In Australia, what kind of church do you go to? A uni church? Church in a cinema? A night service, or maybe a family service? There are quite a few different choices, but I want to suggest here that there’s more to these configurations than just timetabling and location. In Australia we have […]
As I indicated earlier, liberation theology provides a pre-existing parallel to postcolonial criticism, and this what Gilberto Lozano and Federico A Roth explore in ‘The problem and promise of praxis in postcolonial criticism’, one of the most critical and constructive chapters in Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations. Liberation theology originally took focus not in the academic world […]
You are one of the ‘subaltern’, having the unique experience of being on the underside of society. How do you live in a world that seems set against you? You are part of the centre, one of the powerful people. (That’s me, by the way, and probably you.) You like […]
‘Tracing the metanarrative of colonialism and its legacy’ is one of the shortest and sharpest chapters in Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations. Teri Merrick, a professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University, argues that Kant and Hegel’s version of how we know things sets up Western modern science as the arbitrator of truth. She writes, ‘This places an […]
Let’s return to Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations and the chapter by Victor Ifeanyi Ezigbo and Reggie L Williams, ‘Converting a colonialist Christ: toward an African postcolonial Christology’. Ezigbo and Williams begin by pointing to the African theological quest to reimagine Jesus’ identity and significance for today. It might sound strange to reimagine […]
Last Friday we looked at some of Vinoth Ramachandra’s theological reflections in Subverting Global Myths — reflections for Christians to take on board. He also has some considerations of what Christians might have to offer in postcolonial conversations. In part these flow out of Ramachandra’s concern for context. He suggests that unless we safeguard the multiplicity and particularity […]
Last Friday I looked at Vinoth Ramachandra’s account of multicentred world history and postcolonial criticism, and pointed out his emphasis on the need to specify and honour context. This is part of what inspires his diverse series of theological reflections. Many of these are about renovating how we as (Western) Christians see the world. ‘The “we” in Christian […]
Meet Jesus at uni 