Decolonial Christianities


Book Description

What does it mean to theorize Christianity in light of the decolonial turn? This volume invites distinguished Latinx and Latin American scholars to a conversation that engages the rich theoretical contributions of the decolonial turn, while relocating Indigenous, Afro-Latin American, Latinx, and other often marginalized practices and hermeneutical perspectives to the center-stage of religious discourse in the Americas. Keeping in mind that all religions—Christianity included—are cultured, and avoiding the abstract references to Christianity common to the modern Eurocentric hegemonic project, the contributors favor embodied religious practices that emerge in concrete contexts and communities. Featuring essays from scholars such as Sylvia Marcos, Enrique Dussel, and Luis Rivera-Pagán, this volume represents a major step to bring Christian theology into the conversation with decolonial theory.




Colonialism and the Bible


Book Description

This volume addresses the problematic relationship between colonialism and the Bible. It does so from the perspective of the Global South, calling upon voices from Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors address the present state of the problematic relationship in their respective geopolitical and geographical contexts. In so doing, they provide sharp analyses of the past, the present, and the future: historical contexts and trajectories, contemporary legacies and junctures, and future projects and strategies. Taken together, the essays provide a rich and expansive comparative framework across the globe.




Decolonial Love


Book Description

Bringing together theologies of liberation and decolonial thought, Decolonial Love interrogates colonial frameworks that shape Christian thought and legitimize structures of oppression and violence within Western modernity. In response to the historical situation of colonial modernity, the book offers a decolonial mode of theological reflection and names a historical instance of salvation that stands in conflict with Western modernity. Seeking a new starting point for theological reflection and praxis, Joseph Drexler-Dreis turns to the work of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. Rejecting a politics of inclusion into the modern world-system, Fanon and Baldwin engage reality from commitments that Drexler-Dreis describes as orientations of decolonial love. These orientations expose the idolatry of Western modernity, situate the human person in relation to a reality that exceeds modern/colonial significations, and catalyze and authenticate historical movement in conflict with the modern world-system. The orientations of decolonial love in the work of Fanon and Baldwin—whose work is often perceived as violent from the perspective of Western modernity—inform theological commitments and reflection, and particularly the theological image of salvation. Decolonial Love offers to theologians a foothold within the modern/colonial context from which to commit to the sacred and, from a historical encounter with the divine mystery, face up to and take responsibility for the legacies of colonial domination and violence within a struggle to transform reality.




Decolonial Theology


Book Description

Editorial Part One: Violence Accumulation Through Robbery and Systemic Violence RAÚL ZIBECHI 12 Transitions, Acts of Resistance and the Women's Movement: A View from Colombia GINA MARCELA ÁRIAS RODRÍGUEZ AND LUIS ADOLFO MARTÍNEZ HERRERA 23 Part Two: Resistance Care for the Common Home GUSTAVO ESTEVA FIGUEROA 35 Women in Their Various Struggles: Spiritual Activism as 'Other' Knowledge SUSAN ABRAHAM 46 Part Three: Spiritualities Relational Wisdom and Spiritualities in Abya Yala SOFÍA CHIPANA QUISPE 59 Theology of the Quilombo: Afro-Brazilian Spiritual Resistance CLEUSA CALDEIRA 69 Diverse Communities Inhabited by the Divine Ruah JOSÉ DE JESÚS LEGORRETA ZEPEDA 80 Editorial Part One: Violence Accumulation Through Robbery and Systemic Violence RAÚL ZIBECHI 12 Transitions, Acts of Resistance and the Women's Movement: A View from Colombia GINA MARCELA ÁRIAS RODRÍGUEZ AND LUIS ADOLFO MARTÍNEZ HERRERA 23 Part Two: Resistance Care for the Common Home GUSTAVO ESTEVA FIGUEROA 35 Women in Their Various Struggles: Spiritual Activism as 'Other' Knowledge SUSAN ABRAHAM 46 Part Three: Spiritualities Relational Wisdom and Spiritualities in Abya Yala SOFÍA CHIPANA QUISPE 59 Theology of the Quilombo: Afro-Brazilian Spiritual Resistance CLEUSA CALDEIRA 69 Diverse Communities Inhabited by the Divine Ruah JOSÉ DE JESÚS LEGORRETA ZEPEDA 80




Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts


Book Description

This book provides a critical and decolonial analysis of gender and development theory and practice in religious societies through the presentation of a detailed ethnographic study of conjugal violence in Ethiopia. Responding to recent consensus that gender mainstreaming approaches have failed to produce their intended structural changes, Romina Istratii explains that gender and development analytical and theoretical frameworks are often constructed through western Euro-centric lenses ill-equipped to understand gender-related realities and human behaviour in non-western religious contexts and knowledge systems. Instead, Istratii argues for an approach to gender-sensitive research and practice which is embedded in insiders’ conceptual understandings as a basis to theorise about gender, assess the possible gendered underpinnings of local issues and design appropriate alleviation strategies. Drawing on a detailed study of conjugal abuse realities and attitudes in two villages and the city of Aksum in Northern Ethiopia, she demonstrates how religious knowledge can be engaged in the design and implementation of remedial interventions. This book carefully evidences the importance of integrating religious traditions and spirituality in current discussions of sustainable development in Africa, and speaks to researchers and practitioners of gender, religion and development in Africa, scholars of non-western Christianities and Ethiopian studies, and domestic violence researchers and practitioners.




Spirit Outside the Gate


Book Description

Oscar García-Johnson explores a new grammar for the study of theology and mission in global Christianity, especially in Latin America. Moving to recover important elements in ancestral traditions of the Americas, he discerns pneumatological continuity between the pre-Columbian and post-Columbian communities. With an interdisciplinary, narrative approach, this work offers a constructive theology of mission for the church in global contexts.




World Christianity and Interfaith Relations


Book Description

World Christianity and Interfaith Relations makes the case that religion is not partitioned off from the secular in the Global South the way it is in the Global North. Rather, religion is deeply integrated into the lives of those in the Global South, even though secularism officially predominates.




Decolonizing Liberation Theologies


Book Description

The publication of this volume marks the Ten Year Anniversary of the Postcolonialism and Religions series. In intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives, the chapters of this book constitute a complex whole: a volume that does justice to the justice-seeking origins of Latin American Liberation Theology, philosophy, and sociology as it emerged in the 1960s-70s and its development to the present. What drives this book is a common spirit and conviction: Liberation Theologies of the Global South remain relevant to the sociocultural and geopolitical contexts of today, which remain ensconced in the dynamics, exclusions, and resistances that gave rise to Liberation Theologies six decades ago. Today we may speak of interculturality, of borderlands, of in-betweenness, in ways that complicate, confirm, affirm, and interrogate the “underside of history”, and the spaces that are marginalized but de-centered centers of liberation struggle — within, alongside, underneath, over-against societal projects that claim and exclude them, and that represent some of the actual challenges and opportunities to liberation.




A Primer in Christian Ethics


Book Description

How does Christian belief and practice relate to living well amid the difficulties of everyday life and the catastrophes and injustices that afflict so many today? In his introduction to Christian ethics, Bretherton provides a new, constructive framework for addressing this question. Connecting the theory and practice of Christian moral thought to contemporary existential concerns, this book integrates classic approaches to the pursuit of wisdom with contemporary liberationist and critical voices. The relationship between human and nonhuman life provides a central focus to the work, foregrounding environmental justice. As well as addressing a broad range of ethical questions, Bretherton situates moral formation and the pursuit of human and nonhuman flourishing alongside a concern for spirituality, pastoral care, and political struggles to survive and thrive in the contemporary context. Written for those seeking a place to start, as well as those seasoned in the field, Bretherton's book provides an innovative ethical framework that moves beyond many of the impasses that shape current moral and political debates.




African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development


Book Description

This book investigates the substantial and growing contribution which African Independent and Pentecostal Churches are making to sustainable development in all its manifold forms. Moreover, this volume seeks to elucidate how these churches reshape the very notion of sustainable development and contribute to the decolonisation of development. Fostering both overarching and comparative perspectives, the book includes chapters on West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso) and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa). It aims to open up a subfield focused on African Initiated Christianity within the religion and development discourse, substantially broadening the scope of the existing literature. Written predominantly by scholars from the African continent, the chapters in this volume illuminate potentials and perspectives of African Initiated Christianity, combining theoretical contributions, essays by renowned church leaders, and case studies focusing on particular churches or regional contexts. While the contributions in this book focus on the African continent, the notion of development underlying the concept of the volume is deliberately wide and multidimensional, covering economic, social, ecological, political, and cultural dimensions. Therefore, the book will be useful for the community of scholars interested in religion and development as well as researchers within African studies, anthropology, development studies, political science, religious studies, sociology of religion, and theology. It will also be a key resource for development policymakers and practitioners.