Decolonizing Ecotheology


Book Description

Decolonizing Ecotheology: Indigenous and Subaltern Challenges is a pioneering attempt to contest the politics of conquest, commodification, and homogenization in mainstream ecotheology, informed by the voices of Indigenous and subaltern communities from around the world. The book marshals a robust polyphony of reportage, wonder, analysis, and acumen seeking to open the door to a different prospect for a planet under grave duress and a different self-assessment for our own species in the mix. At the heart of that prospect is an embrace of soils and waters as commons and a privileging of subaltern experience and marginalized witness as the bellwethers of greatest import. Of course, decolonization finds its ultimate test in the actual return of land and waters to precontact Indigenous who yet have feet on the ground or paddles in the waves, and who conjure dignity and vision in the manifold of their relations, in spite of ceaseless onslaught and dismissal. Their courage is the haunt these pages hallow like an Abel never entirely erased from the history. May the moaning stop and the re-creation begin!




Decolonizing Christianity


Book Description

“How curiously different is this white God from the one preached by Jesus who understood faithfulness by how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alien, the incarcerated and infirm. This white God of empire may be appropriate for global conquerors who benefit from all that has been stolen and through the labor of all those defined as inferior; but such a deity can never be the God of the conquered.” Echoing James Cone’s 1970 assertion that white Christianity is a satanic heresy, Miguel De La Torre argues that whiteness has desecrated the message of Jesus. In a scathing indictment, he describes how white American Christians have aligned themselves with the oppressors who subjugate the “least of these”—those who have been systemically marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—and, in overwhelming numbers, elected and supported an antichrist as president who has brought the bigotry ingrained in American society out into the open. With this follow-up to his earlier Burying White Privilege, De La Torre prophetically outlines how we need to decolonize Christianity and reclaim its revolutionary, badass message. Timid white liberalism is not the answer for De La Torre—only another form of complicity. Working from the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew, he calls for unapologetic solidarity with the sheep and an unequivocal rejection of the false, idolatrous Christianity of whiteness.




Decolonizing the Body of Christ


Book Description

The first book in the new Postcolonialism and Religions series offers a preview of the series focus on multireligious, indigenous, and transnational scholarly voices. In this book, the once arch enemies of Religious studies and Postcolonial theory become critical companions in shared analysis of major postcolonial themes.




Decolonizing Epistemologies


Book Description

This anthology gathers the work of three generations of Latina/o theologians and philosopher who have taken up the task of decolonizing epistemology by transforming their respective disciplines from the standpoint liberation thought and of what has been called the "decolonial turn" in social theory, theology, and philosophy. At the heart of this collection is the unveiling of subjugated knowledge elaborated by Latina/o scholars who take seriously their social location and that of their communities of accountability and how these impact the development of a different episteme. Refusing to continue to allow to be made invisible by the dominant discourse, this group of scholars show the unsuspecting and original ways in which Latina/o social and historical loci in the US are generative places for the creation of new matrixes of knowledge. The book articulates a new point of departure for the self-understanding of Latina/os, for other marginalized and oppress groups, and for all those seeking to engage the move beyond coloniality as it continues to be present in this age of globalization.




Decolonizing Theology in Revolution


Book Description

Drawing on decolonial perspective, this book provides a critical retrieval of Sergio Arce’s theological thought, and proposes it as a source of inspiration to continue renewing liberation theologies in Cuba and in Latin America. In light of current social contexts in Cuba and abroad, this volume examines the relevance of Arce’s theological legacy, identifying significant contributions and also key limitations. It presents a panoramic view of the historical contexts previous to Arce’s articulation of his theology, and also reconstructs the various stages of the development of his theology by reviewing his major writings from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. Bringing Arce into a conversation with other recognized Latin American liberation theologians, this book delivers a reconstruction of his major theological insights related to discourses and practices of liberation, highlighting important similarities and differences between their approaches.




Decolonizing Christianity


Book Description

This book traces Christianity's change from European imperialism's moral foundation to a voice of political and social change during decolonization.




Theologies on the Move


Book Description

Theologies on the Move: Religion, Migration, and Pilgrimage in the World of Neoliberal Capital speaks to the reality that many religions have developed in motion, with people exploring new boundaries, migrating, and being displaced. Consequently, major religious traditions form as they come into contact with other religions and cultures, typically in situations of struggle and pressure. Due to neoliberal capitalism, more people are on the move today than ever before. Most are driven by necessity (migration due to violence, poverty, and perceived poverty); others, by religious quests that are often fueled by experiences of tension (pilgrimage). The chapters in this volume explore the complexity of these situations, examining in detail how theology and religion shape up in various contexts “on the move” and investigating specific problems and tensions in order to suggest solutions, alternatives, and new possibilities.




People and Land


Book Description

This book addresses the impacts of the strikes by empires upon land and people, the traditions that fund and sanctify those ventures, and the spinoffs that they inspire. The contributors engage and interrogate these assaults on the land and people, and oblige theologians and biblical studies scholars to confront modern empires.




Decolonizing Theology


Book Description

A fascinating historical study of the complex nature of Afro-Christianity in the Caribbean and American South. Includes in depth assessments of the Caribbean Church, Black Theology, Revivalism, and Rastafarianism




Decolonizing Revelation


Book Description

At a time when ideas like “post-racial society” and “#BlackLivesMatter” occupy the same space, scholars of black American faith are provided a unique opportunity to regenerate and imagine theological frameworks that confront the epistemic effects of racialization and its confluence with the theological imagination. Decolonizing Revelation contributes to this task by rethinking or “taking a second look” at the cultural production of the blues. Unlike other examinations of the blues that privilege the hermeneutic of race, this work situates the blues spatially, offering a transracial interpretation that looks to establish an option for disentangling racial ideology from the theological imagination. This book dislocates race in particular, and modernity in general, as the primary means by which God’s self-disclosure is read across human history. Rather than looking to the experience of antiblack racism as revelational, the work looks to a people group, blues people, and their spatial, sonic, and sensual activities. Following the basic theological premise that God is a God of life, Burnett looks to the spaces where blues life occurs to construct a decolonial option for a theology of revelation.