This book brings Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars from different fields of knowledge and many places across the globe to introduce/expand the dialogue between the field of liturgy and postcolonial/decolonial thinking. Connecting main themes in both fields, this book shows what is at stake in this dialectical scholarship.
Postcolonial studies has challenged the Eurocentric frameworks and methodologies in the fields of biblical studies and theology. Postcolonial Practice of Ministry is a groundbreaking anthology that enables a new engagement between postcolonial and practical theologies, focused on three key areas of the practice of ministry: pastoral leadership, liturgical celebration, and interfaith engagement. Postcolonial Practice of Ministry will make an impact in at least two areas of theological reflection: first, among postcolonial scholars, it will stretch postcolonial theology into an area where it has been neglected; second, it will provide a comprehensive resource for rethinking the practice of ministry. Contributors to this volume are well-known scholars from different racial, national, and denominational backgrounds, bringing with them experiences of hybrid identities and multicultural churches. Many of them are pioneers in introducing postcolonial discourse to their fields.
It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.
From a major scholar, a postcolonial perspective on key current and historical issues in Anglicanism, foregrounding the voices of theologians and church leaders from the Global South. In recent years, the Anglican Communion has been consumed by debates about gender, sexuality, authority, and biblical interpretation, which have frequently divided along North/South lines. Much of these controversies stem from the colonial history of Anglicanism. Written by a pioneer in postcolonial theology, this groundbreaking volume challenges Eurocentrism and racism in the Anglican Communion by highlighting the voices of theologians and church leaders from the Global South. The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective scrutinizes Anglican theology and history to advocate for the decolonization of the Church. It examines controversies on Christianity and the social order, economic justice, worship, gender and sexuality, women’s leadership, and the Church’s mission in a religiously pluralistic world.
In Postcolonial Preaching, HyeRan Kim-Cragg argues that preaching is the act of dropping the stone of the Gospel into a lake, making waves to move hearts and transform the world wounded by colonial violence. The ripple effect serves as a metaphor and acronym to guide to preaching that takes postcolonial concerns seriously: Rehearsal, Imagination, Place, Pattern, Language and Exegesis (RIPPLE). Kim-Cragg explains each “ripple” in this approach and exercise of creating and delivering sermons. The author delivers fresh insights while drawing on some traditional homiletical perspectives in the service of a homiletic that takes the reality of racism, migration, and environmental degradation seriously. Moreover, Kim-Cragg demonstrates the postcolonial sermon in action by including annotated homilies. This book contributes to the very first wave of the application of postcolonial scholarship in preaching. Given the continuing extent and influence of colonial worldviews and legacies, this approach should become a staple in preaching over the next generation.
What does postcoloniality have to do with sacramentality? How do diasporic lives and imaginaries shape the course of postcolonial sacramental theology? Neither postcolonial theorists nor sacramental theologians have hitherto sought to engage in a sustained dialogue with one another. In this trailblazing volume, Kristine Suna-Koro brings postcolonialism, diaspora discourse, and Christian sacramental theology into a mutually critical and constructive transdisciplinary conversation. Dialoguing with thinkers as diverse as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak as well as Francis D'Sa, S.J., Martin Luther, Mayra Rivera, and John Chryssavgis, the author offers a postcolonial retrieval of sacramentality through a robust theological engagement with the postcolonial notions of hybridity, contrapuntality, planetarity, and Third Space. While exploring the methodological potential of diasporic imaginary in theology, this innovative book advances the notion of sacramental pluriverse and of Christ as its paradigmatic crescendo within the sacramental economy of creation and redemptive transformation. In the context of ecological degradation, In Counterpoint argues that it is vital for the postcolonial sacramental renewal to be rooted in ethics as a uniquely postcolonial fundamental theology.
The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.
Becca Whitla uses liberationist, postcolonial, and decolonial methods to analyze hymns, congregational singing, and song-leading practices. By way of this analysis, Whitla shows how congregational singing can embody liberating liturgy and theology. Through a series of interwoven theoretical lenses and methodological tools—including coloniality, mimicry, epistemic disobedience, hybridity, border thinking, and ethnomusicology—the author examines and interrogates a range of factors in the musical sphere. From beloved Victorian hymns to infectious Latin American coritos; congregational singing to radical union choirs; Christian complicity in coloniality to Indigenous ways of knowing, the dynamic praxis-based stance of the book is rooted in the author’s lived experiences and commitments and engages with detailed examples from sacred music and both liturgical and practical theology. Drawing on what she calls a syncopated liberating praxis, the author affirms the intercultural promise of communities of faith as a locus theologicus and a place for the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit.
The fundamental intuition of this essay is that liturgical theology does not simply deal with Christian rituals, festivals and sacraments, but with the core of faith itself: God, world, the Christ event, tradition, Church, and redemption.
Unraveling Religious Leadership invites readers to reconsider foundational assumptions in Christian communities. Drawing upon decolonial frameworks and realities beyond white, eurowestern, modern ideals of who leaders are and what they do, this work pulls on the threads of colonialism and empire to create new possibilities for religious leaders.