The burgeoning field of postcolonial studies argues that most theology has been formed in dominant cultures, laden intrinsically with imperializing structures. An essential task facing theology is thus to "decolonize" the mind and free Christianity from colonizing bias and structures. Here, in this truly groundbreaking study, highly respected feminist theologian Kwok Pui-lan offers the first full-length theological treatment of what it means to do postcolonial feminist theology. She explains her methodological basis and explores several specific topics, including Christology, pluralism, and creation.
This book engages with the critical tools of Edward Said (1935-2003) and traces the voyage of various postcolonial feminist theologians. Along four intersecting lines, postcolonial feminist theology unfolds as addressing cultural othering, religious othering, gendered othering, and sexual othering. In critical solidarity with those constructed as other postcolonial feminist theology, the book challenges the norms of Western theology. (Series: ContactZone. Explorations in Intercultural Theology - Vol. 16)
Contributors examine white feminist theology's misappropriations of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dismemberment of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim canonical stories.
Postcolonial Politics and Theology seeks to reform and reimagine the field of political theology—uprooting it from the colonial soil—using the comparative lenses of postcolonial politics and theology to bring attention to the realities of the Global South. Kwok Pui-lan traces the history of the political impacts of Western theological development, especially developments in the U.S. context, and the need to shift these interlocking fields toward non-Western traditions in theory and practice. A special focus of the book is on the changing sociopolitical realities of American Empire and Sino-American competition, illustrated in Donald Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" and Xi Jinping’s hope for a “China Dream.” The shifting of U.S. and Asian relationships highlights the need to move our theological and political categories away from a vision of strongman domination and toward a postmodern, postcolonial, and transnational world, especially exemplified in the Asia Pacific context. Throughout, Kwok overturns the idea of centering one cultural framework and marginalizing others in favor of living into a multiplicity of deeply contextual theologies. She explores how these theologies are being developed in global, postcolonial contexts, through struggles for democracy and civil disobedience in Hong Kong, by efforts to reclaim selfhood and sexual identity from exploitative colonial desire, through the work of interreligious solidarity and peacebuilding, and in the practice of earth care in the face of ecological crisis.
Noting that the ways of interpreting the Bible now practiced in the West are patriarchal and oppressive of those in other parts of the world, Dube offers an alternative interpretation that attends to and respects needs of women in the two-thirds world. In a provocative and insightful reading of the book of Matthew, she shows us how to read the Bible as decolonizing rather than imperialist literature.
A theology in tune with postcolonial theory has the potential to creatively inform and transform ecclesial practice. Focusing on the relation of theology to postcolonial theory, Postcolonial Theologies brings together a wide diversity of authors, many of them fresh and exciting theological voices, in essays that are stunningly creative and prophetically lucid. All essays are theologically constructive, not merely deconstructive or critical, in their visions for Christianity. Forming a sort of doctrinal landscape, they emerge under the themes of theological anthropology shaped by ethnicity, class, and privilege; a Christology that intersects the claims of Christ and empire; and a Cosmology that imagines a postcolonial world.
This original and ambitious book considers the terms of engagement between Christian theology and other religious traditions, beginning with criticism of Christian theology of religions as entangled with European colonial modernity. Jenny Daggers covers recent efforts to disentangle Eurocentrism from the meeting of the religions, and investigates new constructive possibilities arising in the postcolonial context. In dialogue with Asian and feminist theologies, she reflects on ways forward for relations between the religions and offers a particularist model for theology of religions, standing within a classical Trinitarian framework.
Asian women comprise more than a quarter of the world's population, and the forms in which they express feminist theology are many and varied, extending through grassroots movements, theological networks, ecumenical conferences and journals. Those involved in the process include community organizers, theological students, church leaders and social activists, among whom even the concept 'feminism' assumes many definitions and substitutes. Kwok Pui-lan's introduction to this huge subject begins with a survey of the social, political and cultural contexts of Asian women's experiences, and then traces the emergence of feminist consciousness and the organization of women's networks. She describes the resources of Asian feminist theology and the appropriation of Asian religious traditions, and considers the reconstructions of the concept of God in inclusive categories. Finally, she summarizes Asian women's critique of the patriarchal church and outlines the search for a new spirituality that express women's embodiedness and sexuality.
Drawing from poststructuralist, postcolonial, and queer theory, this text explores the challenges of cultivating attentiveness to difference in women's experiences and reflects on the impact of race and sexuality on feminist theology.
