Postcolonial Theology

Deimperalization and decolonization are prefixed by the word ‘de-’, which means there is something to remove, reduce, and reverse. Deimperalization and decolonization are closely intertwined, and they serve a similar purpose. Deimperialization is the phenomenon of dismantling imperialism, and decolonization is the aspect of resisting colonization , especially the colonial structures left by imperial powers. Before going further, one begins by highlighting what ‘imperialism’ and ‘colonization’ mean. One of the difficulties in defining imperialism and colonialism is that they are hard to distinguish from each other. Frequently, the two concepts are treated as synonyms.  However, in the strict sense of the terms, imperialism is an ideological concept which upholds the legitimacy of control of one nation by another; whereas, colonialism is one form of practice that results from the ideology of imperialism.  Indeed, it is arguable that while colonialism is virtually over today, imperialism continues promptly as Western nations are still engaged in imperial acts.  The impacts of imperialism and colonialism and the present facets of neo-colonialism are mainly felt in the area of colonized mentality, language and culture, academia/theology, economy, and socio-polity. 
This paper is an attempt to explore and locate the issues of imperialization and colonization of the tribal mind, language (culture), and academia. It will undertake to dismantle imperialism and colonialism in the natives’ life. Here the methods employed are a blend of postcolonialism , decolonization , and the tribal-natives’ reading. Overall, the paper aims to deconstruct the imperial and colonial legacy, and it tries to reconstruct the natives’ life and culture by infusing their histories, cultures, heritage, and traditions.

Queere und postkoloniale Theorien erlauben autoritäre und diskriminierende religiöse Identifizierung zum Vorschein zu bringen. Empirische Beispiele zeigen desidentifizierende Widerstandstrategien, wie sie junge Menschen in religionspädagogischen Kontexten einsetzen.

In diesem Band werden zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache die wichtigsten Aufsätze postkolonialer Theologie vorgestellt und in einer umfangreichen Einleitung das Spektrum postkolonialer Theologie erkundet und Chancen und Herausforderungen prägnant benannt.

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.

Poco a poco va ganando fuerza la necesidad de entender y estudiar los procesos coloniales en la Antigüedad desde una perspectiva que vaya más allá de las teorías aculturacionistas, lo que conlleva la necesidad de emplear enfoques teóricos como el postcolonialismo, en lo referente a las interacciones que se produjeron durante los contactos que pueblos, como griegos o romanos, mantuvieron con muchas de las sociedades con las que tuvieron contacto, a través de los diversos asentamientos que en aquellas regiones se establecieron desde época temprana.

Los procesos de construcción identitaria pueden, así, ponerse en relación con los conflictos inherentes a los desarrollos de sociedades coloniales, expresados muchas veces a través de cultos, ritos y mitos. Cualquier tipo de encuentro cultural representa un proceso complejo, a todos los niveles, entre grupos sociales, que debe abordarse lejos de las teorías basadas en la influencia unidireccional que, por este motivo, tienden a realizar un nivel de análisis superficial donde muchas facetas de interrelación se dejan de lado o se niegan, pero de las cuales tenemos noticias gracias a las fuentes clásicas y arqueológicas. Es necesario intentar ahondar en el punto de vista de los colonizados, en la medida en que ello nos sea posible (Loomba, 1998), dado que es lógico pensar en la existencia de una transferencia multilateral de ideas, costumbres, etc., entre los sujetos que mantuvieron un tipo de contacto prolongado o, al menos, regular, sin que tengamos que entender a los colonizados como meros receptores pasivos.

La teoría postcolonial ha surgido con fuerza para afrontar esa nueva concepción de los procesos de interacción cultural; sin embargo, ¿se ha logrado abandonar por completo las reminiscencias relacionadas con el marco conceptual de la sociedad que intenta definir al “Otro”? ¿Podemos emplear términos como aculturación a la hora de definir un proceso colonial sin que ellos mismos conlleven cierta carga ideológica? No es mi intención dar respuesta aquí a preguntas tan importantes y que, aún hoy, generan un intenso debate, sino sólo exponer el proceso de surgimiento de la teoría postcolonial como un nuevo enfoque teórico surgido de una realidad contemporánea y aplicado a procesos de interacción cultural colonial en diversas épocas.

'The Symbolic Scenarios of Islamism' initiates a dialogue between the discourse of three of the most discussed figures in the history of the Sunni Islamic movement — Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Osama bin Laden — and contemporary debates across religion and political theory, providing a crucial foundation upon which to situate current developments in world politics. Redressing the inefficiency of the terms in which the debate on Islam and Islamism is generally conducted, the book examines the role played by tradition, modernity, and transmodernity as major "symbolic scenarios" of Islamist discourses, highlighting the internal complexity and dynamism of Islamism. By uncovering forms of knowledge that have hitherto gone unnoticed or have been marginalised by traditional and dominant approaches to politics, accounting for central political ideas in non-Western sources and in the Global South, the book provides a unique contribution towards rethinking the nature of citizenship, antagonism, space, and frontiers required today. While offering valuable reading for scholars of Islamic studies, religious studies and politics, it provides a critical perspective for academics with an interest in discourse theory, post-colonial theory, political philosophy, and comparative political thought.

El presente texto examina las formas de predicación jesuita, contenidas en el esquema de subjetividad cristiana, y que entran en juego con las estrategias de conquista, expansión y explotación en el reino de Chile durante el siglo XVII. Se propone una lectura del pasado colonial, de sus relaciones de poder imbricadas en las ‘tecnologías del yo’, en el marco de un proyecto Fondecyt de Iniciación (nº11140804) que tiene como objeto de análisis los efectos de despolitización que tiene la Educación Intercultural durante las últimas décadas de postdictadura. El eje que orienta este trabajo está en pensar cómo el núcleo de la subjetividad mapuche (weichafe) ha sido durante siglos el foco de interés en las políticas o prácticas de dominación imperial.

In 2013, Edward Snowden released a trove of documents revealing the extent of government electronic surveillance. Since then, we have been inundated with reports of vicious malware attacks, election hacking, data breaches, potential cyberwars, fights over Net Neutrality, and fake internet news. Where once discussion of cyberspace was full of hope of incredible potential benefits for humanity and global connection, it has become the domain of fear, anxiety, conflict, and authoritarian impulses. As the cloud of the Net darkens into a storm, are there insights from Christian theology about our online existence? Is the divine present in this phenomenon known as cyberspace? Is it a realm of fear or a realm of hope? In The Cyberdimension, Eric Trozzo engages these questions, seeking not only a theological means of speaking about cyberspace in its ambiguity, but also how the spiritual dimension of life provokes resistance to the reduction of life to what can be calculated. Rather than focusing on the content available online, he looks to the structure of cyberspace itself to find a chastened yet still expectant vision of divinity amidst the political, economic, and social forces at play in the cyber realm.

This paper is part of the Reflection Papers of the 2014 FACE THE FACTS program by World Council for Mission (WCM) held in the Philippines. Starting with some personal impressions, the author is trying to refigure a theology of empire and highlighting a spirituality of resistance based in contextual struggles.

„The liturgical turn is back“, schreibt Cláudio Carvalhaes in Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives: „unkontrolliert, messy, gespeist von undenkbaren Quellen und tief beeinflusst vom neoliberalen Wirtschaftssystem.“  Nicht erst durch die sogenannte ‚Flüchtlingskrise‘ kommt heute neues liturgisches Wissen aus den ehemaligen Kolonialstaaten des Globalen Südens, durch Migration, transnationale Gemeindegründungen oder reverse mission, in die Metropolen des Globalen Nordens. Mit Blick auf das Zusammenrücken der Welt auch in liturgischen Vollzügen, lohnt es sich, liturgische Texte und Praktiken auf (neo-)koloniale Aneignungs- und Ausbeutungsprozesse, unterwerfende Worte, Lieder, Symbole und Gesten sowie postkoloniale Gegenbewegungen und Wissens-Austausche hin zu untersuchen.
Entsprechend etschließt der Beitrag das kritische Potential einer postkolonialen Perspektive in der Liturgiewissenschaft. Dafür wird Hybridisierung als Herausforderung und Ausbeutung in Theorie und Praxis des Gottesdienstes nachverfolgt und mit Analysen des Gemeingesangs als Beispiel verbunden.

This chapter charts various ways that religious persons and groups can be perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice. Religious persons and communities can commit, or can suffer, epistemic injustices. Miranda Fricker, for instances, mentions religion as a ‘dimension of social activity’ that prejudices could track but does not focus upon it (2007, 27). A religious identity can invite others’ prejudice and entail activities and experiences that others might find difficult to make sense of, while also shaping a person’s epistemic sensibilities. The practices of testifying to 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 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 explore the ways that epistemic injustice and religion can interact and focus mainly in the major monotheistic religions that are culturally dominant in the modern West.

... Siobhán Garrigan, Julie Gittoes, Brutus Green, David Grumett, Vicky Gunn, Symon Hill,John Hughes, Lisa Isherwood, Louise Lawrence, Morwenna Ludlow, Stuart Macwilliam,Jon Morgan, Noel Moules, Rachel Muers, Philippa Newis, David Nixon, Francesca Stavrakopoulou ...

Preface - E.M.Townes Introduction - M.L.Harris and K.M.Ott Section One: Coming to Voice: Faith and Feminism Remnants: Mothering, Spirituality and African American Activism - R.E.Harding Christian Feminist Theology and Postcolonial Resistance - W.A.Joh Feminism and Justice: Who We Are, What We Do - K.M.Ott Section Two: Keeping the Light: Sharing Story, Sharing Strength Changing the Bulb and Turning on the Light: The Power of Personal Agency in Feminist Work - M.E.Berry A Solidarity-Talk among Women of Color: Creating the 'We-Category' as a Liberative Feminist Method - K-J.C.Pae A Latina Methodology for Christian Ethics: The Role of the Social Sciences in the Study and Praxis of the Option for the Poor in the United States - M.T.Davila Transformative 'Moves' to Join: A Transnational Feminist Pedagogical Practice - N.Kim Section Three: Walking the Talk: Embodied Feminist Pedagogies Womanist Wholeness and Community - M.L.Harris Crafting the Ground as We Go: 'White&#3...

In the tumultuous years following the Jubilee celebration of the Methodist
Church in Fiji (2014), the 'New Exodus' vision of Tuikilakila Waqairatu and Tevita Nawadra Banivanua shaped the homiletic focus of the MCIF.  Through careful indigenous biblical interpretation, the metaphor worked to negotiate change and preserve cultural specificity in a volatile season.

In her groundbreaking book "Appalachian Mountain Religion," Deborah Vansau McCauley leveled an important critique against emerging articulations of “Appalachian liberation theology.”  Protestant and Roman Catholic churches and movements working for “social justice” which were influenced in some way by Latin American liberation theology, she said, were simply new forms of an old religious colonialism in Appalachia. McCauley based this important critique in large part on the 1992 pastoral letter of the United Methodist Bishops, "God’s Face is Turned Toward the Mountains," but applied this argument too against the Roman Catholic bishops’ 1975 pastoral letter "This Land is Home to Me" as well as movements and organizations such as the ecumenical Commission on Religion in Appalachia (CORA). McCauley’s critique raises the question of what liberation theology is and what the difference between the appropriation of liberationist themes and the actual practice of liberation theology means in Appalachia. This paper argues that this distinction is important and that liberation theology has actually been practiced, and not just its language appropriated, in movements such as the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (the group which gave birth the Catholic pastoral letters) and CORA whose theologies have not only spoken of liberation but have been rooted in liberating praxis. The legacy of these traditions is not without ambiguity, yet these dynamic movements have not stood still, thus McCauley’s call for Appalachian liberation theologies to examine their relationships with Appalachian mountain religion should continue to inspire further reflection and concrete  relational practices toward new, liberating Appalachian theologies.

Explores the historical and theological roots of the Residential/Boarding Schools in the United States and Canada for Indigenous children, their contemporary impacts as described in historical trauma literature and the current Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and case studies of several grassroots projects within church and religious movements promoting healing and just-reconciliation. Particular emphasis on "unintended consequences" and religious-humanitarian rhetoric in North American cultural genocides.

This dissertation explores the potential of the “theopoetics” of Richard
Kearney, John D. Caputo, and Catherine Keller for Christian theological
reflection on religious difference and interreligious encounter. It suggests religious difference appears marked by an unruliness or “anarchy,” which theopoetics may lead us to embrace rather than repress.
The first chapter thus sketches the main issues in Christian theology
of religions in recent decades, tracing this unruliness of religious difference in deepening layers. Taken together, what emerges is a growing understanding of the groundlessness of Christianity, especially its assumptions of superiority, the unavailability of a comprehensive neutral viewpoint or unifying schema, the unsettling and unfinished nature of interreligious encounters, and the need for critique of the most central categories through which Christianity has viewed religious difference.
With this debate established, the next chapters turn to Kearney, Caputo,
and Keller in a dedicated chapter for each author. While their direct
writings on religious difference are of varying depth, resources may be found especially in Kearney’s understanding of narrative collective identity and imagination, in Caputo’s deconstructive wariness of systematization, and Keller’s relational apophasis and her reading of Genesis 1 as the Divine calling forth creation from an unruly tehom or Deep. Taken together, theopoetics offers a way to figure the groundlessness of religious attachments, the non-privileged place of Christianity, its indelible relatedness to others, and an embrace of critique, challenge, and negation, without falling into silence or neglecting the communal, traditional, and indeed political nature of religion. Further, theopoetics seeks to resist stabilizing these insights into a comprehensive schema or renewed privileged vantage point.
Drawing on these resources, the final chapter explores a direction a more
intentional theopoetics of the interreligious might take. Drawing on insights from religious studies and related fields, it argues religious difference historically appears to always already insist itself into the formation of religious identity, thus at the same time constituting and destabilizing religious traditions.
This leads into a more (quasi-)ontological investigation of difference
and its unruliness, proposing to think it as a in proximity to diff´erance, kh¯ora, and tehom, and suggesting interreligious translatability can be seen as opening religion up to an aporetic relatedness, perhaps already divine. Finally, a theopoetics of religious difference will seek, in these aporetic conditions, to not only envision but also evoke a sense of community as interreligious solidarity, calling forth relationship from the depths of difference.

Utilizing Kierkegaard’s concept of Indirect Communication, Powell engages the religious writing of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a nun from 17th Century New Spain, Mexico’s colonial past. Powell builds a theological case for the inclusion of literary genres in the theological discipline, a move that opens the theological canon and resists western philosophy’s dominance of form. In addition to featuring the work of the subaltern, this work contributes to the methodological groundwork postcolonial theology.

As an American born woman with the blood of the colonized and the colonizer running through my veins, I have been the unwilling victim of the patriarchal, heterosexist and racist indoctrination of the United States. Consciously championed by the capitalist-driven hypersexual and re-imagined slave narratives that permeate media culture of this nation, I found myself weak, sad and lost in the repetitiveness of life. Insatiably seeking liberation from something and always angry, my soul ached for healing. Embracing the awareness that I was severely unfulfilled, I stopped looking to the material world for solutions, embraced my intuition and found myself opening the door to the world where the Egungun reside. As a result, I am willingly being led on a path by my ancestors to decolonize my mind, body and spirit. The use of ritual theater, intuitive creativity, Orisha worship and ancestor reverence have allowed me to counter the Eurocentric, masculinist validation processes forced upon my mind and soul. The return to the spiritual legacy of our African ancestors is a form of resistance to the imperialist doctrines of the United States, the dogma of which are projected upon the bodies, minds and souls of Black American women like me born and raised on colonized land.

This paper gives an overview of the role of religious faith in radical movements for justice in Appalachia. In the context of changing views of Appalachian issues, politics, orgaznizing, and theorizing since the 1960s toward an "oppositional" stance, I question the lack of attention on the ways "religion" has contributed to movements for social change in the region. Four historical examples of religiously motivated resistance to regional oppressions are explored: the witness of traditional Appalachian "mountain churches," the role of miner-preachers in the "secular church" of union struggles, the "conversion" story of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia, and the prophetic grassroots Catholicism of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia. Finally, in today's context of diverse, militant, "secular" movements that are open to the wisdom of the world's religious traditions rising up against the practice of mountaintop removal mining, as well as a growing conservatism within official Christian ecclesial bodies such as the Roman Catholic Church, I suggest possible routes toward a decolonial Appalachian theology of liberation that proclaims "Another Appalachia is possible."

"David R. Brockman is Research Associate for the Progressive Christian Center of the South. He has taught courses in theology of religions, world religions, Asian religions, christology, and the social context of Christianity at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and at Brite Divinity School. Brockman earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University in 2006. He collaborated with Ruben L. F. Habito on The Gospel Among the Religions: Theology, Ministry, and Spirituality in a Global Context. His essay, "Encountering 'the Event' as Event: Transforming Christian Theological Reflection about Religious Others" appears in Event and Decision: Ontology and Politics in Badiou, Deleuze, and Whitehead, ed. Roland Faber (December 2009). He has presented papers at numerous conferences, including American Academy of Religions annual meetings. His essay, "'Linguistic Through And Through'? The Challenge of Yogacara to David Tracy's Epistemology," was published in Koinonia XV (2003).

"Western Christian theology has been slow to respond to the persistent challenge of global religious diversity. Though there are a few notable exceptions, in the main Christian theology continues either to ignore or to dismiss the perspectives, texts, practices, and experiences of religious others as outside the bounds of the relevant, let alone the normative. This book breaks new ground by examining how boundaries between Christianity and religious others are discursively constructed in and through theological discourse. It examines how those basic boundary-drawing processes exercise power, and how that exercise of power can distort Christian theology itself.

'David Brockman's No Longer the Same makes a convincing case for Christian theologians to engage religious others and let their voices be heard in the endeavor of faith seeking understanding. It is indeed a groundbreaking piece of work that pushes the boundaries further and opens new horizons in Christian theology.' - Ruben L.F. Habito, co-editor, The Gospel among Religions: Christian Ministry, Theology and Spirituality in a Multifaith World, and author of Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World

'Meditating on the boundaries Christians have erected vis à vis the religious others, Brockman acknowledges at once the truth of difference and the chance of liberation. He manages the astounding feat of mapping the landscape of Christian responses to religious multiplicity with an adventurous clarity at once suitable for an introduction and satisfying for comparative theologians.' - Catherine Keller, Professor of Theology, Drew University, and author of On the Mystery: Discerning God in Process

'Marked by acute analysis, freshness of insight, and a deep underlying passion, this book makes an outstanding contribution to systematic theology in general and especially to the theology of religion. It takes the debate in this field a whole stage further forward.' - Kenneth Cracknell, President Emeritus, the Cambridge Theological Federation

'No Longer the Same offers a solid and deep consideration of the encounter with religious others, enriched by the compelling insight that this more serious encounter changes - liberates - Christian theology for this new era. A host of authors have raised these issues and argued the possibilities, but Brockman is one of the few who moves things forward in an intelligent, sober, and comprehensive way.' - Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Director, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University"