero-Isaiah, it is this belief in the one God that is the source of hope for the Judeans exiled in Babylon. The polytheistic worldview of the time had certain traits similar to a Foucauldian universe: the victory of the more powerful nations was seen as proof that their gods and their religions were more powerful. It is precisely in this context that DeuteroIsaiah receives a much clearer grasp of the belief that the God of Israel is the Creator of heaven and earth. For him the nations are no more than dust on the scales and a drop from a bucket (Isaiah 40:15). He reveals the gods of Babylon to be no more than human creations that themselves will fall while the God of Israel remains faithful, not only to Israel, but to a plan that includes all the nations. It is precisely because the one God is not owned by anyone and cannot be claimed by the powerful that there is hope for the exiles who have no one to save them apart from this God. 33 5. An intercultural theology under postcolonial conditions should carefully rethink Christian soteriology. Postcolonial thinkers themselves often have a deep sense of mission with a message of equality, freedom and human flourishing. Postcolonial analysis has deepened our awareness of how certain understandings of salvation may have effectively perpetuated or at least condoned situations of injustice. At the same time, there is also a need for a greater awareness of explicitly Christian 32 See for the political meaning of the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate further Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 140f. 33 Cf. Miroslav Volf, ‘Christianity and Violence’, Reflections A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry from Yale Divinity School, 2004, https://reflections.yale.edu/article/violence-and-theology/christianity-and-violence. 13 understandings of freedom and human flourishing [226] that are shaped by the biblical narrative and biblical hope. These Christian understandings are not only shaped by but also intrinsically linked to union with Christ and renewal through the Spirit. Postcolonial thinkers often spend little time deconstructing their own understandings of salvation and corresponding political proposals, asking how these understanding have been shaped by the secular West. Different religions do of course have their specific understandings of flourishing and salvation, and should be allowed to speak for themselves. Decolonizing intercultural and interreligious encounters demands open conversations about what we believe salvation is and how it can be found, rather than measuring all according to a set understanding of what a better world is supposed to look like. 6. A Christian framework for postcolonial analysis would also need to include a theology of power. 34 It is a crucial element of Trinitarian monotheism that Jesus of Nazareth revealed the purposes of the one God while going the way of the cross, with no power but the power of truth, as he testified before Pilate. In the words of David Bosch it is only in as far as the church remains faithful to the vulnerable mission of Christ that it can truly challenge the powers and represent an anti-imperial message of liberating truth. 35 Nevertheless, much postcolonial theory seems to have an exclusively negative view of power. The Scriptures are full of the liberating power of the God of Israel and the crucified Messiah is also the risen Christ to whom the Father has given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). We need a more profound engagement with Pentecostals from the South for whom God is the Almighty who raised Jesus from the grave and whose Spirit, precisely because it is powerful, is a liberating and healing. A Christian theology of power should move beyond the modern myth that issues of truth can be properly addressed while neglecting power relationships and beyond a postmodern tendency to view power as necessarily self-interested and therefore as always misleading. We should rather ask whether there are forms of power that are subversive of such distortion and can rather open up an awareness of truth, that protects the weak and is a source of salvation. It may well be that the lack of interest in the positive aspects of power reveals the middle-class Western location [227] of important strands of postcolonial thinkers who can take for granted a certain level of social security control over their lives. 7. The final element for a Christian understanding of intercultural theology under postcolonial conditions I propose may well be counterintuitive. Emmanuel Katongole, a Ugandan priest, has written an impressive study on how the lament of African people can become a source of hope, yet indicates that for such hope to be true 34 I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Klaas Bom for pointing out this crucial issue. David J Bosch, The Vulnerability of Mission, Occasional Paper 10 (Birmingham, England: Selly Oak Colleges, 1991); cf. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI; Geneva: W.B. Eerdmans; WCC Publications, 1989), 159; Richard. Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 103–9. 35 14 hope and not mere optimism – which is simply unwarranted in places as Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo – it needs to be grounded in the resurrection of Christ. It is for this hope that the First Epistle of Peter calls us to give an apologia, a defence (1 Peter 3:15). 36 It is this reasoned account of the Christian hope that is crucial to answer the postcolonial effort to dismiss all salvation narratives as mere human constructions. The answer of the First Epistle of Peter to those who ask for an account of the Christian hope is that this is not a mere human story of hope, it is grounded in God’s prior liberating action in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This reality precedes the church and is gratefully recognised by her. The church does not engage in mission because she wants to grow the influence of a specific community or class, but out of a desire to share the great news she has received. When the church encounters opposition, she does not need to forcefully assert herself or silently retreat. Instead she boldly and humbly witnesses to the global importance of this unique historical event and shares the gift that she has received in her particular location ‘with universal intent’, to use Michael Polanyi’s phrase. 37 Such a defence can no longer follow the mode of Enlightenment apologetics, which argued the truth based on supposedly universally shared rational foundations. Rather, in the words of Karl Barth, it should be an effort eine genaue Rechenschaftsablage über die Voraussetzung, über die Grenze, über den Sinn und über den Grund der Sätze des christlichen Bekenntnisses zu vollziehen und so gegenüber jedermann, der danach verlangt, vor diesem Rechenschaft abzulegen. 38 [228] How this can be done in humility and vulnerability under postcolonial conditions may need further reflection, but if the First Epistle of Peter was originally directed at a marginal community and suffering church in the diaspora, then Scripture itself might well provide crucial insights here. It is only when we humbly share what we have received in Christ and why we believe this concerns all that we can create an open discussion and a level playing field with our fellow travellers in a postcolonial pluralist world. 39 In conclusion, I return to the initial question of whether and how intercultural theology should move beyond postcolonialism. In an important sense, it should not. Much work needs to be done and we need to continue to grow as persons and academic communities before we can really begin to hear and appreciate voices such as that of Jean, our former house help, which continue to be pushed into the margins by both Western and African theological 36 Emmanuel Katongole, Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 26, 28–33. 37 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Corrected edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 150f; cf. Benno van den Toren, Christian Apologetics as Cross-Cultural Dialogue (London; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2011), 124f; Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 35, 47–51. 38 Karl Barth, Die Kirchlichen Dogmatik IV/3, Die Lehre von Der Versöhnung, Dritter Teil, Erste Hälfte (Zollikon, Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1959), 121. 39 See further van den Toren, Christian Apologetics as Cross-Cultural Dialogue. 15 discourses. We are still far removed from a situation in which marginal voices can really be taken seriously, whether in traditional academic theology, postcolonial discourse, or even in intercultural theology itself. In order to contribute to a further decolonisation of academic theology, intercultural theologians may well need to become even more of a nuisance to other theological disciplines and also keep calling the wider university to a better understanding of the oppressive provincialism of the Western academic world. In another sense, intercultural theology should indeed move beyond postcolonial analysis in as far as postcolonialism is not able to propose a way forward. In a time when all claims to truth become a matter of social contestation and can be derided as fake news, Christians need to argue that truth matters and that only the truth of Christ will set us free. We therefore need a properly Christian theological framework in which to understand these challenges. My impression is that this enterprise has only just begun. 16