Postcolonial Theology

No translation is a perfect replication. A translation may by judged on its uses of the gaps opened up between the original text and the new version. When Christian missionaries encountered the Panare people and discovered that they had no understanding of guilt, “something had to be concocted” so that the Panare might convert to Christianity. This paper explores the implications of translating the message of the death of Jesus Christ as: “The Panare killed Jesus Christ,” and then uses the insights of postcolonial theologians to point towards alternative possibilities for translating without imposing guilt and fear.

CHASTE’s NOT FOR SALE campaign was launched in Autumn 2004 to champion the ratification of the Palermo Protocol, and was joined by other campaigning groups along the way, including Amnesty International, The Women’s Institute, and  Unicef.  The Palermo Protocol was ratified by the UK government in February 2006. The role of faith and religion in this process of ratification has not been completely understood in the academic literature.  The role of Religion in an individual’s life is clearly the prerogative of that individual. However the role of faith and religion in the life of a culture, and society at regional, national and international levels is clearly not optional. The fact that members of civil society find a part of the way in which they read the world and themselves, and invest these arenas in value rich meaning through the conduit of organised religion means that religion and faith must be taken into account as part of the rich tapestry of potential agencies for change as well as places where terrible entanglements occur. It is with this level of informed consciousness of both the liberative opportunities and the hazards of embedded patriarchy where faith and religion are concerned, that NGO’s and governments working in the arena of gender and development must undertake their remit for gender justice – sensitive to the gains of partnership and the positive impact of working with agents of liberation within faith communities whatever their denominational affiliation or naming of God. this article explores through the engagement with a case study of involvement and transformation of advocacy within one particular arena of faith, how religion can work in a liberative function as well as be involved in the very processes of control and disablement which counter trafficking groups seek to dismantle.

I'm including in this bibliography monographs and edited volumes explicitly engaged with (predominantly) Christian religion and theology (with some nods to biblical studies and pastoral care) since about 2000 (with a couple important exceptions). It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather takes in a limited vista. This list engages significant queer spaces, voices and queer theologies in such a way that opens to even more. Go for those lines of flight. Bibliographies should be queerly mysterious and performative too, no? Think of this list as an invitation to a conversation rather than the final word. Some voices will take queer liberationist lenses. Others more traditionalist. Also, consider: to be folded into these conversations are a number of important modern/contemporary queer theorists who impact on theology though wouldn't be considered theologians:

La hermenéutica bíblica en el mundo de lengua hispana ha estado dominada por un paradigma de conocimiento objetivista que postula un lector desinteresado y universal. La crítica poscolonial, al incorporar las aportaciones recientes de la filosofía posestructuralista, propone una nueva óptica que cuestiona algunos presupuestos metodológicos-ideológicos de los modelos tradicionales, permite avanzar intuiciones de las hermenéuticas de la liberación y establece un nuevo espacio de diálogo interdisciplinar en el ámbito académico (estudios de minoría, étnico-raciales, queer, o de género) y culturalmente variado en el ámbito geopolítico.

The liberation theology of Gustavo Gutiérrez has offered an effective postcolonial critique of the conditions of life of the Latin American poor, and of a theological method that legitimated them. The present article studies early writings of Gutiérrez that show his critique taking form. In the first instance, Gutiérrez argued, theological truth is not something beheld in philosophical theoria, but is rather a performance of agonistic practice. One may usefully abstract to theoretical expressions of the truth about divine matters; however, the abstractions are only useful if—indeed only true if— they play back upon that practice to effect greater freedom for the poor. So Gutiérrez drew upon and pointed toward a ‘new spirituality’—a theological and practical reorientation away from the spirit of a Eurocentric faith, enmeshed in the geopolitics of colonialism and neocolonialism under which most Latin Americans have suffered for centuries, toward the spirit in which the poor whom he served live. Eventually, in pursuing this reorientation himself, Gutiérrez became persuaded that methodology is not the primary mode of critique, and began a turn from conceiving theology as ‘critical reflection on practice’ to conceiving it as ‘thought about a mystery’. This study’s limited purpose is to understand Gutiérrez’ development to this pivotal moment.

This paper critically surveys the similar yet independently-developed Postcolonial and Decolonial studies that have emerged in the last fifty years. I will begin by providing a short historical overview of the emergence of each school of thought. I will then compare and contrast highlighting primarily their differences. I will then survey their intersection with theology as Christianity played a crucial role in the colonial project. I will argue that building on the foundation of a critique of colonization of knowledge, Decolonial and Postcolonial theory must move beyond binary conceptions of power to take into account multiple relations of dependence and antagonism within postcolonial societies. This is especially true in their interaction with theology that continues to be tied to reductionist notions that Christianity is synonymous with colonialism. While this critique is still necessary as colonial tendencies persist in globalized capitalism; the emergence of a multi-polar world demands a greater understanding not only of the Western colonial legacy but also the inter-relationships between and within postcolonial nations. Only by doing so, can post/decolonial thinking transcend its deconstructive nature to truly become a constructive theory for alternative futures.

Bartolomé de Las Casas’ The Only Way:
A Postcolonial Reading of At-One-Ment for Mission


Dale Ann Gray, Ph.D.
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 2018

Advisors:  José David Rodríguez & Gordon (Tim) Huffman

What can sixteenth century Bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de Las Casas, teach us about loving the world? Plenty! Especially where neo-colonial asymmetries of power abound. Becoming one with anOther creates a holy, boundary-crossing, multi-lingual hybridity that transforms as much as it informs. This dissertation posits that a postcolonial reading of at-one-ment for mission in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ The Only Way informs a just, liberative, holistic, peaceable, creation-friendly theology of mission by: revealing a complex, multilayered view of God coming to be one with those who suffer; exposing patriarchy, exclusion, and an essentialist stereotyping of the “Other”; and critiquing neo-colonialism and empire and the complicit role of the Church.
After examining the pitfalls of atonement theories from feminist (Darby Kathleen Ray, Deanna Thompson, Rita N. Brock, Rebecca Parker) and womanist (JoAnne Marie Terrell, Jacquelyn Grant, Delores Williams) perspectives, Chapter One shifts the conversation to at-one-ment. By uniting the ideas of liberation in the New Community of Revelation’s New Jerusalem, shalom, and reconciliation, Chapter One explicates at-one-ment as missio Dei, God coming to be one with all. Via a transgressive reading of The Lord’s Prayer through three discreet centuries of empire (first century Roman, sixteenth century Spanish, and the Pax Americana), the next two chapters focus on God sending the Church in mission to love the world in Jesus’ name. Chapter Two addresses the first two phrases of the missional prayer regarding God and God’s Kingdom, while Chapter Three dwells on the petitions and doxological ending. These two chapters dive into the work of Richard Horsley, Las Casas and Gustavo Gutiérrez, for insight into empire and resisting empire in the first, sixteenth and twentieth/twenty-first centuries, respectively. Culminating in a postcolonial reading of at-one-ment for mission in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ The Only Way, Chapter Four offers a theoretical reading and Chapter Five a theological one. Chapter Four employs postcolonial categories of Identity and Mimicry/Mockery, while Chapter Five investigates Hybridity, Boundary/Border Crossing and the Korean concepts of han, dan and jeong as elucidated by Homi Bhabha and Wonhee Anne Joh, among others. Extensive appendixes situate Las Casas, the first century Roman Empire and the current Pax Americana.
Las Casas’ voice in The Only Way resounds today as a call for the Church to love the world in Jesus’ name by: defecting from empire; recognizing humanity in its varied splendor; seeking to be in relationship with the Other; becoming hybrid-border-crossing-multi-lingual interpreters for those who do not speak the Other’s language; extending hospitality to the immigrant; listening, learning and lingering in the borderlands; and through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, coming to be one with herself, one with an-Other, one with God’s beloved world and one with God.

A reading of the Book of Ruth through the dual lenses of At-One-Ment and Postcolonial Theory and Theology renders a lack of at-one-ment for all save Naomi. This paper culminates in an imagined Ruth chapter 5 where the seeds of at-one-ment are sown.

Esta colección de reflexiones, escritas originalmente en castellano, a lo largo de más de diez años, es un signo de agradecimiento al mundo latino que las inspiró, con muchísima gratitud, con humildad y con una actitud de propuesta.
Los temas presentados en este volumen: La Iglesia, los laicos, la misión, las religio­nes, el Reino de Dios, las grandes ciudades, el eurocentrismo, el poscolonialismo, entre otros, los une el deseo de una reflexión teológica endeudada al Concilio Vati­cana II y sus desarrollos posteriores, ante todo en diálogo con la Teología de la Libe­ración.
La perspectiva de los pobres y la opción por ellos fueron fundamentales para cada una de estas páginas.

Предлагаем вашему вниманию второй выпуск журнала Tartaria Magna (Тартария Магна), в котором мы продолжаем тему противостояния и компромисса между "своим" и "чужим". В этом выпуске представлены исследования авторов, так или иначе касающиеся вопросов конструирования и разрушения социальных границ религиями. Второй выпуск Tartaria Magna носит название "Мир "своих" и "чужих": Духовные братья, священные враги" ( www.tartaria-magna.ru ). Как и круг поднимаемых проблем, исследовательская география выпуска традиционно широка - от Прибалтики до Тибета, от Закавказья до Забайкалья. В выпуске представлены исследования авторов из разных стран, занимающихся изучением различных народов и культур, но всех их объединяет высокий исследовательский уровень, проблематика номера и... журнал Tartaria Magna.

Case studies in postcolonial contextualization mark a forty-year-old missiolog-ical trend in evangelical scholarship. The largely unqualified support of indigenous theological expression by mission theorists represents an epistemological shift from a conservative bibliology toward felt-needs evangelization and religious roundtable dialogue methods. Evangelical contextualization theory today echoes German Ro-manticism's early assessments of indigenous language and local religion, especially as seen in the works of pluralistic Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). No study of postcolonial contextualization is complete without considering the enduring influence of Herder's " vernacular consciousness " on the current missiological mindset.

This paper will probe a particular image from Augustine’s christology, that of the totus Christus, with the intent of subverting its imperialist tendencies and recovering its radical potential. This Pauline image of Christ, comprised as head and members, is a central theme of Augustine’s christology and has been echoed in the work of contemporary theologians. It is an image that has been invoked in various ways and for different theological purposes, often to explain and/or defend “conservative” ecclesiological stances and structures. Despite these “conservative” uses, I believe the image, as conceived by Augustine, contains a quite radical christological impulse, one that has been carried on in the history of christology in various forms whenever a christology has emphasized Christ’s humility, kenotic posture, and radical solidarity with humankind, such that Christ’s people are “taken up” into christology itself. Through a sort of “contrapuntal reading” of Augustine (a theologian often associated with imperialistic, hegemonic Christianity) and the Salvadoran Jesuits Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino (who represent a view “from below”) in which the views of the “center” and the “margin” are brought into dialogue, I will suggest that, rather than reifying “traditional,” “conservative,” “closed,” “totalizing,” “rigid,” and/or “exclusivistic” christological and ecclesiological stances, the image of totus Christus can be re-read as a fruitful, if ambiguous, image for contemporary political theologies, an image that remains christocentric yet open and unpredictable, open to the radical presence of Christ in those places and persons often considered to be “outside” of christological formulas and language. [http://www.postcolonialjournal.com]

This chapter charts various ways that religious persons and groups can be perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice. The practices of testifying and interpreting experiences take a range of distinctive forms in religious life, for instance, if the testimonial practices require a special sort of religious accomplishment, such as enlightenment, or if proper understanding of religious experiences is only available to those with authentic faith. But it is also clear that religious communities and traditions have been sources of epistemic injustice, for instance, by conjoining epistemic and spiritual credibility in ways disadvantageous to ‘deviant’ groups. I focus mainly on the major monotheistic religions, culturally dominant in the modern West.

This paper explores the life and work of Brazilian Catholic nun and leading Latin American feminist liberation theologian Ivone Gebara. The paper aims to examine Gebara’s commitment to social justice based on her calling. I argue that Gebara’s search for liberation has shaped her understanding of what the theological task ought to be, and contend that she serves as an example of a progression from a purely liberationist viewpoint to the ecofeminist perspectives emerging out of localised experiences; and that these in turn largely contributed to the development of her methodology and feminist theological vision. The paper attempts to show that her pioneering feminist work and her own life have inspired Christian women locally and globally to contest the androcentric theology that objectifies and diminishes women’s place within the Church.

The phrase, “utang ng loob” (“I do something for you, you do something for me”) is used commonly by Filipinos to express gratitude towards one another. For many Filipino immigrants to the United States, this sentiment of debt and gratitude describes a feeling of obligation to the American government for granting them citizenship.  This sense of obligation is rooted in the complicated relationship between the United States and the Philippines. In the early 20th century, the Philippines was under the control of the United States. It was not until 1945 that the country was deemed fully independent. But this time period laid the groundwork for the colonial legacy and belonging that have impacted Filipinos and their descendants. For Filipino immigrants coming to the United states, this burden arises out of a need for Filipino immigrants to prove their worth to this new country they now call home. As a result, they are heavily involved in civic engagement and responsibilities, most notably through military service. This paper draws on the relationship between the government and immigrants through an analysis of Matthew 11:28-30. In this passage, Jesus offers rest and repose from those who are carrying heavy burdens in exchange for a lighter burden by following him.  Jesus inverts the conventional understanding of “burden” and “yoke” by proposing that submission to his yoke offers rest and liberation. This investigation places Filipino immigrants within the same context as Jesus’ audience. For many Filipino immigrants, the need to feel value, recognition, and worth in the eyes of the U.S. government largely influences their actions and livelihoods. The words found in Matthew offer a recognition and validation by something larger and more important than the state; namely, God’s love and desire for the immigrant to flourish. The hope is that through this analysis, this can be a considerable step forward in deconstructing the colonial legacy that is so closely tied to the history of the Philippines and its people.

The author proposes a development of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference's theology of church as a sacrament of harmony, drawing in particular from the East Asian concept of yin-yang unity and integration. In Daoist beliefs, yin and yang are the generative forces of the cosmos whose blending and balancing result in harmony or the unimpeded flow of Qi-Ch'i. Yin and yang are opposite, complementary, non-dualistic, and fluid qualities of beings/things relative to particular contexts. The yin-yang symbolism can be fruitful for reimagining man-woman, cleric-lay, and other dualities in the church as fluid polarities.

This article explores the global implications of the statement from African theologians that the body of Christ has AIDS. It will outline how these theologians employ the metaphor of the body of Christ to challenge the western world to enter into solidarity with Africa struck by HIV and AIDS. From the realization that the HIV epidemic is embedded in globalization processes, and from the understanding of contextual theologies as significant to western theology, it is argued that western theologians have to take seriously the critical African questions. Hence the article investigates what it means for the western world to say that the body of Christ has AIDS, and how this metaphor helps to envision global solidarity in light of the HIV epidemic.

With its focus on " narrative " and theology as an ethnographic enterprise, the " postliberalism " of Hans W. Frei and George A. Lindbeck sought to incorporate insights from the linguistic turn in modern thought; however, it has faced criticisms ranging from sectarianism to concern with its overly static and homogeneous conceptions of " narrative " and " Christian community " that fail to recognize the church's participation in many overlapping communities of discourse. In this essay, I explore such criticisms and their recognition of the varied narratives and discursive practices by which Christian communities are formed, in ways both recognized and unrecognized. I then examine the work of Ugandan Catholic theologian Emmanuel Katongole which gives due attention to " narrative " and ideology, and in doing so, demonstrates " postliberal " theology's insights while also compensating for its weaknesses.

Cross-cultural missionaries leave family, security, predictability, community – motivated by the gospel.  But what is their understanding of the gospel?  How do they measure “success”? What is their understanding of the value of the work itself, apart from outcomes and “success”? What has eternal/future significance and how does that intersect with the present? Asking these questions and considering them deeply is important, as our picture of God and what God is doing in the world around us has a first-order influence on our behaviour. Is clear thinking about God and the gospel important in integral mission? I suggest yes, for a few reasons. First, because many definitions of the gospel held by cross-cultural workers today were held by followers of Christ in the first few centuries after Jesus’ crucifixion. Many of them originated in the West relatively recently in modern history. Second, because I suspect that some conflict and burnout in cross-cultural workers and church leaders is influenced at least as much by their picture of God and what God is doing in the world as by mental/emotional factors. Finally, because I have seen relationships between cross-cultural workers and local church leaders deteriorate not simply because of cultural differences, but because of an underlying (and unspoken) “the ends justify the means” approach of a transactional/salvific theological paradigm.

The last centuries brought theology to Africa along with the secularized state and not without raising some long-lasting problems of political theology. Assessing them leads to ask a long overdue question : has theology learned something from its journey in Africa ? Answers may focus on the renewal of inculturation as a way of making home for the Church in (African) cultures. But is theology ever to be “at home” ? By answering negatively, this paper argues that there lies what theology needs to learn again, afresh : that the Church, wherever it dwells, should be a “xenotopia”, the never-settled stranger that raises ever new questions and renders hospitality a sacrosanct social value. This is not something new, but something theology seems to have forgotten of its origin. This is not to be the fate of theology in Africa, but the fate of theology as such, turning from diaspora, from sojourning in the South.

Intercultural Theology (IT) and postcolonial studies are closely related. Both react to the emergence of non-Western voices with a call for an epis-temological shift which challenges the dominance of Western models of knowledge and truth. 2 IT thus aims to develop theological reflections on issues for which postcolonial theory has generated a rich set of analytical instruments: it investigates entangled histories and cultural contact zones in and between Christianities, maps the hybridity of Christian traditions, and traces agency and complicity in cultural transformations of theology. It is not surprising therefore that there has been a strong call for a reception of postcolonial studies in IT—also in approaches from the German-speaking context, which will be the focus of my contribution (cf. for example Küster 2011; Nausner 2013; Walz 2016). Yet, as indicated above, a shift to postcolonialism also has far-reaching epistemological repercussions and the theological stakes of such a reception are high. 3 In this article, then, I will explore the relation between IT and postcolonial studies—the questions I aim to answer are these: How can the postcolonial paradigm shift be adequately implemented into IT, and what does its reception entail for the theological status of IT?

One of the more striking and, likely, widely-used publications of Gregorio Aglipay, one of the founding fathers of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, is the so-called Novenario de la Patria (1926). It contains both a specific kind of – emancipatory – Mariology and a statement in devotional form of Aglipay’s religious views at the time of its publication. The Mariology of the work has recently been addressed by Gealogo, Furusawa, and De la Cruz: the first, outlining the general features of the ‘Virgin of Balintawak’ (Birhen sa Balintawak);
the second, placing her in the context of other Filipino representations of Mary; and the third, providing a discussion of the representation in the context of Filipino culture and politics; earlier, Ileto also discussed the work. Building on these analyses and going beyond them, this essay focuses on the function of this particular type of Mary-with-child in the Novenario. This question as to the role of Mary in the Novenario is provoked by the apparent oddity that although the title of the work suggests a Marian novena, Mary is in fact absent from most of
the devotional material, only making an appearance in the title of the book, its prefatory (or paratextual) material and briefly as part of the seventh day of the novena. In addressing this question, this paper will move beyond extant scholarly positions in a number of ways.

Resumen: El presente artículo tiene por objetivo introducir algunas nociones generales de la teoría poscolonial, especialmente en Homi Bhabha, para ser aplicadas a una relectura de las dinámicas socio-políticas contemporáneas, y con ello acercarnos a un concepto sobre lo público. Estas nociones nos permitirán proponer una teología pública poscolonial a partir, principalmente, de una "teología sobre Dios" (o más concretamente, una poscolonización de lo divino), donde se presentarán algunos abordajes sobre la relación entre religión y política, y con ello sobre procesos más amplios en el espacio público. Palabras claves: Poscolonialismo. Teología Pública. Política. Religión. Abstract: The present article aims to introduce some general notions of postcolonial theory, especially in Homi Bhabha, to be applied to a re-reading of contemporary socio-political dynamics, and thus approaching a concept about the public. These notions will allow us to propose a postcolonial public theology starting, mainly, from a "theology of God" (or more specifi cally, a postcolonization of the divine), which proposes some approaches on the relationship between religion and politics, and with this on wider processes in the public sphere. Introducción Los estudios poscoloniales irrumpieron el campo del análisis socio-cultural como un marco que pretende abordar pero también superar diversos reduccionismos propios de los ejes epistémicos en boga dentro de la academia occidental, reinantes 1 O artigo foi recebido em 27 de agosto de 2018 e aprovado em 05 de outubro de 2018 com base nas ava-liações dos pareceristas ad hoc. 2 Argentino. Licenciado en Teología, Magister en Antropología Social y Política, y Doctorando en Ciencias

Postkoloniale Theologien haben sich in den letzten Jahren als innovative Neuausrichtung und kritische Anfrage nicht nur im Feld der Interkulturellen Theologie, sondern in praktisch allen Fächern innerhalb der Theologie positioniert. Ihnen geht es um die Überwindung eurozentrischer Perspektiven, die die Wissenschaft teilweise bis heute prägen. Das Ziel der postkolonialen Theologien ist eine Dekolonisierung des Theologie-Treibens. Während der erste Band (2013) die wichtigsten Übersetzungen versammelt hat, finden sich im vorliegenden Band fundierte Beiträge zu allen theologischen Fächern. Zum ersten Mal gibt es nun für den deutschsprachigen Raum eine Bestandsaufnahme postkolonialer Theologien. Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler der verschiedenen theologischen Disziplinen geben Auskunft über die Debattenlage innerhalb ihrer Fächer und loten Chancen und Grenzen postkolonialer Theologien systematisch aus.

This draft paper provides an introduction to postcolonial theology and makes the case for postcolonial theology as a genuinely global theology. It challenges the centrality and dominance of the traditional systematic theology of the West which it argues should be set in its cultural context. This is a draft paper for an article published in Modern Believing 62:4 (Autumn 2021) 327-348

El presente trabajo se propone analizar los con-ceptos de “civilización” y “barbarie” que subyacen al “debatede Valladolid” en el siglo
XVI, a la luz del pensamiento crítico de América Latina (Modernidad / Colonialidad). Re-visando y sintetizando parte de la literatura existente, se demostrará que los argumentos de Bartolomé de LasCasas, y aquellos que defendían abiertamente la dignidad de los nativos, constituían un “encubrimiento” de la “diferencia colonial” como una “diferencia cultural”. Este “encubrimiento”, no sólo servirá como estrategia o mecanismo de justificación y legitimación de la Conquista, y su consecuente dominación y explotación indígena; sino también como una plataforma sobre la que se inscribirá la noción de “civilizar al otro” (o idea de “progreso”) durante el pensamiento ilustrado de los siglos XVII y XVIII.

This essay outlines some key considerations and principles for doing theology in (South) Africa and in the world beset by the Covid19 pandemic - which is sometimes called 'the new normal'. Building on the lessons learnt from the global and the South African history of pandemics and the ways in which they have been managed so far, the essay uses the metaphors of graveyard and prison to characterize the contemporary context for doing theology in the midst and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.