Mission and Context (Theology in the Age of Empire) 197870366X, 9781978703667

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Praise for Mission and Context

“This book is a missiological treasure trove of our times. It contains the latest cutting-edge reflections on the greatest challenges facing Christian mission globally. The chapters are written by a carefully assembled group of some of the best theologians in the world at this time. At the heart of each chapter is an analysis of the interplay between the Missio Dei and context in a world dominated by the ideology and the values of Empire. It is remarkable how contributors to this volume, each in her or his own way, manage at once to unmask the negative strategies of Empire and to point out the various ways in which Christians all over the world are resisting it and providing alternatives through their lived faith.” —Tinyiko Maluleke, University of Pretoria “The publication of this book in academic and other church circles is—to use the phrase of my friend Tony Gittins—‘a presence that disturbs.’ But the disturbance that it causes is a grace, a grace that only those who speak from the margins of society and empire can offer. The entire church, but especially those of us at the privileged center, need to listen, learn, repent, and be converted.” —Stephen Bevans, SVD, Catholic Theological Union “Mission and Context is the fifth and last volume of a series of collections of essays edited by Jione Havea that re-examine and challenge all aspects of Christian practice and theology from the perspective of resistance to Empire and imperialism. Contributors hailing from all corners of the globe unflinchingly unmask the various ways in which Christian churches have colluded with imperial power in ‘matters of power, position, protection and plethora.’ If readers feel uncomfortable with the views expressed in this book, it will have achieved its goal of provoking them to critically rethink the traditional understanding of Christian mission and to acknowledge that ‘empires do not have the final word,’ nor are they the ‘final world.’ Reading this book with an open mind is already an act of resistance.” —Peter C. Phan, Georgetown University “Mission and Context is an empowering collection of experiences and theological discourse that turns the concept of mission upside down. Mission was for the majority of its history carried out in the context of Empire. This book decolonizes the concept of empire and the forces with which it was associated. For instance, it captures the impact of the mis-

sionary movements of the eighteenth century and their silent and complicit relationship with slavery. The different contexts represented in these chapters give us an honest insight into the role and place of mission, both historically and in contemporary context. This is a book about mission from the margins that looks with hope to the marginalized communities as the places where Jesus lives and speaks.” —Feiloaiga Taule’ale’ausumai, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand

Mission and Context

Theology in the Age of Empire Series Editor: Jione Havea In these five volumes, an international collective of theologians interrogate Christianity’s involvement with empires past and present, trouble its normative teachings and practices whenever they sustain and profit from empire, and rekindle the insights and energies within the Christian movement that militate against empire’s rapacity. Titles in the Series Religion and Power, edited by Jione Havea Scripture and Resistance, edited by Jione Havea People and Land: Decolonizing Theologies, edited by Jione Havea Vulnerability and Resilience: Body and Liberating Theologies, edited by Jione Havea Mission and Context, edited by Jione Havea

Mission and Context Edited by Jione Havea

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934803 ISBN 978-1-9787-0366-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-9787-0367-4 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

This book was made possible through the kind contribution of the Council for World Mission

Contents

Foreword Collin I. Cowan 1

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repatriation of native minds Jione Havea

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1: Context Matters

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Turn to Decolonial Theology: A Southern African Invitation Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

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Hermeneutical Embers from the “Zone of Non-being” Vuyani S. Vellem

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Reading Christ in the Neighbor’s Eyes: An Asian Invitation Samuel Ngun Ling

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Who Is Christ for Ali?: Refugees in a Post–Truth Age Eunice Karanja Kamaara

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Get Out: Soul Trans-Formations in Trumpire Jennifer Leath

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The Philippine Nation-State and the Killing of Indigenous Peoples: Christianity and Modernity as Walls of Legitimation and Conquest S. Lily Mendoza

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Dare Not! Or Fear Not!: Reimagining the Story of the Canaanite-Noisy Woman (Matthew 15) Surekha Nelavala

2: Mission Matters 9

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Counter-creating Mission in but not ofEmpire Peter Cruchley

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10 Conservative Evangelicalism, Prosperity Gospel, and the Pornification of Western Christianity Roderick R. Hewitt

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11 Calling for Communities of Resistance in the Context of Empire Sindiso Jele

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12 Mission and Violent Conflict: Seeking Shalom Deborah Storie

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13 Reassembling the Oikoumenē Kathryn Poethig

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14 Theology at the Nexus of Spirit and Life Kim Yong-Bok

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Bibliography Index About the Contributors

201 217 221

Foreword Collin I. Cowan

The context of and for mission has been crucial for Council for World Mission (CWM) from the beginning of its life, back in 1795, in the shape of the London Missionary Society (LMS). The early founders of this mission society read the signs of the times in the late eighteenth century and detected the power of the Gospel of Jesus to bring freedom to all the lands of the world. They initially envisaged a mission movement that was not intended to plant British ways of church. Instead, they were deeply moved by an impulse to share the Gospel so that those who heard it could develop ways of church and mission which reflected their context, culture, and place. This was a high and noble vision, which our founding parents quite quickly failed to attain. They propagated English, Welsh, and Scottish forms of Christianity, as well as rooted Congregational and Presbyterian models of Church in new lands. Hymnody, dress, language, and theology reflected the colonial power to which these new lands were becoming co-opted and contextualized. Soon the cultures of the evangelists became synonymous with the Gospel, and the conflation of these two forces dominated the thought and practice and the Christian mission. Mission from the center to the margins became the norm, whether it be by an individual, a congregation, a denomination, or a mission society. Those who were privileged by the Gospel and by “civilization” began missions to those who were regarded as “the less fortunate and benighted peoples,” the heathens in places where “thick darkness broodeth yet.” In truth, we lost our way. We welcome this volume on Mission and Context, which rightly turns this understanding of mission on its head. In this volume are reflections on mission from the margins, where those supposedly benighted, without the Gospel, are in fact the true home of Jesus present among us now. This sets a huge challenge before bureaucratic churches and mission agencies, who thrive on performance and are obsessed with power and the need to deliver outcomes, rather than to identify with the vulnerable and the dispossessed. We are not where Jesus is, in the trenches and at the stations where creation groans. This discovery is challenging and disturbing, yet transformative and hopeful. xi

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So, we may look again to our contexts with new eyes. CWM, as a reformulation of LMS, emerged out of the urge to de-colonize mission and Christianity. By acknowledging the overarching impact of the British empire on the development of Christianity throughout the world, contextualization offered new routes out of empire’s grip. But empire, as a system of domination and control, has not been broken; and in its reformed shapes we continue to wonder what is the extent to which this missionary urge is fermenting and how the various contexts in which we do mission offer us the way to de-colonize from the new empire. This volume points to alternative ways, and we welcome its challenges and opportunities.

Collin I. Cowan General Secretary, CWM 13 August 2019

ONE repatriation of native minds Jione Havea

Tupaia (1724?–1770) was a noble and educated native priest (tahua) who was taken aboard the Endeavour, the ship captained by James Cook when it came to Tahiti (in the Mā’ohi Nui group of islands, which is at the heart of Polynesia, in April 1769) to observe the Transit of Venus and then to search for the “Great Southern Continent.” He was the wise native who navigated the Endeavour through the waters of Mā’ohi Nui, mapped the islands of Pasifika (for Pacific Islands, Oceania) for Captain Cook, and negotiated with the angered natives at Raiatea (Tupaia’s home island, also known by the names of Havai’i or Hawaiki) and Aotearoa (New Zealand, which the Endeavour reached in October 1769) for the lives of the invasive European explorers. Tupaia was a native priest, a navigator and a negotiator, but he was not appropriately appreciated by his European beneficiaries. Unbeknown to Tupaia, Captain Cook did not want to take him on board because Cook did not expect the British government to pay for the extra expenses that Tupaia would add to his mission. 1 The credit for taking Tupaia on board goes to a wealthier member of the expedition, Joseph Banks. Banks convinced Cook that they take Tupaia to London, and he offered to bear all financial costs involved: “I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tygers at a larger expence than he will probably ever put me to.” 2 For Banks, Tupaia was first of all another exotic native body on par with the exotic animals that other Englishmen brought back from other lands claimed for the British Empire. And Banks continues on: “the amusement I shall have in his future conversation and the benefit he will be of to this ship, as well as what he may be if another should be sent into 1

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these seas, will I think fully repay me.” 3 Banks therefore also saw in Tupaia, second, an opportunity for his entertainment (including when others talk about Tupaia); third, a benefactor for their current mission as well as for future missions to Pasifika; and fourth, the combination of those three reasons made Tupaia a sound investment (despite his bringing another native along, the younger Taiata, which meant more expenses for Banks). Banks saw in Tupaia gifts and knowledge, which Cook later took advantage of and appropriated as his own, but this white captain (Cook) did not have the decency to elaborate on the skills and wisdom of the native person. Cook only mentioned Tupaia once in his diaries (on December 26, 1770), after Tupaia had died (on November 11, 1770, two days after Taiata died) and been buried on the island of Edam (in Indonesia): “He was a Shrewd Sensible, Ingenious Man, but proud and obstinate which often made his situation on board both disagreable to himself and those about him, and tended much to promote the deceases which put a period to his life.” 4 Cook was referring to scurvy, one of the diseases that Europeans introduced to Pasifika, but he showed no appreciation for the exotic wisdom and skills of this native priest and navigator. In light of Banks’s reasoning (except for Banks’s amusement), Tupaia qua benefactor for their journey deserved to be credited for, at least, mapping Pasifika for Captain Cook. Like Tupaia, many beneficial Pasifika natives did not receive appropriate credits in the so-called “mission(ary) fields.” On the other side of that coin, many natives also did not receive the critique that they deserve. Tupaia was wise in his navigational skills and cultural negotiations, 5 but he was also taken advantage of (read: fooled) by the European explorers. If Tupaia had misled Cook and as a consequence caused the wreck of the Endeavour, he would have delayed the “discovery” of Pasifika by European colonialists and diseases. I imagine that Tupaia would not have boarded the Endeavour had he heard the late Aretha Franklin’s rendition of Otis Redding’s song “Respect.” Franklin inserted the line “you’re runnin’ out of fools” as her way of saying that she is not going to be her honey’s fool. She will not be fooled, and that is the context for her demand for r-e-s-p-e-c-t (which she clearly spelled out, so there was no room for misunderstanding). 6 If Tupaia had refused to be one of Captain Cook’s fools, but instead fooled the captain and crew of the Endeavour, i imagine that he would at least have received more than one mention in this British explorer’s diaries. Tupaia was noble and wise, but the history of colonization (which paved the way for the Christian mission) would have been different if he was also cunning, resistant, and insistent on receiving some r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

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SHIPWRECK Relato de un Náufrago, the inspiration for the mural on the cover of this book, is a work of nonfiction by the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez that retells the survival of Luís Alejandro Velasco in the open sea. 7 Velasco was travelling back on the destroyer Caldas from the United States to Colombia when (according to the government version) a storm caught the vessel at sea and washed eight people overboard. After four days of searching, the men overboard were declared dead. But Velasco found a raft on which he drifted for ten days, until he arrived at Colombia, where he was received with military honors. As the survivor of the catastrophe and of loneliness at sea, Velasco became a national hero with much compensation from sponsoring agencies. Before Relato de un Náufrago was published in the form of a book, Velasco’s story was printed (in his own name) as a series of newspaper (El Espectador) episodes in 1955. These episodes challenged the official government version of what happened: There was no storm at sea. The real problem, rather, was that the Caldas was overloaded with contrabands, and the victims drowned because of negligence by the Colombian navy. Velasco’s story caused a public controversy, and one of the upshots was the censuring of Garcia Márquez by the Colombian government. So he became a foreign correspondent (another tag for someone in exile). Fifteen years later (1970), Relato de un Náufrago was published as a book in the name of Garcia Márquez. Bringing Velasco’s survival story to the intersection of Tupaia’s navigational skills and his longing for the motions of the seas, 8 i imagine that Tupaia would have survived the wild seas if he had caused the shipwreck of the Endeavour (which carried contrabands taken from Pasifika natives). If Tupaia had fooled Captain Cook and caused a shipwreck, then Cook and Banks would have run out of fools. But that was not the case, and I call attention to Relato de un Náufrago as an opportunity to address several matters of critical concern. First, because Relato de un Náufrago presents a personal story that challenged the official (government, colonialist) record, what Garcia Márquez and Velasco attempted (to correct the Colombian story) is lacking in the case of Tupaia and many Pasifika natives who became fools of Western missions. Western mission(arie)s harvested their native wisdom and buried their native bodies, some at home and a few in foreign lands and on the shelves of museums overseas. In response to this irritating reality, i propose that one of the tasks to consider in reimagining the future of “mission” is the repatriation of both native remains and native minds. The repatriation of native remains should be easy, but it would be political and costly because it requires apology, confession, repentance, reparation, and reconciliation (in that order). The repatriation of native minds is a lot more difficult and complicated, but necessary; it requires the decoloniza-

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tion of the minds of both natives and non-natives. The minds of both natives and non-natives, and not one or the other, need to be decolonized. Together. In relation to one another. With r-e-s-p-e-c-t to the natives who did not receive appropriate credit and critique for their contribution and participation in the European mission. This collection of essays takes a step toward the repatriation of native minds. From different contexts in the mission field, the authors reflect on some of the principles and practices (read: missionary positions) of the Western(ized) and Christian(ized) mission and offer alternative visions for navigating mission into the future. As a collective, the authors prefer that the Christian mission would stop seeing and treating people in their home (and differing) contexts as fools. In other words, no more fools on (mission) board (put another way, “FOBs no more”; see the section “Repatriation, FOB-style” below). I also call attention to Relato de un Náufrago, second, in order to muse around the image on the cover of this book (see figure 1.1). It is a photograph of a mural at the Calle 26 x Nqs underpass in Bogotá, Colombia (the homeland of Garcia Márquez and Velasco). The mural is not signed nor dated, and it brings Relato de un Náufrago (the novel and its agendas) onto land. To a crossroad. Under a crossing road. The mural puts the mariner in a decent, solid boat, instead of a raft. The mariner points ahead past a clock that freezes at three o’clock and a bird that suggests that land is not far. The sea is littered with contrabands, and on the ground in front of the mural are the kinds of litter that one finds at an underpass—cigarette butts, urine, bottle tops, a syringe, packaging for

Figure 1.1. A mural at Calle 26 x Nqs underpass (Bogotá, Colombia). “Relato de un Náufrago/Story of a Castaway.” Photographer: Jin-Yang Kim, 2018.

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drugs and other contrabands, and so on. The mural is located at one of the contexts for mission that has been given many names: context of the poor, home of indigenous people, and other catchwords such as underside, margin, underpass, roadside, and so forth. This is a context familiar to those who are involved in mission and liberation theologies. And there is more to the mural. Following the extended right hand of the mariner, this artwork invites viewers to go forth from this context. Put another way, the mural calls for mission from the underpass. This raises an important question: from the underpass to where? There are two details in the mural that help one answer this question: First, following the arms of the clock, the unseen destinations are where the vertical and the horizontal intersect. The “three o’clock” is not all about time of the day or night. It is also about horizons (upward and forward) and intersectionality, of what comes from above and what awaits below, yonder. And second, following the determined look of the bird, the mural invites viewers to trust that the bird knows where the boat is going. The bird knows the ways across both land and sea, and so the mariner is probably pointing to a place that the bird has already seen and been. The bird is therefore the navigator, and so it is among those who are forgotten or overlooked in stories of survival including Garcia Márquez’s Relato de un Náufrago. In light of my opening reflection, i see the bird also as a figure for Tupaia and so, in the calm and stable body of the bird, the mural is an example of how repatriation of native minds might work. The mural gives credit to bodies of wisdom (which may appear as bird-brains in the eyes of official records) that have been harvested and then forgotten (read: buried). The mural puts such bodies back at the front of the boat, in the way of the pointing arm of the mariner (read: missionary). The decolonization of native and non-native minds could involve intersecting everyday texts like Relato de un Náufrago (as book and mural) with the unofficial memories of natives (like Tupaia) and the desire for the repatriation of native minds. This is not the only way to decolonize native and non-native minds, but in light of the concern of this collection with the matters of mission and context, this approach encourages studying texts and repressed stories at the underpass before setting out in missions from the underpass. Do not hurry. Study the texts at the underpass before boarding the mission boat. Moreover, this approach is not afraid of wrecking mission boats that carry the flags of the missionary era, that teach salvation songs which “kaching” the missionary accounts (in banks and in archives), and that sanctify teachings and practices which enforce missionary positions (read: theologies, principles, and practices). Such mission boats deserve to be wrecked. In other words, decolonizing the usual business of Christian mission is also called for in the repatriation of native minds. For r-e-s-pe-c-t toward natives and texts at underpasses.

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MISSION-WRECK Mission positions have turned over since the missionary era, and they oscillate still, unsettled and disturbed (see Ruth 3:18), as Christianity’s center of gravity continues to slide from the global north to the global south. Part of this slide is evident in the “mission from the margin” rhetoric (also invited by the Relato de un Náufrago mural, as discussed above) that emerged from the tenth assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at Busan, South Korea, in 2013, and the Conference of World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) at Arusha, Tanzania, in 2018. This slide, however, is only in terms of numbers. There are more Christian bodies and communities in the global south, but the decision-making powers and the control over resources (including resources situated in the global south) have not shifted from the global north. There are more white bodies at the boards and councils of WCC and CWME even though there are more black and colored bodies among their memberships. In that light, this collection of essays presents voices of wisdom (similar to the bird in the mural) that deserve recognition and appreciation—and i unashamedly make this call in the interest of the repatriation of native minds. The voices of wisdom (mostly by theologians from and/or who have commitments to the global south) presented in this collection are divided into two clusters that unavoidably intersect. The first cluster contains voices that give more weight to context matters in two senses: (1) that there are matters in (all) contexts which deserve close attention in the practices of (especially church) mission, and (2) that physical, ideological, and theological contexts do matter for reimagining mission in(to) the future. As a cluster, these essays resist the assumption that contexts are docile and innocent. Also in a double move, the second cluster presents voices that give more emphasis to mission matters: (1) there are matters in the usual business of mission that need to be reexamined, and (2) mission still matters even with all its quirks. Insofar as contexts have their own missions, and missions are always in contexts, these two clusters of essays will hopefully interweave in the eyes of readers. context matters In terms of lived contexts, this first cluster of essays spreads from Africa to Asia and to America. And in terms of theological currents, this cluster flows from exposing and interrogating the abuse of power that results in the oppression of vulnerable subjects toward learning from and following vulnerable subjects across barriers and walls that serve the interests of centers of power (in church, state, and society). When one follows this flow all the way to learning from rejected and vulnerable “birds” (recalling the bird in the mural as discussed above), one has an

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opportunity to participate in the repatriation of native minds. 9 Together, the essays in this cluster favor the decolonial option. Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa (chapter 2) opens this first cluster of essays with an exploration of the decolonial options for the discourse on empire and the interlinked subject of power. While postcolonial hermeneutics has been employed by a number of African theologians in southern Africa, the persistence of coloniality requires a diagnosis of the context uncovering the various ways in which this continues to impact on theology and mission in much of southern Africa. Sakupapa suggests that one way in which African theologians in southern Africa may contribute toward the discourse on empire and power would be to consider a decolonial epistemic perspective. Such a perspective may well inform the process of the decolonization of theology in southern Africa for meaningful engagement in mission in the context of multifaceted forms of empire. While Sakupapa’s focus is on southern Africa, his decolonizing invitation is relevant for other mission fields where empires collude, control, and corrupt—that is, the decolonial option is relevant for all contexts (south, north, east, and west) and all fields (missionized or otherwise). Vuyani S. Vellem (chapter 3) offers a hermeneutical turn to the drive for decolonization. The demise of apartheid in South Africa deeply challenged scriptural authority. Foreign concepts such as “the Word of God,” “Sola Scriptura,” and “Sola fide” had become too contentious and futile, without any emancipatory value for the oppressed and struggling masses. Drawing from the heritage of black hermeneutics, while being alert to the challenges related to black African agency in post–1994 South Africa, Vellem argues that there is something worthwhile in decentralizing the Bible, debunking the deification and the Santa-Clausification of democracy. Vellem does this within a search for Ilizwi in the embers of hermeneutics in the “zone of non-being,” under the shadows of the empire polis, for the development of a life-affirming, decolonial hermeneutics. Samuel Ngun Ling (chapter 4) brings the attention to the Myanmar context with a rereading of Christ and Christology. To understand Christ in Myanmar requires that one seriously takes into account various religious cultural worldviews, thought-forms, and contextual realities. The kingdom movement of Christ was to set at liberty the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized; to heal the broken society; and to serve as the voices of the voiceless and the oppressed against the principalities of the empire. Jesus’s kingdom movement was against structural powers, structural sins, and structural ideologies. It was anchored in the hope of resurrection for all beings, and the liberation of the poor and marginalized. In this connection, decolonization is for the purpose of liberation. Eunice Karanja Kamaara (chapter 5) calls attention to the realities of refugees, many of whom have been pushed out of their homes because of abusive imperial powers. Thanks to advancements in information tech-

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nology, which have transformed the amount of information accessible, the way the information is accessed, and the way information is used, political polarization is at an all-time high. People cherry-pick from different information streams to suit their political opinions and to influence others, largely by appealing to their emotions. Against this background, Kamaara suggests that global Christianity must radically redefine its mission in defense of the vulnerable. Kamaara accordingly analyses the case of Ali—a Somali born in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya—in order to clarify the implications of President Trump’s executive order on refugees, Christology, and mission. Trump’s order is supported by many American Christians who fear radical Islamic terrorism (which is more about islamophobia than reality), arguing that “It is not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come.” So who is Christ to Ali, and what are the imperatives for global Christian mission today? Jennifer Leath (chapter 6) extends the attention to the doomed circumstances surrounding particular groups of people and land in the contemporary United States empire under the leadership of Donald Trump. Specifically, Leath brings attention to five groups of people whose access to and experience of space is lethally compromised as a result of the new regime of political power in place in the United States: people indigenous to the land occupied by the United States, people of African descent, Muslim people, Spanish-speaking immigrants, and transgender people. Corresponding with an investigation of what kinds of “land” pressures these people are experiencing, Leath identifies the contemporary call of Christian mission with respect to each of these groups from within and without. Leath identifies and evaluates the necessary ethical frameworks for response and the international responses most appropriate. S. Lily Mendoza (chapter 7) offers another framework for addressing Leath’s concern, with a reflection on the kinds of walls erected around Christian, national, and modern identities. Such walls are multi-tiered devices erected for the purpose of managerial control. The wall erected by colonial Christianity, in particular, is a device intended to convert, master, and manage so-called heathen subjects. Mendoza’s agenda is not to call upon those outside to come into such walls, in order to be included, but for those trapped within to step out of their confinements and to resist attempts to subdue them and to be incorporated. If those inside the walls recognize their unfreedom (or captivity), they could subvert the narratives that justify keeping those walls. If they see the walls and venture out, they may recover their connections to the wider world—to the whole of creation. Surekha Nelavala (chapter 8) winds up this section with a reading that, so to speak, steps over the walls. Nelavala reads the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 from her perspective as a feminist scholar who has experienced subalternity. Though people at the margins

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speak out, they continue in their subaltern status because they are often ignored, resisted, and muted by the authorities at the centres of power. The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 experienced the same as she approached Jesus to seek healing for her daughter. The Canaanite mother dared to take on whatever it would take—to be shamed, to be insulted, to be called names, to be ill-treated, to face rejection—in order to get healing for her daughter. Based on the things she heard about Jesus, she believed that he was the one who could heal her daughter. She dared to approach Jesus because her only daughter was her everything, more than her own life and her own dignity. Her everything was crumbling, so she dared to step over the walls that confined her. She had nothing to lose. mission matters In response to the problems with some of the principles, positions, and practices of the Christian mission, and evangelism its lifetime partner, the voices in the second cluster of essays both critique and reimagine alternative ways of doing mission and evangelism. In general, there are strong calls in this cluster for resistance, for listening to and embracing victims, for returning to the Gospel ways, and for entertaining the gifts of spiritualism. Peter Cruchley (chapter 9) opens this cluster of essays with a critical assertion: mission is at the heart of the complicities between religion and empire, but mission could be converted to contest religion, power, and empire—through acts of “counter-creativity.” For Cruchley, countercreativity is the key method and spirit of mission in the age of empire. The missio dei can be understood as counter-creativity and countercreation, God seeking to transform history through various acts of redemption in the face of empire’s claim that resistance is futile. Cruchley frames counter-creativity in biblical-theological terms (with illustrations from the counter-imperial roots of the creation and Gospel narratives) and finds supporting evidences in early church histories as well as in the story of the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the Council for World Mission (CWM), through the counter-creative action of Bethelsdorp Mission Station in South Africa. Contemporary application of countercreativity takes place in two areas of CWM life and program: emphasis on missional congregations and emerging perspectives on “evangelism from the margins.” Roderick R. Hewitt (chapter 10) presents an assessment of conservative evangelicalism through its by-product, the prosperity gospel, which has resulted in the pornification of a type of populist Christianity (especially within the South African context) that thrives on satisfying the instant desires of religious consumers for “miraculously initiated” blessings of wealth and health. This brand of conservative Christianity has mutated expeditiously into political and economic ascendency. The glo-

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bal consequences of this brand of evangelicalism are far reaching; and the credibility of ecclesial leaders is called into question because their character is perceived to thrive on greed, self-importance, control of others, and false witness. Finding this brand of evangelicalism to be a complete antithesis to the gospel of Jesus, Hewitt calls for re-visioning the identity, vocation, and witness of evangelical witness that reembraces authentic spirituality for social justice and responsibility. Sindiso Jele’s contribution (chapter 11) is premised on the missiological conviction that each socio-political and economic context and situation creates a type of community. The book of Revelation, which was written in the context of persecution, is an example of a narrative of such a community born out of suffering and persecution. The urgent question is, how can a community of faith participate in the mission of God in the context of disturbing, violent, and unpredictable situations in human history? The community’s resistance to all the challenges of empire becomes the definition of its testimony and visible witness. What kind of mission might communities of resistance do? To what extent do these communities reflect that they are a people of radical hope? What issues and who are to be resisted? Jele offers a reading of the book of Revelation that shows how a new community that is different may exist within a society ridden with life-denying issues. Deborah Storie (chapter 12) brings the concern for the shape of mission to contexts of violent conflict. What shapes does mission take when covert violence masquerades as peace? Storie addresses this question through a series of personal encounters in Afghanistan and other conflict zones. Reflecting on each encounter, she highlights the need to listen to and learn from conflict-affected communities, and to consider how cycles of violence may be transcended. Storie also interrogates strategies used by humanitarian agencies in conflict zones, and the covert violence in international systems and structures that drive war. In the context of violent conflict, Storie suggests that mission involves seeking and telling stories that do not make violence the defining reality and offers opportunities for participation in God’s story of forgiveness and resurrection love. Kathryn Poethig (chapter 13) expands the meaning and membership in contemporary oikoumenē, the “whole inhabited earth.” While we now include nonhumans (animals and ecosystems) as participants in a peaceable, sustainable earth, we also need (following the lead of de Sousa Santos) to “reassemble the social” and affirm an “ecology of knowledge” that includes the worldviews of marginal communities in conflict zones. Embarking on a transdisciplinary “anthropology of the imagination,” Poethig takes seriously the social imaginary of local religious communities who seek out the invisible world for guidance and solace, focusing particularly on religious dreams in “undreamy times.” Poethig takes the

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spiritual turn upon the vibes of epiphany dreams during and after revolutionary conflict, particularly in Cambodia. Kim Yong-Bok (chapter 14) closes this second cluster of essays with another spiritual turn. For Kim, a spiritual approach helps one discern the Zoegraphy of all living beings. Perceiving the real global threat of omnicide, Kim suggests that we need spiritual hermeneutics to recover the reality of the spirit and of life in its full implications. This spiritual approach affirms that people are flesh and blood, and that life as a whole is lived on earth. Life as a whole is a spiritual reality. At the end, together, the second cluster of essays leans toward spiritual matters. This move is not toward some airy-fairy kind of spirituality, but toward spiritualities that are rooted in the demands of resistance, are attentive to the contexts of violence, are critical of the politics of peace making, materialize the dream worlds of the departed (in native terms, the ancestors), and embrace life in its full implications. This turn toward spiritual matters is also necessary for the repatriation of native minds. REPATRIATION, FOB-STYLE Among Pasifika (and Asian) migrant communities in the 1990s, “FOB” was a derogatory tag impelled upon us as people who were fresh off the boat. It was easy to identify Pasifika FOBs because of our fuzzy and curly hair, brown eyes (slanted eyes, in the case of Asians), thick noses, darkened skins, body odor, and broken tongues (bad English and strange accent), in other words, because we were different from the dominant white society. When i migrated to Australia in August 2000, with all of the marks of a FOB, Pasifika migrants were coming around: We were becoming proud of being FOBs. Instead of being ashamed or crossed, we affirmed our FOBiness, and the FOB acronym started to appear on Tshirts, PI-graffities, tribal-tattoos (which became a sensation in the worldwide context), and in some theological papers and theses in the so-called Pacific diaspora. Slowly, the bite of the FOB slur lifted. By embracing our FOBiness, we silenced the scoff of our scorners. 10 With the benefit of the FOB experience i seek (in FOB-style) to slide the “native” tag in this essay. Drawing upon the concerns, commitments, and energies of the authors of the following essays, i call for the repatriation of native minds, and to end this reflection i add two more qualifications—first, i explain the significance of affirming the native-tag, and second i caution against the allure and trap of nativism. First, what is the significance of using “native” as a tag? This takes me back to the missionary era, when European missionaries were simply identified as “missionaries,” but the local Pasifika islanders who converted and became missionaries to other communities and other islands were called “native missionaries.” The white missionaries were the stan-

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dard (read: the real missionaries), but the local missionaries needed to be qualified (as “natives”) even though they were at the frontline (read: pawns, subalterns) of the mission. For instance, in the Solomon Islands and Papua, the white missionaries would wait on the boat or another island while the native missionaries from Tonga and Samoa swam or rafted out for the first encounter with the natives onshore. The native missionaries negotiated for the foreign (Westernized) religion, and the white missionaries landed after the native missionaries had befriended the native people. But these native missionaries, as in the case of Tupaia, are not appropriately remembered in the accounts of the Christian mission. Many are named with a brief mention of the home island, the missionary they served, and in which mission field, but their stories are not accounted. My preference for “native” is in honor of native people who are forgotten after their wisdom and courage were harvested by the white mission(aries); for their sake, i call for repatriation of native minds in this essay. There is another side to my affirmation: for natives of the modern time, the repatriation of native minds requires critique of the native missionaries. If they had not boarded (and became fools on board) the boat of white missionaries, we would not have lost many of the customs, valuables (referring to loots that became, but were not seen as, contrabands in mission libraries and museums overseas), and wisdoms of our ancestors. While the native missionaries assisted the Christian mission, they exposed the native religions and values to be whitewashed and buried. Native religions and values also await repatriation. My preference for the “native” tag instead of the now standard “indigenous” tag (which homogenizes minority cultures in a similar way) is also in response to negative connotations that anthropologists and ethnographers associated with it. While the “native” tag feels less damaging than the “savages” and “pagans” tags that they also ascribed to native people, for some reason our people reacted more strongly to the “native” tag. In FOB-style, i use “native” with the hope to both expose as well as reverse the indignity that it projects on our people. Second, i hasten to add that my call for repatriation is not a (re)turn to nativism—(going back to the critique of anthropologists); the call in this essay is not out of the illusion that only natives can or may speak on native matters. My concern is not with who has the right to speak for natives and native matters, but for natives and native matters that have been harvested and then buried (or silenced, unappreciated) in conversations around mission and context. Those natives and native matters are “texts at the margins” (or underpass, as in the Relato de un Náufrago mural) that need to be repatriated and studied first before any “mission from the margins” marches out with chants of resistance, emancipation, solidarity, and whoteva.

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NOTES 1. I wonder if the issue of expense came up simply because the additional passengers were from a different race and color. Would cost have been an issue if Tupaia were a white British subject? 2. Cited in Anne Salmond, Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans 1642–1772 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 116. Joan Druett only quotes up to this point in Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator (Auckland: Old Salt Press, 2011), 181. 3. Cited in Salmond, Two Worlds, 116 (my italics). 4. Cited in Druett, Tupaia, 373. 5. See also Joan Druett, “Tupaia,” Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6t2/tupaia; accessed April 13, 2019). 6. Franklin’s lyrics are available at https://genius.com/Aretha-franklin-respect-lyrics (accessed Nov 05, 2018). 7. The English translation, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, was first published in 1986 by Penguin. 8. Joan Druett explained that on his last days, despite being very sick, Tupaia “asked to be moved to the seamen’s camp on Kuyper Island, where he could see the ocean” (Druett, “Tupaia”; my italics). 9. Unfairly, i confess, i frame and present the essays in this collection in light of my own interests in this essay. There are of course more to each of these voices than the call for repatriation of native minds. 10. The American sitcom Fresh off the Boat is a public example of embracing FOBiness; the TV series gives viewers (including many scorners) a chance to laugh with Asian FOBs in the United States. The scorners are thus entertained, and the Asian FOBs laugh all the way to the bank.

1

Context Matters

TWO Turn to Decolonial Theology A Southern African Invitation Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

This essay offers decolonial perspectives on the discourse on empire and its cognate subject of power. The persistence of coloniality requires a diagnosis of the ways in which coloniality impacts theology and mission in southern Africa. I bring into creative engagement the views of Zimbabwean born scholar Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) on the “postcolonized neocolonized world” of African people on the one hand and the prospects of decolonizing theology in southern Africa on the other, and argue that African contributions to the discourse on empire and power can be enriched with a decolonial perspective. 1 By decolonial, I refer to a set of interventions that advance the process of decolonization in the postcolonial age: The decolonial turn does not refer to a single theoretical school, but rather points to a family of diverse positions that share a view of coloniality as the fundamental problem in the modern (as well as postmodern and information age), and decolonization or decoloniality as a necessary task that remains unfinished. 2

A decolonial perspective entails a critique of both Eurocentric and socalled third world fundamentalisms, colonialism, and nationalism. As Ramon Grosfóguel observes, it is not an “essentialist, fundamentalist, anti-European critique.” 3 Decoloniality means “working towards a vision of human life that is not dependent upon or structured by the forced imposition of one ideal society over those that differ, which is what mod17

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ernity/coloniality does and, hence, where decolonization of the mind should begin.” 4 While a number of contributions on the debate on religion and empire in theological discourse in southern Africa highlighted the residue of colonialism in mission in terms of neo-colonialism and postcolonialism, 5 my focus will be on decoloniality. A decolonial epistemic perspective on African theology is only beginning to be highlighted. Kaunda and Hewitt have made one such attempt by positing the view that “mission-formation in Africa must be comprehended within decolonial thinking that relates to the specificity of its historical and political construction.” 6 My considered view is that a decolonial perspective in southern Africa concerns how we may understand our situation within the current global system. Framed this way, I find Jobling’s critique of postcolonialism attractive and therefore propose a decolonial perspective. 7 Recent discourse on decoloniality tends to distinguish postcolonial and decolonial in terms of different readings of colonialism. 8 My contribution is an attempt to enter into a theological conversation on the concept and various articulations of coloniality within the southern African context. On the basis of the diagnosis of the African context by Ndlovu-Gatsheni, mine is an endeavor to juxtapose empire and decolonization. In the vast theological literature on empire that has emerged within the context of ecumenical and confessional church bodies, reflections on empire have often accentuated the depredation of neoliberal globalization. The significance of such discourse is captured in the WARC statement which notes that empire “presents life and death challenges for Christians, as the empire uses religion to justify its domination and violence, and makes claims that belong to God alone.” 9 More so, as Rieger argues, empire has a stake in “controlling all aspects of our lives, from macropolitics to our innermost desires.” 10 The very notion of empire draws one to a self-critical reflection on how we entangle in power structures. 11 RELIGION AND EMPIRE A contemporary understanding of empire goes beyond the narrow view of empire as a “relationship of domination and subordination between one polity (called the metropole) and one or more territories (called colonies) that lie outside the metropole’s boundaries yet are claimed as its lawful possessions.” 12 Hardt and Negri distinguish empire from the older imperialism when they observe that the former “establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers.” It is “a decentred and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers.” 13

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Stuart Bate suggests three forms of relationships between religion and empire: “when empire dominates religion”; “when religion dominates empire”; and “a dialectic of control between empire and religion.” 14 Historically, the Roman Empire under Caesar exemplifies the first while the Holy Roman Empire under Charles the Great and today’s globalized context typify the second and third respectively. Already in the bible, the biblical narrative is embedded within a complex entanglement with empire. Empires such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome provide the context of some biblical narratives. Christianity evolved within the context of empire since its beginnings in the Roman Empire. With the gradual emergence of what came to be regarded as Christendom (corpus Christianum) following the Edict of Milan in 313, there was a symbiotic relationship between the church and state leading eventually to a rise in prominence of the papacy by the twelfth century. 15 The sixteenth-century reformations were a huge blow to such symbiosis. Thus, some see the sixteenth-century reformation as a quintessential illustration of anti-empire at least in the force of Martin Luther’s 95 theses amidst the various contestations within the Holy Roman Empire. The reformers, however, did not espouse a theology that called for resistance against the forces of the empire or the magistrates. The reformation was much more than that. One needs to pay attention to conditions in the late medieval world in which context the reformations grew and rebelled. 16 The entanglement between mission and colonialism that characterized missionary expansion into Africa during the so-called missionary century may be seen as another phase of Christianity and empire. 17 In The Stolen Bible, Gerald West from a South African vantage point captures this tension through a detailed study of African receptions of missionarycolonial Christianity on the one hand and African receptions of the Bible on the other. 18 This study highlights the complex relationship between mission and colonization. 19 Ironically, the history of Christian mission in Southern Africa provides a key into a deeper understanding of colonialism in much of Africa. 20 Inversely, one could argue that rather incongruously, the colonial period somehow “precipitated an unparalleled era of mission.” 21 Some portray missionaries as nothing more than agents of colonialism while others argue that the relationship between missionaries and the colonial officials was fraught with tension. 22 As Hastings has shown, the relationship between missionaries and the early colonial state ranged from “fawning subservience to deep distrust and open disagreement.” 23 This notwithstanding, the irony of mission history is that it achieved the “unintended result of stiffening the African resolve and directing it on the path of political and cultural emancipation” primarily through the African elite who were trained through mission education and later championed decolonization. 24 The decolonization process, which re-

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sulted in the creation of new “independent states,” also had a domino effect on the Christian religious landscape in Africa. 25 AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE FIRST WAVE OF DECOLONIZATION A number of African church leaders and theologians reacted to the calls for decolonization by forging African theologies, for example, the theology of inculturation. 26 With decolonization serving as the nexus for the quest for authenticity that privileged a form of African Christian identity discourse, African theologians undertook an Africanization of Christianity and employed such vocabulary as adaptation, localization, translation, indigenization, and incarnation. Idowu’s Towards An Indigenous Church is one example of initial attempts at the decolonization of theology. 27 These efforts symbolized attempts to forge authentic African Christianity and theology predicated on a hermeneutic of identity. The contributions of various African theologians during the 1970s placed emphasis on theological reflection on the Gospel to mirror African “reality” and cultural milieu. African inculturation theology thus became a theological effort to rethink African identity. This initiated an epistemological break from Western cultural and intellectual assumptions. Given the false assumption held by most missionaries to Africa that Africans had no religion, it is understandable why many African theologians of the generation of John Mbiti and Bolaji Idowu saw it necessary to plead for the integrity of African religion. The denigration of African culture/religion is best understood in terms of the western imperialist project of colonization and civilization. To the extent that the introduction of Christianity in Africa as a civilizing western religion was based inter alia on the false assumption that Africans had no religion partly illustrates how religion (read: Christianity) and empire reinforced one another. Little wonder then that in his stress on the integrity of African traditional religion (ATR), the Kenyan poet Okot p’Bitek labelled African Christian theologians such as Mbiti as “intellectual smugglers who refuse to appreciate ATRs as valid religions possessing a peculiar identity.” 28 The challenge posed in this regard concerns the attempt by African Christian theologians to recover ATR without taking into account the influence of Christianity. This criticism falls squarely on African theologians such as John Mbiti who, despite acknowledging the integrity of African religions, stressed the preparatory role (praeparatio evangelica) of African religions and thus opined a thesis of continuity between African religion and Christianity. 29 For p’Bitek, this was no less than positing an inferior status to African religion. South African scholar Tinyiko Maluleke is of the view that p’Bitek’s challenge has not been sufficiently engaged by African theologians, and thus he

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suggests the “re-opening of the dialogue between Christian Theology and ATRs—a debate that never started.” 30 The above notwithstanding, one may affirm with Bediako that such initial attempts at decolonizing theology achieved the “Christianisation of the African tradition.” 31 What remained was the Africanization of African Christian experience. Bediako saw the task of Africanization as a religious and an intellectual one regarding “how African Christianity, employing Christian tools, may set about mending the torn fabric of African identity and hopefully point the way to a fuller and unfettered African humanity and personality.” 32 Bediako and Sanneh have contributed to this discourse by not only demonstrating the critical and preparatory role played by African traditional religion in the assimilation of Christianity as Mbiti and Idowu had done, but also attributing the successful implantation of Christianity to the facilitating role of African religions. Sanneh specifically articulated a view of “mission as translation” and thereby demonstrated how in “African hands, Christianity spread along familiar religious channels, acquiring in the feedback a strong dose of local religious materials which the quarantined culture of the Western missionary had tried to filter out.” 33 There is a sense in which African theology became elitist and did not therefore help chart the path to a decolonized church in Africa. The predicament of the church in Africa is variously described in terms of “prefabricated theology, liturgies and traditions” borrowed from the west (Idowu), and the “North Atlantic Captivity of the Church” by assuming a definition of the Christian faith, which is definitely North Atlantic (Pobee). A number of theologians have pondered the question whether African theology as a decolonized theology has been successful in speaking to the needs of African people. In a way, the various trends of African theology represent an attempt to respond to this question with reference to a specific issue and context (e.g., poverty, gender construction, racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa). The nuanced but innovative proposals for an African theology of reconstruction during the early 1990s by Jesse Mugambi (of Kenya) and Charles Villa Vicencio (of South Africa) represent attempts to interrogate the specific role of African theology in changing situations. Although the Africanization debate (read: decolonization) featured prominently in theological reflections on African Christianity during the early 1960s, the unfinished nature of the debate has found expression in educational discourse, 34 theology, 35 religious studies, 36 and philosophy especially in the Southern African context. These calls highlight something of the persistence of colonial mindsets. Musa Dube, operating with a postcolonial perspective, has shown how the scramble for Africa did not end with “westerners sharing the body of Africa among themselves.” 37 It has continued through globalization. There has been an em-

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phasis on a critical analysis of past and contemporary politics, economics, and cultural identity. The South African biblical scholar Gerald West argues that discourses on the relationship between African culture (and/as religion) and Christianity assumed “a post-colonial stance.” 38 Edward Antonio more explicitly posits a link between inculturation and postcolonial discourse. Antonio depicts African inculturation theology as a species of postcolonial discourse in as far as it represents an African effort to rethink African identity. Several essays in Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in Africa, edited by Antonio, postulate that inculturation represents a decolonization of Christianity in Africa. 39 In this mode, John Mbiti and Jesse Mugambi have contributed toward articulating theology that promoted African agency. 40 Mugambi is especially self-conscious in his attempt to resist the theological hegemony of Western theology. The call for a moratorium within the ambits of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) coupled with African liberation struggles during the 1970s influenced the “shifts in the strategy for decolonizing the African churches” and setting an African Christian agenda for mission. As a missionary strategy, the moratorium debate was also prompted by ethical concerns over ecclesiastical imperialism. 41 My sense is that the history of African theology in its early period was a response to the colonial residue in mission just as nationalist leaders called for political liberation. It is a history fraught with various ways of negotiating the tensions between western hegemony in theology and African Christian identity. African theologians have not however deliberately articulated their theologies from a postcolonial perspective. The more explicit postcolonial African theology has especially been espoused more recently within the context of biblical hermeneutics. 42 Nevertheless, Antonio argues, African inculturation theology is “an oppositional discourse whose goal is to resist and displace the epistemic claims of a western inflected Christianity.” 43 THE ILLUSIONS OF FREEDOM Securing political independence in many African nations during the 1960s was marked with euphoria among African church leaders, leading some to observe that political independence is the “proudest moment” of African nationalism. 44 It was not long before Africans became disillusioned with decolonization (read: political independence). This is nowhere better expressed than in Ali Mazrui’s observation that although political power was asserted by African leaders such as Nkrumah to be a prerequisite to economic and social power, the experience in postcolonial Africa has shown that this was indeed necessary but not sufficient. 45 In his diagnosis of the contemporary African situation Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues that the key problem in Africa pertains to the

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illusion of freedom and the myth of decolonization. In his view, a postcolonial Africa has not yet been fully realized. The African postcolonial world remains an aspiration rather than a reality. 46 In this regard, to speak of a postcolonial world is a misconception. 47 Distinguishing between emancipation and liberation, he contends that the African “native bourgeoisie” capitulated toward emancipation and ended up replacing the white colonial bourgeoisie. 48 Therefore, for Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “a postcolonial world was never born; rather what decolonization facilitated was a postcolonial neocolonized world.” 49 Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues that global coloniality is presently a major challenge in the African context. 50 He espouses a view of coloniality as an “invisible power structure that sustains colonial relations of exploitation and domination long after the end of direct colonialism.” The encounter of the West through the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and globalization is seen as constituting coloniality as “a global power structure that sustains asymmetrical power relations between the Euro-American World and the Global South.” 51 In his view, decolonization as a political, economic, and epistemological project is an unfinished business that has given way to coloniality. Here, he draws significantly from the views of Peruvian sociologist and humanist thinker Anibal Quijano, who theorized a colonial “power matrix” around the socially constructed notion of race. Quijano intended to show the multilayered and complex process of domination through which Europe instituted various modes of control. With this notion, Ndlovu-Gatsheni highlights how colonial mentalities, psychologies, and worldviews continue into the so-called postcolonial era. As Grosfóguel explains, “we continue to live under the same ‘colonial power matrix.’ With juridicalpolitical decolonization we moved from a period of ‘global colonialism’ to the current period of ‘global coloniality.’” 52 Coloniality thus becomes a useful way of speaking about the continuity of colonial forms of domination even after the end of colonial administrations. Ndlovu-Gatsheni offers a succinct analysis of how the postcolonial African state could not escape the snares of colonial matrices of power. Ndlovu-Gatsheni employs the concepts of “coloniality of power,” “coloniality of being,” and “coloniality of knowledge” to unravel the pervasiveness of coloniality in Africa beyond “formal” colonialism. 53 Coloniality of power confronts the four constitutive elements of Western domination and exploitation of the non-Western world, namely the control of economy, authority, gender, and equality, as well as subjectivity and knowledge. 54 There is therefore “the continued entrapment of the continent and its people within global imperial designs.” 55 The coloniality of power underscores modern forms of domination and control. As articulated by Quijano, the coloniality of power was associated with coloniality of knowledge expressed as modernity/rationality. 56 Ndlovu-Gatsheni de-

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scribes the coloniality of being in terms of the inferiorization and dehumanization of African people. For Ndlovu-Gatsheni, the coloniality perspective is significant because it privileges the subaltern side of colonial difference as it critiques and challenges hegemonic European paradigms, which as Grosfóguel has argued have assumed “a universalistic, neutral, objective point of view.” 57 For if, as Walter Mignolo shows, Christianity became “the first global design of the modern/colonial world system,” 58 then coloniality is significant for contemporary discourse on religion and empire in the southern African context. Following Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, I describe the predicament of the majority of African countries as a “postcolonial neocolonized world.” Such diagnosis is germane to understanding the challenges facing the contemporary southern African context. With this in mind, I proceed to capture trends in recent theological discourse on resistance to empire in southern Africa. THEOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE TO EMPIRE Most commentators in the discourse on religion and empire highlight the need for theologies of resistance. 59 Ecumenical discourse on empire, often discussed under the rubric of neoliberal globalization, has ensued in several ecumenical structures such as the WCC, 60 global confessional bodies such as the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), 61 and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). 62 Chief among these is the Accra Confession, which speaks of empire as: the convergence of economic, political, cultural, geographic, and military imperial interests, systems, and networks for the purpose of amassing political power and economic wealth. Empire typically forces and facilitates the flow of wealth and power from vulnerable persons, communities, and countries to the more powerful. 63

The Accra Confession links empire and economic injustices, similar to perspectives held by some radical anti-globalists such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri who articulate a “global empire” thesis which views globalization as a form of imperialism that must be resisted. 64 Neoliberal globalization is thus interpreted as a form of recolonization and imperialism through global financial structures which make competitivemarket ideologies hegemonic. Resistance to empire is thus stressed together with a call to work for peace, social justice, and ecological integrity. The work of the Council for World Mission (CWM) on empire represents an attempt to theologically ground the concern with resisting empire. 65 It is especially significant that empire is named as the context for mission in our contemporary times.

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While such discourses on empire are significant, they are problematic if they do not at the same time unravel imperial tendencies in the very theologies of resistance. Coloniality must be unmasked and resisted. I therefore contend for the need to decolonize theology in Southern Africa without capitulating to the tendency toward essentialism and the “politics of return.” 66 Such an approach entails not only drawing from the resources of scripture but also from cultural and religious traditions in southern Africa. 67 DECOLONIZING THEOLOGY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA Recent discourse on decolonization within the South African context has focused on the legacy of colonialism in education, politics, and economics. For some, decolonization is an appropriate response to some of the pressing challenges in the South African context. Some of these include concerns around inequality, white monopoly capital, access to land, and land redistribution given the legacies of racial discrimination under apartheid. Within this context, Nico Botha highlights the hegemony of empire in South Africa by noting three ways in which this manifests in the impact of transnationalization of market on South Africa, a consumerist culture (the unceasing hunger and anxiety to have more), and the academy in terms of “information capitalism.” 68 One may add to these the challenges facing other countries in southern Africa in the form of personalized systems of domination crystalizing around political leaders. While most commentators raise the call for decolonization, it is not often clear how this may play out within theological discourse. For the first generation of African theologians, the link between mission and colonization called for a distinct African response to the gospel. This was born out of the recognition of the role of the modern missionary movement in the colonization of the mind. One may in retrospect question the tangible outcomes of African theology as Africanization or decolonization. In this regard, some question where the line might be drawn between recent calls for decolonizing theology and the Africanization attempts within African theology in its early period. It seems fair to argue that there are colonial residues in the way mission is done today as well as in how theology is taught. Here, I discern the significant role of theological education for social transformation. A growing body of literature on theological education in southern Africa is illustrative of this concern. 69 In his highly acclaimed book The Decolonized Mind, Kenyan academic Ngugi wa Thiong’o speaks of how colonialist imposition manifested in the control of the social production of wealth as well as through subsequent political dictatorship. He notes that “its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control,

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through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.” 70 In the long run, colonial mindsets were imposed on the psyche of African people. For wa Thiong’o, the domination of the peoples’ languages by the languages of the colonizing nations became crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized. Thus, the continued use of the languages of the colonizers perpetuates the cultural subservience to the former colonizers. According to Fanon, “colonisation is not satisfied merely with holding people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns the past of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.” 71 A related effect of colonialism was the internalization of inferiority complexes among the colonized. 72 The colonization of the mind may indeed be described as one of the worst forms of colonization. This has been variously expressed by some African scholars in terms of “broken imaginaire” (Kä Mana) and “anthropological poverty” (Engelbert Mveng). Using a decolonial epistemic perspective, Ndlovu-Gatsheni describes the colonization of the mind in terms of coloniality of knowledge. Although one may contend that wa Thiong’o is not calling for an end to the use of colonial languages such as English, 73 Chinua Achebe disagreed by positing an instrumentalist view of language that stressed nativization or Africanization of colonial languages to serve African ideas and interests. 74 In this way, he opined a linguistic indigenization strategy on the basis of his conviction for instance that the English language would be able to carry the weight of his “African experience.” For wa Thiong’o, on the other hand, language is a collective memory bank of a people, and we are all drawing from the languages and cultures in which we are rooted. Admittedly, that much of theology in southern Africa is articulated in English arguably leads to a marginalization of theological expressions in local languages. This is a crucial consideration as language expresses and carries the culture of a people. Epistemological colonization which amounts to colonization of the mind and imagination affected African “modes of knowing, of producing knowledge, of producing perspectives, images and systems of images, symbols, modes of signification, over the resources, patterns, and instruments of formalized and objectivised expression” including intellectual and visual forms. 75 Calls for the decolonization of higher education in South Africa capture something of the concern for epistemological decolonization. For as Graham Ward suggests, the “decolonization now is concerned with mental habits that have been internalized and where the West retains spectres of superiority—most notably in education.” 76 The university systems are akin to what Grosfóguel describes as an “epistemic hierarchy that privileges western knowledge and cosmology over nonwestern knowledge and cosmologies.” 77

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In my view, epistemological decolonization may well enhance intercultural communication for an interchange of meanings and experiences. How then may we go about decolonizing theology in southern Africa? DECOLONIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF EMPIRE Recently, South African theologian John De Gruchy counterintuitively asked British theologian Graham Ward to deliver a paper on “decolonising theology in South Africa” on the occasion of the sixth Steve de Gruchy memorial lecture at which I had the pleasure of responding to the said paper. Therein, Ward proposed a model of decolonizing theology consisting of three stages, namely, provincializing Europe, transplantation or translation, and affirmation. The first stage recognizes the importance of “provincializing Europe” for diminishing the power of the fetish in our own words and is named after the work of prominent postcolonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty. According to Ward, this entails calling into question the sense of having to emulate Europe and its theologies. Although theologians in the so-called non-Western world have come to acknowledge the contextual nature of all theology, theology is taught as though theologies crafted in Europe are of universal validity. In the second stage, Ward contends that the contestation with colonial hegemony is conducted in the translation and transplantation. Here, there is a recognition that discourse on decolonization, at least in the Southern African context, is at the same time concerned with “mental habits that have been internalised most notably in education.” The third stage involves cultural self-identification, a culture that expresses who “we” are. Ward notes the contested nature of a decolonized (South) African identity. He argues that the “affirmation arises from a recognition: that this is our culture, reflective of the diversity of peoples and their experiences of being here in this place, with these histories, politics, economies, socialities and values.” At a national level, Ward argues, such a cultural self-identification will be continually struggled for “because that ‘we’ will always remain a question.” 78 As Ward discerns, such a process of decolonization is not without challenges. He notes three salient challenges: the “history of the relationship between Christian mission and colonization,” “the conservative understanding of tradition in theology,” 79 and the need for a decolonized theology to pay attention to lay experience and lay education. 80 I find Ward’s proposal useful, but it needs to be engaged in view of earlier attempts at decolonization. As I see it, this raises the need to rethink theological education for mission. The question here is whether the kind of theological education taking place in universities and seminaries in southern Africa adequately equips students for mission in the context of existential issues facing the region and the continent at large. 81 South African theologian Rothney Tshaka observes that “current theological

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discourse is Western in its very nature” and links this to continued hegemony of Western forms of knowledge production and the cognate issue of the disregard of African knowledge. 82 A decolonized theology in southern Africa may well contribute toward the construction of epistemologies for social transformation and development. However, there is a need to factor in lay experience as distinct to theology articulated by professional theologians. Commenting on this, the late South African theologian Steve de Gruchy appropriated “grounded theory” from social theorists to stress the point that “the world is not just a place for ‘applied theology’ learnt in books and classrooms, but a place in which theology itself emerges from the ground up.” 83 UNCONCLUDING THOUGHTS It may be argued that the pan-Africanist movement, in which African nationalism developed, was a redemptive project that promised freedom from colonialism. But this was not so, given as I have shown that we live in a postcolonial neocolonized world. First-generation African theologians espoused various theologies of inculturation and liberation (which will not be pitted together) predicated on some form of Africanization that may well be read in terms of decolonization. Liberation theologies included African women’s theologies, black theology in South Africa, and African theologies of liberation in Africa north of the Limpopo River. Various soteriological motifs were employed in these initiatives. For example, among African inculturation theologians, a variety of honorific titles were ascribed to Jesus, such as the ng’anga (healer) and liberator. Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues that “there is no way Africans can create African futures without a clear diagnosis of what has been frustrating and preventing them from doing so for the past 500 years.” 84 Some African scholars are pointing out the need for research as diagnosis rather than simply conceived in prescriptive terms. In similar vein the Zambian theologian Kapya Kaoma offers a more nuanced proposal when he argues that we “need rational, theological and moral analysis of root causes of problems facing Africa.” 85 This essay offers some tentative reflections on engaging with empire by also taking into account the decolonial perspective. If decolonization entails a liberatory process that includes the political, epistemological, and economic project, then it is indeed unfinished business. This essay therefore suggests the necessity of the decolonization of theology in southern Africa for meaningful engagement in mission in the context of multifaceted forms of empire. How a decolonial theology in southern Africa will encounter the matrix of coloniality remains an ongoing conversation.

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NOTES 1. Whereas postcolonial theory emerged around the ideas of scholars from South Asia (e.g., Edward Said, Hommi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak), decoloniality has mainly emerged from among diasporic South American scholars. In the South African context, a concern with decoloniality perspective is emerging among some theologians. See for instance Gerrie Snyman, “Responding to the Decolonial Turn: Epistemic Vulnerability,” Missionalia: Southern African Journal of Mission Studies 43.3 (2015): 266–291. 2. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Thinking through the Decolonial Turn: Post-Continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction,” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of Luso-Hispanic World 1.2 (2011): 2. 3. Ramón Grosfóguel, “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn,” Cultural Studies 21.2–3 (2007): 212. 4. Walter Mignolo, “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality,” Cultural Studies 21.2/3 (2007): 459. Compare also the view of Maldonado-Torres (2006, 117) who describes decoloniality in terms of “the dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that foment the reproduction of racial, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies that came into being or found new and more powerful forms of expression in the modern/colonial world.” Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Cesaire’s Gift and the Decolonial Turn,” Radical Philosophy Review 9.2 (2006): 117. 5. Musa Dube, “Consuming a Colonial Cultural Bomb: Translating Badimo into ‘Demons’ in the Setswana Bible (Matthew 8.28–34; 15.22; 10.8),” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 21.73 (1999): 33–58; Musa Dube, “The Scramble for Africa as the Biblical Scramble for Africa: Postcolonial Perspectives,” in Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, edited by Musa Dube, A. M. Mbuvi, and D. R. Mbuwayesango, 1–26 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012); Tinyiko Maluleke, “Postcolonial Mission: Oxymoron or New Paradigm?” Swedish Missiological Themes 95.4 (2007): 503–528; Gerald West, The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2016). 6. Chammah Kaunda and Roderick Hewitt, “Toward Epistemic Decolonial Turn in Missio-Formation in African Christianity,” International Review of Mission 104.2 (2015): 392. 7. Here, one may venture to suggest the need for some conceptual clarity between postcolonialism and decoloniality. David Jobling warns of the danger of postcolonialism of—among other things—”losing some of its closeness to local struggles but also becoming another intellectual fad within the Western globalising machine.” David Jobling, “‘Very Limited Ideological Options’: Marxism and Biblical Studies in Postcolonial Scenes,” in Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections, edited by Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), 191. 8. See Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), xxvi–xxvii. 9. WARC, “An Ecumenical Faith Stance against Global Empire for a Liberated Earth Community” (http://oikoumene.net/eng.global/eng.manilaphilippines2006/index.html, accessed 14 Oct 2017). 10. Joerg Rieger, Christ & Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), vii. 11. However, some thinkers are critical of what they perceive as thoughtless use of the concept of empire (and even as a stumbling block) in the real context of society. See for instance Martina Wasserloos-Strunk, “The Concept of Empire as a Stumbling Stone: Aspects of an Ecumenical Discussion on the Theme of Empire,” HTS Theological Studies 65.1 (2009), 1–4. 12. See David B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 19–20.

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13. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), xii–xiii. 14. Stuart Bate, “Between Empire and Anti-Empire: African Mission in the 21st Century,” Missionalia 41: 313–315. See also Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: the Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). 15. David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 281. 16. See Ernst M. Conradie and Teddy C. Sakupapa Teddy, “Renewal, Renaissance, Reformation, or Revolution? Guiding Concepts for Social Transformation in South Africa in the Light of 16th Century Ecclesial Reform and Deform Movements in Europe,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 3.2 (2017): 14. 17. Cf. Dube, “The Scramble for Africa as the Biblical Scramble for Africa,” 2. 18. Gerald West, The Stolen Bible. West’s insistence on distinguishing the Christian religion from the bible is crucial to the ways in which he unravels African agency, thus demonstrating that Africans were not passive receptors. 19. See also Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Vumbi Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (London: James Currey Mudimbe, 1988), 47; Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 20. Here one must take cognisance of the colonial invasion of the Portuguese who arrived in Congo already in the fifteenth century and that of the Dutch in the Cape in the seventeenth century. 21. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 227. 22. Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 316. 23. Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 428. 24. Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity: The Religious Impact (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983), 128. 25. Ogbu Kalu, “African Christianity: From the World Wars to Decolonization,” in African Christianity: An African Story, edited by Ogbu Kalu (Pretoria: University of Pretoria Press, 2005), 347. 26. See Teddy C. Sakupapa, “Ecclesiology and Ethics: An Analysis of the History of the All Africa Conference of Churches (1963–2013)” (doctoral dissertation, the University of the Western Cape, 2017, available: http://etd.uwc.ac.za/handle/11394/5534), 124. 27. E. Bolaji Idowu, Towards An Indigenous Church, Student’s Library, volume 3 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1965). 28. Okot p’Bitek, African Religions in Western Scholarship (Nairobi: East African Literature, 1971), 88. 29. John Mbiti, “Christianity and African Religion,” in Facing the New Challenges: The Message of PACLA (Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly): December 9–19, 1976, edited by M. Cassidy & L. Verlinden (Kisumu: Evangel Publishing House, 1998), 134. For a detailed discussion and critique of Mbiti’s continuity thesis, see Teddy C. Sakupapa, Ecclesiology and Ethics, 117–120. 30. Tinyiko Maluleke, “African Traditional Religions in Christian Mission and Christian Scholarship: Re-opening a Debate that Never Started,” Religion and Theology 5 (1998): 134. 31. Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of the Non-Western Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995), 5. 32. Bediako, Christianity in Africa, 5. 33. Sanneh, West African Christianity, 245. 34. See for instance the edited volume Africanising the Curriculum: Indigenous Perspectives and Theories (2016). 35. See the informative contribution of K. T. Resane (2016) on “Africanising a Theological Discipline: Paradigm Shifts for the New Trends.” He offers a reading of

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Africanizing theology in South Africa as a genesis from state theology to indigenization, from liberation theology to public theology, from church theology to prophetic theology, from black theology to reconciliation theology, from parochial theology to dialogical theology, from ecumenical theology to communion theology, and from Eurocentric hermeneutics to Afrocentric hermeneutics. See also Rothney Tshaka, “How Can a Conquered People Sing Praises of Their History and Culture?” Black Theology 14.2 (1026): 91–106. 36. See the edited volume African Traditions in the Study of Religion in Africa (2012). 37. Dube, “The Scramble for Africa as the Biblical Scramble for Africa,” 4. 38. West, The Stolen Bible, 235. 39. Edward Antonio, “Introduction: Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse,” in Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in African Theology, edited by Edward Antonio, 1–28 (New York: Peter Lang Antonio, 2006). 40. Cf. Robert S. Heaney, From Historical to Critical Post-Colonial Theology: The Contribution of John S. Mbiti and Jesse N. K. Mugambi (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015), 184. 41. See Sakupapa, Ecclesiology and Ethics, 135. 42. See for example the contribution in M. Dube, A. M. Mbuvi, & D. R. Mbuwayesango (eds.) Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations (Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). 43. Antonio, “Introduction: Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse,” 15. 44. See Paul Zeleza, Rethinking Africa’s “Globalization,” Volume 1: The Intellectual Challenges (Trenton: Africa World, 2003), iv. 45. Ali Mazrui (ed), General History of Africa, VIII: Africa since 1935 (Paris: UNESCO, 1993), 105–126. 46. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 15. 47. Cf. Ramón Grosfóguel, “A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality. Epistemologies of Transformation: The Latin American Decolonial Option and its Ramifications,” Kult 6 (2009), 22. 48. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa. Myths of Decolonization (Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series, 2013), 70. 49. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa, 72. 50. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century,” The Thinkers 48 (2013): 11. 51. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century,” 11. 52. Grosfóguel, “A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy,” 22 53. These concepts are further used to describe the African realities of subalternity. The term subaltern was coined by the Italian Marxist theorist and politician Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) to describe a structure of power established around class relations (see Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks [London: Biddles, 1971]). 54. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa, 7–8. 55. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity, 36. 56. Anibál Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21.2–3 (2007): 173. 57. Grosfóguel, “A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy,” 13. 58. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012), 21. 59. See Bate, “Between Empire and Anti-Empire,” 316. 60. See AGAPE document of the WCC, Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth (AGAPE): A Background Document (Geneva: WCC, 2005). 61. See the Accra Confession (2004). The confession is best understood in light of the call for a committed process of recognition, education and confession (processus confessionis) regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction issued at the WARC general council that met at Debrecen in 1997 (See §3.2.4). For useful resources on the possible implications and challenges of the Accra Confession, see Allan Boesak

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and Len Hansen (eds), Globalisation, Volume 1: The Politics of Empire, Justice and the Life of Faith (Stellenbosch: Sun Press Boesak & Hansen, 2009); and Allan Boesak, Johann Weusmann, and Charles Amjad-Ali (eds), Dreaming a Different World: Globalisation and Justice for Humanity and the Earth; the Challenge of the Accra Confession for the Churches. Globalisation Project (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2010). 62. In the Message from its Tenth Assembly (2003) held in Winnipeg, Canada, the Lutheran World Federation (2004, 61) observed that “as a communion, we must engage the false ideology of neoliberal economic globalization by confronting, converting and changing this reality and its effects. This false ideology is grounded in the assumption that the market, built on private property, unrestrained competition and the centrality of contracts, is the absolute law governing human life, society and the natural environment. This is idolatry and leads to the systematic exclusion of those who own no property, the destruction of cultural diversity, the dismantling of fragile democracies and the destruction of the earth.” For a useful collection of documents on the LWF engagement with economic globalization, see Karen Bloomquist (ed), Communion, Responsibility, Accountability: Responding as a Lutheran Communion to Neoliberal Globalization (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 2004). 63. WARC, “Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth” (http:// wcrc.ch/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TheAccraConfession-English.pdf; accessed 14 July 2016); cf. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 23. 64. Hardt and Negri, Empire, xi–xv. 65. See CWM (Council for World Mission) Mission in the Context of Empire (Singapore: CWM, 2011) http://www.cwmission.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/missionand-empire.pdf; accessed March 16, 2017). 66. The philosopher Mabogo More explains the contested nature of the consequences of a discourse of return in “African Renaissance: The Politics of Return,” African Journal of Political Science 7.2 (2002): 66–75. 67. Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire, 7. Compare here for instance the resistance resources within AICs. 68. Nico Botha, “Living at the Edge of Empire: Can Christianity Prevail and Be Effective? A Theological Response to the Historical Struggle between Empire and Christianity,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 37.3: 147–148. 69. See for instance the contributions by scholars from southern Africa in Contested Issues in Training Ministers in South Africa (2015); Transforming Theological Knowledge: Essays on Theology and the University (2013); and the WCC publication The Handbook of Theological Education in Africa (2015). 70. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Nairobi: East African Publishers, 1994), 16. 71. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in a White World (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 170. 72. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 11. 73. See for instance his argument that all languages including the languages of colonizers are valid in so far as “they do not seek to oppress other nations, nationalities, and languages,” in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (London: James Curry, 1993), 41. 74. See Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day (London: Heinemann, 1975), 6, 62. 75. Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” 169. 76. Graham Ward, “Decolonising Theology in South Africa” (unpublished paper, 2017), 575. 77. Grosfóguel, “A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy,” 19. 78. Ward, “Decolonising Theology in South Africa,” 578. 79. Here I have in mind the paucity of studies on the doctrine of the trinity in African theology. One may argue that this is partly owing to the fact that the Greek notions in which the doctrine has traditionally been articulated cannot be rendered in African languages and therefore do not find similar expressions in African intellectual

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infrastructure. These concerns are further elaborated in Sakupapa’s contribution entitled “The Decolonising Content of African Theology and the Decolonisation of African Theology: A Decolonial Analysis” (Forthcoming). 80. Ward, “Decolonising Theology in South Africa,” 580. 81. See James Amanze, “The Voicelessness of Theology and Religious Studies in Contemporary Africa: Who Is to Blame and What Has to Be Done? Setting the Scene,” Missionalia 40.3 (2012): 198; Ezra Chitando, “Equipped and Ready to Serve? Transforming Theology and Religious Studies in Africa,” Missionalia 38.2 (2010): 197–210. 82. Tshaka, “How Can a Conquered People Sing Praises of Their History and Culture?,” 92. 83. Steve de Gruchy, “Theological Education and Mission Practice: A Vital Dialogue,” in Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity, edited by D. Werner, D. Esterline, N. Kang & J. Raja, 42–50 (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2010), 44. 84. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Global Coloniality and the Challenges of Creating African Futures,” Strategic Review for Southern Africa 36.2 (2014): 185. 85. Kapya J. Kaoma, The Creator’s Symphony: African Christianity in the Age of Climate Change (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2015), 134.

THREE Hermeneutical Embers from the “Zone of Non-being” Vuyani S. Vellem

The so-called pro-colonization tweets by Hellen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape Province in South Africa, have enormous hermeneutical implications in the struggle for the epistemological integrity of knowledge systems viewed as inferior in South Africa. That these tweets suggested that colonization benefitted black people is an interpretation of colonization with white epistemological lenses in contradistinction with the position held by the victims of colonization. These tweets created a lot of public commotion, and the story itself is (hermeneutically speaking) illustrative, the subject of conversation in this chapter. As Bonganjalo Goba clearly explains the relationship between hermeneutics and the black condition, “The invasion of Africa by Western powers thus provides a unique context in which to understand the hermeneutics of African theologies.” 1 To claim that colonization was good for black people might seem innocent and even well-meaning, especially when such a view is expressed by one like Hellen Zille, who was among those who fought against apartheid in South Africa. For this to be vivid, one should be cognizant of the fact that there is a link between Eurocentric modernity, slavery, colonialism, Christianity, and capitalism as constructs or systems managed and enunciated to maintain the supremacy and superiority of one race. Put otherwise, racism is constitutive of modernity and its constructs. The justificatory logic of racial exclusion, violence, dispossession, and the dismantle of indigenous knowledge systems and spiritualties emerged at the same time with Eurocentric modernity. Hellen Zille is a symbol of liberal politics in South Africa, and her tweets carry im35

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mense implications for the liberal discourse and its struggle against apartheid in South Africa. 2 That such an utterance was made in the context of decoloniality— decoloniality questions the dominance of colonial symbols and systems of knowledge—could have been a terrible error of judgement by Zille. Let us hasten to say it is not Zille the person with whom we are troubled, but the apparent stubbornness of racial logic and thus racism. After the demise of apartheid, the dominant view in Nelson Mandela’s South Africa and Desmond Tutu’s “rainbow nation” was that talk of racism had become a thing of the past. In the same manner as in the United States, there was talk of a post-racial society, and consequently privileging critical race analysis had become unattractive. 3 In our decolonialist moment however, how could Hellen Zille have “forgotten” that the statue of one of the iconic British colonialists, Cecil Rhodes, had to be publicly removed (April 2015) in her own backyard, the Province of the Western Cape, and placed in “safe keeping” according to the Council of the University of Cape Town? These introductory remarks clarify some of the questions we wrestle with in this conversation. Racial prejudice might be with us until Jesus comes again, but racism as a creation by human beings, like poverty, could be eradicated when the blackness of humanity is affirmed for the humanity of all. Since the relationship of the Bible and racism is widely researched, including the symbiosis of racism with concepts such as the “The Word of God,” Sola Scriptura, and Sola Fide, what lessons have we not learned in Black Theology of liberation (BTL) that racism continues to elude us in the context of empire? Zille’s example illustrates the elusiveness and slippery logic of racism that we need to confront. The Bible has been seriously and vehemently problematized in BTL, and if there are lessons in this regard, why have they not translated into liberative reason in South Africa post-1994? Second, the grammar of liberation theology seriously challenged and problematized white, Western canons of knowledge. The last question that shapes our conversation is the agency of a black interlocutor, the black person in whose hands is the Bible post-1994, ostensibly for the reclamation of the land that was taken away. This last question is triggered by the angst of a black student who is disappointed inter alia by the very exponent of Black Consciousness and the failure of a black led government to keep its promises. Average students in the #MustFall movements ask why the exponent of Black Consciousness or BTL has become such a disappointment to the struggle of a black person? “Why,” they ask, “did the 1976 generation of the struggle leaders fail the young?” At the heart of the decolonialist movement is deep disappointment with failure in the translation of liberative knowledge or logic into the new South African democratization processes. This conversation is thus a selfcritical, Black Conscious reflection on hermeneutics.

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VIGILANCE AND DIALOGUE IN LIBERATION HERMENEUTICS The absence of debate and contest of ideas in BTL, is both a foreign and fraudulent propensity. BTL grew from internal engagements, and that there is little contest of ideas in the advent of democracy and the historical arrest of black liberative knowledge are critical signs of our times. That the Bible was dislodged from the center in BTL as a source of the development of theological grammar for Black hermeneutics is our first illustrative point to examine what lessons there are in this heritage which have not optimally translated into our democratic revolutionary discourse. Maluleke, citing Henry Okullu below, explicitly suggests that African Theology and its sources are found everywhere: [W]hen we are looking for African theology we should go first to the fields, to the village church, to Christian homes to listen to those spontaneously uttered prayers before people go to bed. We should go to the schools, to the frontiers where traditional religions meet with Christianity. We must listen to the throbbing drumbeats and the clapping of hands accompanying the impromptu singing in the independent churches [. . .]. Everywhere in Africa things are happening. Christians are talking, singing, preaching, arguing, praying, discussing. Can it be that all this is an empty show? It is impossible. This then, is African theology. 4

One might say, “but he is referring to African Theology not Black Theology of liberation.” 5 Tinyiko Maluleke puts the matter this way: Black theology’s declaration of intent “to use the Bible to get the land back and to get the land back without losing the Bible” is also a declaration of a most difficult enterprise. Which biblical hermeneutics are the most appropriate and liberating for African Christians? Various African theologies have answered this question variously and the search for the most useful paths is still on. What has become very clear is that it is no longer possible for African theologians to pretend that the Bible, the gospel or the “Christian faith” interprets itself and things only go wrong when people misrepresent a “faith” or Bible which is itself essentially “pure” and “good.”

Maluleke continues, The question of hermeneutics has been thrust to the fore and many African theological approaches have bidden farewell to hermeneutical innocence and have begun to take conscious responsibility for this important and complex task of hermeneutics, not only in relation to the bible but also in relation to the social reality in which African Christians find themselves. 6

In the hands of the black masses, the Bible does not hold a central innocent place. Maluleke himself says that “the Bible does not constitute ‘the only subject matter of theology.’” 7 He goes on to say, “The equation of

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colonialism with Christianity and where it has occurred has done far less harm to Black and African theologies than the equation of the Bible with the Word of God.” 8 Therefore, despite the plausibility of the “translatability” (term associated with Kwame Bediako) and “vernacularisation” (term associated with Lamin Sanneh) of Christianity by going behind the backs of the inseminators of this faith, possible independent epistemological systems and alternatives drawn from our own wells to Christianity are imperative a task for African and Black Theologies. “Bible = Word of God” 9 must be fundamentally and foundationally challenged. The wayout of this quagmire is plausible on the basis of independent epistemological systems and alternatives. In this regard, what Gerald West suggests is significant about the choice of interlocutors: “This choice of interlocutors is more than an ethical commitment, it is also an epistemological commitment, requiring an interpretive starting point within the social analysis of the poor themselves.” 10 Who are the interlocutors of biblical interpretation? There should be epistemological commitment to the preferential option of the poor, the black, in their social conditions including in the Bible. This epistemological break does not require confirmation by Reformed faith but rather, the validation of Reformed faith itself if it is life-affirming for the black body. Ngùgi Wa Thiong’o eloquently puts it, “An echo is precisely an echo and never a reproduction of the original under new conditions.” 11 BTL hermeneutics is not about the echoes of Western canons of knowledge, but the embers of hermeneutics in the Zone of Non-being. Long ago the Bible lost its innocence as a central text for the liberation of black African masses: “amaXhosa warriors destroyed the Bible and said, ‘this is the thing Tiyo troubles us with.’” 12 This destruction of the Bible is not unrelated to the wars fought between colonizers and the colonized. The destruction of the Bible which troubled black African people includes the “destruction” of the troublesome gospel or Christian faith viewed as essentially pure and good. The narrative of conquest, colonization, and Christianization features in most of the stories and works that many literature laureates have produced in South Africa and Africa. These works qualify as theological and extra biblical sources in black hermeneutics. For example, Zakes Mda’s recent work eloquently opens with lyrics apt to paint this repugnant picture of brokenness in colonial times: He can see the whitewashed buildings of the mission station, and the smoke billowing from the houses of the school people surrounding the station. It is something that started even before he left, this practice of surrounding mission campuses with homesteads of school people as a buffer between the missionaries and the hordes who are apt to cut a white man’s throat without any provocation at all—there is a lot of pacification that still needs to be done. 13

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Mda introduces and weaves the story of Malangana, after whom the title of the book is named, Little Suns, with the story of dispossession. He says in the opening lines of this novel, Malangana “is hobbling on twisted crutches, made from umsintsi, known to the Trek-boers as the kafir boom—the tree of nonbelievers—and as the coast of coral tree to the colonists.” Malangana is symbolic of a defeated black person in our current dispensation in South Africa, of black bodies hobbling on twisted crutches, and the sarcasm about naming is painfully palpable and telling. The name of the tree of a black person is called kaffir-boom, a tree of a kaffir, a tree of the nonbeliever. This triggers the thought of a lynching tree; 14 the kaffir tree is the cross of a black person, a limping black person passing through the buffer zone, a black body that shields the white master, the school people, the elite. The crawling of a black person with the Bible in hand, “Tiyo’s Bible,” hobbling and twisted, is a powerful image of the social disorder after the conquest and defeat of black Africa sealed in 1910 when a Boer and a Briton united against blacks to form the Union of South Africa. So everywhere there is a Bible, at least for black interlocution. 15 Tiyo Soga, himself the first black ordained minister in South Africa, resorted to drama, arts, and other sources to deal with the ambivalent experience of black pain, his own people, in response to the claim of the extinction of the “kaffir race.” 16 There is another related point we need to examine briefly in relation to the destruction of the Bible—its loss of pristine innocence. Later, in the development of the school, there came critical internal debates, at times extremely ferocious for my liking. Itumeleng Mosala critiqued James Cone, Cornel West, Allan Boesak, and others for their alleged use of white tools employed by the same whites to perpetuate the oppression of the blacks in their theological approaches. 17 The use of the same tools that the oppressor employs, the weapons of the oppressor, rendered black biblical hermeneutics impotent. Mosala indicted “Black Theologians of being blind to the fact that in their attack/criticism of ‘white theology,’ they are actually using the same tools of analysis that whites have traditionally used to justify their case.” 18 Relying on Amilca Cabral’s views on culture among others, Mosala argued that the tools of BTL were better located within the history and culture of the oppressed, albeit critically so, without romanticizing the culture of the oppressed. Tinyiko Maluleke puts the matter this way: This is in my opinion a momentous suggestion. What is crucial is that theology must go beyond commitment to effecting an “ideological and theoretical break” with dominant ideologies, practices and discourses. Indeed, the sharpest edge of Mosala’s tongue is reserved for those types of liberation theologies, who despite their genuinely good intentions, nevertheless remain trapped in the ideological and theoretical frameworks of the very oppressors whom they seek to undermine and ultimately dethrone. 19

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What was ambiguous about this argument nonetheless was that Mosala himself was heavily reliant on scholars that came from the West. Cecil Ngcokovane also concurred that Mosala’s strongest point was that Black Theology, by relying on the hermeneutical assumptions of white theology, turned a blind eye on the class struggles in the Bible, and thus the need to treat the Bible as the site of struggle was crucial. Gerald West’s work provides a good exposition of this “ferocious” debate. 20 This long debate which signified the need to give attention to inter alia the foreignness and fraudulence of epistemological tools, proceeded post-1994 notably between the likes of Tinyiko Maluleke, Gerald West, and Jim Cochrane. 21 The interpretation of black agency with foreign and fraudulent epistemological tools was the bone of contention, and this foreignness and fraudulence needs attention in our democratization processes—a point we argue later in this conversation. Suffice it to say that BTL bequeathed lessons that translated to liberative reason in post–1994 South Africa. Before we proceed nonetheless, it is necessary to state that even when I was still a student in the late 1980s, Mosala and Boesak had remained brothers. At the launch of Allan Boesak’s festschrift, Mosala argued that there would have been no BTL in South Africa without Allan Boesak. Allan Boesak’s publishing post-1994 remains spotless in his appropriation of the cultures and epistemologies of the oppressed, not only in South Africa but on the globe. The obstinate defense of BTL in his works at a time when there was a subtle onslaught against this paradigm with the exodus of many of its icons into government positions, himself included at one stage, remains unutterably invaluable. His paper, delivered in a gathering of more than sixty international academics, is but one of those excellent examples on Boesak’s part in harnessing the spontaneous knowledge of the ordinary in the interpretation of the Bible. Boesak eloquently states: “Oppressed people, had and exercised, an intuitive, critical theological ingenuity” 22 in interpreting the Bible, and indeed, we should add that this intuitive, critical ingenuity is in their struggle for liberation. Gerald West and Tinyiko Maluleke are friends; you only should watch them from a distance and in township lingua; one can conclude by saying these debates made more friends than enemies, and anyone who thinks otherwise, uyajiya! This is a township word which means that he or she is not telling the truth. Interlocution and epistemology— this narrative should be applied if not translated in the democratization discourse of our land. There are critical lessons here. First, one of the strengths of BTL is its internal debates. The construction of liberation hermeneutics is a product of vehement debate with long-lasting friendships rather than a confabulation of the think-alike. There is more a legacy of a culture of expression than one of suppression. What is even more interesting is that outside the school, the killing of debate and expression is done through labelling,

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“lynching” not merely the suppression of views. Elsewhere, Tinyiko Maluleke profoundly asks if there could ever be any genuine reconciliation in South Africa without the Dutch Reformed Church letting go of its grudges against Allan Boesak, who was prominent in Ottawa in destroying the Bible of apartheid and the theologized politics of Afrikaner racism. Second, vigilance against epistemological foreignness and fraudulence is another lesson. With the Bible as another site of the struggle, black hermeneutics does not only guard against dominant ideologies, practices, and discourses, what in a nutshell could be designated as epistemicide, but should turn democracy from fraudulence and foreignness into an iconic life-affirming polity. DECEPTION OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA POST–1994 How the post–1994 settlement became a foreign and fraudulent discourse should be the starting point of the analysis of democracy in South Africa. How can a black person produced by white power structures, “an empty shell” without consciousness, participate in democratization? Stated otherwise, the task of BTL in post–1994 South Africa is to inter alia examine the extent of the agency of black Africans shaping democratization. Bluntly put, the hermeneutical innocence of the Bible, of the social reality of African Christians and of black African agency, are indispensable for life-affirming democratization processes and practices having bidden farewell to the pseudo-innocence of spatiality and the temporality of Eurocentric modernity. Democracy cannot and should not escape its “destruction” as a troublesome import of the West, perpetually hazardous to the agency of black African people. Emanating from numerous analyses of the post-1994 pact, the burning and fiasco of the prophetic scroll arguably manifest in visceral politics, the self-combustion of the black bodies, we argue that blackness is enough to deal with the deceptions of Eurocentric canons of Christian knowledge and polity. Maldonado-Torres quotes Itumeleng Mosala this way: [T]he black pain of a post-apartheid betrayal of black people is infinitely more painful and dangerous than that of an age when no one had promised any freedom to anyone [. . .]. As the Yanks would say, “It is coloniality, stupid!” No need for a doctorate to grasp this. Blackness should be enough. 23

Blackness should indeed be enough to encapsulate human brokenness and pain. When the promises of political liberation crumble and fall in the face of millions of black bodies unemployed, viciously excruciated by poverty, and growing inequalities inside and outside a given country, even in the same countries that are known to be well-developed, coloniality, the festering “colonial wound” hidden in the language of salvation,

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progress, and modernization, needs no doctorate to grasp—blackness is enough! Following Javier Sanjinés, this festering wound “is nothing but the physical and psychological consequence of racism, of the hegemonic discourse that denied and still denies the humanity of the dispossessed, that assumes it alone can encompass everything and classify everyone else’s stage of evolution and of knowledge.” 24 What is more perplexing, central to the crux of the debate in this conversation, is that the ability of the colonizer to perpetuate the physical and psychological pain of racism and the denial of the humanity of the dispossessed is a vexing question that betrays the lessons we might have learned and garnered through BTL. This is what we see in post–1994, the continuation of pain if not its worsening in the advent of democracy. Amilcar Cabral’s view about the arrest of the historical process of the black by the hegemonic discourses of the colonizer is important to keep in mind for this conversation. The gains of liberation knowledge accrued in the struggle for liberation are diffused, rendered superfluous, thus “arresting” progress necessary to translate liberative reason and practice by other means if overt strategies of violence are not resorted to by the colonizer. The propensity to value the white race more than blacks, now managed through neoliberal democracy in South Africa and the globe, implies that democracy has succumbed to white fear and the protection of white privilege by privatizing black pain and misery. Racism is inter alia constitutive of modernity, colonialism, conquest, and Western Christianity. Neoliberal democracy, a continuation of Eurocentric modernity, cuts and casts the prophetic scroll into fire. The arrest of liberation reason, following Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, implies that “intellectual decolonization cannot come from existing philosophies and culture of scholarship.” 25 The ability of Western power, what Biko defines as the white power structure, to cunningly manage the superiority of the white race for centuries cannot be ignored. In one of the statements produced by black theologians more than two decades ago, 26 the cry for life by blacks at least goes as far back as 1492, a historical conjuncture of the beginnings of Eurocentric modernity with its colonizing and conquering spirit. Some scholars trace the distortion associated with the commodifying or reifying propensities of human civilization as far back as the introduction of private property, money, and interest during the Axial Age, a few millennia ago, being arguably manifest in the deficit of democracy today. While we should not give up on the agency of the oppressed, there are imminent dangers of the agency itself being robbed and snatched by the current power configurations of the world that value one race over all other races and the perpetuation of reifying logic. The impoverished and the poor robbed of their agency are a dangerous species more than American drones! No black without consciousness, the dignification of a

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black person, and the humanization of all humanity can endure the deception of virtual politics, images of success, the manipulation of information, and the manufacture of religiosity aimed to make the dreams of the poor to be the same as the dreams of the rich, these being part of the long durée of the white power structure. For this reason, in contrast with Gerald West’s 27 view regarding Mosala’s critique of “the hermeneutics of mystification” against the AIC’s, the demystification of the agency of the poor masses cannot allow us to turn a blind eye on their agency—the agency of the poor. The pseudo-innocence of faith, accompanied by the justificatory logic of the supremacy and superiority of one race, has morphed into democracy itself and of itself, assuming the pedestal of a salvationist, authoritative religiosity, to the detriment of “obediential politics.” 28 Dussel argues that “a decolonized, decolonizing, and planetary political philosophy” denounces the “philosophical narratives of the emergence of modernity.” 29 So democracy “coerces” through deception the agency of the poor to obey the politics of “the value gap.” TROUBLESOME DEIFICATION OF DEMOCRACY IN POST–1994 SOUTH AFRICA Cornel West, reflecting on the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, warns that there is a need to “pierce through the superficial surfaces and market-driven fanfares” of this monumental life and gift so as to retain its revolutionary face. 30 Reminiscing about his visit to South Africa when he spoke at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, West says: The masses of precious poor people—disproportionately black—have been overlooked by the full-fledge integration of the South African economy into the global capitalist world.

He continues: I asked the great Nelson Mandela about this grave situation after I gave the Nelson Mandela lecture in Pretoria a few years ago. I lambasted the Santa-Clausification of Nelson Mandela that turned Mandela the man and the revolutionary leader into an unthreatening, huggable old man with a smile with bags full of toys—especially for cheering oligarchs like the Oppenheimers or newly rich elites like Cyril Ramaphosa. Even global neoliberal figures like Bill Clinton and Richard Stengel of Time Magazine become major caretakers of Mandela’s legacy as his revolutionary comrades fade into the dustbin of history. As I approached him, he greeted me with a genuine smile of deep love and respect, expressed in the most elevating and encouraging language his appreciation of my righteous indignation in my speech and told me to be steadfast in my witness.

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The Santa-Clausification of Nelson Mandela suggests that democracy in post–1994 South Africa has been Santa-Clausified as a discourse that transforms revolution into an unthreatening, huggable, and smiling polity to be cheered and taken care of by oligarchs. The search Tinyiko Maluleke embarks upon, of the human face of Nelson Mandela, affirms this troublesome presentation of Nelson Mandela outside Robben Island as a huggable and smiling person in the care of the rich after almost three decades in prison for the liberation of the poor now left unattended on the “Roben Island,” the sordid and squalid condition of black South Africa, post-1994. 31 Allan Boesak a few years ago (at a Monash lecture) was explicit in his castigation of the deification of Nelson Mandela, while few whites were demonized during our transition to democracy apparently, for the exculpation and vindication of whiteness and its benefits from colonialism and apartheid. Boesak split hairs by saying that white South Africans love Mandela even more than they love Jesus, inevitably to the consternation of many whites and friends who were part of the lecture he presented at the launch of the book in his honor. 32 Whenever blacks refused to be quarantined, they were told to “adapt,” and they adapted. When they cried “we cannot adapt,” they were told, “indigenize,” and they indigenized. To “No we can’t indigenize, please,” they were told, the best way for you is to “Africanize.” Each time the broken and the miserable attempted to scream and shout, the salvationist religion and spirit of the empire was unrelenting. “No, do not be violent, we found a better solution now, let us democratize, democracy is the way, and this we shall guard with our might.” Democracy is crowned a salvationist paradigm at offer by a Eurocentric modernist discourse. As a deified promise for the liberation of the millions of the global South, the Am Haaretz within a killing and throttling culture and civilization conceived and managed for the maintenance and sustenance of a supreme race, democracy has become deceptive in South Africa post–1994. “There can be genocide in the absence of colonialism,” Patrick Wolfe contends. 33 Democracy could be the continuation of a genocidal, epistemicidal, and spiritualicidal triad intrinsic to Eurocentric modernity. The killing of their culture and systems of knowledge attains the same effect as genocide which physically eliminates the “native.” It is generally argued that democracy is a product of the upheavals associated with the European Reformation. The religion of modernity could thus be described as the Reformation itself if the latter continues without the black face. That the Reformation brought with it a salvationist, authoritative religiosity of modernity that subverted the cultural dispensation of the black Africans is an aspect to which we cannot turn a blind eye when we examine democracy. 34 If this salvationist and authoritative religiosity of the Eurocentric modernist conjuncture accompanied its own version of democracy, then democracy itself as a salvationist

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authoritative religiosity has become the challenge we face after the demise of distorted Reformed faith and apartheid. Dirkie Smit’s reflection on what it means to live in South Africa and to be Reformed suffices as a cautionary view of contending stories of Reformation in this context: So, what does it mean? Any serious response will inevitably be the story of many stories, an ambiguous story of liberating potential yet need for being liberated, a story of internally conflicting traditions and histories of reception, a story of externally competing forces and influences, a story of ambiguities and “sites of struggle,” a story full of enthusiasm and question marks at the same time. 35

A de-centered Bible implies dislodging faith from the salvationist, authoritative paradigm of Eurocentric modernist constructs and religiosity for our democratic discourse. ECHOES OF FIRE IN THE ZONE OF NON-BEING There are combustion chambers in the Zone of Non-being, with potential to consume all of us or liberate us by igniting liberation and life-affirming epistemologies. There is a revival going on, an Imvuselelo—a throng of singing, dancing, and the preaching masses. 36 Ilizwi! The Word! This cry echoes a dialogical celebration in the liturgy of the Word. The proclamation of the Word is celebrated with shouts of Ilizwi by the congregation that shares in the preaching; it is a “tragicomic” celebration of the Word, democratized, dramatic, and active, filled with unspeakable taints of eisegesis. Ilizwi is “fast paced,” “playful,” “interspersed with choruses,” “acted out in the often dramatic and loud sermonettes.” 37 Ilizwi, the embers from the Zone of Non-being, the shouts from the abyssal divide between the Zone of “beings” and the “non-beings,” is a shout to the preacher too: “stop being a statue of the Cartesian Ego.” Ilizwi is a “dialogic-proto-level celebration” according to Baai; 38 there is constant dialogue with the immediate experience of the preacher. When a preacher delivers a sermon, the listeners respond. Listeners participate in the sermon that is being delivered, what Baai refers to as a “Deutero Dialogic Celebration.” Without denying that most of the time the content of the messages preached in the Zone of Non-being is fraught with top-bottom Christological and soteriological taints and thus the ideological assumptions in support of the view that preaching is meant for the non-believer, the style and verbs of Ilizwi in this zone assume another meaning when the nonbeing is the interlocutor. The celebration of Ilizwi is an expression of “Word of God” as meaningless without a dialogic proto-level and the dialogic celebration of the participants in their suffering. Ilizwi is not an abstract and non-ideological concept of the “Word of God” but a play, a dramatic and active bodily expression of what echoes from the zone of

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Non-being. Several metaphors are applicable in the celebration of Ilizwi, such as the dishing out of food in a jamboree, the sharing of a meal. That Ilizwi is likened to the sharing of food is so profound as the Word of God, the Logos, is biblically validated as food if indeed the Eucharist is concretely understood as the celebration of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. 39 In this sharing of Ilizwi, no one seems to be an expert, the interpretation of the Word is shared, and all members participate. The Zone of Non-being provides us with the embers of the democratization of the interpretation of the Word of God and Christian faith at least. It is visceral; it is a rupture of cognitive and cerebral approaches to the politics and theological, the verbs of obedience to the trust of the marginalized. UN-CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Liberation theology is a theology of love, a theology of hope with its hermeneutical embers in the zone of non-being. That BTL, black social theological ethics in South Africa post-1994 is relevant is a wrong question. The appropriate question is: what does the so-called New World Order, modernist democracy, the packages of modernity as a whole do to liberative reason? The deification and Santa-Clausification of foreign and fraudulent symbols, epistemology, religiosity, and democracy kill the prophetic scroll and liberative logic of BTL. NOTES 1. Bonganjalo Goba, “The Hermeneutics of African Theologies,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 12 (1988): 19. 2. The verdict on her case has been pronounced. She has been suspended from participating in her own Party while she remains in government as the Premier of the Western Cape Province. On 13 June 2017 she said in her press statement with Mmusi Maimane: “I realise the wounds of history that my tweet, and subsequent defence of it, has opened. In particular I recognise that my actions were insensitive to South Africans who suffered under colonial oppression.” 3. I ask if racism was under-theorized given the centrality of this question in the development of Black Theology of liberation in the paper titled: “Cracking the Skull of Racism in South Africa Post 1994” (forthcoming). 4. Tinyiko Maluleke, “Half a Century of African Christian Theologies: Elements of the Emerging Agenda for the Twenty-First Century,” in African Christianity: An African Story-Perspective on Christianity, edited by Ogbu U. Kalu (Pretoria: University of Pretoria Press, 2005), 374. 5. African and Black Theologies are soul mates. This conclusion was reached long ago in what could be defined as a classical debate between John Mbiti and Desmond Tutu, another good example of the culture of debate and dialogue in this paradigm. See also debate between Motlhabi Mokgethi and Tinyiko Maluleke, “Black Theology Lives! On a Permanent Crisis,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 9.1 (1995): 1–30. 6. Tinyiko Maluleke, “The Rediscovery of the Agency of Africans,” Journal of Theology in Southern Africa 108 (2000): 31.

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7. Tinyiko Maluleke, “Black and African Theologies in the New World Order: A Time to Drink from our Own Wells,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 96 (1996): 12. 8. Maluleke, “Black and African Theologies,” 12. 9. Maluleke, “Black and African Theologies,” 11. 10. Gerald O. West, “Human Flourishing and Social Transformation: Bringing Embodied Theology into the Public Realm,” Reformed World 59.3 (2009): 165. 11. Ngùgi Wa Thiong’o, In the Name of the Mother: Reflections on Writers and Empire (Nairobi: James Currey, 2013), 3. 12. Vuyani Vellem, “Tiyo Soga: Violence, Disruption and Dislocation in the White Polis,” HTS Teeologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72.1 (2016); a3563.http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v72i.3563. 13. Zakes Mda, Little Suns (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2015), 8. 14. The title of James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2011) resonates with the sentiment but also addresses the historical truth of the lynching of black bodies in the United States of America and ultimately, the glaring failure of Western theology to link this reality with the Cross of Jesus. One then could ask the same question about the bastardization of umsintsi as “kaffir boom” especially if the discourse of naming that BTL has largely addressed comes to mind. Black people have been named all sorts of things by Whites. 15. See Ndikokhele Mtshiselwa, “The Poor in the Psalms and in Tshepo Tshola’s Song Indlala: African Liberationist Remarks,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72.1 (2016); a3173. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72.3173. 16. Tiyo Soga, who at a certain stage of his life totally embraced the world of the Scottish, surely must have been deeply disappointed by this claim. See Vellem, “Tiyo Soga.” 17. See Itumeleng J. Mosala, “The Use of the Bible in Black Theology,” in Unquestionable Right to be Free, edited by Itumeleng J. Mosala and Buti Tlhagale, 175–196 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1986). 18. Cecil Mzingisi Ngocokovane, “The Socio-Cultural Analusis of the Origins and Development of Black Theology,” in We Are One Voice: Black Theology in the USA and South Africa, edited by Simon S. Maimela and Dwight N. Hopkins, 35–50 (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1989), 43. 19. Maluleke, “The Rediscovery of the Agency of Africans,” 33. 20. Gerald O. West, The Stolen Bible: From Instrument of Imperialism to African Icon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2016), esp. chapter 6. 21. Maluleke sharply critiques the notions of “ordinary reader” and “trained reader” used by Gerald West in discussing the matter of African subjectivity. See Tinyiko Maluleke, “The Bible among African Christians: A Missiological Perspective,” in To Cast Fire upon the Earth: Bible and Mission Collaborating in Today’s Multicultural Global Context, edited by Teresa Okure (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2000), 92–94. 22. Allan Aubrey Boesak, “Babblers to the Rabble, Prophets to the Powerful: Mission in the Context of Empire,” Dare Global Forum, Bangkok (29 May 2017), 4. 23. Nelson Maldonado-Torrese, “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality,” https://fondation-frantzfanon.com/outline-of-ten-theses-on-coloniality-anddecoloniality/; accessed 30 June 2017. 24. Javier Sanjinés, Embers of the Past (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 3. 25. Walter Mignolo, “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference,” in Coloniality at Large, edited by M. Morana, E. Dussel, and C. Jauregui (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2008), 331. 26. EATWOT, “The Cry for Life—The Spirituality of the Third World (Statement),” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 1 (1993): 45–71. 27. Gerald West (2016, chapter 6) eruditely provides the internal development of hermeneutics through an evaluation of the different phases of BTL. Seen together, these phases are a crescendo of restlessness, ukunyuka—a whirlwind of resistance to

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Western canons of knowledge rising up in critical engagement of modernity and the New World Order, a hardening husk of this long durée of the supremacist logic of one race even epistemologically. 28. Inspired by Enrique Dussel’s view about “serving the community through the obediential exercise of power.” Enrique Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics (London: Duke University Press, 2008), 4. 29. Eduardo Mendiata, “Foreword: The Liberation of Politics: Alterity, Solidarity, Liberation,” in Ten Theses of Politics (London: Duke University Press, 2008), 9. 30. Cornel West, “Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Nelson Mandela,” http:// www.cornelwest.com.mandela.html. 31. Tinyiko Maluleke, “The Search for a More Human Face of Nelson Mandela,” HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 7.1 (2015); 3/a2941/DOI:https://doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v71i3.2941. 32. P. Dibeela, P. Lenka-Bula, and V. Vellem (eds.), Prophet from the South: Essays in Honour of Allan Aubrey Boesak (Stellenbosch: SunMedia, 2014). 33. Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8.4 (2006): 4. Patrick Wolfe cites examples of genocides that took place without settler colonialism and argues that we should distinguish genocides and settler colonialism. Our argument is that these distinctions might turn a blind eye to the fact that genocide, epistemicide, and spiritualicide are intrinsic and constitutive of colonization and modernity. 34. For a rather detailed argument of the reformation as a salvationist and authoritative religiosity, see Vuyani Vellem, “Spirituality of Liberation: A Conversation with African Religiosity.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 70.1 (2014); http:// dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v70i1.2752. 35. Dirkie Smit, “What Does It Mean to Live in South Africa and to Be Reformed,” Reformed World 58.4 (2008): 269. 36. Vuyani Vellem, “‘Imvuselelo: Embers of Liberation in South Africa Post-1994,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72.1 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ hts.v72i1.3501. 37. See Tinyiko Maluleke, “Will Jesus Be Ever the Same Again: What Are Africans Doing to Him?” Journal of Black Theology 11 (1997): 13–30. 38. G. S. Baai, “Dynamic Complemetarity: A Study of Relationship between Scripture and Culture,” Journal for Southern Africa 83 (June 1993): 58. 39. See Enrique Dussel, Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History, Marxism, and Liberation Theology (New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), chapter 2.

FOUR Reading Christ in the Neighbor’s Eyes An Asian Invitation Samuel Ngun Ling

Traditional Christology is preconditioned by the Jewish cultural setting and thought-form and the long historical traditions of the apostolic church, whereas Asian Christology emphasizes what Jesus Christ did rather than who he was. The first thing that we ought to do in Asia is to reinterpret traditional Christology in light of Asian socio-politico-cultural experiences. This new understanding of Asian Christology will hopefully break the traditional framework. Traditional or classical Christology is being faced with the crisis that denies the presence of Christ in other religious traditions, while experiential Christology recognizes Christ present in other religious traditions. Felix Wilfred characterizes such a crisis situation as follows: Questions such as uniqueness of Christ are knots that have come to be as a result of centuries-long Christological interpretation in the West, and we understand the need to unknot them—if I may coin a new word. But for us to turn unknotting into our major task in Jesus interpretation would be to engage in something which has both historical or cultural precedents and implications in Asia. I believe that we need to spend our time and energy not in unknotting but in carrying forward the thread of Jesus interpretation which will take us to new vistas and horizons. In short, creative interpretation of the person and message of Jesus in Asia is something that should engage our attention. 1

The difficulty that Asians experience with the traditional or classical approach to Christology is that this approach claims the absoluteness of 49

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Jesus Christ. This approach is partly the influence of the quest for the historical Jesus. This tendency and claim to present the absolute-ness and universality of Jesus continued to grow in Western tradition which could be seen as recently as in the writing of Hans Kung: “The Christ of the Christians is a quite concrete, human, historical person: the Christ of the Christians is no other than Jesus of Nazareth. And in this sense, Christianity is essentially based on history; Christian faith is essentially historical faith.” 2 The Asian approach seeks faith experience of the people and embraces a holistic dimension. It is an approach to totality that starts from fragments, from our experiences, concerns, and questions. The Asian approach to Christology and theology can be identified as a dialogical and cross-cultural approach, which attempts to express Christian faith in a multi-religious cultural context. Theologians like Fr. Aloysius Pieris, 3 Raimon Panikkar, 4 S. J. Samartha, 5 and C. S. Song, 6 to name a few, made significant contributions in this approach. The central focus of this approach is a holistic liberation of the whole of humanity and the whole of creation. It enables Asian Christians to engage themselves in a new way of interpreting Christology by relating the suffering of Jesus Christ to the suffering experiences of Asians such as the broken Minjung, the neglected Dalit, the exploited Tribals, and the oppressed women. The Asian approach to Christology has made reflections on Asian soteriological questions and Asian moral challenges that lead to thinking about greater horizons of the whole cosmos. In the Asian mind, the Christ-event is perceived as the center of the whole cosmos as Christ sacrificed his life for liberation of the poor, the oppressed, and the whole cosmos. Christology is understood not from the perspective of the church’s classical traditions but from the Trinitarian perspective of God the universal. Instead of the traditional aspect of “Christ from above” that focuses only the vertical dimension of the divinity of Jesus Christ, the “Christ from below” (which looks at Christ as the center of divine-human encounter) is taken seriously in Asian Christology (without minimizing the divinity of Christ). 7 NAMING CHRIST IN ASIA In the past, naming Christ in Asia was done by Western Christian missionaries in their Western-Asian ways. This Western-Asian naming calls for renaming Christ in an Asian way today. Renaming Christ is therefore one of the great tasks of contextual theology in Asia. The Asian way of naming is not simply a matter of defining the person by naming him with attributive titles such as Messiah, Lord, Son of God, and so on. Asia could have various forms of naming Jesus Christ in terms of images, symbols, and metaphors, even though none of those may express fully the mysterious nature of Jesus Christ. Biblically speaking, there is always significance

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or meaning behind the given name of a person. For instance, the name Benjamin in Genesis 35, named by Jacob, his father, means “son of my right hand,” and the name Peter in Matthew 16:17, named by Jesus Christ, means “rock.” Biblical naming stands for personhood, personality, and future vision of the person being named. In other words, the reality of a person lies not in his naming label or name-tag but in his existential reality (the way of life). In a similar vein, one may know God by God’s way of life or acts of love. God made Godself known by coming to deliver Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3:9–10). This God did not name himself but simply said, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). This God was in Christ, and so Jesus Christ was God-incarnated, God-with-us (Immanuel). We can feel God’s love not by knowing God’s name but by experiencing God’s acts of love. God is not “who he is” (naming) but “what he does” (action): A true Christology will tell us not simply that God is like Christ, but that God was in Christ. Thus, it will tell us not only about the nature of God, but about His activity, about what He has done, coming the whole way for our salvation in Jesus Christ; and there is no other way in which the Christian truth about God can be expressed. 8

In line with this thought, Edmund Za Bik, emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Myanmar Institute of Theology, made the following statement: When our Lord says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by me,” this statement is [. . .] not so much by clinging to or getting associated with the “name-tag” of such words as Jesus Christ, but the whole-hearted reliving and embodying of the way of God that Christ has revealed it to us as the key to Truth and Life. It is only by and through Jesus’ way of life of God’s way that one will go to the Father. It is therefore hardly surprising when Raymundo Panikkar says that people of other faiths who truly embody the way of Christ are anonymous Christians. I think this is the heart of Professor Khin Maung Din’s article titled, “Can a Buddhist be Buddhist-Christians.” 9

Bik proposes naming Christ in Asia not by a name-tag, Jesus or Christ, but by his way of life or deeds that embodied God’s saving will. The Burmese Buddhists believe that a number of Buddhas appeared before Gautama the Buddha received enlightenment. The real essence of Buddha-hood is not bearing the name Buddha but “to be really enlightened.” A “given name” is by no means an identity or indicator of the what-ness or the ontological being of a person or the name bearer. There may be a hundred persons with the same name like Beckham, an English football star, but their ontological what-ness or way of life are not the same. One may be a football star, one a driver, one a musician, and one an artist. The name Jesus is the same as Joshua, Jeshua, and Jeshuah, whose meaning is “Jehovah is salvation.” This name was given to the son of Joseph and

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Mary (Matthew 1:21). There may be scores of peoples with the name Jesus as given name, but their ontological what-ness or way of life is disproportionately different. The name Christ comes from the Greek “Christos” meaning “the anointed.” There were hundreds of anointed kings, emperors, and rulers in ancient and modern histories. Some were ruthless and brutal killers, some were crooks, cruel and selfish, whereas some were good-hearted and compassionate, and they all were called Christs. Here, it is already evident that it is not name or name-tag that constitutes a person’s real identity but the how (the way of life) and the what (being) of a person put together. This proposal is also true with the Buddhist context of Southeast Asia, where meritorious deeds or karmic actions of a person play central roles in Theravada Buddhology or Buddhist soteriology. If Jesus Christ was born in a Buddhist family of Southeast Asia like my country, Myanmar, his birth and naming systems would have to be defined in the Buddhist ways, terms and meaning. To find an appropriate Buddhist name for a newborn baby, the parents would have to consult with grandparents, monks, and astrologers to identify his cosmological stature or planet under the influence of which he was born. For the Buddhists, the birth of a person is the outcome of the whole causal chain of his or her previous life’s events as summed up in his or her actions or deeds (Kamma in Buddhist Pali terms). Their actions or deeds and merits or good actions (Kutho in Burmese terms) determine the moment, plane, and place of his birth. The Burmese Buddhists also believe that the planet and time under which a person was born has effects on that person’s personality, though not fully determined. Thus, the social, religious, sexual status, and personal trait or inborn character is believed to be the result of one’s good or bad deeds in the previous existence. A name for a Buddhist is not an identity or a label of a person but a description of one’s self-understanding in a religious sense and one’s total orientation of life in a broader social and cultural sense. His or her name is determined not by his or her parents’ will but by the actions or deeds of his or her past existence. He or she now belongs to “what he or she was” in the past. Moreover, his or her naming will depend on what day of the week he or she was born, and the first alphabet of his or her name would bear the meaning and merits of his or her past existence. If a child is born on Monday, for instance, the optional Burmese alphabet for his or her first name would be one of kah, khah, kah-nge, and ngah, and the initial alphabet of the name will be Khin, Kyaw, Ngwe. Possible namings include Khin Pa Pa (friendly, shining, beautiful) and Kyaw Than (most famous one among millions). The second alphabet may represent good wishes or visions of his or her parents or relatives who might name him or her. In this sense, naming Jesus in a Burmese Buddhist context could have a completely different story with different implications, and it could bring a different impact on his lordship, Christology, and soteriology.

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In light of the above discussion, Christian religion is oftentimes reduced to a mere name- and label-Christianity. Too often, Christians distort the moral and cosmic values of Christ. It is quite understandable why Dietrich Bonhoeffer called for a religion-less Christianity as Christians used to manipulate the value of Christ and failed to live up to Christ’s moral teachings such as love, justice, goodwill, forgiveness, and compassion for others. 10 It so transpired, ruefully at times, that traditional Christology becomes nothing more than a big theological mill that produces unnecessary theological jargons like by grace alone, by faith alone, sufficient grace, supernatural grace, blood sacrifice, justification, sanctification, substitution atonement, propitiation, expiation, and adoption which confuse, distort, and trivialize the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. 11 It is therefore important to see Jesus Christ not only from the intellectual lens of Western, traditional perspectives but also from the wisdom of oriental faiths. It is time for Christians to recognize and acknowledge the common deposit of truth in other religions. M. M. Thomas, a prominent Indian theologian, developed a cosmic Christology that is grounded in God’s universal revelation. He proposed a “Christ-Centered Syncretism” which would enable Christians to be more open to God’s revelation in other religions. 12 By “Christ-centered syncretism,” he means that the Christian truth must be expressed against the background of and in conflict with the moral and religious contexts of the non-Christian religions. 13 For him, Christ is the unbound, cosmic Christ who can transcend any particular religion including Christian religion. Consequently, because of the universal presence of the cosmic Christ, religions have awakened human society of the need to remove social evils such as injustice and promote a new form of humanity. Thomas’s approach to cosmic Christology is in line with Karl Rahner’s theory of Anonymous Christianity and Paul Tillich’s notion of the Latent Church. 14 WHO DO THEY SAY THAT WE ARE? According to Paul Knitter, every one of us looks at the truth through our own cultural lens or telescope, and that telescope not only enables us to see the truth but also to prevent us from seeing it. He insists on the significance of seeing the truth from the point of views of neighbors of other faiths: If we can look through our neighbors’ telescopes—even though these new telescopes might seem strange to us and difficult to adjust our eyes to—we can see things that we missed with our own. And the more differently built and angled these telescopes are the newer things we are going to be able to see. With other telescopes, really different from our own, we can see areas of the universe that our telescopes were not able to reach or were not able to bring into focus. And the more tele-

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Chapter 4 scopes we manage to use, the more our vision and understanding of truth will expand. Thus, we come to the conclusion that felt right to us from the beginning: truth is known through conversation. 15

Seeing Christ through our neighbors’ telescopes is an important pedagogical basis that would enable Asian Christians to break their imported theological framework that is primarily confined to the Christian community alone. Christology in Asia should not be an exclusive possession that pertains to the Christian community alone. History of religions in Asia tells us that to a certain extent, our neighbors of other faiths have shown their deep reverence to Jesus Christ, appreciate his moral and spiritual teachings as the fundamental teachings of their religions’ gurus, and make attempts to relate the life of Jesus and his teachings to their religious life and worldviews. Gandhi wrote about Jesus: For many, many years, I have regarded Jesus of Nazareth as one amongst the mighty teachers that the world has had, and I say this in all humility [. . .] for He was, certainly, the highest example of One who wished to give everything, asking nothing in return, and not caring what creed might happen to be professed by the recipient. I am sure that if He were living here now among men, He would bless the lives of many who perhaps have never even heard His name, if only their lives embodied the virtues of which He was a living example on earth; the virtues of loving one’s neighbor as oneself and of doing good and charitable works among one’s fellow men. What, then, does Jesus mean to me? To me, He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had. 16

In this enterprise, the cultural values and faith-traditions of our neighbors are very crucial as they provide ways to understand or interpret the messages of Jesus Christ and also experience his person in the depth of their believing hearts. To deprive them of their religious traditions would be to render it difficult, if not impossible, for the overwhelming majority of Asians to interpret Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, Asian interpreters have seen in Jesus Christ the embodiment of the highest ideals they hold as Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims, and so on. Given this, many non-Christian interpreters of Jesus believe that they have greater accessibility to him through their own religious experiences. Their anonymous experiences of Jesus Christ, how different in form they may be from those of the Christians, can neither be neglected fully nor be considered apart from their collective religious experiences as Hindu, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, etc.: Whether one looks at the issue of Christ as avatar or Christ as an ideal, there is a single thread that runs through Hindu views of Christ. This thread is the depiction of Christ as an Oriental or Asiatic. One might even be more specific and say that it is the depiction of Christ as the quintessential Hindu, the one who lives Hindu ideals, as they ought to

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be lived and teaches the essence of Hindu truth, as it ought to be taught. 17

How could one presuppose that a Buddhist would interpret Jesus Christ without his or her understanding of the Buddha? 18 In matters of religious experiences, it is wrong for Christians to expect that their neighbors interpret everything in terms of Christian categories. Again, it may not be correct to limit ourselves to what our neighbors have to say about Jesus Christ through their religious, cultural, and philosophical categories. Their witness to the truth of Jesus Christ may be, for instance, through symbolic and artistic means of expression. In fact, by delving deeper into our neighbors’ interpretation of the events of Jesus’s life, his meal-sharing, his suffering and self-sacrificing death, we may be able to gain some inspiring insights into their deeper encounter with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. 19 In Asia, especially after the entrance of Christianity into the continent, a lot of popular forms of devotion to Jesus Christ were developed by our neighbors. In the same manner, Asian Christian interpreters of Jesus from all kinds of religious backgrounds revolved around the fact that Jesus was an Asian. Take the Indian scholar Kesha Chunder Sen as an exemplary figure. In many of his writings, he refers not only to the Asiatic character in Jesus’s appearance, manners, customs, and the way of his relationships with people, but also sees the person and life of Jesus through the perspective of the Hindu belief in the ultimate divine character of humanity. 20 I am inclined to think that what our neighbors have learned of Jesus and from his teachings exerted far greater influence on Asia than the preaching done by the Christian community. An important task that the Christian community could do is to create a condition for our neighbors of other faiths to encounter the person, message, and teachings of Jesus Christ. The task of the Christian community and church leaders in Asia is not so much to persuade our neighbors about our Christological interpretations of Jesus Christ but rather to help them persuade themselves about Jesus and his mystery by their own discovery of him. DECOLONIZING CHRIST The need to interpret Christ from our neighbors’ eyes is an important reason why Asian Christians need to listen attentively to the voices of our neighbors. Our neighbors tend to identify their mixed feelings on the Christian mission with past colonial experiences. Asian Christianity should not undermine this factor, or try to wash away such a deeply ingrained impression about Christianity in the minds of their nonChristian neighbors. The distinction between Christianity and colonialism does not yet seem to convince our neighbors of other faiths. In fact, a fresh encounter of Christ with the peoples of Asia needs to be facilitated

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when Asians free Christ and the Gospel from colonial experience. That will also mean the slow and sure dispelling of the mental and spiritual barriers caused in our neighbors by the experience of colonialism. The long period of colonial rule over Asian countries and the association of Christianity with Western powers have made the image of Christ and Christian religion appear to non-Christian Asians as an appendage of Western sovereignty and civilization. 21 In countries like India and Myanmar (Burma, under British Empire until separation from India in 1937), colonies of the British Indian Empire for more than a century, only very few in numbers of the Hindu and Buddhist populations had responded to Christianity, for it appeared to them, to put it in Hendrik Kraemer’s terms, as part of the Western invasion of their cultural and spiritual realm as the agents of Western imperialism and cultural expansionism. 22 British colonization left little impact on the majority of Buddhists in Myanmar; as Erick Sharpe, former missionary to India, once wrote, “Christianity in Burma is tarred with a colonist brush.” 23 The study of history in Asia including its history of the church and mission cannot be complete without studying the history of the British colonization in Asia, as M. M. Thomas rightly put it: “The Asian revolution cannot be understood apart from the impact of the West on Asia. Therefore, interpreting the Asian revolution means interpreting also the Western impact of Asia.” 24 The British colonization of Asia has become the central focal point of Asian accusation and rejection of Christianity in the postcolonial period. 25 Should we therefore pull Christ out of an imperial package of Western Christianity? Is Christianity truly a Western product (as Karl Barth once said that religion is a human product)? If so, how may we set Christ free from the entanglement of Christianity and imperialism? Would it be possible for Asians to experience Christ without imperialistic Christianity? It is in this context that Bonhoeffer’s message of religion-less Christianity remains relevant to Asian reality in which colonialism-ridden Christianity disfigured the image of Christ as Christ of the imperialists. REDEFINING CHRIST IN ASIAN THEOLOGY Asia inherited the great tradition of the gospel of Christ from Western Christian missionaries, and hence Christians in Asia were over-confined to inherited Western church tradition. While the liberal tradition of Western political dominance had made a huge impact on the later cultural revolutionary movements of Asia before and after independence, Asia still struggles to deliver itself from the ideological bondage of the Western intelligentsia. Theologically speaking, in the past, it was assumed that the proper way to do Christian theology was to make use of Western theological and philosophical models. Many theological libraries kept

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worn copies of the theological systems of Charles Hodge, Louis Berkhof, A. H. Strong, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Karl Barth. The problem is that each of these theological systems is based upon Western philosophical categories, and at the same time, the systematic theology model was presented as being universally valid. But the dramatic changes that have taken place in theology since the 1970s are due to a movement known as “contextualization.” A living theology in Asia must speak to the actual questions men and women in Asia have been asking in the midst of their dilemmas and hopes; aspirations and achievements; doubts, despair, and suffering. A living theology in Asia must speak in relation to the answers given by Asian religions and philosophies, both in their classical form and in forms created by the impact of Western thought, secularism and science. Christian theology must fulfill its task in Asia as the Asian churches (as servants of God’s Word or revelation in Jesus Christ) must speak to the Asian situation and from involvement in it. Dogmatic theological statements from a church that stands on the sideline as spectator or even as interpreter of what God is doing in Asia can carry no conviction. A living theology is born out of the meeting of a living church and its world. Asian Christians believe that living Christ must have more of his truth to reveal to us, among men and women in various Asian cultures and religions, and in their contemporary Asian revolutions. ENGAGING CHRIST CROSS-CULTURALLY One salient phenomenon in the postmodern era is the paradigm shift of the concept of truth from absolute to relative. Christianity, once claimed as an absolute true religion, has now to rethink its position, and it needs to make some adjustments for its viability in the changing situation. No religion has the right to absolutize the truth as before because one cannot make any judgment for others. Under this paradigm, Christianity can be a true religion only for the particular adherent and not for the peoples of the world. Truth can no longer be interpreted as objective alone, but it is rather subjective for it is the subject who will judge it as true or false. In the past, Christian views and attitudes were shaped by geographical conditions. Geographically, Christianity was conceived as a Western religion whereas other religions are being confined to different geographical demarcations, such as India for Hinduism; China for Confucianism; Japan for Zen Buddhism; Indonesia, Malay and Pakistan for Islam; Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia for Buddhism. When Christianity as Western religion was brought to the East across geographical boundaries, it became alienated and thus could not mix with other religions. It has either to keep isolated or to confront other religions head on. But with the changing conditions under the impact of

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present economic globalization, it is no longer possible for any religious group to stay aloof in total isolation. We are now made to live together in a pluralistic religious society. Hence, living with other communities is to be perceived on the one hand as an opportunity, and on the other hand as a challenge to our established religious faith. The universality of Christ includes the wholesome of God’s manifestations in human history. Christ as the cosmic and universal Christ means that he is the universal savior of all peoples. Christ is not the God of a particular people. God’s saving action is not limited to a particular historical and cultural tradition. Christ has broken down a particularity that divides. Christ is active everywhere through the Holy Spirit. Our task is not to carry Christ where he is not present but to discover him where he already is, often in ways unknown to us. 26 To explain the historical Jesus and the cosmic Christ, John Hick used the concept The Metaphor of God Incarnate which means that the historical Jesus is a model of revealing the cosmic Christ. 27 In brief, the uniqueness of Christ should not be a stumbling block for Christians but an opportunity to rethink and discover the universal and cosmic Christ who takes the initiative of salvific work in other religions. Christians should abandon their narrow monopolization of the cosmic Christ as Jesus of history and extend their concept of Jesus of Bethlehem to Christ of Calvary, who is working in other religions and cultures in mysterious ways. READING CHRIST CROSS-TEXTUALLY One of the challenges that we face in Asia is to develop contextual language that speaks relevantly to Asians. There have been a lot of symbols which functioned as windows to the understanding of the reality of Christ. The love for images and metaphors in the Asian ethos must therefore be brought to bear upon our approach to the understanding of the mystery of Christ. The writings of theologians like C. S. Song and Kosuke Koyama have brought out how an Asian soul vibrates with symbols and metaphors. Stories are powerful means through which we come to realize important truths. We cannot wait for a total story; all our stories are fragmentary and partial, and yet they have power to carry us to the realization of truth. This is something which the one-time vogue program of “demythologization” did not take into account. What we have in Asia is a blending of symbols and interpretations, history and myths. These are not placed in opposition to each other. All this is enough indication of the need to develop the kind of contextual language that will get the mystery of Christ closer to our Asian context and experiences. Language is much more than a simple tool for communication. Language structures the way we perceive reality and make sense of the world. In Asia, it is important that the languages and categories employed in framing Chris-

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tology and theology reflect Asian religious cultural experiences and moral visions so that they may be more meaningful and convincing to the Asian Christians. Actually, the Biblical names and titles given to Jesus such as Messiah, Immanuel, Son of man, Lord, and New Adam are meaningful to the Jewish peoples. To translate these titles into Asian languages and categories would not give Asians their total meaning. The Biblical categories, even though fragmentary in character, could serve as windows to the common reality of all religions. But one cannot superimpose the Biblical categories as the only windows to the full reality of Jesus. Any attempt to give such absolute categories to Jesus Christ in any language’s context would lack a historical basis and remain fragmentary. In this connection, we also need to mention the important role that art plays in Asian cultures. Art has power to overcome the dichotomy between subject and object, reality and representation. Art does not simply copy reality; there is a process by which the representation of reality passes through the subject and their experiences. In fact, for our neighbors, art has been an important avenue for the approach to Christ. Every piece of art is fragmentary, and yet it opens up infinite horizons of meaning and signification. For a long time, the term “scripture” was employed almost exclusively to refer to the Jewish-Christian sacred writings. Today we realize that the sacred writings in other religious traditions hold an important place. The scriptures have been viewed in religious traditions as invested with great power and supreme authority, and are considered to be eternal and immutable. 28 The specific scripture of a particular religious tradition becomes a singular mark of the believer’s religious identity. Such being the case, any attempt to enter into the understanding of scriptures of other faiths will be very enriching. The Christian scriptures with the perennial message of Jesus Christ belong to all of entire humanity and have a universal appeal. What is envisaged here is more than the study of other scriptures—it is rather the reading of one’s scripture through the eyes of others. Cross-scriptural reading can be extremely creative and transformative for those involved in the process, besides contributing to a deeper understanding of both faith traditions. Obviously, the cross-scriptural reading should not be for apologetic motive or for irenic purpose or to satisfy intellectual curiosity as it could happen in an uninvolved comparative religious perspective. Fr. Aloysius Pieris, from his experience of cross-cultural reading and interpretation of the Christian and Buddhist scriptures, advocates a “symbiotic” reading: Cross-scriptural exegesis of the symbiotic type is quite an innovative exercise in inter-religious dialogue. For here, a seminal teaching in the scriptures of one religion, sown and buried in the texts, when exposed to the warm light that comes from the teachings of another religion’s sacred Writ, sprouts forth and grows into a fruitful source of new insights. In this symbiotic approach, no room is left for diluting or dis-

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Attempts at such a cross-scriptural reading have contributed to a better understanding of both religious texts, thereby helping adherents of both religions enter into a deeper realm of reality toward which they converge. 30 Archie C. C. Lee, a Chinese Biblical theologian from Hong Kong, developed a new method of biblical interpretation called “Cross-Textual Hermeneutics.” 31 This method holds that Asian Christians should venture to read their own classical texts (truth claims and values of their own religious traditions and cultures) and the Biblical text together and let one text shed light on or challenge the other so that creative dialogue and integration can take place. Cross-textual reading takes Asian religiosity and cultural values in Asian classics and scriptures seriously and strives to integrate divine activities in Asian history with those witnessed in the Bible. It values the common human religious quest as a necessary guiding principle and takes the search for the sacred in the mundane as a significant presupposition. Both the Christian text and the cultural text are affirmed as equally significant and valid for the religious quest they pose and for the similar human religious dimension of life they address, although differences do exist because of their historically and culturally bound conditions. Lee’s cross-textual hermeneutics suggests that there may by multiple crossings between an Asian text and a Biblical text. Both texts must be read in the context of the reader, and the social location of the community must be seriously considered. What contextualization means is therefore none other than cross-cultural, cross-scriptural, and cross-textual hermeneutics which stresses on the reconstruction of traditional Christian theology. It is definitely redefining and reengaging Christ cross-culturally and cross-textually. Being critical in orientation, contextualization stands as the missiological discernment of the signs of the times, seeing where God is at work and calling us to participate in it. Further, contextualization signifies the critical conscientiousness of the contexts in a particular historical moment so that the peculiarity of the context may be re-assessed in light of the mission of the church. Authentic contextualization is open constantly to the painful process of decontextualization for the sake of re-contextualization. NOTES 1. Felix Wilfred, “Jesus-Interpretations in Asia: Some Fragmentary Reflections on Fragments,” Keynote address delivered at the IASACT Inaugural Conference, Asian Christian Higher Education Institute, Hong Kong (June 6–9, 2004). 2. Hans Kung, On Being a Christian (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), 146. 3. See Aloysius Pieris, The Asian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992).

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4. See Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London: Longman and Todd, 1964) and The Trinity and World Religions (Madras: CLS, 1970). 5. See S. J. Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ (Bangalore: CISRS, 1974) and One Christ, Many Religions: Towards a Revised Christology (Bangalore: SATHRI, 1992). 6. See C. S. Song, Theology from the Womb of Asia (London: SCM Press, 1985). 7. JPIC, “A Conciliar Process,” The Ecumenical Review 44.3 (1992): 291. 8. D. M. Ballie, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1946), 66–67. 9. Edmund Za Bik, “Universal Salvation in the Context of Inter-Religious Dialogue in Myanmar,” RAYS MIT Journal of Theology 1 (2000): 29–30. 10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Colliers-Macmillan, 1971), 280–82. 11. Edmund Za Bik, Doctrine of Sin: Original Sin Re-interpreted (Yangon: MIT, 2005), 30, 109. 12. M. M. Thomas, Man and the Universe of Faiths (Madras: CLS, 1975). 13. M. M. Thomas, “The Absoluteness of Jesus Christ and Christ-centered Syncretism,” The Japan Christian Quarterly 52.2 (1986): 134. 14. M. M. Thomas, “Modern Man and the New Humanity in Christ,” in The Human and the Holy, edited by Nacpil and Elwood, 313–30 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1980). 15. Paul Knitter, Introduction: Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 11. 16. Cited in Robert Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 23, 27. 17. Ronald Neufeldt, “Hindu Views of Christ,” in Hindu-Christian Dialogue, edited by Harold Coward (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1993), 172. 18. Cf. Aloysius Pieris, “The Buddha and the Christ: Mediators of Liberation,” in Asian Faces of Jesus, edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah, 46–61 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993). 19. Cf. John F. Butler, Christian Art in India (Madras: CLS, 1986); Jyoti Sahi, Stepping Stones: Reflections on the Theology of Indian Christian Culture (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1986), 137. 20. Cf. P.C. Mozoomdar, The Oriental Christ (Boston and Calcutta, 1883). 21. Samuel Ngun Ling, “The Meeting of Christianity and Buddhism in Burma: Its Past, Present and Future Perspective,” Ph.D. dissertation, International Christian University, Tokyo (1998), 229. 22. Hendrick Kraemer, Religion and Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 26. 23. Erick J. Sharpe, Faith Meets Faith (London: SCM, 1977), 104. 24. M. M. Thomas, The Christian Response to the Asian Revolution (London: SCM Press, 1966), 9. 25. Ling, “The Meeting of Christianity and Buddhism in Burma,” 229–30. 26. John Jefferson Davis, The Necessity of Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 1978), 90–99. 27. John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1993). 28. William A. Graham, “Scripture,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, vol. 13, 133–35 (New York: Macmillan, 1987). 29. Aloysius Pieris, “Cross-Scripture Reading in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: A Search for the Right Method,” in Scripture, Community and Mission: Essays in Honor of D. Preman Niles, edited by Philip Wickeri (Hong Kong: CCA, 2003), 253. 30. George M. Soares-Prabhu, “Two Mission Commands: An Interpretation of Matthew 28:16–20 in the Light of the Buddhist Text,” Biblical Interpretation 2.3 (1994): 264–82. 31. Archie C. C. Lee, “Cross-Textual Hermeneutics on Gospel and Culture,” Asia Journal of Theology 10 (1996): 38–48.

FIVE Who Is Christ for Ali? Refugees in a Post–Truth Age Eunice Karanja Kamaara

Arguably, two events represent the most dramatic shifts in international politics in the recent past: The Brexit Referendum and the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Both events continue to have serious implications across the globe, particularly among the poor and powerless. In his presidential campaign under the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump made various promises: Total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on [. . .] our country cannot be the victims [sic] of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again. 1

This statement was posted on Trump’s campaign website on 7 December 2015 but has since been removed. The statement had already achieved its intended purpose. Trump was voted in by Americans who agreed with him that the only way to control terrorism is to keep Muslims away. Welcome to post-truth politics, where debate around political issues appeals not to facts but to emotions, especially to incite fear. Through emotional half-truths and non-truths, whole populations have been won over to support the empire and its political issues and/or political candidates. 63

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A week after his inauguration, President Trump almost kept his promise. In Executive Order 13769 titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorists Entry into the United States,” 2 he suspended entry into the United States of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen; 3 he capped (by more than 50 percent) the number of refugees coming to the United States at 50,000; and he suspended the US Refugee Admission Program (USRAP) for 120 days. These decisions had serious implications across the globe and Africa in particular. Over 700 travelers were detained in various transit points, and up to 60,000 visas were revoked. Post-truth politics has existed over the years. Plato alluded to this in his Republic when he expressed concern over the behavior of citizens taking political action on the basis of their emotions while ignoring objective truths. 4 But it is only with the proliferation of information by way of new communication technologies—social media platforms featuring instantaneous communication and photo-driven shopping, for example— that the phenomenon has been labelled. David Roberts was the first to use the term “post-truth politics,” and he defined it as “a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation).” 5 However, it is with the polarized political positions preceding the Brexit Referendum and the 2016 US presidential elections that the phenomenon of post-truth came to be understood and publicly discussed. In this chapter, I illustrate how empire manifests itself and how empire lacks compassionate justice as it distances itself from those who are negatively affected by its decisions. Further, I discuss the contextual nature of theology, showing how post-truth politics contributes to Christological and missiological problems. Specifically, I use the case of Ali to illustrate the impact of imperial decisions on the poor and powerless, to highlight the presence of empire in the Church, to amplify and commend various Christian agencies that rose above the polarization to present Christ as liberator, and consequently to sketch the true mission of the Church in the specific context of empire—to liberate on the socio-political and economic front. REFUGEES IN KENYA The story of Ali is set in Kenya, a developing country in Africa. Like many others, Ali is a refugee. Refugees are persons who have fled from local hardship be that war, famine, drought, or some sort of cultural, religious, or political persecution, among other catastrophes. Upon arrival into their host countries, the persons’ identities change to “refugees.” The term “refugee” is derogatory, dehumanizing, and stigmatizing: it

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implies that those persons are of a lower status and so their rights as human persons need not be protected or guaranteed. By October 2015, there were close to 600,000 registered refugees in refugee camps in Kenya. 6 It is difficult to estimate the number of unregistered refugees, especially of Somali origin, since Kenyan Somali and Somali from Somalia are one people. The forces of empire drew cosmetic boundaries in the scramble for African land, locating many people of one nation, often even one family, in different states (countries). 7 Over 70 percent of all refugees in Kenya are from Somalia. 8 There are two major refugee camps in Kenya—the Dadaab complex, located in Garissa County, Kenya, is the third largest refugee camp in the world; and the second is Kakuma Refugee Camp, located in Turkana County. Both locations are among Kenya’s poorest counties due to harsh climates and underdevelopment as a result of uneven distribution of national resources since colonial times. While Kenya is a signatory to various refugee agreements such as the UN Refugee Convention (1951) and the OAU Refugee Convention (1969), and though it seems committed to meeting its obligations as a refugee host-nation (facilitating refugees’ access to basic facilities including health and education), suffering in the refugee camps is enormous. Basic needs for food and sanitation are in dire strain, even as new refugees arrive daily. This causes overcrowding and a thinning of already scarce social goods and services. Conflicts between the local communities and refugees in the two camps, Dadaab and Kakuma, are common. The local communities have negative attitudes to refugees who appear to receive more attention than the local people. Most of the refugees in Kenya are hopeless, having been in refugee camps for decades. Some were born in the camps and are now married with their own families. It is particularly difficult for young people who have nothing to do day after day. 9 Education is the only hope out of their difficult situations, but fitting into Kenya’s education system with instruction in English, which most refugees learn for the first time in the camps, is difficult. Life is particularly difficult for girls who constantly face threats and realities of rape and early marriage. Most refugees are from predominantly Muslim countries, while their host countries are almost entirely Christian; this is another factor that contributes to negative attitudes from local communities. A refugee’s life in Kenya is a dog’s life. Life in and outside refugee camps in Kenya was complicated by the insurgence of terrorist attacks by Al Shabaab, a group associated with Somalia, in the 1990s. This means that all Somali, whether of Kenyan or Somalian origin, are treated with suspicion. This is particularly true in the wake of the Westgate attack in Nairobi in 2013 that left 67 dead and about 200 injured, and the 2015 attack of Garissa University College that left 147 dead and hundreds injured. 10 The Kenyan government has recently threatened to close the

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Dadaab complex, which has caused a lot of anxieties among refugees in Kenya. THE CASE OF ALI Well before Ali was born, his parents lived in rural Somalia with their three children—two boys and a girl. They were not poor; they were not rich. But they were comfortable and content. Then war broke out, and the family fled. As they fled, they lost the two boys. The family still does not know if they are alive or dead. A few years later, the family ended up at Kakuma Refugee Camp with their only surviving child, Ms. Y. While Mrs. X and Ms. Y were in relatively good health, Mr. X escaped the war with a septic gunshot wound on his right thigh, and he turned depressive soon after they settled in Kakuma. A month after arrival in Kakuma, Mrs. X gave birth to Ali. This was before the family of Mr. and Mrs. X could be registered as refugees. Mrs. X received a lot of attention from public health officers working for an international, faith-based organization (FBO) concerned about the low survival rate of mothers and their newborns in the camp. The organization provided nutritive feeds to improve chances of survival. Mrs. X, Ms. Y, and the newly born Ali received constant service from the FBO, but Mr. X did not receive much attention. He subsequently developed extreme depression. He refused to talk and eat. His wife tried to comfort him but he would not be consoled. He spent much of his time in bed under the small tent that the family shared. Ali was only two years old when his father died. Life in Kakuma was difficult, but Mrs. X was determined to make the best out of the situation. She pleaded with officials of the international FBO to take her daughter away from the camp and save her from rape. Some years later, one female health worker came to the camp with some forms and urged the family to complete them. She explained that this would begin their process of relocation to the United States. For Mrs. X, the completion of the forms marked the beginning of mixed feelings. More often than not, she was anxious about relocating to another country many miles away from her home country and away from fellow refugees whom she had come to consider as family. Her children were more optimistic and were the main reason why she pushed on with the process. The family went through many rounds of rigorous security screenings at the local United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Kakuma, followed by a seven-step screening process over six visits to the UNHCR office in Nairobi. A visit to Nairobi by road is roughly 800 kilometers, and the trip takes about two days because there are no direct public transport services. The route is dangerous because it passes through a zone of conflict between the Turkana and Pokot peo-

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ples. Mrs. X and her daughter completed the process over the course of five years. Ali was forced to undergo additional security checks with every step. By the time his mother and sister were cleared, Ali was sixteen years old and still going through extra security screening. Although Ali had a birth certificate indicating that he was born in Kakuma, the absence of any documents confirming the biographic data of his dead father led to the denial of Ali’s relocation to the United States. The woman from the FBO who was helping the family pleaded with Mrs. X to move with her daughter to the United States, promising to help Ali get refugee status. The mother initially refused to relocate without Ali, but the FBO official promised that she would ensure that they communicate often and that Ali would eventually join them there, noting that it would be easier for Ali to get refugee status if his family was already in the United States. So Mrs. X and her daughter relocated to the United States. The FBO official facilitated communications between Ali and his family now in the United States. She appealed to a white American friend to help Ali join his family. The American happened to be an executive officer of a Resettlement Support Center (RSC), which is supported by the federal government. He accompanied Ali through various screening points. Two years later, Ali was given refugee status and was now ready to relocate to the United States. He sold the few items that his family had accumulated at Kakuma and returned to Nairobi ready to travel to the US on the following day—January 27, 2017. Meanwhile, as Mrs. X and Ms. Y waited for Ali to depart Nairobi for America, the newly elected president, Donald Trump, signed an executive order banning nationalities from seven countries from entering the United States. Somalia was on his list. UNHCR officials explained to Ali that he could not yet travel to the United States as they needed clearance from the United States for his case, which would take a few weeks. Although various aspects of the ban were later lifted, thanks to various US courts and lobbying by various Christian agencies, the ban had a lasting impact on Ali. He was unable to travel to the United States due to reduced fiscal support from the government. When he lost hope of travelling to the United States, Ali told UNHCR officials that he was returning to Kakuma to see some relatives. Those helping Ali join his family in the United States have not heard from Ali since then. Ali has not been in touch with his family either. It is rumored that he joined Al Shabaab.

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CHRISTOLOGY AND MISSIOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF ALI AND THE EMPIRE On the way, he asked them: “Tell me, who do people say I am?” [. . .] “What about you?” He asked them. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered: “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8: 27–29)

There is no doubt that America and the world at large have suffered enormous cases of terrorism that led to the killing and maiming of many people, leaving countless individuals both annoyed and fearful. It is this anger and fear that post-truth politics exploits. Ali is a discontent Muslim of suspect nationality. Nearly all terrorists who have attacked America have identified themselves as Muslims. Ali easily fits the profile of a terrorist and is therefore perceived to be a threat to America’s security. Ali is also, however, a refugee, and so to find his way to the United States, he had to undergo a stringent, multiple-step screening process before he could enter the United States. There are six steps to this screening process, and applicants can be dismissed if any suspicious information emerges at any point in the process. The few who pass undergo cultural orientation classes with a US-based NGO to determine a resettlement location for them. Once the resettlement area has been identified, the International Organization for Migration books travel for the refugees, the US Customs and Border Protections National Targeting Center screens the refugees, and the Transportation Security Administration secures a flight. Those who pass receive IOM-labelled bags with various personal and US government–related immigration documents together with instructions to openly display the IOM-labelled bags. This helps to quickly identify the refugees throughout their transit and arrival in the United States. By the time they arrive in the United States, refugee resettlement agencies would have received detailed information about each refugee arriving at the airport and sent social workers to pick them up. The resettlement agencies support the refugees through the first six months while they learn their new contexts and settle down (find schools for their children, learn basic literacy and English if they need to, access health care if they need it, among other things, and eventually find a job). After the six months, the refugees are expected to have settled and live independently. It is a requirement that all refugees apply for a green card before the end of their first year in the United States. The application for a green card marks the beginning of another process of security screening. Those who fail this screening may be repatriated; those who pass are integrated into American society.

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With this system in place, it is almost impossible for terrorists to find their way into the United States. As V.v.B writes in the Economist: If a potential terrorist is determined to enter America to do harm, there are easier and faster ways to get there than by going through the complex refugee resettlement process. Of the almost 750,000 refugees who have been admitted to America since 9/11, only two Iraqis have been arrested on terrorist charges; they had not planned an attack in America, but aided al-Qaeda at home. 11

Minimal evidence is available to suggest that refugees are responsible for terrorist attacks in the United States. Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, 12 addressing the US Congress on June 24, 2015, indicated the following: The threat to the US homeland from refugees has been relatively low. Almost none of the major terrorist plots since 9/11 have involved refugees. Even in those cases where refugees were arrested on terrorismrelated charges, years and even decades often transpired between their entry into the United States and their involvement in terrorism. In most instances, a would-be terrorist’s refugee status had little or nothing to do with their radicalization and shift to terrorism. 13

The forgoing suggests that the empire’s denial of Muslim entry to the United States is not grounded in fact. Nonetheless, in line with the mission of empire and in the context of post-truth politics, Ali was kept away from the United States. The mission of the empire’s foreign policy is unmistakable. Empire seeks to amass power and exercise this power to dominate the powerless. In the context of the nation of Somalia, the family of Mr. and Mrs. X, and Ali more specifically, represents the powerless while President Trump and the United States represent the empire. The empire propagates the concept of a global village all the while knowing well that Ali and others like him will not be welcomed as bona fide citizens of that village. The life of Ali and his family in Kakuma Refugee Camp is marked by brokenness and hopelessness. Against this background, the question of who Christ is, and therefore what the mission of the Church ought to be, emerges. Christology and missiology have posed problems throughout time and space, but the problems have never been clearer than in the context of empire today. Who is Christ for Ali and his family, and what might the mission of the Church be in response? Faith-based organizations are among the major development actors across the world. In Africa, over 40 percent of public health and education services are provided by such organizations. In Kenya, it is close to 60 percent. 14 At Kakuma Refugee Camp, faith-based and faith-inspired organizations (FBOs/FIOs) build and organize communities, resolve conflict, build peace, provide formal education, provide social services to vulnerable populations, and promote communication to build trust and

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address the issues of women and children. There are over 50 FBOs and FIOs working with refugees in Kenya, the majority being Christian. Some, like Church World Service, are international, while others, like the National Council of Churches in Kenya, are local. In Kakuma, the United Refugee and Host Churches (URHC) brings together a number of churches to do theology of trust, service, and sacrifice among vulnerable refugees to make their lives bearable and worth living. It is one of these FBOs that worked with Mrs. X to see Ali live beyond age five and supported Ali and his family in accessing UNHCR. In this mission, these organizations are united in presenting a compassionate Christ as liberator, as a provider in times of need who does not care about religious identity. Much like the Christ who came to serve rather than to be served, the Church in Kakuma camp offers service to all. Not surprisingly, most of the Christians and Christian organizations working in the refugee camps in Kenya are American, America-related, or America-supported. This implies a similar understanding in America: of Christ as a liberator of all, regardless of their religious identity. Indeed, while theology is contextual, it is also universal. Indisputably, the Church, as well as individual Christians, ought not to be neutral or silent in the face of political decisions. As Ronald J. Sider observes, “Human experiences prove that politics profoundly impacts billions of people. Bad political choices lead to dictatorship, starvation, and death for hundreds of millions. Good political decisions nurture freedom, life, justice, and peace. Politics matter.” 15 Indeed, the two-fold mission of the church is the liberation of persons on the socio-political and economic front and salvation on the eschatological plane. It is therefore fitting that Christians continue to respond to Trump’s campaign platform, the drafted executive order, and the eventual signing of the executive order to keep Muslims away from the United States. KEEPING MUSLIMS AWAY FROM AMERICA: A DIVIDED CHURCH Writing on how Christians may develop a political philosophy that can guide them into “more thoughtful and effective political activity,” Sider observes: Tragically, Christian political activity today is a disaster. Christians embrace contradictory positions on almost every political issue. When they join the political fray, they often succumb to dishonesty and corruption. Even when they endorse good goals, they too often promote their political agenda in foolish ways that frighten non-Christians, thus making it more difficult or nearly impossible to achieve important political goals. 16

Sider was writing in 2008 on Evangelical Christians, but he may as well have been informed by the responses of Christians in America to

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Trump’s campaign platform, the draft executive order, and the eventual signing of the executive order to keep Muslims away from the United States. Many Christian leaders were unanimous that it would be absolutely wrong for President Trump to keep Muslims out of the United States. For example, Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Catholic from Indiana, opposed Trump’s policy in no uncertain terms: “Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” 17 Many Christians expressed dismay at the imperial nature of Trump’s promises. There were equally many Christians who could not hide their sorrow, disappointment, and anger at Trump’s election. Theology professor Roger E. Olson, for example, would not celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump: For me it is a truly frightening turning point in American history and possibly world history. [. . .] My reason for being so dismayed by his ascendency to national leadership is this: I cannot detect in him any concern or compassion for the weakest, the most vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the marginalized of America. 18

And when American Christians learned of the executive order, many of them condemned it and appealed to Trump not to sign it. When Trump finally did sign the order, some American Christians were among the first to express dismay. Notable were many Christians and Christian organizations that protested and continue to protest the decisions of President Trump. For example, Church World Service has persistently campaigned against the decisions, championing the rights of refugees. 19 Could this presentation of a liberating, compassionate Christ who operates above Christian identity be the true identity of Christ? Sadly, the voice of the Church in America is not unified. Christian voices are at extreme ends. On the specific question of keeping Muslims away from America, Trump’s campaign message was echoing the voices of Christian leaders in the United States: Franklin Graham proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, suggesting their relation to the country being under attack by “evil.” 20 Graham defended the order while it was still a draft, saying: “It’s not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come, that’s not a Bible issue.” 21 After the order was released, Graham consistently defended Trump’s action. Commenting on rain experienced on the day Trump was inaugurated, Graham noted that this was a sign of God’s blessing to Trump: “It’s my prayer that God will bless you, your family, your administration, and may He bless America.” Similarly, Rev. Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University, could not hide his joy over Trump’s election, explaining

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that “Trump is better than advertised. I could not be more pleased.” There were many with Graham and Falwell. Who is Christ and what is the mission of the Church? A response to this question is not easy in the context of post-truth politics, particularly since it features serious polarization in the Church. It is not my intention to answer that question but to point at the opportunity this situation offers not just for Christians in America but for the universal Church. CHRISTOLOGY AND POST-TRUTH POLITICS Even as Christian polarization makes it difficult to respond to the question of who Christ is, the situation presents an opportunity for Christians to re-examine afresh the mission of the Church in the context of posttruth politics. The situation challenges Christians to be more discerning on how to live out their faith in Jesus Christ: “to think and pray for wisdom to act politically and in ways that best reflect Christ our Lord.” 22 Richard J. Mouw, Professor of Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary, in Pasadena, California, responded as follows to the election of President Trump: Given my political preferences, my feelings right now border on despair. But I also know that people whom I admire—even love—voted for Mr. Trump. How do we talk together now about the deeper issues without mutual accusations? What hopes and fears accompanied us into the voting booths? How do we love each other in continuing to work together in the service of the only true and righteous King? 23

I admire Mouw for his courage to present his position while at the same time acknowledging that some of the people whom he admires and even loves voted for Trump. His concern is the reality of not just political polarization but of Christian polarization as well. Rather than claiming righteousness and truth, Mouw invites all to unity in service to “the true and righteous King.” Unfortunately, the identity of the true and righteous King in this context remains controversial. Nevertheless, Mouw is asking the right questions in the context of refugees and the empire. As if in response to Mouw, Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, wrote: I feel both blessed and broken. The blessed sentiment arises out of the de facto assurance that the cause of life, and religious liberty, via a “rights”-affirming Supreme Court will stand protected. My brokenness emerges out of the reality that while the nation’s collective tapestry stands broken, the church is divided. A divided church will never heal a broken nation. More than ever we need John 17: “Lord, make us one.” 24

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Indeed, the great mission of the Church in the contemporary world is to seek unity, to seek to understand the other, to pray for wisdom in discerning the meaning of the unchanging identity of Christ, and therefore the unchanging mission of the Church. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18). The mission of the Church is not directed to those who already have good news but to the poor who need liberation. This, then, is a calling for Christians to rise above their Christian identity and focus on spreading good news to those who need it. BEYOND CHRISTIAN MISSION In our contemporary context, Christ may no longer be presented as a Christian just as Christian mission may no longer limit its service to Christians. As Council for World Mission (CWM) articulates: As partners in God’s mission we do not locate our calling within a narrow Christian redemption history perspective but in the larger perspective of God’s presence in the whole of creation leading it to the New Creation. Such a perspective permits us to explore in new ways the relationship between creation and redemption. It also gives us a new openness to work together with people of other faiths and beliefs for justice, peace and the integrity of all God’s creation. 25

This points at the need to move beyond religion (external expression and practices including rituals), to exhibit less religion and more spirituality, and to allow all human persons to listen to each other and work together even when we do not agree with each other. While religion polarizes, spirituality binds; religion is sectarian, but spirituality is all encompassing. Spirituality encompasses all, thereby bridging differences across persons and creation. What the world needs, therefore, is not to protect Christians from Muslims or Muslims from Christians. What the world needs is unity even in the midst of diverse cultures, races, religions, positions, and perspectives. The context of a post-truth political culture provides an opportunity to underscore that context matters and contexts change all the time. In the context of Trump’s win and his executive orders lies an opportunity for churches and religions to come together to appreciate the reality of their diverse perspectives and to realize that humans live in a fallen world. As they do so, they should develop a common political philosophy that is biblically grounded and Christ-oriented. This is possible. The mission of the Church is to present Christ as relevant to Muslims and to Christians alike, a Christ who is relevant to both the empire and religion. This mission is to seek the unity of Church, religions, and ulti-

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mately all people. In his address to President Obama during his visit to Kenya in 2016, President Kenyatta alluded to the core need for connectedness: The premise of Harambee (let’s pull together) and interdependence is at the heart of human living. It is the promise we have made one another. It is also the key to our relations [. . .]. Our lasting security depends on our ability to work with other nations to ensure that peace reigns inside and outside our borders. [. . .] the world have never needed the spirit of Harambee more than it does today as we face generation-defining challenges blind to national borders. 26

Indeed, connectedness across the world is needed now more than ever before. 27 This is an opportunity for the Church (in addition to other religions) to make a theological response (in word and deed) to bring about unity for the whole world. CONCLUSION In this post-truth political culture, vulnerable populations—those embodied by the family of Ali—challenge the Church not just in America but all over the world, to redefine Christ and Christian mission outside of Christianity. The events happening in America with the election of President Trump and their implications across the world provide an opportunity for churches to acknowledge the reality of their polarization. Churches must seek to understand each other and find common ground around which they can continue to do theology. I suggest that the Church move beyond external manifestations of beliefs to spirituality, which unites all regardless of racial, doctrinal, cultural, or religious orientation. NOTES 1. Jessica Estepa, “Preventing Muslim Immigration Statement Disappears from Trump’s Campaign Site,” USA TODAY May 8, 2017 (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/08/preventing-muslim-immigration-statementdisappears-donald-trump-campaign-site/101436780/; accessed on June 18, 2018). 2. “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” 2017 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/06/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states; accessed August 10, 2017) 3. See “Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration,” 2015 (New York, NY, Dec 7; https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/trump-website-takes-downmuslim-ban-statement-after-reporter-grills-spicer-in-briefing.html). 4. Plato, The Republic (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974). 5. David Roberts, “Post-truth Politics” (2010; http://grist.org/article/2010-03-30post-truth-politics/; accessed on August 2, 2017). 6. World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), “Refugees in Kenya: Roles of Faith” (2015; https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/refugees-in-kenyaroles-of-faith; accessed on August 2, 2017).

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7. The Somali people are not the only nation spread across countries. The Luo people are spread across Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania; the Maasai across Kenya and Tanzania; and the Kisu across Kenya and Uganda. 8. WFDD, “Refugees in Kenya: Roles of Faith.” 9. Raphael Sungu, “Frozen Lives,” D+C Development and Cooperation (2016; https:// www.dandc.eu/en/article/long-term-refugees-kenya-education-oJanuary 15, 2016.nlypath-towards-better-future; accessed July 10, 2017). 10. This author is a professor of Moi University to which Garissa University College (GUC) belonged. Most of the lecturers and administrators working at GUC at the time of the attack were colleagues that she previously worked with and she was part of the Moi University Senate that had to make decisions on what to do with the college after the attack. In the immediate days after the attack, all students and staff were relocated to the Moi University main campus and counsellors were mobilized to support both staff and students to cope with the traumatic experience. 11. V.v.B., “The Economist Explains Why America Does not Take in More Syrian Refugees” (2015; https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/10/economist-explains-13; accessed on August 24, 2017). 12. The Rand Corporation is a non-profit American institution which seeks to positively influence public policy through research and analysis. 13. Seth Jones, “The Terrorism Threat to the United States and Implications for Refugees, Testimony Presented before the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence” (Rand Corporation, June 24, 2015). 14. US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (2012). A Firm Foundation: The PEPFAR Consultation on the Role of Faithbased Organizations in Sustaining Community and Country Leadership in the Response to HIV/AIDS. Washington: U.S. Department of State. 15. Ronald J. Sider, “Preface” to The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2008), 11. 16. Sider, “Preface,” 11. 17. Avi Selk, “Pence Once Called Trump’s Muslim Ban ‘Unconstitutional.’ He Now Applauds the Ban on Refugees.” Washington Post (2017; https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/28/mike-pence-once-calledtrumps-muslim-ban-unconstitutional-he-just-applauded-the-order/ ?utm_term=.abf51e6f177d; accessed August 8, 2017). 18. David Virtue, “Evangelicals Give Trump Mixed Reviews after Inauguration,” Global Christian News (January 23, 2017). 19. See for example CWS’s “Uniting in Support of Refugees” (2018; https://greateras1.org/; accessed June 18, 2018). 20. “Franklin Graham Updates Stance on Refugee Ban” (2017; http://abc11.com/ religion/franklin-graham-updates-stance-on-refugee-ban/1729760/; accessed August 2, 2017). 21. BGEA, “‘It’s My Prayer That God Will Bless You’: Franklin Graham to President Donald Trump” (https://billygraham.org/story/prayer-god-will-bless-franklingraham-president-donald-trump-inaugural-ceremony/; accessed August 4, 2017). 22. Sider, “Preface,” 22. 23. Virtue, “Evangelicals Give Trump Mixed Reviews after Inauguration.” 24. Virtue, “Evangelicals Give Trump Mixed Reviews after Inauguration.” 25. CWM, “Mission in the Context of the Empire: CWM Theology Statement” (2010; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.2011.00061_2.x; accessed on June 18, 2018), 4.12. 26. Uhuru Kenyatta, “As Obama Visits His Father’s Home, Kenya and the U.S. Must Look to the Future,” The World Post (2015; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/uhuru-kenyatta/obama-visit-kenya-kenyatta_b_7853742.html; accessed August 10, 2017). 27. CWM, “Mission in the Context of the Empire,” 17.

SIX Get Out Soul Trans-Formations in Trumpire Jennifer Leath

“Sikiliza, sikiliza! Kimbilia, kimbilia!” The Kiswahili is echoed and expanded at the end of the film: “Brother, sikileza kwa wahenga. Kimbia! Unakimbia mbali. Sikileza kwa ukweli. Brother! Brother! Brother! Kimbia! Kimbia! Kimbia! Kuokoa mwenyewe! Kuokoa mwenyewe!” Kiswahili—the language of pan-African hope, a legacy of Julius Nyerere’s East Africa and the liberation movements of people of African descent all over the world in the mid-twentieth century—has a history of connecting disparate people and places. Yet, the Kiswahili lyrics of the opening musical score of the 2017 movie Get Out signals rapidly dwindling hope for Black people and places. 1 These Kiswahili words are translated: “Listen, listen! Run away, run away!” When expanded: “Brother, listen to the elders/ ancestors. Run. Run far. Listen to (the) truth. Brother! Brother! Brother! Run! Run! Run! (To) Save yourself! (To) Save yourself!” In other words: “Get Out.” These are the lyrics of the score Michael Abels prepared for Get Out. Bracketing the first sounding of this song, which is echoed throughout the film, is “run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run,” from Noel Gay’s and Ralph Butler’s 1930s (circa 1939) song “Run Rabbit Run” and Childish Gambino’s “Redbone,” with the haunting lyrics: “Stay Woke! Now, Stay Woke!” Together, these musical libations bring us to the place of the command: “Get Out!” Few phrases speak so directly to the complexity of Black identity and experience in the world: get out (i.e., you are not welcome here); get out (i.e., you are not safe here); get out (i.e., you are not wanted here); get out 77

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(i.e., you, as a person among a people, are not good enough to be here); get out (i.e., this place to which you have come is too good for you as a person among a people). “Get out” is a command phrase that reminds the abject, 2 necropolitical being that s/he is neither citizen nor subject, without a proper place and people, and only suitable for being put out (and, thus, also neither in nor out). In his directorial debut, Get Out, Jordan Peele transforms the horror film drama through the intentional inclusion of, engagement with, and even centering of race as a philosophical, social, aesthetic, and performance phenomenon. Chris Washington, played by Daniel Kaluuya, is the Black boyfriend of Rose Armitage, played by Allison Williams. The film is set in three key places—each of which provide an edge of the frame for this essay. The primary place in which the film is set is a suburb within the United States (post-Obama presidency) in which Rose’s family home is located. Toward the beginning of the film, however, we meet Chris and Rose in a secondary place: their city habitat, where they each regularly reside. The final place into which the film and this essay invite us is called “the sunken place.” It is a place into which Chris and, we learn, many others have “sunken” after they have been hypnotized at the hands of Rose’s mother, with the support of Rose’s entire nuclear family. This final place is a psychological black hole, a vortex, a place through which the physical brain and mental function of Black bodies is erased while White minds (and matters) possess these Black bodies (bodies which have been deemed superior in various ways dissociated from brain function and mental capacities). From this “sunken place” of exile, to which Chris and others have been relegated through psychological and physical manipulation, Chris and others seek escape. Often, the only indications of the presence of the Black bodies so manipulated are tears that seem to climb from the soul of the Black abject, necropolitical being, crawling through the possessive white mind and matter and spilling from the eyes and down the cheeks of the body of the Black abject, necropolitical being. Thus, in the film there is the possibility of being in two places at once. For the Black abject, necropolitical being suburban presence and a sunken place can be experienced at the same time, though they may be in two distinct (astral?) planes. Notwithstanding the materiality of these three places—suburb, city, and sunken place—the fundamental message remains: “Get Out!” No message is clearer to those of us who persist on the margins within the United States right now: “Get Out!” This essay explores the challenging circumstances surrounding particular groups of people and land in contemporary US empire under the leadership of Donald Trump. Specifically, this essay brings attention to five groups of people whose access to and experience of space is lethally compromised as a result of the new regime of political power in place in the United States: people indigenous to the land occupied by the United States, people of African descent,

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Muslim people, Spanish-speaking immigrants, and transgender people. While this essay does not address the conditions and circumstances facing these five groups comprehensively, it makes an important assertion: these people are connected in experience with respect to land and empire in fundamental ways such that a deeper understanding of each of the groups (individually) is made possible through a deeper understanding of the other groups of people—individually and collectively. 3 Corresponding with an investigation of what kinds of “land” pressures these people are currently experiencing, this essay identifies the contemporary call of Christian mission with respect to each of these groups—from within and without—at such a time as this. This essay identifies and evaluates the necessary ethical frameworks for response and the international responses most appropriate. Ultimately, this essay calls on those of us who would continue to promote discipleship of Jesus, the first-century rogue Palestinian Jew, to “get out” of our sunken and hypnotizing places, to “get out” of the suburbs from which some of us have come and to which some of us aspire, and to “get out” of the cities that erase complex differences. There is no telos here, no final destination proposed. All that is clear is that we all must “get out” of the places and from among the people that oppress; we do this through acts of connection that recreate the places into which and people with whom we move. FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION By the time Donald Trump gave his equivalent of a “State of the Union” address on February 28, 2017, he had already pressed forward a variety of troubling aspects of his agenda. Specifically, since taking office as President of the United States, Donald Trump had made fifteen Executive Orders addressing the following concerns: (1) rolling back the affordable care act; (2) expediting infrastructural projects at the expense of environmental concerns; (3) forcing immigrants—especially Muslims and those from Arabic-speaking and African countries, as well as those from Spanish-speaking countries—out of the United States (three orders regarding these matters); (4) the ethical expectations for executive branch appointees; (5) decreasing financial regulations; (6) core principles of a financial system; (7) crime reduction and public safety through (a) the increase of law enforcement attention to illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime, and (b) the establishment of a task force appointed by the attorney general; (8) the protection of law enforcement officers; (9) inhibiting the work of transnational criminal organizations—including human, substance, wildlife, and weapons traffickers; (10) the order of succession for the Justice Department in the case that the Attorney General is unable to perform his or her duties; (11) decreasing regulation—especially as it relates to orders the Executive Branch has rescinded; (12) decreas-

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ing water protection regulations; (13) establishing the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Besides these executive orders, there have been memoranda, proclamations, and letters— including the letter sent to all public schools rescinding protections for transgender children’s bathroom choice and the withdrawal of US funds from any international nongovernmental organization that includes information about or access to safe and legal abortions for women seeking reproductive health care. The following five intersections of places (or land) and people are what a Get Out analysis may term “sunken places,” places and people through whom the brokenness of Trumpire (and empire, generally) are most evident. 1. Indigenous People in the Land Occupied by the United States By January 24, 2017, Donald Trump had signed an order expediting the development of the North Dakota Pipeline. However, the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency were marked with protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in what is now called “Sioux Falls,” which crosses parts of South Dakota and North Dakota; by the end of Obama’s presidency, these protests had reached a fever pitch. Indigenous people of the land occupied by the United States (and their allies) rose up to take a stand against the US Army Corp of Engineers, banks such as Wells Fargo (and countless multinational corporations), and moneyed interests committed to the building of a “Dakota Access Pipeline.” The people protesting the pipeline asserted that this would compromise the safety of their water source, was otherwise bad for the earth, and was an expansion of the occupation of indigenous land. However, it would be a mistake to begin and end this brief note on contemporary indigenous life in the United States with Standing Rock. More to the point of this essay, the atrocities that developed in 1492 with Columbus included what Andrés Reséndez calls “the other slavery.” Reséndez writes: “[i]f we were to add up all the Indian slaves taken in the New World from the time of Columbus to the end of the nineteenth century, the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million slaves. Such large numbers of enslaved Indians not only approximate the African tragedy in sheer scale but also reveal an even more catastrophic result in relative terms.” 4 Reséndez concludes with these poignant assertions: (1) “the emphasis on the newness of contemporary forms of bondage is myopic,” (2) “the other slavery that affected Indians throughout the Western Hemisphere was never a single institution, but instead a set of kaleidoscopic practices suited to different markets and regions,” and (3) it was uniquely difficult to combat Indian slavery, which “was capable of shifting geographically and targeting new groups.” 5 To this final point: “[a]ttempts to liberate one group often resulted in the enslaving of a neighboring group.” 6 For indigenous people in the land occupied by

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the United States, we can see that there is no clear way to “get out.” Indeed, why “get out” of land that is one’s first home? What can be done when one’s first home is so thoroughly colonized that it becomes a sunken place? 2. People of African Descent in the Land Occupied by the United States While there are many places we could look to understand the plight of people of African descent living in the United States, the most obvious place to look is the prison industrial complex and the criminal (in)justice system that attends to it. In her groundbreaking work The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander put the world on notice, making it impossible for us to ignore that there are (numerically) more Black men imprisoned today than there were Black men enslaved in the United States in 1850. 7 However, in the wake of a disproportionately high number of extrajudicial shootings of Black men, she also reminded us: The fact that some African Americans have experienced great success in recent years does not mean that something akin to a racial caste system no longer exists. No caste system in the United States has ever governed all black people; there have always been “free blacks” and black success stories, even during slavery and Jim Crow. The superlative nature of individual black achievement today in formerly white domains is a good indicator that the old Jim Crow is dead, but it does not necessarily mean the end of racial caste. If history is any guide, it may have simply taken a different form. 8

Here we hear an echo of Andrés Reséndez’s voice: when slavery does not work one way, those interested in enslaving find other ways, people, and places to enslave and oppress. However, even as Alexander and Reséndez remind us that there are always those ready to find a way to enslave, and Alexander reminds us that some within the oppressed group are “free,” James Forman Jr. in his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America demonstrates the ways that those within oppressed groups consciously and unconsciously participate in their own oppression. 9 In the ranks of those whom Forman critiques are Eric Holder and Barack Obama, both of whom are black. 3. Muslim People in the Land Occupied by the United States Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the United States has taken up what appears to be a war against Muslims and people from Arabicspeaking countries. The primary sites of this war against Muslims are airports. On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” which specifically targeted people traveling to the United States from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This was later

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revised and presented again as Executive Order 13780 on March 6, 2017. While this order has been met with a great degree of protest and the courts have effectively prevented this law from going into effect, the ethos of the order has been clearly communicated, and great damage has already been done. The xenophobic impulses of the Trump administration are clear regardless of the conclusions the Supreme Court draws if and when it hears a case addressing what has been called Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” Importantly, when still a candidate, on August 15, 2016, Trump identified the Pulse Nightclub Shooting as one of several justifications for such a ban. While not so concerned with the mental illness and/or homophobia that likely motivated this massacre, Trump was concerned with naming the shooting as an act of terror. Two results of this were drops in tourism to the United States and in applications for visas to the United States. 4. Spanish-Speaking Immigrants in the Land Occupied by the United States While the war against immigration rages and rears its head in many places, the symbol of this “sunken place” for Spanish-speaking immigrants is the threat of a wall to be built and/or expanded upon the southern border of the United States. Two aspects of this intersection are important to consider with respect to the question of mission for those who follow Jesus. On the one hand, the work of the Trumpire with respect to this form of immigration has pressed US cities—and individual, local churches—to become “sanctuaries” for those whose immigration status is being challenged. However, this is not the only way “Christians” in the United States are thinking about what it is to follow Jesus. On the other hand, there is the criminalization of Brown bodies, bodies of Spanishspeaking immigrants whose criminalization mirrors that of Black bodies and other bodies of color. In his February 28, 2017, speech, Trump introduced VOICE (Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office) under the Department of Homeland Security. Through this program, Trump advocated an isolationist principle that denies the ways that poverty directly impacts the incidences of violent crimes. Moreover, Trump made it clear that at the southern border and wherever it appears that individuals who have crossed that border are located, there will be danger for Spanish-speaking immigrants. 5. Transgender People in the Land Occupied by the United States Bathrooms present a very different kind of space. These places where we release bodily excrement and toxins with a degree of safety for ourselves and the communities around us are among the most private of spaces that society offers. Public bathrooms represent a unique crossing of public and private spheres. At these crossroads, people whose bodies

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and/or minds do not fit into the confines of “male” or “female” classification are often required to make body/soul-splitting choices. On December 18, 2014, then Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice issued a directive that according to Section VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protection against discrimination applies to gender identity and therefore extends to transgender people. While this directive prompted some schools and states to review and reform access to bathrooms based on gender identity, some states went out of their way to ensure that the rights of transgender people—that is, to use the bathroom that matches their experiential identities and realities instead of what was on their birth certificates—would be opposed. On February 22, 2017, Donald Trump repealed the directive of the Justice Department and the Executive Branch’s commitment to uphold transgender rights through appropriate bathroom access. 10 This intersection of place and people represents a particular form of willful blindness about the biological complexities of human beings. There is sufficient evidence for us to be able to say with certainty that G*d created more than male and female. Research shows that one of every one hundred children born has genitalia that does not match the standard male or female. 11 This kind of intersection may be the most difficult for churches and others interested in Christian mission to “get out” of and into a more just people-place connection. Notwithstanding these realities, the factuality of oppression has been called into question through Trumpire. In fact, a hallmark of Trump’s iteration of empire is that there is no such thing as fact. Only the question of who is in power remains. In Simulacra and Simulation, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard explores the relationships between reality, symbols, and society. He shows how simulacra are copies without an original, and simulation is the imitation of a real process over time. Baudrillard writes: “[t]he simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” 12 Part of the truth to which Baudrillard invites our attention is the possibility that regardless of the verity (or lack thereof) of the conditions to which we respond as social subjects (or abjects), our ongoing (responsive) simulations make real the process of our response and imply the verity of that to which we respond. This is a dangerous thought when we contemplate the falsehoods upon which so many of our approaches to justice and injustice are built. We are left with the question: what do we do when we cannot see clearly between fact and fiction, truth and lies? In the midst of such a situation, we might take a cue from thinkers such as Noam Chomsky. The title of his most recent book asks the question: “Who rules the world?” He concludes with this helpful expansion of that question which guides the remainder of this essay: “What principles and values rule the world?” 13

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NECROPOLITICS AND THE CITY These who have been named—the indigenous, people of African descent, Muslims, Spanish-speaking immigrants, and transgender people in the United States—are the survivors and subjects of what political theorist Achille Mbembe calls the necropolitical. He defines “necropolitics” as the “contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death.” 14 He argues that the sting of and stench of death have taken on new qualities and characteristics in our current context such that—often on the basis of such incidents as race and religion and sexuality—death-worlds have become our landscape and living dead are our constant companions, staring back at us in our mirrors and haunting us in our homes, in our schools, in our jobs, in our congregations, and in our denominations. Our worlds are death-worlds where we wait to hear the next gunshot, the next report of an extrajudicial killing, the next statistic explaining how and why we will be the first to die in this horror flick they call life. Our existence might, rather, be described as a persistence. This is a persistence in which the living dead come to expect to be overlooked, to be forgotten, to be ignored, to be pulled over, to be accused, to be misunderstood, to be charged, to be convicted, to be sentenced to imprisonment or death—or for social death to be sealed with physical extermination or expiration. In his seminal work Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion, Charles H. Long introduces the problem that Mbembe has explicated in terms of the “necropolitical” from the vantage point of the study of religion. Long attempts to “show how our rational Western intellectual tradition, rooted in a citied tradition, has blinded us to an adequate appreciation of the diversity of the human.” 15 He suggests: “A critical consideration of these problems has [. . .] broad implications for a new sense of the human in all humanistic studies and in the human sciences.” 16 Long continues: The Enlightenment orientation in the history of religions represents the continuation of a classical Western epistemological stance. Its methodologies, while critical of former positions, tended to relocate the epistemological center of inquiry as new data were confronted, yet it remained wedded to the notion of a centered consciousness as the locus of inquiry. Its systematic inquiry presupposed the locus of an ordered and centered intelligence in human consciousness. 17

Long develops the problem of centering in two key ways: (1) in terms of epistemological method or approach, and (2) in terms of ritualistic city origins (which is, inevitably, an extension of, if not the source of, the epistemological centering problems). With respect to the epistemological “centering,” Long articulates the question that many scholars in different fields reached with respect to the populations they had rendered abject: “What is the meaning of the human now that the West must realize that

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those who were formerly considered lesser or second-class human beings have in fact always been fully human?” 18 With respect to centering in terms of ritualistic city origins, Long explicates Eliade’s notion of “the center.” A few extended quotes help explain the significance and dangers of “the center” and “the city” to how we think about and do religion: For Eliade the center defines the locus of reality. Accessibility to the center through the construction of domes, temples, and other architectural forms is given as evidence of the pervasive notion of centered existence as denoting the religiously real [. . .]. In traditions emerging after the rise of cities, a return to the beginnings through cyclical rituals is at the same time a return to the center [. . .]. [. . .] Around the center, other dimensions of life are organized; the center gives coherence to the common life, and through the center the common life participates in reality. The center holds together, in symbolic forms, human, natural, and supernatural realities. It is through the center that life receives meaning and value; the center is the source of human value [. . .] [. . .] Citied traditions begin as ceremonial centers which later develop into embryonic cities. It is not that ceremonial centers always develop into cities; it is simply that before there can be a city there must first be a ceremonial center. The ceremonial city is the symbol of the metaphysical notion of effective space. The discernment of the sacred in the ceremonial center is a recognition of a surplus of power (Eliade’s kratophany), and from this place power may be allocated. The power and prestige of the ceremonial center are transferred to the city, and thus the early, and for that matter all, citied traditions express centrifugal and centripetal dynamic forces; they tend to bring power into their centers and redistribute the power from the center. One might say that there tends to be an imperialistic principle inherent in even the earliest citied traditions. 19

Ceremonial and ritualistic centers (1) assert epistemological reality, (2) assert religious reality, (3) organize “common life,” (4) confer humanity (implicitly), (5) confer meaning and value for human identity, (6) reorganize thinking around effective spaces and places, (7) become the necessary node around which cities form, (8) accumulate power, and (9) (re)distribute power. Theologies of liberation, “theologies of the opaque,” present an alternative: “The appearance of theologies of the opaque might promise another alternative of a structural sort, but only if these theologies move beyond the structural power of theology as the normative mode of discourse and contemplate a narrative of meaning that is commensurate with the quality of beauty that was fired in the crucible of oppression.” 20 In so doing, “The oppressed must deal with both the fictive truth of their status as expressed by the oppressors, that is, their second creation, and the discovery of their own autonomy and truth— their first creation.” 21 The work of understanding the centering and cit-

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ifying process, intentionally dismantling centers in order to expose the “beautiful” by-products of suffering, and establishing individual and communal wholeness in the midst of first and second creation realities are the “get out” tasks to which Long invites us. The city, however, has its own appeal. In fact, the International Review of Mission dedicated one of its most recent volumes to “Evangelism in the City.” In his contribution to that volume, Darrell Jackson takes T. S. Eliot’s “Choruses from the Rock” as his starting point— How will one answer a stranger’s question about the city? Was it formed by people who love each other? What will you answer? “We all dwell together To make money from each other.” Or “This is a community”? 22 Jackson suggests that any hope in understanding evangelism in or through the city begins with assuming the epistemological posture of “the stranger” and that this helps: (1) emphasize “the priority of questions over answers in any study of mission in the city,” (2) remind those who study Christian mission in cities “that urban and suburban evangelism ought to be a strangely countercultural activity,” and (3) point “to the possibility that the phenomenon that we label urban or city is capable of bearing multiple interpretations.” 23 Writing as a British Baptist minister and theologian about Australian urban context, Jackson has very little to say about aboriginal indigenous perspective. However, he does offer that “life-affirming evangelism in the city” should be “a mutually transformative encounter with [. . .] human activity, labour, power, and initiative. [. . .] Equally important, our exploration here of life-affirming evangelism can be taken as a critique (implicit or explicit) of practices of evangelism that are life-denying.” 24 In this way, Jackson lays the groundwork for a critique of both suburban and some manifestations of city life as problematically “aspirational.” 25 As helpful as this analysis is, he overlooks the communal nature of “stranger” identity in ways that are typical of individualistically oriented “city” mentalities. Jackson contemplates “lifeaffirming” evangelism from the perspective of individuals who might theorize from the perspective of “the other,” but he does not take account of communities that are forged from, in, through, and by systemic othering. Such communities, as Long demonstrates, give birth to completely different hybrid, opaque, and abject sensibilities about what constitutes lifeaffirmation. While countless scholars present various defenses and critiques of “the city,” Iris Marion Young’s theory of the city is one that is compelling enough and foreign enough to theological and missiological studies that it may open new insights for those of us contemplating Christian mission

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from within (i.e., within Christianity, within Trumpire, and within whichever places and positions of empire we reside). In Justice and the Politics of Difference, Young writes of “city life as a vision of social relations of difference without exclusion.” 26 For Young, the city creates an opportunity to face the problems with privileging the “face-to-face,” the “ideal of community,” and “asocial” “liberal individualism.” Young both problematizes and affirms some goodness in both community and individuality. She writes, “If city politics is to be democratic and not dominated by the point of view of one group, it must be a politics that takes account of and provides voice for the different groups that dwell together in the city without forming a community.” 27 Specifically, the normative possibilities of the city that Young affirms are (1) social differentiation without exclusion, (2) variety, (3) eroticism, and (4) publicity. 28 In order to avoid the problems of cities as accumulators and redistributors of power (as Long might put it), Young focuses on the objective of cities as agents of empowering its inhabitants while not being autonomous themselves. In this way, Young leaves room for further contemplation of the Nation State and/or other regulating and uniting governmental super-structures that mediate the work that cities do. Still, this leaves questions about the ways that Nation States and such super-structures continue to operate imperialistically (and as super-cities). Nevertheless, Young helpfully invites her readers to think about both recognition (or identity politics) and distribution (or questions of distributive justice) at once. 29 In so doing, Young consistently maintains that “injustice [. . .] should be defined primarily in terms of the concepts of oppression and domination, rather than distribution.” 30 This changes the approach of those who seek justice toward dismantling the philosophical underpinnings of oppression and domination and dismantling the violent materializations of these philosophical underpinnings. Young encourages us to take on what she calls the “five faces of oppression”: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. 31 When injustice and justice are considered as primarily matters of oppression and domination with philosophical roots that manifest (secondarily and, then, cyclically) in material distributions, the approach to justice work changes to account for the complexity of abjectiveness and the telos of the abject (qua value and relationship to value). Young’s five faces of oppression are reflected in the “five faces of oppression” in the United States that framed this essay: indigenous people, people of African descent, Muslims, Spanish-speaking people, and transgender people. As with the overlap of Young’s faces of oppression, the overlap between these people and the places at which their identities come to a head must consistently be acknowledged. Young’s theory helpfully identifies aspects of the city through which she perceives possibilities of justice. Social differentiation without exclusion would mean that it is possible to identify individually and/or collectively

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as indigenous, Black, Muslim, Latinx immigrant, and/or transgender and be recognized on the part of individuals and community structures that do not necessarily carry those identities without suffering the denial of dignity, respect, honor, or resources. One of the serious challenges facing those concerned about global Christian mission is that the institutional structures that govern the mission reflect the same kinds of social exclusions and problematically oppressive hierarchies that are endemic in the societies from which they come. Perhaps a gift from Young’s secular sensibilities is an invitation to think in terms of difference without excluding a homogenizing appeal to inclusivity or unity. The affirmation of variety means that these recognized groups are acknowledged as distinct contributors to a distinct reality that we value. One of the things that followers of Jesus must ask is this: which is the way of Jesus—the protection of variety or the profession of Jesus as the Christ (of a Trinitarian God)? Contemporary social realities make it difficult to promote both of these, simultaneously, as the way of Jesus. However, it is helpful to remember that Jesus was of a variety, a peculiar subject, who needed (and was ultimately refused) protection. Moreover, it is helpful to recall that the gospel accounts of how Jesus asked followers to recognize his lordship are varied. Not only is it necessary for those who look in from the outside of indigenous, Black, Muslim, Spanish-speaking immigrant, and transgender communities to respect and protect variety (including the variety of those identities), but it is also essential for those who look outside from those communities to respect and protect variety. This is not an appeal to variety for its own sake, but an acknowledgement that we often “do not know what we do not know.” 32 Without variety, we miss out on what we cannot know except through others—knowledge (and ways of thinking) that we do not even know that we do not know. Such appreciation for variety requires such humility as to be able to say: we do not even know what we do not know. Eroticism can be about acknowledging scientifically affirmed truths about diversities of sexual orientation and gender identity, but is more, for Young, about uses of the erotic as Audre Lorde invoked it. 33 Young invites us to consider the power of “attraction to the other, the pleasure and excitement of being drawn out of one’s secure routine to encounter the novel, strange, and surprising.” 34 Avoiding the whiff of orientalism, Young suggests that we, in our diversity, might engage one another as sexual (qua constructive and self-defying) subjects. Of this erotic ideal of the city, Young writes: “[o]ne takes pleasure in being drawn out of oneself to understand that there are other meanings, practices, perspectives on the city, and that one could learn or experience something more and different by interacting with them.” 35 Regardless, eroticism without objectification as a point of entry between differentiated individuals and groups is critically important. Surely, this is one degree of the heat from the refiner’s fire that produces the hybrid, opaque theologies of which

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Long writes. For the sake of a “follow-ship” of Jesus that contravenes empire, this means—at the very least—a willingness to think and talk about sexual orientation, gender identity, and the positive virtues of boundary crossing in and through sexuality as properly religious and “Christian” subjects of discourse. Thus, Young presents us with another way to “get out” of “the sunken places” into which we have been hypnotized. Finally, Young invites us to celebrate the possibility of publicity that happens through the city. Young describes the virtue of publicity as the possibility that we do not all share a common telos. From a perspective of Christian mission, this invites Christian believers not to impose a sense of purpose on others while enjoying and even cultivating common space with others as an objective unto itself. Young writes: “Cities provide important public spaces—streets, parks, and plazas—where people stand and sit together, interact and mingle, or simply witness one another, without becoming unified in a community of ‘shared final ends.’” 36 Considering the groups invoked in this essay, this vision of a liberating possibility of the city may be a bit too sanguine. On the one hand, it presumes the luxury of time and access to “safely” curated space for such presence and enjoyment. The necropolitical realities of too many indigenous, Black, Muslim, Latinx, and/or transgender people often precludes publicity in Young’s sense. On the other hand, even in such shared public places as streets, parks, and plazas, perceptible differences often also reflect unjust distributions of resources and power. Still, were Christians resisting empire to cultivate publicities that could mitigate these two problems, this vision of Young’s city might be a way to “get out.” Young’s perspective can be helpfully coupled with the communitarian approach of theorists like Michael Sandel, who maintains that “justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good” more than “maximizing utility or welfare—the greatest happiness for the greatest number” or “respecting freedom of choice—either the actual choices people make in a free market (libertarian view) or the hypothetical choices people would make in an original position of equality (the liberal egalitarian view).” 37 Even though Young resists a strong version of “the common good,” her view of the city and its virtues do provide some places to which we might look together for a just way forward in the midst of the oppressions and dominations we endure. What should be clear now that has not always been clear is that “the common good” must include those who have been relegated to abjectivity. The “abject” are fully human and have a distinct, essential, and even determinative voice in the discernment of “common good.” Moreover, the “common good” precludes the uninterrupted reproduction and simulation of necropolitical abjectivity. This should be most obvious to those who follow the teaching ascribed to Jesus about “the least” (Matt 25:31–46; NRSV). However, Long warns—as we cultivate virtue and reasoning about the com-

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mon good—that we do not center whatever conclusions we draw about virtue, reason, or the common good. In fact, Long warns that we should not be so swift to dismiss questions of distribution or freedom. Rather, the ethic to guide us is one that we learn from those who “get out”—and maintain a moral integrity in the “getting out.” THE HOMELESS FUTURE OF CHRISTIAN MISSION It is not just that we must get out of the suburbs; we must also get out of “the sunken place.” It is not just that we must get out of the city in its fundamental imperialism; we must also remember the decentered “sacred” of the city (and keep it holy). It is not just that we must get out of Trumpire; we must also get out of empire. It is not just that we must get out of our traditional conceptualizations of Christian mission; we must also get out of our traditional ways of thinking. For many, the future of Christian mission is homeless and without a recognizable telos. The mission is homeless in the sense that it does not belong in city, suburb, or sunken place; it does not belong in institutional or physically built church, temple, synagogue, or mosque. This mission is without a recognizable (or articulable) telos because the telos is constantly being (re)developed in and through variety. The most that can be said about the telos is that the abject (identities) and the telos of the abject is of utmost interest—and those who might be identified within such categories must be empowered to self-articulate wherever we/they are. In fact, it is abject places, spaces, and people from whence the truest and necessary works of “mission” come—and these places, spaces, people, and works may not even be properly labeled “Christian.” The gospels of Matthew and Luke both record similar accounts (likely drawn from the same source) of a dialogue between Jesus and a wouldbe follower: As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57–62; cf. Matthew 8:18–22; NRSV)

This passage contrasts with Jesus’s response to the Gerasene demoniac: “The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming

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throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him” (Luke 8:38–39; cf. Mark 5:18–19; NRSV). For those concerned with the necropolitical reality of the abject, Luke 9 and Matthew 8 clarify a way forward. There is no assurance of home or its comforts. This is a truth with which we must get more and more comfortable. Life is for the living; the dead do not need the same attention that life and living require; the isness 38 of those condemned to necropolitical persistence must be affirmed; necropoliticizing systems and powers must be dismantled, rendered powerless. THE TELEOLOGY OF GET OUT The film Get Out ends with Rod Williams (played by LilRel Howery), a TSA agent and the best friend of the protagonist, Chris, finding Chris at his most desperate moment. Chris has escaped from “the sunken place” and has almost escaped from the white suburban family that sought his demise through both the suburbs and “the sunken place.” On his way, Chris has had to kill all of Rose’s family—including two of her family who had already possessed black bodies. There is no way to condemn Chris’s violence. At the end, we can see that, though Rose has been seriously wounded, it is likely that she survives. There is no way to condemn the choice Rod and Chris made not to kill Rose. Chris (and Rod) defy abjectivity—both their own and the creation of abject others. Chris asserts his right to defend his life and living, but no more or less than that. Chris (and Rod) assert the right to “get out” and the moral obligation to “get out,” fighting for life, when faced with condemnation into necropolitical “sunken places.” The soul trans-formations required of Chris set him on a new mission simply through an everyday path of erotic relational possibility. The soul trans-formation required passing through a “second creation” in order to re-emerge into a “first creation.” We could say of Rose that she satisfied so much of what Young thought was good about the city: on the surface, she affirmed differentiation without exclusion, she affirmed variety, she affirmed eroticism, and she affirmed publicity. However, she neither “got out” nor appreciated the human drive to “get out.” Holes and nests are of no use to those familiar with the perennial need to “get out” for the sake of one’s very life and survival. Neither an embrace nor a rejection of the city is adequate when oppression is ubiquitous. Instead, the place of the abject is always (to) “get out.” Finally, a message to those of us who would follow suit— hearing the voices of the ancestors, the elders, the secular, the indigenous people, the Black people, the Muslim people, the Spanish-speaking immigrant people, the transgender people, the “least of these” people, the Jesus-following people: as we “get out,” we must never forget from whence we have gotten out and are yet getting out.

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NOTES 1. Jordan Peele, Get Out (Blumhouse Productions, 2017). 2. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 3. This essay was first delivered at the DARE Bangkok meeting. As such, insights developed and were confirmed in this context which included reminders through conversations with DARE participants and on the streets of Bangkok (especially in sex and souvenir street enclaves)—that “sunken places” and the forced and agentive “get out” options are local (Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996) and transnational (Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 4. Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston: Mariner Books, 2017), 5. 5. Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 319–21. 6. Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 321. 7. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). 8. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 21. 9. James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). 10. See “Understanding Transgender Access Laws” The New York Times (https:// www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/transgender-bathroom-law.html?_r=0; accessed May 31, 2017). 11. ISNA (Intersex Society of North America), “How Common Is Intersex?” (http:// www.isna.org/faq/frequency; accessed May 25, 2016); Jennifer Leath, “‘Discuss and Debate’—Toward a Balanced Conversation,” The Christian Recorder (2016; http://tcronline.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/the-christian-recorder-online-english_27.html; accessed May 27, 2016). 12. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 1. 13. Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World? (New York: Picador, 2017), 258. 14. J. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15.1 (2003): 39. 15. Charles Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Aurora, CO: The Davis Group, 1999), 75. 16. Long, Significations, 75. 17. Long, Significations, 76. 18. Long, Significations, 82. 19. Long, Significations, 78–79. 20. Long, Significations, 210. 21. Long, Significations, 184. 22. Cited in Darrell Jackson, “Evangelism as Life-Affirming Activity in the City,” International Review of Missions 105.1 (2016): 62. 23. Jackson, “Evangelism as Life-Affirming Activity in the City,” 62–63. 24. Jackson, “Evangelism as Life-Affirming Activity in the City,” 64. 25. Jackson, “Evangelism as Life-Affirming Activity in the City,” 69. 26. Iris Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 227. 27. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 227. 28. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 236–41. 29. Nancy Fraser, “Recognition or Redistribution? A Critical Reading of Iris Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference,” Journal of Political Philosophy 3.2 (1995): 166–80. 30. Fraser, “Recognition or Redistribution?,” 192. 31. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 39–65.

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32. This is an adaptation of a turn of phrase that Rev. Francine Brookins often uses (i.e., “I do not know what I do not know”) reflecting back what a contractor working on building the current edifice for Bethel AME Church in Fontana, California, which Brookins now pastors, often said to her as she oversaw the Church building: “you need to listen because you do not know what you do not know.” 33. Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984). 34. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 239. 35. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 240. Privileging of a Ruth approach in contradistinction with an Ezra-Nehemiah approach to the question of intermarriage in post-exilic Israel helps along a contemporary Christian theological appreciation of this point. 36. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 240. 37. Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 260. 38. Emilie M. Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 28.

SEVEN The Philippine Nation-State and the Killing of Indigenous Peoples Christianity and Modernity as Walls of Legitimation and Conquest S. Lily Mendoza

The trope of walls is an interesting concept to think with. There are all kinds of walls erected around Christian identity, national identity, and modern identity, designed to keep “non-worthy” folks out (e.g., unconverted indigenous folk intent on clinging on to their “backward” ways), and much of the politics of today is about tearing down those walls so the excluded others can get in. But that is not the argument being presented here. The argument here is that such walls are often multi-tiered devices that enact the colonial reduccio for the purpose of managerial control (i.e., the reduction of “wild,” “uncivilized” peoples into detribalized, compliant, civilized subjects). The wall erected by colonial Christianity, in particular, is one such device intended to convert, master, and manage “heathen” subjects. What this calls for then is not inclusion of indigenous peoples into the enclosure, but rather for those trapped within to step out of their confinement into a reverse tutelage to those who alone remain unredacted (i.e., unconquered) against all attempts to subdue or incorporate them. Such is possible only if those trapped inside the walls recognize their unfreedom (or captivity) and they can only do so if presented with an alternative report on the world outside that breaks the seamlessness of the narrative accorded to them by those most invested in keeping the walls, unperturbed by the rumblings of other truths outside. 95

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This is the purpose of the mapping done here—to make the prison walls of modernity and Christianity visible to those inside and to invite such subjects to venture out into the world beyond and recover their redacted connections to a much wider world encompassing not only human relations but other kinship relationships—with plants, animals, mountains, trees, rivers, rocks, storm clouds, insects, and other beings in nature—in other words, to return to a much deeper ancestry that in fact is their birthright as once indigenous peoples. Interestingly, up until the advent of modernity beginning in 1492, this ancestral way of living a broad-based kinship relationship made up a substantial portion of the then known world. Since then that world (of the indigenous) has been engulfed in the constricting encirclement—of “laws,” “moralities,” “subjectivities,” “enclosures of commons,” etc.—of a modernity and Christianity that have been promulgated with ever increasing force on the world’s peoples and environments. The discursive foreclosures around visions of the “good life” within these “walls” of legitimation is something I find damnable, permitting only assimilation and incorporation as the only possible mode of relation with modernity and Christianity’s others. Any capitulation (on the part of indigenous subjects) is conveniently interpreted as a “matter of choice”—not the effect of the ideology of TINA (There Is No Alternative). 1 American anthropologist Stanley Diamond argues differently: In fact, acculturation has always been a matter of conquest. Either civilization directly shatters a primitive culture that happens to stand in its historical right of way; or a primitive social economy, in the grip of a civilized market, becomes so attenuated and weakened that it can no longer contain the traditional culture. In both cases, refugees from the foundering groups may adopt the standards of the more potent society in order to survive as individuals. But these are conscripts of civilization, not volunteers. 2

Eminent political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott likewise posits that given the oppressive burdens that early (city-)states imposed on their subject populations to sustain their operation (levies and other forms of taxation, forced servitude, etc.), the building of city walls was not so much about keeping the barbarians out, but about keeping their subject populations in and preventing them from fleeing. 3 The task then is to identify the constituent beliefs that make up modernity’s and imperial Christianity’s walls of legitimation and conquest, note their contingent character, and expose the cracks and contradictions out of which new thoughts and formerly abjected knowledges and subjectivities might emerge and/or be recuperated.

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THE PROBLEMATIC There is today an “undeclared open season” on indigenous peoples in the resource-rich nation of the Philippines, particularly in the southern region of Mindanao. 4 The spate of harassment and extra-judicial killings of indigenous peoples by military and paramilitary units have led to the displacement and forced evacuation of an estimated 3,400 families (around 17,000 individuals) as of 2016. 5 Ironically, the killings continue unabated despite the Philippines having some of the most progressive legislations aimed at promoting indigenous peoples’ rights. One such major legislation is the Republic Act 8371, also known as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA), passed in 1997, recognizing and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples in the country—in particular, the right to self-determination and to their ancestral domains. As part of the government mandate to implement policies and programs pertinent to the protection of the rights of 14–17 million members of indigenous cultural communities (representing 80 to 120 ethnolinguistic groups), the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) was created as an implementing arm. Hailed by many as finally making possible the resolution of centuries-old injustices committed against the nation’s minoritized indigenous communities, this historic law also augured prevention of further exploitation, or so was the expectation. More than a decade into the law’s enactment, however, indigenous communities in the country continue to suffer displacement, discrimination, theft of their land, impoverishment, and, more recently, the outright killing of indigenous leaders who dare push back and fight industry’s encroachment on their areas. 6 “The country leads Asia in the number of murders of indigenous and environmental activists, with 41 people killed last year [2017] alone,” says UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz. 7 Notwithstanding the explicit intent of the newly enacted law, the prevailing discourse governing the nation-state’s relation with the country’s indigenous communities remains one of assimilation and incorporation into the national polity and market economy, with the allowance of “otherness” only within the realm of cultural expression (and for purposes of tourism) that precludes acts of resistance and/or demands for autonomy or the right to their ancestral territories. This study foregrounds a series of questions that brings into relief our current difficulty in thinking clearly and creatively about the indigenous holocaust we are witnessing today. What stories/narratives are told that justify the treatment of indigenous peoples in a postcolonial country like the Philippines as disposable peoples? What suturing discourses are deployed to smooth over the contradictions between stated policy and actual practice? How are such discourses mobilized in the popular imagination to produce and maintain a certain “regime of truth” about indige-

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nous peoples and surveil what is deemed thinkable or sayable about them? 8 What enabling cultural logics sustain the nation-state’s assimilationist project vis-à-vis indigenous peoples? I submit that the discourses and narratives constituting walls of legitimation and conquest of indigenous peoples are, at bottom, underpinned by the default logic of Christian supremacy, albeit now cloaked in a secular guise. In what follows, I track the operation of this Christian supremacist logic as it has morphed in the following discursive sites: the Regalian Doctrine (the Spanish version of the Doctrine of [Christian] Discovery), the subsequent institutionalization of liberal ideology and the civilizing discourse of modernity via US education and Protestant missions, and the contemporary nation-state ideals of progress, nationalism, and development. I end with my own attempts at disrupting the domination dynamic, drawing from my process of decolonization as a post-evangelical Filipina seeking to undo the same dynamic of supremacy, calling for the need to break open the foreclosures of the domination discourse. THE REGALIAN DOCTRINE AND CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY The country known as the Philippines comprising 7,100 islands did not possess a unitary identity prior to the Spanish arrival (and subsequent occupation) beginning in 1521, when Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was purported to have “discovered” the archipelago. This is despite well-documented inter-island trading and cultural exchange noted to have taken place routinely between the regions’ inhabitants long before European arrival. 9 What marks the coming into being of the Philippine nation-state is the people’s resistance against Spanish colonial rule which culminated in the revolutionary uprising of 1896–1898 and the declaration of independence on June 12, 1898, 10 hailed as the founding moment of the Philippines as the first independent republic in Asia. The notion of “discovery” is a juridico-religious concept authorizing the grant of possession to whichever European power happened to first set foot on so-called “heathen” lands. Enshrined in what is known as the “Doctrine of Discovery” (DOD), it comprises a series of papal bulls issued in the 1400s sanctioning European nations’ takeover of nonChristian lands provided no other Christian nation had yet laid claim to such. 11 For example, one 1452 papal bull issued by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories in service of Christian imperial expansion and the discoverers’ Christian monarchs. In the Philippines (as in Mexico and the South American republics), the DOD’s derivative equivalent as enacted by Spain is the Regalian Doc-

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trine or Jure Regalia. It rested principally on the idea that lands in the conquered territory belonged to the Spanish crown by right of discovery and conquest. By the nineteenth century, land titles became the basis of grant from the Spanish crown. Those without land titles were deemed to have no legal right over the land. Anyone who refused to be covered by Spanish land laws lost any right to their own land regardless of longstanding tenure. First introduced in the Philippines through the Laws of the Indies (intended to regulate Spanish interactions with natives who were presumed to be unable to govern themselves) and the Royal Cedulas (a form of identification issued for the purpose of implementing taxation), the Jure Regalia laid the foundation that “all lands that were not acquired from the Government, either by purchase or by grant, belong to the public domain” to be disposed of as the state wills. 12 Federal Indian and international law scholar Robert J. Miller outlines the ten elements of the DOD to wit: (1) First discovery which granted property and sovereign rights over the land and peoples to the first European nation to discover such; (2) Actual occupancy and current possession through the building of physical structures and settlements; (3) Preemption/European title or the claim to have the sole right to purchase land from Indigenous peoples; (4) Indian or Native title which accords indigenous peoples occupation and use rights, but not full ownership of their lands; (5) Tribal limited sovereign and commercial rights that confine trade and diplomatic relations only with the European government purported to have first discovered them; (6) Contiguity which allowed the claiming of rights of ownership over land contiguous to their actual “discoveries;” (7) Terra nullius or the principle of declaring “empty” or “uninhabited” lands deemed not being used “according to Euro-American laws and cultural mores”; (8) Christianity which mandated that nonChristian peoples do not have “the same rights to land, sovereignty, and self-determination as Christians;” (9) Civilization or the extolling of European lifeways and religion as superior and therefore the mandate to bring indigenous peoples under their tutelage; and, finally, (10) Conquest or the justification of takeover and exercise of ownership rights over discovered lands by military victories “in ‘just’ and ‘necessary’ wars.” 13 Although parsed out for purposes of analysis into ten separate elements, the primary justifying principle is religious, that is, the presumption of Christian Europe having the right (and mandate) to bring everything and everyone (including lands, territories, and other “resources”) under Christ’s rule or dominion. To formally inaugurate the moment of possession and conquest, Spain conducted a ceremonial reading aloud to the natives of the requirimiento. This was the Spanish “protocol for conquest” that, according to Seed, pronounces “an ultimatum for Indians 14 to acknowledge the superiority of Christianity or be warred upon.” 15 Part of the statement reads:

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Chapter 7 I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of Their Highnesses. We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as Their Highnesses may command. And we shall take your goods and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him. 16

Stannard remarks, “Not that a reading of the requerimiento was necessary to the inhuman violence the Spanish were to perpetrate against the native peoples they confronted. Rather, the proclamation was merely a legalistic rationale for a fanatically religious and fanatically juridical and fanatically brutal people to justify a holocaust.” 17 Far from being ancient history, the DOD remains operative today in US law (and other settler colonies) as the legal basis of property rights. In the Philippines, the Regalian Doctrine was adopted pretty much in toto and reinforced by the US colonial government upon its conquest of the Philippines (upon Spain’s defeat at the hands of the Philippine revolutionaries). It was subsequently adopted by the post-colonial Philippine government, enshrining the doctrine in its constitution (of 1935, 1973, and 1987). Today it remains an instrument of dispossession of indigenous peoples, granting only a “right of possession” (or occupancy)—not full ownership—and only of the mere surface of their ancestral domains with the state reserving sovereign prerogative over any potential sub-surface mineral or other natural resources under said property to do with as it pleases. 18 In effect, indigenous peoples have the unenviable position of being designated “ecological managers who would protect, maintain, and steward the riches they do not, legally cannot, own.” 19 Ironically, the grant of Native Title—itself a concession won under the IPRA Law recognizing that “land and resources that never fell under the Spanish cross or sword were never part of the archipelago that Spain ceded to the US in 1899”—only further reinforces the putative validity of the Regalian Doctrine. Without a fundamental abrogation of the doctrine itself, and along with it, a questioning of the very notion of state sovereignty over Indigenous Peoples, the Philippine post-colonial government becomes the latest in the series of colonial powers to bring about the conquest of Indigenous Peoples. MODERNITY AND THE DISCOURSE OF CIVILIZATION While the rule of Spain in the Philippines was characterized by a religious zeal to convert the natives, US rule consisted of a systematic schooling of Filipinos in the modern ideology of liberalism that, at bottom, was

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also rooted in notions of Christian supremacy. Grounded in Eurowestern Enlightenment thought, the liberal ideology brought over by the United States found its efficacy in the institutionalization of its tenets in academic disciplines, ensuring that the educated native ruling elite who would eventually supplant the American administrators post-independence would see to it that the country’s modernization track continued unhampered. Liberalism served as the foundational worldview of the civilizing discourse of modernity. Purporting to liberate humans from the constraints of traditional authority structures (such as the Church and absolute monarchies, as well as the presumably constricting ties of kin, clan, and ethnos), its goal was to school Filipinos in individualism, industry, rationalism, and the virtues of private ownership and wealth production and accumulation. Any native subjectivity that failed to conform to these identifying markers of human “being” became a type of savagery, of living “less-than.” Indeed, for all of its invocation of egalitarianism and respect for individual rights, liberalism’s historical record patently belies any such claim, prompting critical race theorist Charles Mills to recast its “social contract” demarcation into a de facto “racial contract” in its actual functioning, with its provisions applying only to a particular sort of subject that is invariably raced (White/European), classed (propertied), gendered (male), and Christian. 20 Although exclusively European in provenance, this purportedly universally evolved subjectivity is what was introduced in the Philippine schools under US tutelage (and reinforced by Protestant missions) as the necessary scaffolding for the building of a modern democracy. Today, liberal theory, with its emphasis on individualism, rationalism, utilitarian calculation, aggressive pursuit of material wealth, mastery of the natural world, and, most importantly, private ownership, remains a foundational course in most universities in the country (often titled, “Social and Political Thought”). A mandatory requirement for all students of higher learning, it constitutes much of the normative thinking around ideals of subjecthood, social life, governance, attitude toward nature, and the goal of human life, with its tenets serving as “a convoluted and manipulable logic [giving] rise to a monopolistic vision of the good life and what it mean[s] to be human.” 21 That vision sees human life as having for its overarching goal the understanding and mastery of the world, with “human capacities [being] a means to that goal’s realization” 22—a vision consistent with the biblical mandate of “subduing the earth and exercising dominion over it.” Thus, Europeans encountering native peoples in their differing subjectivity could only assess them as “treat[ing] life as fun and as a festival, and lack[ing] the kind of moral seriousness expected of human beings.” 23 They were also indicted for “wasting” and failing to use the land to its fullest capacity when engaging only in subsistence, non-sedentary agriculture and allowing the land periodically to lie fallow, as well for giving animals their share of ac-

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cess—a practice that, in European valuation, was patently “irrational and wasteful.” 24 To this day, in the Philippines, such seeming lack of motivation for continuous (surplus) production and accumulation among indigenous peoples translates in dominant mainstream perception as “laziness” and evidence of a “lack of purpose or drive to improvement,” an assessment that proliferates in a lot of the literature on development and economics and is offered in mainstream discourse as the putative explanation for indigenous peoples’ failure to thrive. 25 Leading proponent of liberal theory John Locke noted, “The trouble with the Indians is that they lacked the desire to accumulate wealth, engage in commerce, produce for an international market [. . .] and have no interest in exploiting the earth’s potential to the fullest.” 26 And it is this perceived flaw in their psychology and constitution at the (supposedly) most fundamental level that gives the colonists (and in contemporary times, modernizers and development advocates) both a (God-given) right and a duty either to replace them or bring them up to speed in their acquisition of requisite humanity. I contend that this psychology of conquest, acquisitiveness, rational calculation, competition, and domination as the premier way to be human is what defines the cultural logic of modernity. Michael Mann, in explaining European development, notes: Historians over and over again use the word restless to characterize the essence of medieval culture. As McNeill puts it, “It is not any particular set of institutions, ideas or technologies that mark out the West but its inability to come to a rest. No other civilized society has ever approached such restless instability. [. . .] In this [. . .] lies the true uniqueness of Western civilization.” 27

Within this restless cultural dynamic, “mere” subsistence (as opposed to “production for surplus”) is little more than living “an animal-like existence,” one that no one in their right mind could ever desire or want to keep. (Never mind that for still intact native peoples such a way of life is deemed more than adequate for their thriving.) CONTEMPORARY NATION-STATE IDEALS OF MODERNITY, PROGRESS, AND DEVELOPMENT This vision of modern progress and advancement as the evolutionary destiny of mature human beings (of whom, white folk are the epitome) historically has led to the notion that those who cannot be brought up to speed or who would rather insist on keeping to their uncivilized ways (e.g., indigenous folk) have no other destiny but to “vanish.” Although widely critiqued in indigenous studies literature, 28 the trope of the “vanishing native” today remains part and parcel of the broader discourse on modern “civilization” that consequently produces the “native” as a disposable subject whose evolutionary destiny is to disappear altogether

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from the face of the planet. A further theory concocted to explain indigenous peoples’ “disappearance” during the colonial era (fifteenth to twentieth centuries), when massive populations of native folk were rendered extinct by Europeans through slaughter, slavery, displacement, and disease, was the “inevitability thesis.” This is the social evolutionary doctrine that claims that “all ‘primitive races’ [are] doomed to extinction through mere ‘contact’ with civilization” 29—this conjures images of native peoples dropping off like flies upon mere contact with civilized intruders into their territory, attesting to the inevitability of superior races displacing inferior ones in the aftermath. What is not accounted for in the discourse is the deliberate policy of extermination carried out, coupled with the introduction of European-bred diseases (smallpox, measles, typhus, dysentery, etc.) that are the result of vastly inferior, overcrowded, famine- and poverty-stricken living conditions in Europe prior to contact (hence, the term “crowding diseases”). The language “doomed to extinction” sanitizes the story, ridding it of perpetrators and any suggestion of there even being a crime. In the end, the assumption of inevitability chalks up the decimation of indigenous populations to nothing more than a design of nature, discursively producing an envisioned future where ill-adjusted natives are no more, and the world to come is exclusively populated by “evolved” civilized human beings. The denial is utterly disingenuous, hiding the fact that it was neither nature nor evolutionary destiny that served as the culprit in native peoples’ disappearance; rather, it was the fact that one side in the intercultural encounter entered the encounter with a deadly interest—an interest not in co-existence, but in a supremacist agenda that included taking over native peoples’ lands and enslaving those they encountered. In the Philippines, the United States’ colonial enterprise 30 consisted of nothing less. Its discourse, however, was cast in paternalistic and altruistic terms, that is, as a “civilizing mission,” built around the claim of wanting merely to improve the lives of “the Pagan or Wild Tribes.” The contention is that, left to their own devices, native peoples would remain “lazy,” “dirty,” “ignorant,” and “live in a miserable, half-starved state,” 31 which overlooked the true driving motive: the islands were richly endowed in natural resources and their strategic location in the Pacific made for easy access to the markets of China. In Philippine Geography 1904, a magazine advertised as among the “best geographical text-books for Philippine Schools,” former Philippine Islands Division Superintendent of Public Instruction Roddy-Gibbs writes, “The white race lives mostly in the temperate zones, especially in North America and Europe. They are the most highly civilized people in the world.” 32 This discourse of “civilized” versus “uncivilized” as enacted in the Euro-western colonial enterprise finds convenient grounding in a medieval concept (originating in Plato’s Academy) called the “Great Chain of Being”—the notion of a hierarchy of beings (or Scala Natura) where those on the lower rungs of

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the ladder were presumed to have been set there by God in order to serve those on the higher rungs. 33 This civilizational narrative serves to justify the missionizing impulse and ultimately accounts for why assimilation— and never co-existence—is deemed the only relation possible between the modern nation-state and its indigenous peoples. The linear narrative of “progress” and “advancement” as the default norm for human cultures requires that those who cannot be persuaded to join the march to progress must be prepared to face the consequence of their intransigence or incapacity, that is, extinction. Indeed, within the civilizational discourse of modernity, such quaint retrogressive cultures cannot but be seen as “vanishing,” given the discourse’s presuppositions. Unnamed, such presuppositions constitute a discursive formation that constrains the limits of what is sayable. As ecophilosopher Derrick Jensen notes, “Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture.” 34 INTERRUPTING THE DOMINATION DYNAMIC: A PERSONAL STORY I begin this final section with a confession: I am a dyed-in-the-wool child of civilization, raised within its walls and suckled at its breast. Brought up colonial and Western-educated, the daughter of a Methodist Protestant minister in a predominantly Catholic country (the Philippines), I became a “born-again” Christian in college and a zealous evangelist for much of my adult life. From birth, I had known nothing but linear narratives, whether of the eschatological variety (having to do with history’s purpose as bound up in the attainment of redemption through Christ), or of the secular variety (in the form of modernization theories, nationbuilding projects, and discourses of growth and development). The narrative of nationalism that underwrote the project of nation-building was something I found particularly compelling, since I was one whose assimilation into colonial subjecthood (i.e., Americanization 35) was rendered incomplete by my body’s unwitting inability to submit fully to the colonial linguistic idiom no matter my longing to belong—the dis-ease of my tongue around speaking English inducing an extreme self-consciousness serious enough to border on neurosis. That coalescing post–World War II national narrative momentarily offered me respite in that the valorization of native Tagalog as the language of choice among nationalist circles served partially as a marker for an alternative militant, anti-colonial identity. Yet, nationalism, too, followed a linear narrative of progress even as it sought token legitimation for a decolonized identity in pre-colonial Philippine culture and history (i.e., the only signifier of difference from the colonizer being the remaining cultures of the nation’s tribal peoples). One strand of the narrative that was minted by a government-sponsored

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“Cultural Liberation Program” in the late 1970s 36 went by the famous line, “This nation shall be great again!”—the word “again” pointing to an ancient culture presumed to have had a “civilization” of its own prior to the coming of European and American colonizers. The only problem is, having bought into the story that civilization told of itself in terms of the markers of a “civilized” culture (e.g., large populations, technological achievement, some form of organized religion, standing armies, governments, urban centers, etc.), nationalist scholars were then compelled to extrapolate backward in search of evidence for the existence of such markers in prehistoric Filipino cultures in a bid to prove that Filipinos were already “civilized” prior to their takeover and colonization by Spain, Japan, and the United States. Alas, such a project was doomed to failure from the get-go, for no matter the purported level of civilizational achievement attained by prehistoric Filipinos (and the record is dubious at best), Europe and the West will always remain ahead of the game. As long as the game is not changed, Filipinos can expect to play catch-up for a very long time. But for me, the more serious flaw in this way of reckoning is that, in searching for “greatness” in achievements that could only have come at a price—to plants, animals, land bases, waters, other humans, etc., who were enslaved, exploited, robbed, conquered, and driven to extinction in the course of civilization enriching itself and building its cathedrals, palaces, and other monuments to “greatness”—we miss out on seeing the real worth of modernity’s and Christianity’s “unassimilable others” who continue to evade full embrace inside their varied enclosures: the world’s remaining 350 million indigenous peoples who still retain memory of how to live on the land. One noteworthy achievement of such peoples is their capacity to thrive for millennia without ruining their land bases. Their ability to do so with astonishing grace and beauty is even more remarkable. Once we get past civilization’s disinformation campaign against those ways of being that encode a very different logic than its own, it is easy enough not only to develop admiration for those other lifeways but be compelled to rethink all of one’s presuppositions about what counts for human well-being. This happened for me in a graduate course in the humanities titled “The Image of the Filipino in the Arts” taught by an ethnomusicology professor, where I encountered for the first time the amazing arts of our indigenous communities that were least penetrated by modern development—their intricate weaving designs, the wild vibrant colors of their textiles, their basketry, dances, songs, chants—and what they expressed in terms of a different way of being. I wrote at length about that experience in a journal entry, but can only provide a glimpse here: For the first time, I was introduced to the supple world of nonindividualistic interconnectedness, the delicate sensitivity of kapwa

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Chapter 7 (shared being), the generosity of community, the lack of divide between the material and the spirit world, the openness of loob (inner being), the gracious receiving of gifts of beauty and creativity from the other world through dreams, visions, and the power of ritual.

This first-time encounter with the differing cultures and subjectivity of our indigenous peoples—a first peek “outside” of modernity’s and Christianity’s oeuvre, if you will—served as my gateway to deeper studies in human lifeways prior to the advent of settled agriculture (which is often marked as inaugurating a host of epochal material and conceptual transformations, including notions of linear progress, hierarchy, and the rise of the domination dynamic). It was a soul-shaking encounter (with unanticipated indigenously authored beauty) that led to years of subsequent theoretical investigation of the social organization and lifeway practices responsible for such creativity. The findings revolutionized my perception of both indigenous subjectivity and modernist assumption. Constrained by space, I can here only summarize the operative differences between the two worlds in the most cursory of listings, accompanied by a generalized exhortation that each of the listed items is worthy of sustained investigation and, if so explored, will yield profound revelation about an entirely different possibility of being human than our contemporary discourse allows. In sum, such pre-agricultural huntergatherer societies shared certain characteristics in common, to wit: (1) because they depended for their survival on their habitat, they developed intimate knowledge of their environment that kept them from decimating their land bases; (2) they saw themselves as only one species among many, and as such, understood other beings’ right to exist and to share in the resources of their common habitat; (3) they related to all of nature— including plants, rocks, mountains, clouds, rivers, wind, etc.—as living beings with a right to their own existence and not as objects or mere “resources” for humans’ disposition; (4) they understood reality as fluid and not fixed, developing complex mythologies to make sense of their world (that could put the most brilliant modern philosopher to shame); (5) in most of their cosmologies, there was no necessary separation between “good” and “evil”; life was understood as always mixed, complex, and never free from suffering and struggle; (6) they observed a strict ethic of reciprocity that demanded that they not take anything from the earth without giving something back—an ethic that limited unnecessary taking not just to avoid heavy indebtedness, but also to ensure that other beings—and life, in general—could continue in perpetuity; (7) they employed “unlimited means to meet limited wants” 37—a remarkable condition which led one anthropologist to call them “the original affluent society” 38; (8) they performed activities that we typically call “work” for 4–6 hours a day, with the rest of the day spent resting, socializing, ritualmaking, celebrating, etc.; (9) they found no need to engage in surplus

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production but gathered or hunted only for immediate consumption within a logic of abundance (versus the scarcity assumed in competitive modern economics); (10) they lived a nomadic way of life that discouraged hoarding; (11) they were egalitarian and non-hierarchical (including in terms of gender relations); (12) and to make sure they maintained these values, they evolved complex social arrangements to discourage bullying and subjugation of the weak by the strong 39 and by innovating conflict-resolution techniques designed to prevent escalation and warfare. This is no mere romance or wishful thinking. Quite apart from our civilizational blinders and prejudices, one reason we today are unable to imagine such an existence (both in the past and in the present) is that the majority of these cultures have now been put in jeopardy—if not utterly decimated and struggling to survive—by the onward push of modern culture’s civilizing mission. Their means of subsistence severely undermined (primarily through land dispossession and other mechanisms of marginalization), they are now forced to live lives of misery, desperation, and impoverishment. Many of those who survive the displacement and marginalization suffer cultural depression resulting in high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence. But now and then, if one tarries long enough to hear and listen, one can still catch glimpses, if only in fragments, of that other, more respectful, world that indigenous peoples around the globe struggle to keep alive amid the wreckage of their violent cultural assimilation. As I wrote in my journal coming back from a gathering of indigenous elders and urbanized Filipinos for the purpose of mutual learning and listening held in a native community in the southern part of the Philippines: I’ve glimpsed life-giving beauty—the building of a Manobo tinandasan hut using no nails, each piece of bamboo, nipa, or rattan, sang to and praised before harvest until permission is granted, master builders still retaining memory of the old way of doing things; a people who co-exist and honor the crocodiles on their marshlands as the Spirit Guardians of the waters (in stark contrast to the town Mayor’s bloodlust upon capturing—and eventually killing—the crocodile Lolong, touted to be the largest in the world); a woman indigenous leader being ministered to in ceremony by Muslim patutunong healers so she could finally accept her call to become a healer herself; native youth taking up the mantle of leadership in fighting corporate encroachment of their ancestral lands; the laughter of Manangs and Manongs as they told their stories, and the beautiful chanting of other Elders in response. It is these kinds of encounters—with our Indigenous Peoples and those working on the ground alongside them—that now serve as the homeward beacon for me. Just like our indigenous brothers and sisters everywhere else around the globe threatened by the relentless incursion of our extractive economy into their territories, our own IPs [indigenous

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Chapter 7 peoples] in the Philippines struggle bravely to keep their beautiful ways of being alive amidst the assault. The grief (at their beleaguered condition) compels, but so does the grace, beauty, and courage of their spirit. (August 15, 2015)

It has been long in coming, but now is the time when the foreclosures and presumptions of the discourse of modern civilization and imperial Christianity need to be exposed and recognized for what they are: a set of arbitrarily imposed ideas and conditions benefiting only a few and ultimately destructive to most of life on the planet. In light of how I now see things, I am convinced that it is those of us imprisoned within their absolutist claims that need to be let out, rescued, and tutored by wisdom coming from the indigenous past, which is not really past, but resurgent in the present. 40 For not only does indigenous living constitute the majority of our time on the planet, it also represents the only sustainable living arrangement on record that we have thus far managed. Fortunately, such a witness to a different way of being still exists (encoded in our cultural DNA and still practiced to varying degrees by the estimated 370 million indigenous people around the world continuing to fight to keep their way of life) and the crucial task—in seeking to break open modern civilization’s totalizing claims (to being the only way to be human on the planet)—is to finally find the ears capable of hearing what one of our “own ‘modernist’ kind” who has broken out might say: The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination [. . .] an imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment [. . .] who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. 41

NOTES 1. Wolfgang Streeck, “The Return of the Repressed,” The New Left Review (March–April, 2017): 5. 2. Stanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1974), 204, emphasis added. 3. James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 4. The Philippines is reputed to hold the fifth largest nickel reserves in the world and is also known to have significant deposits of iron, copper, and cobalt scattered across the archipelago. See Lee Morgan, “List of Natural Resources in the Philippines,” USA Today (http://traveltips.usatoday.com/list-natural-resources-philippines54929.html; accessed April 29, 2019). 5. Lance Baconguis, “Basilan Clashes Displace 3,400,” Manila Standard (http:// manilastandard.net/news/top-stories/211926/basilan-clashes-displace-3-400.html; accessed April 29, 2019). 6. The Philippines is reported to be second only to Brazil in the rate of murder of indigenous peoples. Cf. Oliver Holmes, “Environmental Activist Murders Set Record as 2015 Became Deadliest Year,” The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/envi-

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ronment/2016/jun/20/environmental-activist-murders-global-witness-report; accessed April 29, 2019). 7. Victoria Tauli-Corpus, “A Silent War Is Being Waged on Philippine Indigenous Communities,” Financial Times, March 29, 2018 (https://www.ft.com/content/4561c9042dfb-11e8-97ec-4bd3494d5f14; accessed April 29, 2019). 8. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, translated by Alan M. Sheridan Smith (London and New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). 9. Zeus A. Salazar, The Malayan Connection (Lunsod Quezon: Palimbagan ng Lahi, 1998); Molina A. Azurin, Reinventing the Filipino Sense of Being and Becoming (Quezon City: CSSP Publications and University of the Philippines Press, 1993). 10. Renowned Philippine historian Reynaldo Ileto marks the revolutionary years, in particular 1896–1898, as the “origin myth of the Filipino nation-state.” Reynaldo Ileto, Knowing America’s Colony: A Hundred Years from the Philippine War, Philippine Studies Occasional Paper Series No. 13. (Honolulu: Center for Philippine Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 1999), 2. 11. Steven Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Discovery (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008); Robert J. Miller, et. al., Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). 12. Republic V. Villanueva, “Case Digests from Philippine Jurisprudence,” January 15, 2018 (https://casedigests-ph.blogspot.com/2018/01/republic-v-villanueva.html; accessed April 29, 2019). 13. Robert J. Miller, Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008), 3–5. 14. The term also used for Filipinos: Indios. 15. Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 70. 16. David Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 65. 17. Stannard, American Holocaust, 65. 18. Peter Cuasay, “Indigenizing Law or Legalizing Governmentality? The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act and the Philippine Supreme Court,” working paper for the panel “Indigenous Knowledge in the Commons,” Politics of the Commons: Articulating Development and Strengthening Local Practices (Ching Mai University RCSD, 11–14 July 2003), 6. 19. Cuasay, “Indigenizing Law or Legalizing Governmentality?,” 6. 20. Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 21. S. Lily Mendoza, “Savage Representations in the Discourse of Modernity: Liberal Ideology and the Impossibility of Nativist Longing,” Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education & Society 2.1 (2013): 12 (http://www.decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/ viewFile/18685/16233; accessed April 29, 2019). 22. Bhikhu Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke and Mill, in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, edited by Jan Neverdeen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, pp. 81–98 (London: Zed Books, 1995), 91. 23. Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 91. 24. Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 90. Ironically, today, such “primitive” practices are actually being recuperated as more eco-friendly and ultimately sustainable than the soil-destructive and animal-abusive patterns of industrial farming and agriculture. 25. Cf. Juliet Mallari, “The Pathology of the Aeta,” unpublished manuscript. 26. Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 85. 27. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986/2012), 397. 28. See Elazar Barkan, “Genocides of Indigenous Peoples: Rhetoric of Human Rights,” in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, edited by

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Robert Gellately and Ben Kernan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kathryn E. Fort, “The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court,” Saint Louis University Law Journal 57 (2013), 297–338; Daniel R. Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780–1880 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Jean M. O’Brien, “State Recognition and ‘Termination’ in Nineteenth-Century England,” in Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook, edited by Amy E. Den Ouden and Jean M. O’ Brien, 149–167 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Gerald R. Vizenor, “A Postmodern Introduction” in Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, edited by Gerald R. Vizenor, 3–16. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). 29. Patrick Brantlinger, “‘Dying Races’: Rationalizing Genocide in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, edited by Jan Neverdeen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (London: Zed Books, 1995), 44. 30. Inaugurated at the turn of the twentieth century through a military invasion that left an estimated half a million to a million (out of six million) Filipinos dead. 31. Roddy-Gibb quoted in Armin A. Luistro, “National Indigenous Peoples Education Policy Framework,” paper presented at the International Conference on Indigenous Knowledge in the Academe: Bridging Local and Global Paradigms (Vocas and the University of the Philippines Baguio City, Philippines, 2012), 1. 32. Luistro, “National Indigenous Peoples Education Policy Framework,” 1. 33. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936/1964). 34. Derrick Jensen, A Language Older than Words (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2000/2004), 16. 35. The formal US occupation in the Philippines lasted from 1898 to 1946. Although its regime seems brief compared to that of Spain’s (1521–1898), it appears to have marked the nation’s psyche far more insidiously through an ideological machinery that succeeded in displacing all the country’s educational, cultural, and social institutions and supplanting them with its own colonial apparatus. 36. Launched and run by the Philippine Center for Advanced Studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. Cf. S. Lily Mendoza, Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipino American Identities (Manila, Philippines: UST Publishing House, 2006). 37. John Gowdy, ed. Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998). 38. Marshall Sahlins, “The Original Affluent Society,” in Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment, edited by John Gowdy, 5–41 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998). 39. James Woodburn, “Egalitarian Societies,” Man 17.3 (September 1982): 431–451. 40. See James Clifford, Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 41. Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 214.

EIGHT Dare Not! Or Fear Not! Reimagining the Story of the Canaanite-Noisy Woman (Matthew 15) Surekha Nelavala

Can the subaltern speak? Gayatri Spivak’s question broadened the spectrum for postcolonial analysis. 1 Her question has been widely cited and used in contextual, postcolonial, feminist, and biblical studies. 2 Those who use postcolonial feminist analysis in their publications have received this question with approbation, as Spivak’s essay reveals the overshadowing of some women in the contexts of color, race, and other minoritized identities, such as the third-world versus the first-world dichotomy. Spivak’s question, however, still unsettles me as a woman representing Dalit women, who are considered subaltern by their very historicosociological caste-based definition. Indian Dalit women fit the explanation of being subaltern women thrice—because of their race, class, and gender. Nonetheless, the question “can the subaltern speak?” is almost irrelevant in the case of Dalit women because they are often louder than other women (in Indian culture it is shameful for women to be loud and to be heard in public). From a certain perspective and level, all women from India are socially and culturally expected to be subaltern. People at the margins speak out, but continue in their subaltern status because they are often ignored and resisted, if not simply muted by the authorities. The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15, who cried for help loud and clear, experienced the same as she approached Jesus to seek the healing of her daughter. 111

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I approach this narrative as a feminist scholar who has experienced subalternity, mostly being in the margins both in the past and in the present in all walks of life. I have never refrained from speaking out, regardless of the impact that it has yielded. Being that person, I resonate and view the story of the Canaanite woman, “reading from this place” of the margin, as it is my day-to-day experience to choke in fear because as a woman the edges and margins pose the threat of a fall but, on the other hand, I admit that I am not too far into the margins. When I look to the center, I am at the margins; but when I look deep into the margins, I see that I am close to the privileged center, with the opportunity to speak out, and so I recognize my own privileges. Today, I give voice and interpret experience with the privilege of being an educated woman living in the western world, while still shaped by the consciousness of subaltern people. In my case, subordinated particularity refers to Indian-Dalit female identity, with an additional aspect of fluidity. As a subaltern woman I am simultaneously voiceless while having a voice. 3 My voice is a reminder of my privileges viewed through a subaltern lens; my lens is informed and influenced by my life experiences that are real and personal, sharpened by educational tools, and cleansed by created consciousness. Impacted by these circumstances, my hermeneutical views are subjective to the lens that is formed by my varied experiences. THE CANAANITE WOMAN DID SPEAK Speaking out is not the same as being heard. As a feminist biblical scholar from the margins, with a shared experience of not being heard, of often being shunned, ignored, and insulted, I discuss the story of the Canaanite woman—focusing on the discourse between Jesus and her—with reimagination from a perspective of anticasteism and Indian feminism. The Canaanite woman feared for her daughter but dared to challenge whatever marginalized her. She feared that she might miss her one chance to heal her daughter, but she dared to try whatever it would take to get healing for her daughter. To be shamed, to be insulted, to be called names, to be ill-treated, to face rejection, she dared the circumstances. She feared as a mother, her vulnerabilities come ambushing when she thought of her suffering daughter. She could not bear to see the daughter suffer anymore. She heard good things about Jesus. From what she heard, she went to seek for help and she believed that he was the one who could heal her daughter. She felt safe and secure to go and kneel at the feet of Jesus. She had nothing to lose. Jesus seemed to be her last option, and she dared to approach Jesus because her only daughter is her everything, more than her own life, her own dignity. Her everything was crumbling. What could be worse than that? So she dared out.

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In a patriarchal society, complying to the prescribed gender roles are attributed to honor and anything otherwise is shameful or shameless. For instance, women are expected to be shy and modest, to be seen and confined to only a private space. The Canaanite woman did not meet the expectation of an ideal woman, as she was out there on the streets, loud and improper—crying for help, shouting out to Jesus—thus invoking disgust from the onlookers, and from the disciples and Jesus. Stephen D. Moore describes her as a “grotesquely distended character.” 4 The woman exhibited carelessness to guard her honor (by staying in the private space, suffering in submission); rather she took charge, went out searching. This act of the Canaanite woman may not have brought honor for her in her culture and society, but indeed became a first step toward her liberation. She dared to care less about expectations of a patriarchal society even though she would be negatively projected as careless and shameless for the way she went out in the streets crying for help. Thus she dared to be vulnerable and callous to the humiliation to take on her step toward liberation. ANOTHER READING The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman has been discussed and articulated widely, with traditional readings claiming its association with the concept of a universal mission or a Gentile mission initiative. These traditional interpretations defend and protect “the “poor” Jesus against potential misunderstanding of his actual intentions for saying what he says, but undermine the actual reality of “the suffering poor daughter” of the Canaanite woman. Jesus’s comparison of her and her community to dogs has been dismissively interpreted. Jesus’s privileged status in relation to the woman has been privileged in traditional interpretations. His earned reputation from the gospel tradition influenced how his role in the text has been interpreted and his role favored, despite his rudeness to the woman. The woman’s suffering and her desperate situation of being the mother of a possessed daughter has no significance in traditional readings. Jesus’s harsh response to the Canaanite woman has not been taken as further marginalization, but rather just as a provocative comment to test her faith. The woman’s struggle has been completely ignored in the interest of protecting Jesus’s comments. Focusing on her faith, as opposed to her place in the household of God, has been a clear indication of an imperialistic stance in the interpretative tradition of the text. Therefore, the story of the Canaanite woman and its interpretive tradition reveal how the dynamics of marginalization and oppression have been internalized. This act of internalization affected readers’ view and interpretation.

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However, postcolonial, contextual, and feminist readings have introduced a paradigm shift from a Jesus-oriented discussion to a discussion that identifies the woman as a leading character in the story. Scholars have recognized the woman’s marginalization, exclusion, and status of otherness by comparing and contrasting different characters in the story. By analyzing issues of gender, ethnicity, and other disparities related to identity that are evoked from the text, they have rendered intersectional interpretive perspective and significance related to marginalization, discrimination, and multiple layer oppression. In this essay I will not review the scholarly tradition of feminist reinterpretations, but offer another perspective to the existing tradition that offered a groundbreaking paradigm shift. The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman remains puzzling because of Jesus’s reluctance to be a healer. This essay adds a voice to the interpretive traditions that address this puzzle. The Canaanite woman took a powerful initiative and overcame several obstacles, first by crossing her own border—approaching Jesus and calling him “Lord”—and second by persistently making her request at the risk of displaying unconventional behavior. As a woman, she exhibited a significantly loud voice, assertive and intentional in her approach. The woman made a direct approach to Jesus which seemed to annoy both Jesus and his disciples. They were not interested in listening to her request; she was ignored and insulted. She was depicted in an unusual setting, with unacceptable behavior in public, shouting desperately and crying out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon” (Matthew 15: 22). Not only was the daughter tormented but the mother was also horrified at the plight of her daughter. The woman did not exhibit any sense of shame even though she acted differently from other women. According to the social norms of her time, women were confined to the private space and expected to act soberly in the public space. A woman who shouts in the streets and seeks help from a man does not fit the stereotype of a dignified woman. Such an action in the public sphere would be considered shameful. Despite the fact that the woman called Jesus “Lord” and spoke the language of subordination—by saying, “Have mercy on me”—her plea did not appeal to Jesus. Jesus at first ignored her plea, and acted as if the woman was not worth his attention. The disciples were ruthless to the woman, urging Jesus to send her away, further denying her right to ask Jesus to heal her daughter. What made the disciples think that she did not deserve Jesus’s attention and care? What disqualified the Canaanite woman from receiving the same healing which Jesus has given generously to others? Was it because of her race (Canaanite)? Was it because of her gender? Was it her immodest behavior in public that put off the disciples and Jesus? Or were they simply accentuating Jesus’s intention? When it got too noisy and it was time for Jesus to act, he rejected the woman’s

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plea saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” meaning that he was not available for the Canaanite woman. Apparently, the woman failed in her direct approach to Jesus, who stood in a privileged status as a healer, in a position to choose whether or not he wanted to extend his healing beyond the lost sheep of Israel. After Jesus’s rejection, the woman calmed down from shouting. She made an appropriate request by kneeling down in front of Jesus, and saying, “Lord, help me.” Jesus insisted on his point harshly as he responded, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The metaphors within the text—“table sharing,” “children-dogs” and “bread and crumbs”—convey the disparity of power that exists between the privileged and the subaltern. Scholars offer solutions to the problem of Jesus’s act. Stephenson Humphries-Brooks claims, “The Canaanite mother is the only character in Matthew, and perhaps in the four canonical gospels, to win a theological argument with Jesus, and calls her a better theologian.” 5 HumphriesBrooks argues that the acceptance of her being called a dog and the notion of the master’s table both point to God in Jesus as her master. In other words, according to Jesus her humility was directed toward God, not toward ethnic superiors. For Ranjini Wickramaratne Rebera, the woman is a role model who rises above obstacles, claims inclusion, and retains her own identity. 6 The majority of feminist critics either claim her as a foremother of Gentile Christians or praise her faith and wit as key elements to her victory over Jesus. Thus this gospel story is considered a treasure trove for many feminist scholars and theologians, who celebrate the woman in the story as an uppity woman despite the troubling and disturbing words that come out of Jesus’s mouth. However, since Musa Dube takes a stand that she is a victim of imperialism rather than a victor over Jesus, she does not consider liberation as a potential motif in the story. 7 In spite of the woman receiving healing from Jesus, this story is disturbing to me as I resonate with her outsider, rejected status—the status of those who are treated as polluted human beings, in contrast to those of chosen status who “belong” to the community. 8 In the context of a social structure in which one is essentially chosen and another is rejected, the oppressed, marginalized people are made to believe that they were born to be rejected, and that their status is irredeemable. The image of the Canaanite woman who sought the crumbs that have fallen from the table suggests that it was wise to accept the rejected status in humility for the sake of security. As their textual interpretation moves from symbolic crumbs and dogs to the reality that the daughter received healing, most scholars have approached the text in complacency as they celebrate her success. But did it really change the woman’s social status after receiving healing? Was she then given a place at the table, or was her place still under the table? Or was Jesus’s offering to heal her daughter a significant

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breaking of boundaries that existed between Jesus as a child of Israel and the woman as a Gentile? Leticia A. Guardiola-Saenz points to the fact that the oppressed have always been made to believe that they deserve a subordinate position. 9 In most interpretations, including feminist readings, what has been strikingly important is that the woman won over Jesus and accomplished healing for her daughter. Is it not primarily because the Canaanite woman accepted her inferior status which, in turn, affirmed Jesus’s statement? In her response to Jesus’s comparison of her to dogs, she says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table,” in which she presented her case with a precondition that she will not seek beyond what she deserved, “according to Jesus.” Thus the metaphors used in the text represent the power dynamics in their subtle forms, which call for reinterpretation of the texts, especially because metaphors can be read differently in different contexts for the rich nuances that they contain. Similarly, in reference to children versus dogs, most scholars would resist the idea that all first-century Jews were xenophobic, but one could see that certain sects of Jews were more intolerant toward Gentiles than others. 10 In the Matthean community, the Jewish-Gentile issue was a particularly sensitive one. 11 Gentiles were neither strictly excluded nor fully included. Thus Matthew’s reference to the exclusive mission to Israel and his comparison of Gentiles to dogs is best explained in terms of Matthew’s intention to denote his prioritization of the Jews. 12 Glenna S. Jackson argues that the Canaanite woman’s story does not necessarily exhibit an “anti-Gentile attitude,” but simply a “pro-Jewish one.” 13 Both Gentiles and dogs have strong negative connotations in Matthew’s gospel. 14 Therefore, one can sense the complexity of Jewish-Gentile relations in the community that produced it. In the Matthean context it is possible that the woman became a follower of Jesus after she received the blessing of healing for her daughter. But did she follow him collecting crumbs, or did she get her rightful share of bread? Was she tolerated only as long as she craved the bread crumbs and knew her place which was under the table? Or, was she given her place at the table? What did the healing of the Canaanite daughter communicate? Pui-lan Kwok challenges whether we should treat the “other” as the “same” and include or dispossess the “others” for their otherness. 15 As a postcolonial critic, she emphasizes that the Canaanite is a woman of another faith, and her story is inscribed within the master discourse of the Christian canon and interpreted primarily to justify the mission to the Gentiles. 16

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A DALIT-FEMINIST HERMENEUTIC OF RE-IMAGINATION This story commences with Jesus and some of his followers withdrawing to Tyre, in the northern region. They enter a territory beyond the horizons of a Palestinian Jew, socially speaking, the land of Gentiles and the so-called outsiders. Jesus crosses a border. Well, this statement is in fact irrelevant because first of all there were no borders that existed from the view of the privileged. They don’t see any borders, because no one has ever imposed borders on them. It is those that are at margins that see borders, mostly thick and visible borders created by the privileged to keep them confined and outside. When the privileged choose to cross borders, there are demands, not preconditions. In Mark’s account, it is symbolic that Jesus chooses to cross a border to go into the Gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon. 17 When Jesus as a privileged religious leader and a healer crosses borders and demands privacy, he manages to obtain what he wants. He is well received in Gentile territory in Mark’s narrative. In Matthew, however, it is not clear if Jesus actually entered into Tyre and Sidon or if he traveled toward that region. 18 The exclusivism of Israel was an important motif in Matthew. Matthean choice of reference to the woman as a Canaanite, and thus polytheistic woman who cries out and kneels down at the feet of the Son of David, bears vivid relevance to Matthean Christological stage. 19 When Jesus insisted that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, this may suggest a view that perhaps he did not cross the northern border into Tyre and Sidon. 20 In Matthew, it may be presumed that it is the woman who crossed the border in her desperate condition, thereby entering this area in a less privileged status. 21 In the story, the woman’s desperate condition made her marginal and less privileged, whereas Jesus, who could either offer or deny his power, was in a very privileged position compared to the woman. What happened when the less privileged woman crossed the borders and entered into the land of the privileged healer seeking help? She probably did not encounter a pleasant experience across these borders. She may have been exposed on the streets, rebuffed repeatedly, humiliated, and poorly treated by the insiders. There are tremendous differences when empowered characters cross borders as opposed to powerless characters crossing the same borders. 22 If Mark’s story is an example of the powerful crossing a border and retaining their powerful status in a foreign land, then Matthew’s account is an example of how the powerless are treated across borders. In other words, from Mark’s account we can see that when the powerful Jesus crossed a border, whether it happened in the colonizing way or in a graceful way, he was well received in the Gentile territory. He maintained his powerful status, sought comfort, and demanded that his needs be met. Whereas when the powerless cross the borders, they are often chased, suspected, evicted, or humiliated as was the case of the Canaanite

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woman in Matthew’s account. Border crossing is defined differently, depending on who crosses the border. The woman was seen as no better than a beggar and as an outsider who willingly chose to cross. GuardiolaSaenz sees a protest within the woman rather than a passive acceptance of her otherness, as Levine expounds. While identifying with the Canaanite woman’s border crossing, Guardiola says “she crosses the border not to worship the dispossessor, but subtly to demand restitution.” 23 In the imperialist context, border crossing, conversion, or worshipping the same God have all been considered prerequisites for attaining favor among the dominant oppressors. As Guardiola-Saenz claims, if it is a protest for the marginalized to claim their rights, then the unpleasant experience was associated with struggle, and the oppressed are prone to further oppression, abuse, and even violence. In this Gospel story, the dispossessed woman is depicted in relation to being possessed, illmannered, and demonstrating inappropriate behavior in public (by shouting in public, she appeared to be deprived of dignity). The setting clearly shows that crossing borders was not a mutual intention in the story. There is resistance and rejection for the woman who attempted to engage beyond borders. In Matthew’s version, the woman crossed the border and experienced further vulnerability, displaying absolute humility and low self-esteem. As described in the text, her body language suggests her oppressed status which was more than just a plea for the sake of her daughter. She was denied dignity; she was humiliated, insulted, and considered a nuisance in the public. Therefore, what is being said in these stories is determined by who crossed borders. When Jesus crossed the border, according to the version in Mark, we can see a different mood. Jesus was well received, treated, and supported in the foreign land. It is customary that the marginalized protest against boundary makers and have to force themselves to cross borders. However, they usually end up facing violence, humiliation, and insult when they have to trespass in order to cross the boundaries. This does not happen when the bordercrossing occurs by mutual reconciliation that leads toward eradicating the borders. It is important to identify that privileged status is one of no borders. They can come in and go as they wish. They are invisible, if not fluid. Similarly, when the privileged cross borders it is not interpreted as violation or trespassing but as magnanimity, or purely for the benefit of the privileged, may it be colonial, commercial, or pure pleasure of tourism. In this case Jesus crossed the border to get away, to get his vacation. 24 When he is about to enjoy his vacation, he was disrupted by an unwelcomed Gentile woman, who was needy and crying for help. She was yelling out loud on the streets, shamelessly exposing herself. In spite of her loudness, Stephen Moore suggests that the unnamed woman was a subaltern because of her historical past, well present in the narrative in “intensely

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racialized and eroticized” scene, as well as in the Matthean Christological future. 25 Her cry earns no sympathy, but it is deemed as annoying noise that lacks any dignity and poise as expected of an ideal woman. Why did she get on to the streets? Why did she expose herself? When Jesus, the great healer, entered into her region, she believed that this was her one and only opportunity. Her daughter was ill, something was not right. Young daughter, perhaps she was having irregular periods, bleeding for months? This couldn’t be just ailment; it must be demon possession, otherwise there was no way she could survive with all that loss of blood. A heartbroken, helpless, vulnerable mother cried out for her daughter. This unnamed woman in Mark is of Syrophoenician origin, and in Matthew she is a Canaanite. It does not matter which at this point. She came and bowed down at Jesus’s feet pleading for her daughter. Jesus says, in Mark, “Let the children be fed first [. . .] for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Is this not a common experience of the girls of the marginalized? Are they shamed often, are they ill-treated? Sadly this seems the case—a woman who was an outcaste, who has been labeled as a mother of a demon-possessed daughter, perhaps all of her fault, presumably a single woman and thus a threat to moral society—out there on the streets, she couldn’t remember when was the last time that she was respectfully treated, by now, she kind of got used to being called names. When Jesus referred to her and her daughter as dogs, literally called them an unthinkable word, she submitted to it. When Jesus brought up the household image of children and dogs, she conceded to it. Because dogs were the traditional Jewish insult of Gentiles, this must not have been the first time she heard it. What she and her daughter were called was not what was bothering her, but somehow all that she wanted was Jesus’s healing. He can call all the names he wants, if only he is willing to heal her daughter. If it means just crumbs, so be it, crumbs too satisfy hunger. She says, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Something transpired here. Just like that, Jesus granted her request. In Matthew’s version, it was because of her faith. In Mark’s, perhaps even more surprisingly, it was because of her argument. Then Jesus said to her, “For saying that, you may go home content.” In spite of the fact the woman is granted her request, the story of the Canaanite woman is disturbing to me as a Dalit feminist scholar, first, because I resonate with her outsider and rejected status. In the context of a social structure in which one is essentially chosen and another is rejected, Dalits, who were once literally untouchables, are made to believe that they were born to be rejected and that their status is irredeemable. The image of the Canaanite woman seeking the crumbs that have fallen from the table suggests the view that it was wise to accept the rejected status in humility for the sake of security. As their textual interpretation moves from symbolic crumbs and dogs to the reality that the daughter

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receives healing, most scholars have approached the text in complacency as they celebrate her success. The bread and crumbs communicate the internal power disparity between those who eat the bread and those who eat crumbs, although both satisfy their hunger. It is similar in terms of those who are seated and served at the table, and those who receive the leftovers away from the table. This is heartbreaking. If anyone today encountered such a comment from Jesus, an imaginable response would be to say, “Excuse me, Jesus. You didn’t say that, right? Did you just call my daughter a bitch? This is not what I have heard about you. I thought you treat daughters lovingly, from what I have heard.” Just rewind two chapters back to Mark 5, where we see that Jesus encounters another daughter, Jairus’s daughter. “Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’” So Jesus went with him (Mark 5:22–24). What a contradicting response from Jesus. Jesus was obliging in Jairus’s story. He made a visit to his daughter. She also was a young daughter just like the daughter of the Canaanite woman. We are given a hint that she was twelve years old. Not knowing what puberty involves, was she petrified? Has she fainted? By the time Jesus goes to her house, everyone thinks that she is dead. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “‘Talitha Cum!’ which means ‘Little girl! Get up!’” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age) (Mark 5: 38–42). Jesus ill-treated the daughter of an unnamed Canaanite/Syrophoenician by calling her a dog/bitch but endearingly treated the daughter of Jairus, a Jewish-synagogue leader, calling her “little girl,” in other words a “daughter.” He gave her a hand to support and lift her, and lovingly called her a little girl. The two scenes are in stark contrast. Did Jesus then offer the Canaanite woman mere crumbs? The bread and crumbs image in the text does not only communicate the quantity of food at God’s table, nor even just the quality of food. Rather, the image communicates the internal power disparity between those who eat the bread and those who eat crumbs, between those who eat from the main dish on the table, and those who receive the leftovers away from the table. In her response to Jesus—“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (15:27)—did her words suggest that she was satisfied with her under-the-

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table status? Or was it her designated place that she may not cross borders and thus liberation was at stake? NOTES 1. Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?: Speculations on Widow’s Sacrifice,” Wedge 7/8 (1985): 120–130; see also “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). 2. Since the focus and scope of this essay is not to discuss, review, and reflect on Spivak’s question, it is not necessary to supply extensive research available in this field but note its existence and importance. 3. If this does not fit the definition of the subaltern, then the concept needs to be revisited, or it is time to coin a new word to encompass this fluid status, as multiple identities are a normal function of postmodern existential reality. 4. Stephen D. Moore, “The Dog-Woman of Canaan and Other Animal Tales,” in Stephen D. Moore (ed), Gospel Jesuses and Other Non Humans: Biblical Criticism Post-Post Structuralism (Semeia Studies 89, Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 61. 5. Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, “The Canaanite Woman in Matthew,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 143–44. 6. Ranjini W. Rebera, “The Syrophoenician Woman: A South Asian Feminist Perspective,” in A Feminist Companion to Mark, edited by A.-J. Levine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 109–10. 7. Musa Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000), 170. 8. Aruna Gnanadason finds common connections between the Canaanite woman and a Dalit woman, and explains how one can be identified with the other in the context of issues related to pollution. She says that the impurity laws associated with the Syrophoenician woman would make her a Dalit woman in India. Here Gnanadason uses “Dalit” in a liberal way and does not limit it to the caste orientation. See Gnanadason, “Dalit Women: The Dalit of the Dalit,” in A Reader in Dalit Theology, edited by A. P. Nirmal (Madras: Gurukul, 1992), 168. 9. Leticia Guardiola-Saenz, L.A., “Borderless Women and Borderless Texts: A Cultural Reading of Matthew 15:21–28,” Semeia 78 (1997): 70. 10. Such discrimination was, for example, apparent in the Qumran community; see F. Scott Spencer, Dancing Girls, Loose Ladies, and Women of the Cloth (New York: Continuum, 2004), 63. 11. David C. Sim argues that Matthean Christians who were Gentiles in fact followed Jewish customs, becoming Jews in the process. See David C. Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew and the Gentiles,” JSNT 57 (1995): 19–48. Levine maintains a similar idea in her argument that, while Israel was conceived as the chosen people, that did not exclude others from converting into this ethnicity as it was both possible and also quite frequent. See Amy-Jill Levine, The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Salvation History (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 143. 12. Levine argues that the motifs of “election of Israel” and “priority of the Jews” do not come as a surprise as they are consistent with Hebrew thought. See Levine, Social and Ethnic Dimensions, 145. Levine also argues that it would be uncritical and naive to say that Jesus’s sharp response in Matthew’s account actually refers to Jewish parochialism in the light of Jewish-Gentile relations in the ancient context. See AmyJill Levine, “Matthew’s Advice to a Divided Readership,” in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study: Studies in Memory of William G. Thompson, S. J., edited by David E. Aune (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 139–40.

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13. Glenna S. Jackson, “Have Mercy On Me”: The Story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15:21–28 (JSNT Series 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 34. 14. For instance, see Matthew 7:6—“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you.” Similarly, Gentiles are referred to with negative nuance, as in Matthew 6:7— “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do . . . do not be like them” (see also Matthew 5:46–47 and 6:31–32). 15. Pui-lan Kwok, Discovering the Bible in the Non Biblical World (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1989), 75. 16. Pui-lan Kwok, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville: WJK, 2005), 65. 17. Many cultural tensions and conflicts between Jews and Gentiles in the borderlands of Tyre and Galilee were rooted in religious, social, and economic differences. Gerd Theissen gives a thorough discussion of Tyre and its community. He imagines that it is a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles and that Mark’s worldview has not been limited to the Israelites alone, but was expanded as he was responding to the needs of Gentile readers, whereas Matthew maintains Israelite exclusivism. See Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 70–81. 18. See Moore’s critical discussion of the historical connection between Canaan, Tyre, and Sidon in “The Dog-Woman,” 62. 19. Moore, “The Dog-Woman,” 63. 20. Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew as Story (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 149–50. 21. For instance, Amy-Jill Levine and Leticia Guardiola-Saenz believe that Jesus in Matthew remained in his own territory and it is the woman who crossed the borders of Tyre and Sidon to meet Jesus. See A-J. Levine, Social and Ethnic Dimensions, 138, and Guardiola-Saenz, “Borderless Women,” 74. 22. See also Christine Amjad-Ali, “Breaking Barriers to Establish the New Community: The Syrophoenician Women,” in Affirming Difference, Celebrating Wholeness, edited by Ranjini Rebera, 132–35 (Hong Kong: Christian Conference of Asia, 1995). 23. Guardiola-Saenz, “Borderless Women,” 76. 24. Being engaged in some strenuous debates and conflict with his various critics, it was time for rest and reflection, time to get away from it all for a while. So he entered a house up north and did not want anyone to know he was there. We can relate to that human need not to be recognized, the need to retreat for renewal. 25. Moore, “The Dog-Woman,” 65.

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Mission Matters

NINE Counter-creating Mission in but not ofEmpire Peter Cruchley

Council for World Mission (CWM) sets out to be a post-colonial mission organization with a counter-empire vision and agenda. In 1977 CWM embraced a mission theology of “mission from everywhere to everywhere” and reordered its member relationships around a table of equals, dismantling the notion that Christian mission was from the North to the South. 1 Our theology of mission in the context of empire led to the relocation of the organization out of London, and its global office is now located in Asia, in Singapore. The programme agenda seeks to engage with empire through addressing struggles for economic justice, climate justice, inclusive community, legacies of slavery, interfaith engagement, and solidarity with Palestine. We seek to resource member churches to enable the development of missional congregations and life-affirming communities. The basis for this shift can be found in CWM’s 2010 mission statement, Mission in the Context of Empire. 2 However, we recognize that the outworking of this statement will be contextual and so its expression will be influenced by local, cultural, social, economic, and political factors. That said, we have to be careful not to allow ourselves to become captive to these forces for our calling is to be disciples of Christ, rather than to the Caesars (in whatever form we find them, including in our own church traditions) that hold sway over our societies. 3

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COMPLICITIES AND CONVERSIONS IN A MISSION MOVEMENT CWM comes out of a colonial past, complicit with empire and racism. CWM was founded in 1795 as the London Missionary Society (LMS). This was the time of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. They were powered by a new vision of human dignity that emerged from the radical politics of non-conformity and its revolutionary spirit in seventeenth-century England. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written The Social Contract with its famous opening line: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are.” 4 Thomas Paine wrote of reason, republicanism, and radicalism and called for civil rights in the face of the state. Such revolutionary spirit prompted a pious and conservative response from those seeking religious revival in the UK. This can be seen in Mr. George Burder’s Address to the first meeting of LMS, in 1795, in which he refers to such turbulent changes and wishes mission to be wholly apolitical: May we not indulge a hope that the happy period is approaching, when the Redeemer shall take unto Him great power and reign? He must increase. His name shall be great. And is there not a general apprehension that the Lord is about to produce some great event? Already we have witnessed the most astonishing transactions; and it is not probable that the great Disposer of all is now about, by shaking terribly the nations, to establish that spiritual and extensive kingdom which cannot be shaken? Let us then, utterly and sincerely disclaiming all political views and party designs; abhorring all attempts to disturb order and government in this or any other country; vigorously unite, in the fear of God, and in the love of Christ, to establish a Missionary Society upon a large and liberal plan, for sending ministers of Christ to preach the Gospel among the heathen. 5

This quietism was typical of the evangelical revival of the period, but masked attitudes and complicities which were aligned with the status quo. LMS came into being twelve years before the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, and thirty-eight years before the emancipation of slaves in 1833. The abolitionist movement targeted LMS, and many individuals within it were active with Wilberforce and Equiano. But this practice of remaining apolitical meant LMS conceived that it was entirely possible to long for the saving of souls and be unconcerned about the selling of bodies. This was exposed in 1832 when William Hankey, the treasurer of LMS, was called before the Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. Hankey owned three hundred slaves in Trelawney, Jamaica. This is a selection of the minutes recording Hankey’s testimony: 6

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Select committee question: “Has the result of your experience, as treasurer of the Society, led you to the conclusion, from the progress of civilisation among the slaves, that when instructed they have become more obedient and tranquil?” Hankey—“Quite so; I believe their value, even in the market, has risen in proportion as they have been so instructed; we have had instances of that, a slave has been regarded as more valuable in consequence of his being instructed by the missionaries of our own and other societies.” Select committee question: “In recent times of turbulence, where an insurrectionary spirit has shown itself among the slaves, have you been able to ascertain that that spirit has been spread among the converts by the missionaries sent by you?” Hankey—“I think so far as my experience goes, it has not been spread; it has rather been checked and resisted by those who have been instructed in the obligations of Christianity.” Select committee question: “You are aware of no precaution on your part can restrain the slave, when he has attained the talent of reading from using it to the reading that which concerns his temporal as well as his spiritual welfare?” Hankey—“Certainly; but nothing beyond religious instruction is ever permitted to be communicated to them by the missionaries; there is no reference to political or any other events; our instructions upon these points are very peremptory.” Hankey’s appearance led to his resignation and to the LMS finally stating that LMS missionaries and officials could not own slaves. But this was on the eve of the British state enacting legislation to make this compulsory, so no merit can be claimed for leading the way. The racist theology and anthropology which Hankey thought to be perfectly natural was coupled with the culture and theology of the “White Man’s Burden” which missionary movements like LMS employed to inspire people to give money or themselves to the missions. 7 Congregationalism drew its strength and resources from the emerging industrial class, whose capitalist endeavors deepened the complicity with empire. 8 LMS came into being because of a discussion in a coffee shop in Change Alley in 1794, next door to the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England which, between 1761 and 1808 only, financed the trade in 1,428,000 human beings and made the equivalent of £8 billion. 9 In response to this, CWM has devised a project to explore the legacies after the transatlantic slave trade.

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There has been a call for some years now from Black communities of the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, and the United States for the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade to be addressed. It has been recognized by the UN that CWM’s own origins as the London Missionary Society lie in this vital period of colonization and slavery as we were founded before slavery was abolished. CWM came into being in the 1970s as a way to de-colonize the mission relationships of the member churches, and its vision of partnership emerged as a way to dismantle some of the consequences of colonialism. CWM’s DARE (Discernment and Radical Engagement) project is a further part of our being a postcolonial organization. We are looking to examine historical contemporary perspectives, examining the practice of slavery in those settings and how this legacy has continued to shape the realities of the people of that place. In this way the hearings that take place in the CWM projects will enable people to voice hurt and anger, and for CWM to discover afresh what post-colonial mission movements need to address. 10 As a part of the project we are proposing to organize bible studies in various locations to draw attention to the issues we wish to address and produce materials we can share with the wider publics around our movement. This follows but radicalizes the missionary methodology of inviting Scripture to speak to the converted and unconverted as a means to invite transformation. The Minutes of the 1799 Annual Report of LMS Directors meeting tells of the work of Dutch missionary Brother van Der Kemp and British missionary Brother Reed in the LMS Bethelsdorp Mission Station. They banned slavery in the mission station and there is a record of bible studies with Lena, a released slave and recently baptized convert, and other such women and with four British dragoons in July 1799. “We held an hour of experimental discussion between Lena, a Hottentot woman, Perez, a native of Angola, Susanna, of the Chuzara nation, and Christian, a slave, after which brother Read had a similar conversation with four dragoons, in whom the work of God seemed to be manifested.” 11 One wonders what text they read, what might have been said in the discussion, especially if they had one together. But, for all of the apparent progressive vision of Bethelsdorp the pious apolitical complicities remained uppermost. It was a controversial settlement and was investigated by LMS with a view to its closure because of its unorthodox attitudes to race. 12 So, reporting to the LMS emphasized the usual focus on personal damnation and salvation, like this report of Jan Bastard Hottentot: As I lay down to sleep I grow so frightened that I must get up at once and pray to my dear Lord Jesus, that he will forgive my sins. O! Was there not the dear Lord Jesus, I should not know now where to go: I know no other place now, other than to that dear Lord Jesus. I cannot bear to talk about anything else than him [. . .] I cannot live without that dear Jesus and O! how I wish all mankind would fall in love with that dear Jesus. 13

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And further: returning from a walk Dr V found William Bruntjie in a serious discourse with them (Hottentots). One of them, whose name was Courage, asked brother Vanderkemp, if it were not true that God had created them as well as Christians, and the beasts of the fields: “for as you know, (said he), the Dutch farmers teach us, that he never created us, nor taketh any notice of us.” Brother Vanderkemp then sat down, and explained to him man’s equal misery, and the way to everlasting happiness through faith in Christ, Under this discourse he was very much affected crying from time to time O my poor soul [. . .] and promised I will go in my distress to Jesus and after I have settled my affairs with my master, I will follow you into Caffreland. 14

We are proposing that one of the methodologies in the CWM legacies program is critical bible readings that bring together issues and questions that the LMS missionaries were reluctant to address in connected contexts of imperial/colonial violence. In this CWM hopes to continue its conversion toward being a post-colonial and counter-empire movement. MISSION “AT HOME” IN EMPIRE LMS/CWM history is but one small microcosm of the story of Church and empire. The counter-empire referenced above is a conversion in thinking about God, humanity, and politics. It points to a mission theology modelled on empire, in which God is the Emperor sine qua non and the Church is the Emperor’s representatives on earth. As we explore mission, religion, and power the complicity, complexity, and certainty of imperial Church, State, and Deity need to be identified and overthrown. As the early church emerged from persecution and the catacombs to become the favored faith of Constantine’s empire, its iconography took on an imperial guise. Having been a persecuted faith, Christianity converted itself into a persecuting faith. Thus, the cross, which had never been the symbol of the early church, became the symbol of the imperial church, and with it, without irony, the theology of Christ Pantocrator. Christ Pantocrator was based in references to Revelation, and signified Christ “Ruler of All” (Revelation 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, 15:3, 16:7, 16:14, 19:6, 19:15, 21:22). This attribution to Jesus was important given the Christological controversies that shape this era of the church. The Christ Pantocrator icons were symbols of the Nicene verdict that Christ was coequal and co-eternal with God. It was also an extension of Constantine’s claim to have conquered under the symbol of the Chi-Rho. This Pantocratic power, while given to God, was now shared between emperor and Church and is witnessed in the Church and state’s energetic persecution of heretics and pagans. Emperors Constantius and Constans passed an edict in 346 CE immediately ordering the closure of temples “in all places

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and in all cities” and threatening death and the confiscation of property for anyone who sacrificed to the pagan gods. In 408 CE, further legislation was promulgated that authorized the removal of statues from the temples. For the first time, too, bishops were granted the ecclesiastical authority to enforce such laws. 15 Thus the slide into having the power to enforce orthodoxy began. Christian iconography flattered the imperial imagination because the Pantocrator image is really an overworking of the figure of Zeus. 16 Pantocrator adopted the imagery and tone of the intimidating Phidias sculpture, and with it all irony was lost as Christ was made to stand in stern Byzantine imperial style, telling Greeks and Romans that the Lord Omnipotent reigns. There is no Emperor now but Christ. The officers of empire are empowered to prosecute and promulgate in his name. The throne of God becomes the meeting and mixing place of the glory of God and the potency of God’s church. The co-mingling of human and divine is not revealed in the flesh and blood and struggle of a carpenter’s son, but in the pomp and glory and reign of the Divine Emperor’s heir. Thus, this image has remained potent since. It shaped and empowered the spread of Christianity in Europe in the midst of the emerging nation states, and propelled Christianity to claim that it should stand in place of Rome at its fall. This image powered the rivalling schismatic claims of Eastern and Western traditions and the struggle with Islam. Pantocrator permitted the Doctrine of Discovery and the colonial expansion of European nations and their claim for supremacy over “heathen” peoples and land. 17 Pantocrator lent power to earthly majesties who suborned national churches to their will and prospered reformations which would further ally theology with violence and power. In this company, it was easy to claim the mandate and burden to “civilize and Christianize” even “within a generation.” European peoples could conquer in the name of such a God, colonize, enslave, capitalize, and so it was. 18 Yet within and through this era quite different visions of power and freedom emerged. Despite the 1910 council at Edinburgh, two thirds of the world remain unconvinced by the evangelism of Church Pantocrator and more than 90 percent of those within his European “home.” Christianity’s long pursuance of war in national and global forms disenchanted the European context which has so shaped Christianity’s practice of power, that churches can only hope to survive through the migrant communities of those peoples they sought to civilize and Christianize, and then subsequently stigmatize and brutalize. 19 The pantocrator God made no sense in Europe any more, and instead other images are set to emerge which show God in different lights. Thus “God beyond GOD” emerged from territories which are against the status quo: a vulnerable God, a protesting god, a queer god, a missing god, a migrant god. 20 A god who breaks out from a system which has co-opted her to a life which is not and no longer filled with her life-giving spirit. The early church

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however, had visions and stories of a non-imperial God, and one who did not co-operate with empire. Following their example, the theological task in the midst of religion, power, and empire is one of subversion. DETHRONING GOD IN THE FACE OF EMPIRE The emergence of Christianity in the midst of empire prompted counterimperial communities from below. If Acts is to be believed, they were communities who shared their goods in kind and reinterpreted their lives in the light of the story and person of Jesus (Acts 4). They, with other communities around the empire in Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus, wrestled with each other and the apostles to understand what it meant to call Jesus the Christ. This early movement knew the cross all too well as the symbol of their own torture and execution so they chose instead other symbols to scratch into their meeting places in the catacombs. Surrounded by the signs and totems of empire to signify power and authority, the early church chose unadorned images like the Chi-Rho, the Fish, the Anchor, the Peacock, and the Good Shepherd. These became the medium for understanding the significance of Jesus in contrast to the iconography of Caesar, Rome, and Temple. Through such imageries the early church inhabited the twin irony of dwelling in a kingdom without a king and in an empire whose emperor they foreswore. The writings of the early church engage with passion over debates whether Jewish models of faith and following should continue to dominate, whether pagan visions can be adopted, or whether new understandings should take hold (see Galatians). An emerging consensus gathers around declaring Jesus as Lord (Phillippians 2: 9-11, 1 Corinthians 12:3). This creed expresses a political experience in a liturgical voice. The first Jewish believers find themselves wanting to pray to Jesus, their experience of resurrection dismantled and their understanding of the Shema expanded. This liturgical and theological transformation also opened out the possibility for other tongues to name Jesus Lord, thus opening up the covenant. For Jews and Gentiles alike in the Graeco-Roman world, naming Jesus as Lord was to counter and contrast with Caesar. This found its particular expression in followers of Jesus refusing to be enlisted in Caesar’s armies. As the early church considered the meaning of the lordship of Jesus and sat under the shadow of Caesar’s lordship, stories emerge like Matthew 25:31–46 (telling of a kingdom with an empty throne and a king that no one recognizes) and John 19 (where Jesus refuses to allow emperors to define or interpret kingship). It speaks of an ironic vision of kingship which is summarized in Philippians 2 as the very antithesis of kingship— self-emptying servanthood. Thus, for a brief time there is the announcement that God can only be spoken of as king in ironic terms, a king but

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not a KING. Jesus is not first envisioned as uber-Caesar, not even antiCaesar, but un-Caesar, perhaps de-Caesar. Even when the catacombs’ Shepherd symbol leads us to David the shepherd boy (or to Hermes) it is still to one who in being king is not ready to be king, and when he becomes king he behaves in such a way as to radically question whether such a category can ever be applied to the divine. The shepherd is itself an ironic image in Rabbinic Judaism; while many of the heroes of faith were shepherds (Abraham, Moses, David, Amos), shepherds held an ambivalent position in the Jewish law. 21 Shepherds were ritually unclean because they handled animals daily and they worked on the Sabbath, and thus their testimony was not admissible to the Jewish courts. Under such iconography and with such language the early church started out as a haven for plague victims, a gathering of baker boys and washerwomen, and they came in and out of the new counter-imperial space alongside the citizen and the wealthy. Frances Young reminds us how the early church embraced vulnerability, and that this was an embodiment of their theology of Jesus. The potency of the mission of the early church among the lowly in Roman society, the ability to face persecution, came because, “In a funny kind of way, god chooses to be the hidden king, who does not coerce but invites and woos us through Christ into living as if God’s values were realizable, despite our failure and sin.” 22 The kenosis of Christ invites the church to reformulate its life vulnerably and generously. 23 This is the life of the one God sent vulnerably into the world. 24 The one who understood himself to be commissioned by the Spirit to bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, set free the prisoners, and bring release to the captives (Isaiah 61:1–2, Luke 4: 18–19). These themes stand in impotent contrast to the impassable imperial Christ that Europe peddled for so long and Europeans have latterly come to disbelieve. In some spaces, like the one in Corinth, the class divisions persisted, but apostles like Paul insisted on dismantling such divisions to create spaces that could harbor and nurture the new community modelled after Jesus. This space and figure shepherded a movement in its crucial struggles with power and empire. Persecution drove them to an underground light in which they could see a new world coming, and nurtured them in a spirit which was able to resist conscription into the imperial forces. The catacombs and meeting rooms framed visions of Jesus which inspired a persecuted people to do no violence, and incorporate in their bodies a new movement which empire first mocked, then persecuted and finally courted and co-opted. This subversive theology reveals God to be an offbeat, a minor key, a counterpoint.

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GOD AS COUNTER-CREATOR AND “BABELING” FOOL European Christianity, particularly but not exclusively, has sold an image of God as architect-creator who has a plan which must be followed as the only design, a pre-existent plan which is eternally playing out. To such a God and to such a plan, resistance is futile, and there is no alternative. This God sat at the pinnacle of the status quo, enthroned to silence precisely and stifle the alternatives and resistance. The officers of this God look and sound like this God, are invested in the norms, plans, and powers that this God personifies, and so seek to subdue and colonize all into this towering edifice. Yet, we can see from many stories that God is not safe in buildings, and resists the domestication which comes with them. God refuses to allow David to build a temple (1 Chronicles 17); even when invited in by Solomon, God’s presence leaves in Ezekiel 10–11; and Jesus reminds his followers that foxes have dens and birds have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). One should not be surprised about these because even in the midst of the accounts of the God who establishes everything, is the counter story of the one who destabilizes it all. The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:5–9; NRSV)

Babel is pointing us to mission as counter-creation, and creator as countercreator. Leaving aside the ex-nihilo disputes there is a sense in which the Genesis narratives cannot but imagine creation as the countering of an existing chaos (Genesis 1:1), a charming into being of all that is from all the “anti-s.” This is because they come not as a neutral stating of the origins of the universe, or a philosophy of first principles, but as texts meant to counter the texts of the Babylonian empire, and its vision of creation in the Enuma Elish emerging from the violent confrontation between Marduk and Tiamat. This is creation as an un-doing of empire and its claims that imperial power is the ineluctable principle for life on the earth. There is much similarity between the Genesis Priestly creation narratives and the Babylonian Enuma Elish. 25 In both stories, creation follows divine action and speech. Darkness precedes the creative acts. In both stories, light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. In

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Enuma Elish the symbol of chaos is the goddess Tiamat who personifies the sea. Genesis refers to the “deep” tehom, which is linguistically related to Tiamat. In both stories, there is a division of the waters above and below. The sequence of creation is similar, including the division of waters, dry land, luminaries, and humanity, all followed by rest. These stories share a common, ancient way of speaking about the beginning of the cosmos. They participate in a similar “conceptual world” where solid barriers keep the waters away, pre-existent chaotic material exists before order, and light appears before the sun, moon, and stars. The Priestly writers who shape their narrative in Babylon develop significant differences. It is humanity which is given dominion over creation in Genesis, not the gods. God’s act of creation is without violence, and the underlying relationship between creator and creation is harmony. This is the sign and source of Yahweh’s power, who did not have to be granted any power from other celestial beings, unlike Marduk. The Enuma Elish on the other hand was an imperial text, a monument to Marduk and to Babylon and its temple, and was read on the fourth day of the Babylonian New Year festival. Genesis comes then as a counterimperial text, and it conceives God as creator but most importantly as counter-creator. Genesis’s priestly imagination is not looking to rival Marduk with Yahweh, a divine being who is “more Marduk than Marduk,” mega-Marduk as it were. The exiled priests are seeking to counter Marduk and Babylon’s violence and domination with a vision of power that brings creation and harmony out of chaos, Babylon’s chaos. We can press this further with the act of New Creation in Jesus. MARY COUNTER-CREATING JESUS This upending, scattering of the proud imperial claim to create peace by violence and announce its domination as good news is also visible, or rather audible in the new or further creation which is Christ. When Jesus comes into the world, it is announced by the song of Mary in Luke 1, and it is a new “Babel” moment, a further de-stabilizing act of countercreation, the counter euangelion of the Spirit. And her body, spirit, song and commitment to justice are suggesting renewed imagery for articulating the counter-creativity of God and the role of mission in being counter-creation. And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

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His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.” (Luke 1:46–55; NRSV)

Mary is babbling like a fool in the face of empire and its religious power structure, yet her Babel-like vision foretells the same undoing of empire, something Luke amplifies in the setting of the birth narrative in the midst of, and in counter to the actions of emperors and their officers (Luke 2:1). Mary’s Magnificat is the counter euangelion, and none of the generals of Rome comprehend its import. It is not a rival palace which shelters the infant Pantocrator; it is not a palace at all. This decentered location invites a counter outpouring of power and peace, not in hope of becoming the new center, but because such outpourings come only from spaces that empire has written off. As the formal European religious space is so hopelessly co-opted to empire now, can it be the “manger” for something counter to empire? Who are the ones who are upending the empire and its religious avatars? It seems to me that we are looking to grassroots subaltern communities among those systematically objectified, marginalized, and brutalized by those systems. Such spaces may be breaking out amongst queers, migrants, greens, screwball artists, uppity women, abused men, and challenging children. THE SPIRIT OF COUNTER-CREATION IS UPON US Luke conceives of Jesus and the community of Jesus as Spirit led. This echoes again the creation/counter-creation perspective. Luke 4:16–21 has Jesus call on the Spirit’s power to announce the new world and new community of justice and peace. His rather useless disciple Peter claims the same Spirit for the post-resurrection community in Acts 2:17–21. This prophecy of Joel also gathers Mary into the same narrative. These texts, which seem to be the voices of individuals, are narrating the call of counter-creative communities. These are the narratives of communities living literally below the imperial edifice, in the catacombs, bake houses, and washrooms of the empire. They stem from the Deus extra machina which does not hold the whole thing together in a pyramid of perfection but brings it all tumbling down like the Second Temple.

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Mission is rooted in counter-creative communities who are in empire but not of empire. CWM has been reaching for a vision of this in terms like Missional Congregation or Life Affirming Community. But, surely it is dishonest to assume or assert that the church is by definition countercreative, self-evidently in empire but not of empire. CWM’s roots in LMS show just one element of how church and empire have been in alliance. It is also clear that what has been counter-creative and counter-imperial in colonial mission period has not been the (white)missionary coming from the center but the ways the texts and spirit of Jesus shared in making “the natives” restless at the margins. CWM wants to persist in saying in its own compromised and complicit constituencies that mission is to be understood in the context of empire. This is uncovering a notion of evangelism from the margins. 26 We need change and transformation to restore and “re-story” evangelism as the announcement of those who are excluded and marginalized. 27 The church thinks of itself as center, and this always skews and compromises its relationship to religion, power, and empire. This vision of evangelism is to invite a Deus extra machina, a Deus extra ecclesia. Evangelism from the margins begins with looking to marginalized communities with hope as the places in whom Jesus lives and speaks. Evangelism from the margins is asking what visions and messages of Good News are marginalized communities inviting? Evangelism from the margins is asking what alternative worlds are marginalized communities inviting? Evangelism from the margins is asking what and to whom are we being converted and out of where are we being called? Evangelism from the margins is asking what will a church led by the poor do and be? This would prompt a reformation, not of the church, which is the least important outcome to imagine, but of epistemology, politics, and public life. 28 In the company of such evangelists it becomes clear that the counter-creation has begun and it is all around us and longs for our subversion, conversion, and inclusion. NOTES 1. See Bernard Thorogood (ed.), Gales of Change Responding to a Shifting Missionary Context. The Story of the LMS 1945-1977 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994). 2. CWM, “Mission in the Context of Empire 2010” (http://www.cwmission.org/ wp-content/uploads/2015/06/mission-and-empire.pdf; http://www.cwmission.org/ publications/missioninthecontextofempire). 3. CWM, Common Resource Handbook (Singapore: CWM, 2014), 33. 4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (London: Penguin, 1968), 49. 5. Ricard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1899), 18–19, my emphasis. 6. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index (London: Great Britain Parliament, 1931–32), 306–307. 7. See Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (New York: Blackwell Press, 2002); Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in 19th Century England (Palo Alto: Stan-

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ford University Press, 1999); Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries (Kingston: University of the West Indies, 1982). 8. Chris Evans traces how the great Welsh Industrialists were bound up in the slave trade. See Chris Evans, Slave Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010). 9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/industrialisation_article_01. shtml (accessed 10 Nov 2017). 10. The project includes four hearings in the United Kingdom (November 12–17, 2017), Ghana (January 7–12, 2018), Jamaica (February 17–23, 2018) and the US (June 24–29, 2018). 11. London Missionary Society (LMS), “Report to the Board of Directors,” AGM Minutes (London: LMS, 1799), 485–86. 12. The Reverend John Philip was sent by LMS to inspect the mission station as allegations had been made of impropriety and marriages between missionaries and slave girls and interference in colonial politics. See http:// www.footprintsintoafrica.com/index.php/missions/80-missions/69-story-of-christianmissions-up-to-1900-ad. 13. LMS, “Report to the Board of Directors,” 489. 14. LMS, “Report to the Board of Directors,” 376–77. 15. “If any images stand even now in the temples and shrines, and if they have received, or do now receive, the worship of the pagans anywhere, they shall be torn from their foundations, since We recognize that this regulation has been very often decreed by repeated sanctions. The buildings themselves of the temples which are situated in cities or towns or outside the towns shall be vindicated to public use. Altars shall be destroyed in all places, and all temples situated in Our landholdings shall be transferred to suitable uses. The proprietors shall be compelled to destroy them.” (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/ zeus.html; accessed 17 May 2017). 16. Zeus in Olympus was sculpted by Phidias, circa 432 BCE on the site where it was erected in the temple of Zeus, Olympia. It was an enormous and powerful rendering of the Graeco-Roman deity and was meant to humble all mortal power. It remained at Olympia until it was dismantled and brought to Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, where it remained until it was consumed in a fire in 475. See Tom Stone, Zeus: A Journey through Greece in the Footsteps of a God (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 236. 17. For the legal contestation and critique of the Papal Bull Inter Cetera (see http:// ili.nativeweb.org/sdrm_art.html). 18. For more on this idea as the overarching hope of the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference, see https://www.oikoumene.org/en/what-we-do/cwme/history; and https://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/la-conference-missionnaire-mondialeedimbourg-1910/). 19. I have written elsewhere about the way this image is being deconstructed in the context which made it. See Peter Cruchley, “You have not sought the lost.” A reflection from Europe on the WCC theme “God of life: Lead us to justice and peace,” International Review of Mission 102.1 (2013): 69–81. 20. See also the street artwork my former congregation did with Graffiti Jesus at www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=graffiti%20jesus%20comes%20to%20rhiwbina 21. See Nicholas Cachia, The Image of the Good Shepherd as a Source for the Spirituality of the Ministerial Priesthood (Rome: Test Grefgoriana, 1997); Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London: SCM, 1969), 310–12. 22. Morna Hooker and Frances Young, Holiness and Mission (London: SCM, 2010), 102. 23. See World Council of Churches (WCC), Together Towards Life: Ecumenical Affirmation of Mission (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2013); Jurgen Moltmann, Crucified God (London: SCM, 2001); Paul S. Fiddes, Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); John Polkinghorne, The Work of Love. Creation as Kenosis (London: SPCK, 2001).

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24. See William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994). 25. See William Greenway, For the Love of All Creatures: The Story of Grace in Genesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 18–30. 26. See Peter Cruchley and Kyriaki Avtzi, “Explorations in Evangelism: A Partnership between WCC and CWM,” International Review of Mission Volume 106.2 (2017): 436–39. 27. See for example the Halmoni Mission Stories Video produced by CWM at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYqIY6I7Ar4&t=1s. 28. See Peter Cruchley, “Liberating Discipleship: Reforming the Laity of All Believers in the Face of Idolatrous Powers,” Bangalore Theological Forum (forthcoming).

TEN Conservative Evangelicalism, Prosperity Gospel, and the Pornification of Western Christianity Roderick R. Hewitt

This essay continues an exploration on the need for a different approach to spirituality formation of Church leaders in the global South to intentionally cajole them toward life-giving and life-affirming acts of social justice and responsibility. 1 Serious questions are posed about the Christian leadership formation that is serving many churches across the African context. The media reports on institutional models of leadership have not escaped the Church community because of the increasing cases of ethical failures. The moral cracks within the ecclesial institutions and leadership because of ethical failings have called into question their relevance in meeting the real needs of people. In the wider global sphere, the media seem to enjoy the church’s selfinflicted pain because of the many reported cases of ethical wrongdoings linked to untrustworthy leadership. Stories abound of ministers, pastors, preachers, apostles, prophets, and bishops preying on the vulnerable, fleecing them of the little that they have as the price for getting a miracle. 2 Indeed, the trustworthy index of the clergy in some countries is declining and is viewed alongside the low trust that people have of politicians. So, even though ministers may be treated with great cultural respect within their local communities, especially in the global South, their trust index at the national level is much lower. At the Southern African Catholic Bishop Conference on “Integrity in Ministry” in 2007, it was confirmed that

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Chapter 10 in many parts of the world and no doubt in Southern Africa, it has become apparent that the great trust placed in clergy and religious has not always been respected. Such a betrayal of trust has caused untold damage to innocent victims, to their families, to parish communities and to other “secondary victims.” All clergy and religious have in some way borne a part of the collective guilt for the offences of their colleagues; many are now confused and left wondering how to engage in their ministries with integrity while still maintaining a close and warm contact with their people. 3

The media attention on clergy because of their ethical failures linked to abuse of power that exercise unhealthy control over people has contributed to sexual, financial, psychological, and even medical abuse of others. This has led to some theological students becoming disenchanted with church ministry, uncomfortable with wearing the clergy collar and embracing the title of “Pastor” because it has increasingly become associated more with worldly business leadership values and status that regard power and greatness as lording it over others rather than offering servant leadership. PROSPERITY CHURCHES This essay postulates that the unquenchable desire for populist fame by some clergy leaders pedaling a brand of Christianity classified as “prosperity gospel” has resulted in a type of pornification of Christianity, especially by leaders addicted to greed and who have insatiable appetite for the gratification of desire. According to Andrew Brown: The world of porn is one where every desire can be gratified; but the belief that all desire can and should be gratified is itself what is radically wrong; the wrongness of any particular desire is less important. The industry is built on the principle that the customer always comes first. Nothing and no one matters more than what the customer wants. 4

“Pornification” in this essay is a metaphor that goes beyond the penetration and acceptance of sexual themes within mainstream culture. The potency is so effective that it has made impotent the ethical discourse of religious institutions. The many reported cases against clergy for sexual assault of vulnerable people (female and male) under their pastoral care suggest that pornification is an appropriate word to describe this crisis. 5 This essay argues that pornification of Christianity has found best expression through the prosperity gospel brand of some conservative evangelical churches within many denominations. The Lausanne Theology Working Group has defined “prosperity gospel” as “the teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the ‘sowing of seeds’ through the faithful pay-

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ments of tithes and offerings.” 6 This essay therefore seeks to interrogate the contemporary phenomenon of evangelicalism through its expression in the prosperity gospel and to highlight its dangerous complicity and contradiction with the political and neoliberal economic sphere. 7 WHAT OR WHO IS AN EVANGELICAL? The concept of evangelicalism has evolved over many centuries, giving shape to its diverse contemporary usage. It became popular after the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century to identify Christians who resisted the Catholic Church. It is also used as a concept that refers to the renewal and revival movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and efforts that reemphasized and defended traditional, orthodox Protestant Christian teachings. Therefore, the term “evangelical” has culturally and contextually conditioned or determined meanings across religious and political boundaries. Evangelicals hold widely different denominational beliefs, but they generally agree about the need for a personal decision to accept God’s grace through faith in Christ, and they tend to be drawn toward political and religious conservatism worldviews and party allegiance. It was the US brand of nineteenth- and twentieth-century evangelical missionary movement that was transported and transplanted into many of the African religio-cultural contexts. The conservative brand of evangelicalism evolved in the southern United States, where the enslavement and later segregation (another form of apartheid) of African Americans produced a particular form of white privileged evangelicalism that was constructed on an interplay between race and religion to support a slave economy. 8 The economic and political privileges gained from the inhumane system were undergirded by theological building blocks of modern white evangelicalism. 9 This brand of evangelicalism adapted the “fullness of life gospel” for all (John 10:10) that Jesus offers the world into selective gifts for their own people. Those who were enslaved were deemed to be lesser human beings. Their theology of salvation was therefore watered down to be a narrow internal change of the heart that was meant to make the African American subservient. External attributes and appearances of being “born again” were linked to cultural constructs of how the individual should speak, maintain sexual purity, and dress according to Eurocentric standards. Being saved was therefore bereft of doing justice, especially to those who lived on the margins of the society. Within the contemporary Western Christian world, the term “evangelicalism” has mutated to become a phenomenon that appears to align with the white nationalist religio-political and economic conservative agenda. 10 This grouping excludes many other Christian communities, especially those that come from the black community even though they

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identify themselves as evangelical believers. Stephen V. Monsma conceptualizes evangelicalism in three ways: a. as a social movement within Protestant Christianity focused on doctrinal and spiritual renewal (pietism and revivalism); b. as an orthodox Protestant doctrine in contrast to the doctrinal drift and decline in Protestantism as a result of modernity; c. and as “a tradition within Protestant Christianity” that is expressed as “a social group manifesting an organic character bound together by social ties and organizational alliances.” 11 Again, the black experience of Protestant Christianity is missing from these descriptions. Roger E. Olson offers the following description that is conceptually much broader and inclusive of the black ecclesial tradition: [Evangelicalism] is not a movement or group but a spiritual-theological ethos marked by David Bebbington’s four hallmarks (viz., biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activism) plus deep respect for orthodox Christianity as expressed by the earliest Christian creeds and councils and by the Protestant reformers. 12

THE PORNIFICATION OF WESTERN CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICALISM AND POLITICS In order to map the contemporary proliferation of the prosperity gospel brand of churches in the global South one must first connect with the rise of populist US neo-evangelical leaders. Their leaders have dominated the religious media landscape and have built global empires. To a great extent one could infer that this brand of evangelicalism is a finely tuned, American-built religious engine that guzzles money to fuel its heavy baggage of high tech–designed huge buildings that are supported by large staff. 13 This brand of conservative evangelicalism gave birth to the prosperity gospel and may be classified as mallification of the church in which everything done is for profit. 14 This domination that the global religious media have, to a great extent, produced greater public scrutiny of their lifestyles and businesses. This has brought disrepute to the global credibility of evangelical Christianity and the Church in their endorsement of political leaders who are openly amoral and who normalize, legalize, and legitimize such leaders around the world; these leaders are hostile to the free press, democratic rule of law, and ethics in public service that facilitates dictatorial and unaccountable governance. 15 Such leaders in alliance with white conservative evangelical Christianity engage in politics of judicial and executive overreach that empower the oligarchy and plutocracy of the wealthiest class rather than the working classes. 16 In reality, the network of political and Church partnership becomes an unholy hoax that deceptively disem-

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powers the people by depriving them of the fundamental rights to keep leaders with power accountable to the people. The unquestioning certitude of their unyielding fundamentalist faith that is surrounded by strong protective walls from their personal and communal belief system selectively uses their faith to consolidate their hold on economic and political power. The paradox is that such leaders, who once passionately embraced an evangelical theology that called for strict Church and state separation and disapproved of Christians and churches engaging in divisive party politics, have in this contemporary era made a perplexing turn around and advocate full engagement in partisan politics within their society. Evangelical leaders that in the past functioned as respected voices in their society, warning about increasing moral decay enveloping the nation, have (with their accessibility to political power) become voices that legitimize immoral and corrupt actions of political leaders that support their faith. Prominent theologian Timothy Kelly has aptly analyzed the current crisis in the evangelical community, claiming that “Evangelical” was used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with “hypocrite.” 17 Politicians have become drawn to such faith communities because they are in search of endorsement by large populations of religious communities that will confirm their approval by God and votes at the ballot box. In return, religious leaders are bought with gifts of vehicles, support for their building funds, and access to political power to lobby for special privileges for their faith community. Such leaders use the name of Jesus to support unjust politics. In their quest for political influence for shortterm objectives, they have unleashed the ascendency of amoral political leaders into positions of high offices. It could be argued that such leaders have separated the importance of character from the role of evangelical leadership in church and state relationship, and fidelity and accountability in the management of churches. Guardian writer Andrew Brown offers a plausible explanation for the changing landscape in politics and religion. He argued that the global mainstreaming of the film industry that is accessible through diverse media has normalized porn and this has had a devastating impact on human culture. It has impacted on every facet of life including politics and to that extent he argues that “the pornification of politics” is what gave us Trump through his (un-)reality show. 18 In a similar way, the conservative expression of evangelical Christianity that promotes the prosperity gospel has resulted in the pornification of Christianity that seeks to satisfy the instant gratification desires of people for quick wealth and health by suspicious miraculous methods. Similar to the world of the “reality shows,” the religious practitioner through the use of media and technology puts on entertainment shows for economic prosperity. The growth in global conservative evangelical Christianity has also thrived

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off the decline in liberal Christianity that has, to a great extent, become neutralized and powerless (stripped of spiritual potency) in the ascendency of the rationalistic and enlightenment-shaped minds that call for rational discourse of knowing. 19 The contemporary era has suggested that in the complexities of life, the legacies of the enlightenment such as humanism and rationalism can no longer adequately explain the current disordered world that is characterized by political, economic, and religious irrationalism. The contemporary environment now celebrates a mechanistic and materialist way of conceiving human actions marked by naked self-interest and the political harnessing of intense public resentment of being treated unfairly in a nationalistic way that is resulting in the social poisoning of civil society and undermining of political liberty. The result of neoliberal policies on many societies, especially in developing countries, has destroyed lives and has empowered expressions of fear, hate, resentment, xenophobia, homophobia, and other deadly passions that cultural theorist Stuart Hall calls authoritarian. 20 This demonizing “of the other” strategy has generally found that negative attacks work, in the sense that they can be effective in taking down an opponent, but also that they tend to turn people off from politics, and to further shrink and polarize the electorate. 21

It therefore could be argued that the problem with the authenticity of contemporary evangelical church leaders is not their attitude to the changing secular landscape but their comfortable alliance with corrupt life-denying imperial systems of power and being insensitive to anything wrong with their action. They fail to keep a critical distance with the political and economic power systems in their nation that are preoccupied with increasing wealth to be successful. SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROSPERITY GOSPEL AND ECONOMICS The symbiotic relationship between faith and economics was observed during a 2013 global ecumenical conference in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (CWME). An exposure program was organized for the participants to visit new forms of mission emerging within the city of Durban. A visit was made to an “international ministries” complex set in a building that appeared to have been a former warehouse. This facility was used as a healing center that held daily healing services. The group of international participants that gathered to enter the building was searched by young security guards of the Bishop. They claimed that the search was undertaken to protect their charismatic leader from any harm because of threats to his

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life and ministry. This self-styled Bishop with his locally owned “International Ministries” represents a growing phenomenon of charismatic Christianity within the African context that is branded as promoting “prosperity gospel.” The core message of that “religious business” brand is that being a successful Christian is to be healthy, wealthy, and blessed with material goods in excess. The “prosperity gospel” ideology is used to embrace the phenomenon of wealth as a way to idolize, promote, and legitimize their leader’s amazing spirituality. Gbote and Kgatla argue that: The prosperity gospel portrays wealth and riches as a covenant and the fulfilment of the divine promise of God to his people. The basic teaching of the prosperity gospel is that God wants believers to get rich or healthy, but he cannot bless them unless they first send money known as “seed-faith” to their spiritual leader or pastor who tells them about the plan. This approach was popularized by the American televangelist Oral Roberts in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the United States of America (USA). It has now spread to other parts of the world, including Africa. 22

Near the stage used by the Bishop and his worship team were some sick people waiting in anticipation for their healing from the Bishop. When the time came for him to speak, he rose up from his white couch in which he sat dressed in a white suit. As he walked to the platform the overwhelmingly young adult female audience from what appeared to be poor local communities shrieked and clapped their approaching “messiah.” His message was self-promoting, advertising himself as a special “Man of God” commissioned and sent to heal the sick and to claim the promises of God to make people prosperous. His very selective and limited use of the Bible suggested that his message was more important than that which came from the sacred text. His repetitious words sounded like a program designed to bring about cultic conformity. To the people eager to receive something special from God he delivered the ingredients of a prosperity gospel built on legitimizing the idolatry of greed in which the people receive countless blessings as they journey from a lack of material wealth to an overabundance of material wealth. 23 The three-hour “healing service” was climaxed with encouragement for worshippers to pass through the hall toward the exit where all kinds of “holy” products for healing were available for purchase. Holy water, holy honey, holy ointments, and even holy clothes, all blessed by the Bishop to grant healing. The only conclusion one could draw from the spectacle of the religious marketplace was that the “prosperity gospel” of the Bishop was less interested in healing people and more focused on the acquisition of money. The promotion of the products in the market suggest that, to a great extent, the Christian faith on display was assimilated with other ideologies of commerce, captured and commodified to suit the interest of an economic

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ideological agenda. Indeed, when a request was made for the leaders of the research group to meet with the Bishop, his secretary informed us that a fee would be charged for any arranged interview. This international ministry was modelled on a business performance–based approach to the Christian faith. God’s gifts of grace were regarded as something that can be earned through work and not something freely received. This contemporary expression of Christianity failed to model the gospel of life that Jesus advocated: I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me. (Matthew 25:36; NIV)

The exposure visit suggests some core attributes of the prosperity church phenomenon: (a) the church constitutes a private financial business owned by the pastor and his family; (b) money is collected from the poor through deceptive methods; (c) technology-driven marketing strategy is used to attract large audiences to the assembly for miracles to meet health and wealth objectives. The visit revealed a particular “winning formula” model that involves (1) how the Bible is interpreted; (2) worship must be infectiously entertaining, inspiring, and non-stop; (3) the “man of God” must heal, and all his healings must be perceived to be successful and so confirm his ability to do great “unbelievable feats.” None of the social justice themes outlined in the gospel seem to be present in this religious theater. What was on display ran counter to the ministry and mission of Jesus. The perception of responding to the needs of the poor and vulnerable people seeking divine intervention in their lives was in practice a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to facilitate enrichment of the privileged. A growing crisis of ethics and integrity within the evangelical community has enveloped the African context and many areas of the global South. Paradoxically, these are areas where poverty thrives and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing at an alarming rate. This conservative brand of Christianity is driven by charismatic personalities who peddle a “prosperity gospel” that offers healing and economic success as proof of God’s favor while exhibiting lifestyles that are the antithesis of Jesus and the gospel that the Bible bears witness. WHOSE INTEREST DOES THE CHURCH IN AFRICA SERVE? The public is asking searching questions about the evangelical identity and mission within the African context. People are confused, embarrassed, disappointed, and even ashamed of the lack of moral consistency in teaching and behavior from the leadership of the Church. A deadly

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virus of corrupted biblical interpretation combined with a lust for power is at the core of the contemporary lack of credibility. African Christianity is undergoing major change as prosperity-paradigm churches have overtaken and replaced European missionary-founded churches as the dominant form of Christianity in the African context. With this new status of newer churches becoming mainline, their leaders are increasingly having greater access to political and economic power. The most pressing threat to life in many countries of the global South and Africa in particular is linked to the growing scandalous gulf of inequality between the economically empowered class (which includes many church ministers and pastors) and the economically dispossessed that results in social dislocation, a collective mutiny/rebellion by desperate people crying out for justice. This symbiotic relationship between the African expression of evangelical Christianity and money has created a public impression of a movement enslaved and addicted to greed as its leaders deceive the unsuspecting people into a false sense of spiritual righteousness and financial security in which a few become wealthy at the expense of many. 24 Therefore, African evangelicals must be prophetic and resist this false gospel that is being legitimized because of love of money and power. The perennial temptations of avarice and abuse of power that privilege leaders have become a toxin that increasingly destroys public trust. Even among sections of the Church in Africa, some of the leaders have succumbed to embracing a prosperity priority gospel built on greed and deception that appeals to the gullible crowd seeking instant health and wealth benefits from the miraculous religious leader. Church leaders must repent and be ready to rebuild just social relationships and be able to discern the links between wealth, poverty, and ecology that affect the well-being of a community. The most urgent need is for them to work toward the common good of all creation instead of surrendering to the selfish competitive forces that reward the greed of a few at the expense of the many who are usually poor. The above discourse on conservative evangelical Christianity in the southern African context calls into question the contemporary global western brand that has also colonized the African context. Can this product be trusted? There is an urgent need to relearn what it means to be “evangelical” within the “anything goes” contemporary culture. In this “post-truth era” 25 there are troubling consequences for public life because “‘truth’ no longer carries the transcendent quality that points to reliability, integrity, and trustworthiness, rooted in the faithfulness of God’s word.” 26

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SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE GOSPEL In a recent statement on “Social Justice and the Gospel” a group of over 7,000 US conservative evangelical leaders presented a passionate and uncompromising statement filled with Bible verse footnotes to make their case for their orthodox brand of Christianity that rejects Jesus as a social justice advocate. In their definition of what constitutes the Gospel they argue that “implications and applications of the gospel, such as the obligation to live justly in the world, though legitimate and important in their own right are not definitional components of the gospel.” 27 This intentionally selective dichotomy that separates the “spiritual” essence of the gospel from its missional imperatives of acting out one’s salvation through social justice runs counter to other sections of scripture not referenced, such as James 2:14–17 (RSV): What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Their obsession seems to be not so much in defending the integrity of the gospel, but (reflecting a dangerous liberal agenda) to use the scriptures as an instrument to reject the reality of social injustice. Their statement speaks more about their religio-political allegiance than it does about the radical nature of the love of God for all creation that was totally embodied in the life and work of Jesus. In this religio-political changing landscape philosophers claim that people are living a “liquid or plastic state” because life becomes: shapelessly shifting as each disruptive innovation or abandoned certitude outstrips whatever fleeting sense of meaning was only recently embraced. A kind of foreboding of the times that have not yet arrived, a wariness about what’s next, settles in. 28

The central issue is not whether Christians and the church should be involved in political changes within their nation. Rather, the concern is about the quality of political engagement that they offer as Christian leaders. According to Hauerwas and Tran, neutrality is not an option for Christian engagement in the political realities of life because: Christian participation in politics starts with Christians first appraising the world in which they find themselves. This appraisal involves examining political situations as if God mattered for those situations. This is why for us ethics is a matter of seeing the world in such a way that one can accurately survey one’s available options. Those options, moreover, depend on the existence of a people who make options available because of the kind of people they are. In particular, they must be a people who have learned to examine any political situation disciplined

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by a view of God’s activity as described in scripture and as interpreted by Christian tradition. 29

FORMATION PEDAGOGY THAT EMBODIES TRANSFORMATIVE DISCIPLESHIP THROUGH SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY This essay argues that there is an urgent need for radical re-formation of ecclesial leaders toward embracing social responsibility by imitating Jesus, the teacher who sets the standard for spiritual lifestyle. It involves transformative actions of participation in the life and character of the God of life as reflected in the Jesus ministry and mission. The spiritual formation of many leaders seems inadequate to equip them to become the gospel and to live it out in ways that can facilitate good governance and socially responsible citizenship within the communities that they serve. 30 The concern is not so much about the profession but the character of the practitioners. This means that the spiritual formation of church leaders for social transformation can only be effectively formed through risktaking participation in the Mission of God carried out in the example of Jesus. However, within contemporary expressions of faith, much of the spiritual disciplines of worship, centrality of the sacraments, obedience to scripture as the word of God, proclamation and witness of the word of God, and cultivating a life-giving, life-affirming lifestyle of prayer seem to be divorced from the practice of justice. 31 This is critical because doing justice is what authenticates and informs evangelical spirituality. It is only when leaders are formed to “become the gospel” and to live it out in ways that can facilitate good governance and socially responsible citizenship within the communities that they serve that they become authentic. RETURN TO AUTHENTIC EVANGELICAL IDENTITY AND WITNESS This essay examined the dynamics between the phenomena of conservative evangelicalism, prosperity gospel, and pornification of Western Christianity that is expressed within the African context. It argued that white conservative evangelicalism from the United States was forged within an inhumane environment of slavery and has mutated into a contemporary phenomenon that has given birth to the prosperity gospel that was transported into the South African context as a religioeconomic strategy of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. Ecclesial leaders who have embraced this brand of evangelicalism celebrate anti-intellectual discourse with their binary thinking that engages in theological reflection that confirms their embedded faith position built on religio-cultural unquestioning certitudes. This has resulted in evangelicalism experiencing a profound contemporary public crisis of distrust in

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their leaders because of their perceived lifestyle tainted by accusations of immorality and corruption. Evangelical witnesses from other Church communities have been known for their commitment to radical social justice, solidarity with the poor, and living and working with people on the margins. Their understanding and practice of the gospel of salvation brought by Jesus resulted in radical discipleship formation that proclaims the salvation of God in words and deeds. This brand of evangelical witnesses sacrificed their lives in the struggle for equal right and justice for the poor. In order for evangelical witness to restore its public credibility, the leadership and faith community must engage in new hermeneutics of reading the Bible that facilitate praxis of social justice. Risky participation in the struggles of people seeking justice and finding effective contemplative practices will spiritually empower them to live positively in the fastchanging postmodern culture. A toxic form of masculinities has also enveloped the conservative evangelical Church leadership. This also needs re-formation to restore male accountability of the use of power in the Church and the wider society. Evangelical polity must never become comfortable and settled with the status quo of gender and sex in the context of power because the vulnerable will always pay the highest price through denial of human dignity. Contemporary evangelical witness must be mobilized to inculcate a culture of respectful men who can practice positive masculinities in all of their power relationships. Evangelical witness should also eschew its triumphalist domineering heritage and be clothed with respect and humility. This model of discipleship formation must also be fully embodied and engendered in order to provide openness to the flourishing of all people, a participatory team of women and men working together, nurturing a spirituality that ensures ecological and social justice in a political context. In the final analysis the re-formation of evangelical leaders and followers must ensure that they are biblically literate, politically conscious, and economically wise and just in order to fulfill their identity and witness as followers of Jesus. NOTES 1. See Roderick R. Hewitt, “Ecclesial Leadership and Social Responsibility within the African Context of Economic Injustice,” Alternation 19:115–131(2017; DOI: https:// doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2017/sp19a5); Roderick R. Hewitt, “The Church as Christ’s Broken Body Responding to the Emerging Global Challenges in a Divided World,” HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 73.3 (2017; a4648. https://doi.org/10.4102/ hts.v73i3.4648). 2. Valli Boobal Batchelor, When Pastors Prey (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2013). 3. Integrity in Ministry (2011; http://www.sacbc.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/ 11/Integrity-in-Ministry-07.pdf; accessed August 2, 2018).

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4. Andrew Brown, “The Danger of Porn Goes beyond Just Sex—It Normalizes Unchecked Desire,” The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2017/jul/17/danger-porn-sex-desire-advertising-politics?CMP=twt_gu; accessed July 17, 2017). 5. Batchelor, When Pastors Prey. 6. Theology Working Group, “A Statement on the Prosperity Gospel” (2009; https://www.lausanne.org/content/a-statement-on-the-prosperity-gospel; accessed September 17, 2018). 7. Cf. Stephen Mattson, “5 Ways Money Quietly Poisons Our Faith,” Sojourners (2014; https://sojo.net/articles/5-ways-money-quietly-poisons-our-faith; accessed July 24, 2017). 8. See Chris Ladd, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel” (https:// www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/; accessed October 17, 2018). 9. Ladd, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel.” 10. Jerry Falwell Jr., “Evangelicals Have Found Their Dream President,” Sojourners (2017; https://sojo.net/articles/jerry-falwell-jr-evangelicals-have-found-their-dreampresident; accessed August 8, 2017). 11. Cited by Roger E. Olson, “What Is an Evangelical? And Does It Matter?” Christian Scholar’s Review 46.4 (2017): 323–340 (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/ 2017/07/what-is-an-evangelical-and-does-it-matter/?utm_medium=email& utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Best+of+Patheos&utm_content=57; accessed July 27, 2017). 12. Olson, “What Is an Evangelical? And Does It Matter?” 13. Ladd, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel.” 14. This coined term “mallification” refers to the emerging architectural design of megachurches that are designed to look like shopping malls where they offer “all in on services”: worship center, entertainment facilities, health centres, restaurants, gyms, and education institutions. See Hewitt, “The Church as Christ’s Broken Body,” 8. 15. Noam Chomsky, “Republican Party Is the Most Dangerous Organization in Human History” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-chomsky-republican-party-most-dangerous-organisation-human-history-us-politics-mitlinguist-a7706026.html; accessed April 26, 2017). 16. Kenneth R. Ross, Jooseop Keum, Kyriaki Avtzi, and Roderick R. Hewitt (eds), Ecumenical Missiology: Changing Landscapes and New Conceptions of Missions (Geneva: WCC, 2016), 474–477. 17. Timothy Kelly, “Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore?” The New Yorker (2017; https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-evangelicalism-survive-donald-trump-and-roy-moore). 18. Brown, “The Danger of Porn Goes beyond Just Sex.” 19. Hewitt, “The Church as Christ’s Broken Body,” 4. 20. Stuart Hall, “The Age of Humanism Is Ending,” The Mail & Guardian (2016; http://mg.co.za/article/2016-12-22-00-the-age-of-humanism-is-ending). 21. Todd S. Purdum, “The 2016 Race Isn’t about Issues It Is about Character” (2016; http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/does-anyone-care-about-issues-anymore-or-only-whether-trump-is-crazy-214150#ixzz4Gq5fyYct; accessed April 9, 2016). 22. Eric Z. M. Gbote and Selaelo Kgatla, “Prosperity Gospel: A Missiological Assessment,” HTS Teological Studies/Theological Studies 70.1 (2014) (http:// www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222014000100038). 23. Benjamin L. Corey, “Five Reasons the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ Is Actually a NonChristian Religion” (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/5-reasons-prosperity-gospel-actually-non-christian-religion/?utm_source=facebook& utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FBCP-PRX&utm_content=formerlyfundie). 24. Hewitt, “Ecclesial Leadership and Social Responsibility,” 115–151. 25. According to Atkinson “post-truth” is not quite the same as “lies.” It is about exercising power and control, and manipulating public opinion. The liar may know

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the truth, but the post-truth politician does not care what is truth and what is not. See David Atkinson, “Post-truth,” The Church Times (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/26-may/comment/opinion/the-cost-of-living-in-a-post-truth-society; accessed May 29, 2017). 26. Atkinson, “Post-truth.” 27. Statement on the Social Justice and the Gospel (2017; https://statementonsocialjustice.com/; accessed September 17, 2018). 28. Nathan Gardels, Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism (2017; https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1504103.Nathan_Gardels). 29. Stanley Hauerwas and Jonathan Tran, “A Sanctuary Politics: Being the Church in the Age of Trump.” ABC Religion and Ethics (2017; http://www.abc.net.au/religion/ articles/2017/03/30/4645538.htm; accessed May 10, 2017). 30. Michael J. Gorman, Becoming the Gospel, Paul, Participation and Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 26–32. 31. Robert H. Ramsey and Ben Campbell Johnson, Living the Christian Life: A Guide to Reformed Spirituality (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 39–42.

ELEVEN Calling for Communities of Resistance in the Context of Empire Sindiso Jele

By way of introduction, I was born in Zimbabwe during the liberation wars and grew up in a context of conflict and violence. This ingrained two streams of consciousness: first, because of colonialism and imposed cultural supremacy of the west, my religion was considered heathen, and I was baptized to resist my identity as found in my religion. Second, my education was designed to prepare me for employment, a good laborer, in the colonialist farms and factories. This meant that my energy and my intellect were shaped to support empire and capitalism. I was not educated to employ or to be an entrepreneur but to sell my labor, and this has seen me in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa selling my energy and intellect but never to create an alternate economy that will involve the sons and daughters of the African soil. I have lived and continue to live the life of a migrant worker. 1 This has created a spirit of resistance in me, a spirit that calls for discernment of injustice and for the transformative community. 2 The writing of this essay takes place when the world is confronted with the religionizing of politics and the politicizing of religion, which results in ideologies of religious extremism and militarization of politics. The world we live in is characterized by the politics of nationalism and globalization, 3 religious extremism, and polarization organized around the services of mammon. These have been identified as the characteristics of empire. How then can the empire be resisted based on the biblical/ scriptural principles? I entertain this question in the next section, with a reflection on Revelation 21:1–8. There is also a self-critical element to this 153

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essay: Am I educated enough to resist, or am I educated to accept suffering, hoping for a better life in heaven? 4 In light of these questions, there are three terms that I wish to define in order to help clarify the arguments offered in this essay: • Community: This is not limited to those living in a certain geographical space. It also means a group of people that may be geographically dispersed but share a particular characteristic; they think alike. The condition is that of sharing or having a certain attitude and interest in common. • Resistance: In this essay, resistance is used to denote an act of reclaiming space and defiance by the weak or defeated. It finds support in the theology of Banana who spoke of the theology of resistance as the theology of death or combat theology. 5 • Life-affirming: Life-affirming is used here as the basis for radical hope and the antithesis of a life-denying outlook. 6 REVELATION 21:1–8 Biblical scholars classify the book of Revelation among apocalyptic literature that is preoccupied with the future (positive future which according to Augustine of Hippo has to do with change). 7 This genre is characterized by: • Being pseudonymous, hence the difficulty in identifying the author; • The narrative is written in the context of oppression and persecution so it is literature of resistance; • Looking for change where an alternative reign is a radical hope, having hope when everything says “No”; • Being filled with symbolism, a coded language meant to be understood by those who belong to the community of the oppressed, depressed, and persecuted. The book of Revelation is thought to have been written by John; however, the identity of the author has divided New Testament scholarship. The author of the book understood himself as the servant of God, and his selfidentification becomes critical in the concept of resistance as a model of participation in the Missio Dei (Revelation 1:1–2). It is interesting how the author of Revelation connects the activities of God with those of Jesus and how they are intended to achieve the mission activities of the servant of God. God and Jesus are never at cross purposes. The author’s message was from God and he was to be the witness giving testimony of the love and grace of God in times of persecution and suffering. This essay will not discuss the identity of the author but suffice to mention that the author is a figure whose life is defined around suffer-

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ing, persecution, and being removed from the mainstream. The persecution may be seen as institutionalized, Babylon as the symbol of evil including wealth/money, the defining concept of empire. New Testament scholarship debates between two periods for dating Revelation. First, around 65–70 CE, before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, 8 during the reign of Nero (but he is not named in the Bible). The second date is 95/96 CE during the reign of Domitian. It is not, however, in the brief of this paper to discuss the validity of the date. The paper though takes serious note of the events of the time regarding the image of the church as a community of resistance in the context of empire. During both of the dates presented, the people were suffering, the middle-class citizens were accused of being unpatriotic, especially the community of Asia Minor during the reign of Domitian. According to the book of Revelation, Babylon (Rome) is doomed and Jerusalem is the new city of God that will be redeemed. The church, therefore, is presented as a community of resistance during this period of the fall of Babylon and the rise of Jerusalem. The church’s mission (Missio ecclesia) is witness to the presence and action of God in the context of the disturbing and violent situations in human history. The message of radical hope is shared with the community that they must hold fast and remain faithful, to be a witness and not captives because God will finally establish the basileia of justice and righteousness. The overarching themes of the book, therefore, are life and hope in the context of suffering and persecution and looking forward to an alternative kingdom, the kingdom of peace and justice. Addressing the question of “mission as contextualization” and what he calls the “ambiguities of contextualization” Bosch argues that “mission as contextualization is an affirmation that God has turned toward the world.” 9 This gives encouragement to the resistance movements. Bosch further states that “Christ is where the hungry and the sick are, the exploited and the marginalized. The power of his resurrection [. . .] propels human history.” 10 The ultimate success in the program of resistance is a gift from God who makes things happen, 11 and who makes all things new (Revelation 21:5). EMPIRE TO BE RESISTED Empire in the twenty-first century is complex, with some being empires without knowing. Empire is not limited to institutions and political administrations, but it has increased its domain and even infiltrated the academies and the churches. The empire of the twenty-first century is a concept of many faces and thus many definitions.

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During the time of Jesus Christ, it was easy to point to the Roman Empire as the system to be resisted. In Matthew 11:29–30, Jesus invites: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This is in contrast to the heavy yoke of the Roman Empire and/ or of the Pharisees, who made difficult laws for the ordinary citizen. The spiritualization of the yoke is scandalous. The yoke must be taken as a political reference to life-denying situations that the people need to be emancipated from. And in the Bible, we see that the mission of God involves breaking such yokes: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high” (Leviticus 26:13). The mission of God involves freeing the people from all forms of slavery and restoring their dignity so that they can walk with their heads held high. So those who take the mission of resistance are seen as joining God. 13 During the colonial times, it was easy in Zimbabwe, in particular, to direct all the evil of persecution, oppression, and exploitation to the British Empire. And it was easy for South Africa to identify apartheid as the system of life-denying, and thus come up with models of resistance. But now the very liberation movements that fought these systems have turned out to be the systems that are oppressive and corrupted. So we still need to resist empire, even after the colonial powers have left. We speak of Empire, because we discern a coming together of economic, cultural, political and military power in our world today, that constitutes a real and a spirit of lord-less domination, created by humankind yet enslaving simultaneously; an all-encompassing global reality serving, protecting and defending the interests of powerful corporations, nations, elites and privileged people, while imperiously excluding even sacrificing humanity and exploiting creation; a pervasive spirit of destructive self-interest, even greed—the worship of money, goods, and possessions; the gospel of consumerism, proclaimed through powerful propaganda and religiously justified, believed and followed; the colonization of consciousness, values and notions of human life by the imperial logic; a spirit lacking in compassionate justice and showing contemptuous disregard for the gifts of creation and the household of life. 14

The definition above does not sufficiently describe or name empire but does justice in pointing to the characteristics of empire. Empire can be seen as the ideology rather than a coordinated program, and anyone can be an empire. The description also makes an admission that it is difficult to define the empire because it is relative and a composite of cultural,

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political, and economic conditions. These differ from one place to the other. It shows that those who attempt to resist empire must discern the issues within the particular context and the appropriate acts of resistance that would be life-affirming. The argument, therefore, is that the Spirit must lead the community in reading the signs of the time in order to discern the will of God (Revelation 1:10). The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed. (Luke 4:18)

In as much as the discourse on the subject of empire has failed to name it with consensus, what has to be appreciated is that through the characterization done so far each in its own geospace is able to conceptualize empire. Empire has been undressed and unmasked, its activities exposed, and it is thus possible to be resisted. CHRISTENDOM Christendom was considered as the political and ecclesiastic arrangement that reinforces a special relationship between the church and the state. The state strengthens the church by promoting Christian hegemony over the religious and cultural life. The church, in turn, gives legitimacy to the state by supporting the political establishment and granting divine sanction to the action of the state. 15

Such Christian hegemony needs to be resisted as it means that firstly, the church or the community of faith is captured and thus its prophetic ministry is distorted. Secondly, as Tennent (2010) would put it, to embrace a different faith is to be a dissenter with all of the explicit and implicit nuances the term carries and implies. If not resisted, it destroys the spirit of religious tolerance. It is such a spirit that may lead to religious extremism. This is the ideology that emanates from considering one’s religious ethos as sovereign and as the defense for one’s identity. COMMUNITY OF RESISTANCE The reading of Revelation 2:8–11 above suggests a new community, different but among the society. The community of resistance requires a new language (theology) relevant to the situation of the oppressed and the poor and those who choose to be in solidarity with them. This means that the community of resistance needs not be limited to the poor and the oppressed, but includes the concerned outsiders who share the ethos of

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the fullness of life for all and fight against life-denying elements in that community. The community collectively provides an alternative to lifedenying systems and offers hope to the disenfranchised. The communities of resistance consist of threatened and vulnerable people (see Revelation 7:9–17, 14, 18:4–5), including political and economic refugees whose situation has seen them as stateless. 16 These people seek, as it was put in reference to the Zionist influence, not merely the creation of new state but also the deliverance of a people from their enemies, now a Jewish exodus from all the Egypt of the day. Perhaps an ideology is not far away, one born out of a mix of unparalleled injustices [. . .] the creation of state may refill a world emptied of meaning by indescribable suffering. What began as suffering and destruction of meaning is taking shape in the new encompassing belief that all will be made right. 17

The creation of such communities would address the suffering and injustice which are the effects of the domination of empire. The new language needed is a language of resistance. This language is expressed and heard in worship and prophetic announcements. An example of that language is expressed by an Indian churchman Azariah 18 who spoke to the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference: a certain aloofness, a lack of mutual understanding and openness, a great lack of frank intercourse and friendless [. . .] too often you promise us thrones in heaven, but will not offer us chairs in your drawing rooms. 19

A language born out of injustices speaks to unmask racism, cultural superiority, and economic hypocrisy. For resistance to be effective, such ideologies must be unmasked and shamed. FALL OF CHRISTENDOM I am of the opinion that there is a need to look at the fall of Christendom as providing a watershed to the mission from the margins as a community of resistance. The collapse of Christendom means that the western world can no longer be characterized as a society/culture in either its dominant ethos or in its worldview. Christendom has collapsed and twenty-first-century missions must be reconceptualised on the new assumptions. 20

This also means the collapse of the concept of a western superior culture and the ideology of being the custodian of civilization.

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MISSION FROM THE MARGINS Academics are in agreement as to the existence of socioeconomic margins. They are however not in agreement as to who must define the margins, how and why. This essay construes that those who define the margins do so with the perception of being the voice of the voiceless. In my view, that understanding is unchristian. In the spirit of Jesus’s ministry, everyone has a voice. It may be that they have been silenced by their oppressors or their voices have been taken away by those who intend to create their own celebrity status. The concept of the “voice of the voiceless” must be resisted in favor of empowerment and engagement. And therefore, those from the margins must tell their stories, and the church, in particular, must be prepared to listen. It is very important to also look at the elements that define the people on the margins. First, these are people whose eyes have been removed by persecution and suffering, and they have been isolated from the mainstream. This was the case for the author of Revelation: I am John, your brother, and as a follower of Jesus, I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his Kingdom. I was put on the island of Patmos because I had proclaimed God’s word and the truth that Jesus revealed. (Revelation 1:9)

The margins where we find the communities of resistance are peoplemade. The author of the book of Revelation argues that he was put in that situation. The reason for putting him there was to take away his voice, to silence him. This was from where he spoke against injustice and persecution by proclaiming God’s word. Even when in isolation, a community of resistance maintains its stance of resistance because its mission model is to tell its story. The story is about resisting the empire and laying siege to it. The instruments of resistance seek to deprive empire of the oxygen on which it thrives by employing art, music, literature, stubborn acts, joy, and brilliant and relentless activities that tell the community’s own stories. Those stories provide an alternative narrative from the dominant ones that aim to brainwash. 21 This means refusing to buy the ideas of empire, its stories and its version of history. In Africa, the liberation movement monopolized liberation history, and leaders use these narratives to justify that they are ordained to be in power forever. Whoever is against them is considered unpatriotic and not grateful to the liberation struggles. In so doing, the stories of the communities of resistance become the alternative stories— stories of revolution, and stories that speak against militarization and a global market that commits the poor to perpetual suffering. Second, those in the margins are characterized by feeding on the excretion of the capitalist economy. This means that the majority of these people are found on the dumping sites and informal settlements, feeding

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on what the economy considers as waste and not useful anymore. Even those not in the dumping sites feed on the leftovers of the mainstream economy. The voices of these people provide the starting point in the debate of resistance. MODELS FOR RESISTANCE The models of resistance are the way through which the suffering community participates in the Missio Dei. Brownson argues that such models must begin by affirming the realities and the inevitabilities, that is, issues of injustices and liberation. 22 There are three possible ways through which the empire can be resisted, and these find justification in the ministry and work of Jesus Christ. This is an affirmation that the ministry of Jesus Christ indeed took place in the context of the empire as reflected in his teaching and the composition of his disciples and those who were drawn to his teaching. The first possible model is to fight fire with fire, which technically suggests that the communities of resistance must take up arms. This model was popular in the liberation wars where the nationalist movements took arms against the settler governments. This model worked as it forced the settler governments to the negotiation table. But it can be replaced with another oppressor government, and this contributes to the failure of democracy. The book of Revelation reflects this option: Revelation 19 pictures Jesus in a violent war in order to capture the beast. The model creates a trail of violence and possible vicious circles based on revenge. 23 Resisting settler governments has the result that not all the tools and agents of oppression are rooted out. The liberation movements merely fill the gap that was once occupied by settler governments. The second possibility, related to the above, involves holy wars. The concept of violence in the name of divinity is based on the understanding that God sanctions violence. This model tests the very definition of the character of God. This thinking collides with God’s redemption plan as a mission narrative. A cursory reading of the Bible (Deuteronomy 2:34, 7:3–5, 20:1–18; Joshua 6 11:12–20; and 1 Samuel 15) gives the impression that God took part and/or sanctioned those wars, and thus one could be justified to call them divine. Some people would go further to use such scriptures to parallel them with Jihad in Islam. A closer reading, however, gives a different picture. This scripture does not necessarily present a military strategy for the people as they fight for God; instead, it is God fighting for the people, in other words, holy battles (Bellum sacrum). And in most cases, God will fight the gods of nations to prove God’s supremacy: “that they might know that I am God.” And the third possibility, which I prefer, is what Strijdom refers to as the radical alternative. This is the way to oppose systematic imperial

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injustice, practiced both in the ancient world and in our contemporary world: the possibility of non-violent but provocative resistance. 24 The provocative nature of such an approach makes it a viable option. It disturbs the comfort of the oppressor and persecutor. In the ministry of the historical Jesus, he shared food with the hungry and reached out to the sick and the marginalized of the Galilean villages, and this put him at odds with the exploitive Roman Empire. Revelation 11:7 gives another dimension of resistance where worship is the model of resistance. For Paul, the radical resistance is nonviolence, and he argues for equality. In Galatian 2:28 Paul advocates for resistance to racial discrimination, and in Philemon 1:16 he speaks against the systematic injustices of slavery. The alternative is that master and slave are to treat each other as brothers. Paul believes, and I agree, on distributive justice: Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time, your plenty will supply what they need so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality. (2 Corinthians 8:13–14)

Advocacy is the better option. Equality informs the agenda and the content of resistance action. This situation lends credibility to the liberation narratives, which explains the model as my point of departure. Liberation theologies draw the notion of God’s preference for the poor from this model. Liberation theologies focus on resistance to poverty, suffering, and oppression and how these are connected to causality. The marginalization and exclusion that call for resistance are in response to the domination of empire. COMMUNITIES OF RADICAL HOPE I agree with Lear that radical hope is seen when material reality reveals things that used to weave webs of meaning and expose human vulnerability. 25 Radical hope sees the spiritualization of poverty and suffering (for example, in the gospel of Matthew 5:3–4 and 5:10–11) as scandalous and unacceptable. However, in the midst of all these, the community of resistance clings to the hope that finds a theological feed from the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Moltmann argues that in the resurrection the church is shown that God can make things happen even when they look impossible. 26 The delayed Parousia also teaches the community of resistance to remain loyal to their faith (Revelation 6). During the period of waiting, the relationship with God is strengthened as the community depends on God for inspiration and the Holy Spirit as the source of hope. Hope also transforms the mentality of those waiting, and it is thus

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transformative and leads the community to radical discernment as they depend on the guidance of God. Economy of Death In 1930, during the dark days of depression, the economist John Maynard Keynes suggested the future economy that was to be ideal for his next generation: “avarice, usury [. . .] must be our gods for a little longer. For they can lead us out of our tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.” 27 In his view, greed and money are the gods that can take the generation out of the “tunnel of economic necessity to the daylight.” This has continued to define the economy even today and has benefited the neo-liberal economic agenda. The economy is concerned with maximization of production, efficiency, and profit at the expense of the struggling poor. Evidently, Keynes’s economic wisdom has failed to deal with the gods of greed and usury that are so entrenched in the global economic system that they are difficult to uninstall. His tunnel economy and temporary gods have not worked, especially in Africa. World financial institutions, constructed within that economic paradigm, have attempted to come up with programs that purportedly could take countries out of these tunnels. In the process what has resulted are job losses, the poor becoming poorer, and generations made to pay debts all their lives. CONCLUSION The community of resistance, therefore, construes mission as the witness of the grace of God at work in the context of suffering. Suffering may be people-made (empire’s creation). For empire to be resisted it needs to be unmasked and identified. The mission model of resistance locates the community of resistance as a part of society, not a removed sect. It is a network of like-minded people, who may be poor, suffering, oppressed, or in solidarity with those on the margins. The prime missional concern is to transform the society by affirming life as a way of resisting the lifedenying forces of empire. NOTES 1. As expressed in the current Afro-phobic attacks: Poor against the poor. When the poor get into the country they will go to the community that reflects their situation back home, a community of resistance (for example, Hillbrow, Alex, and Diepsloot in South Africa, but never in Sandton, Houghton Saxoworld). 2. Cf. Alan Ka Lun Lai, “Towards an Empire-Resisting Pedagogy for Theological Educators,” Consensus 33.2 (2011; http://www.scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent,cgi?article=1040).

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3. It is very difficult to have a globalized economy and a nationalistic politics; these two are in tension and are against inclusive communities. It must be noted also that presenting these examples doesn’t suggest that I support the global economy. In as much as it speaks of the participation of all the nations in the mainstream economy, the opposite is evident. It has been observed that developing countries have their economy and culture exploited; they can’t put a price tag on their product, intellect, and labor. The global economy has been marketed as a move to reduce global poverty, but the opposite has resulted. There is increase in wealth inequality, and cash flow still goes to the west. But one needs not be naïve of the new globalized economy where Russia and China are the new players. 4. As a Black African from Zimbabwe, being educated also means being cultured and socialized. Education here is seen as a community project. 5. Canaan S. Banana, Politics of Repression and Resistance: Face to Face with Combat Theology (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1996). 6. Cf. Allan Boesak, Dare to Speak of Hope: Searching for the Language of Life, Faith and Politics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). 7. J. Kevin Coyle, “Augustine and Apocalyptic: Thought on the Fall of Rome. The Book of Revelation, and the End of the World,” Florilegium 9 (1987): 8; Cf. Augustine, The City of God (New York: Modern Library Publishers, 1950). 8. Robert L. Thomas, “Theonomy and Dating of the Revelations,” TMSJ 5.2 (1994): 186. See also William H. Bell Jr., “The Date of the Book of Revelation: How It Affects Our Interpretation (Part 1)” (2003; http://richardwaynegarganta.com/TheDateoftheBookofRevelation.pdf). 9. David. J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 426. 10. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 426. 11. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 509. 12. Arundhati Roy, “Confronting the Empire,” (January 27, 2003; Porto Alegre, Brazil; https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AR012703.pdf). 13. Council for World Mission (CWM) affirms this understanding of partnership with God in the pursuit of the fullness of life in the context of empire, through communities of resistance invited to join God in affirming life. This informs, shapes, and provides the mission content for the proposed communities. This is done with the argument that the missionary God is transformative and just, and thus provides the lens through which empire must be looked at. 14. CWM, “Theological Statement,” International Review of Mission 100.1 (2010): 112. 15. Timothy C. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), 18. 16. Stateless means those who are not documented as citizens of any state and may include refugees and the internally displaced people who cannot have registration documents (birth certificates and identity documents). 17. Bob Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, and David Van Heemst, Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Glonal Crises (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 72. 18. Cited in Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 125. 19. Cited in Stephen Bevans, “Mission as Prophetic Dialogue” (2012; https:// www.relforcon.org/sites/default/files/Transform_Wkshp-MISSION_AS_PROPHETIC_DIALOGUE-final.pdf.pdf), 3. 20. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions, 18. 21. Roy, “Confronting the Empire.” 22. James V. Brownson, “Speaking of the Truth in Love; Elements of Missional Hermeneutics,” in G. R. Hunsburger and C. Van Gelder (eds), The Church between the Gospel and Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 233. 23. Johan Strijdom, “Ways of Resisting Empire and Alternatives to Empire: Comparing Ancient and Modern Options,” Phironimon 10.2 (2011): 59 (http://uir.unisa.ac.

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za/bitstream/handle/10500/5525/ Vol%2010%20No%202%202009%20Ways%20of%20resisting%20empire%20and%20alt ernatives%20t.pdf;sequence=1). 24. Strijdom, “Ways of Resisting Empire,” 64. 25. Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2009). 26. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implication of the Christian Eschatology (London: SCM Press, 1976), 12. 27. Cited in Goudzwaard et al., Hope in Troubled Times, 198.

TWELVE Mission and Violent Conflict Seeking Shalom 1 Deborah Storie

Violence is not the exception but the usual context in which the people of God have been and continue to be called to bless the earth. We are to seek the kingdom, love our neighbors as ourselves, and make friends of enemies in the middle of threat and anxiety, surrounded by enemies, risk, complexity, and uncertainty. The question is not can we, but will we participate in God’s mission in violent contexts? If we are not prepared to do mission in violent contexts, are we prepared to do mission at all? I will not attempt to explain how, or how not, to do mission in conflict zones. I can’t do that. I don’t believe anyone can. There are no recipes or best practice templates we can develop, upscale, and replicate. Mission is always incarnational, embodied, and organic. Like yeast or seed, it germinates, grows, and tastes different in each time and place. What I will do is reflect on personal encounters with people who inhabit perilous power-laden contexts where violent conflict is acknowledged, and where violence masquerades as peace. I share these stories conscious that some among us, and others remembered by us, have sought peace within depths of violence I have never encountered. In telling these stories, I assume six things: 1. Mission takes place between present realities and the promises of God. We keep our feet firmly planted on the ground so that we see the world as it is and engage the challenges of our day. At the same time, we look beyond the present and step toward the future to which we are called. 2 We practice mission by imagining, anticipat165

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2.

3.

4.

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6.

ing, and embodying that future and joining with God in bringing it to life. Mission’s shape is determined by context. Where violent conflict is overt and obvious to everyone, mission transcends cycles of violence to restore relationships through which people can recognize their common humanity, break free from the violent past, and imagine and work toward a shared future. In these contexts, peacemakers are recognized as such. Where violent conflict is entrenched and hidden behind cultural, political, and economic systems, mission involves exposing and challenging violence that some people cannot see. In these contexts, peacemakers become troublemakers. Human stories can inform and inspire mission. Stories can cultivate an empathetic and intuitive sense of what living surrounded by violence feels like; equip us to draw connections between our behavior and the lives of those it affects; and invite us to explore possibilities for transformation. 3 As Jonathan Sacks explains, “only those who know what it is to be slaves, understand at the core of their being why it is wrong to enslave others. Only those who have felt the loneliness of being a stranger find it natural to identify with strangers.” 4 Empathetic experiences of past and present violence have the potential to invite and inspire us to mission against present and future violence. While missional relief, development, advocacy, conflict-resolution, and peace-building initiatives can be important steps toward Shalom, they are not our main task. To stop there would be to heal the wound of my people lightly, replacing one form of violence with another, crying “Peace, peace!” when there is no peace. Mission means living our prayer: Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Scripture can and must inform mission. This is not as simple as it sounds. The Bible is a long and complicated story written by real people who struggled to follow God in real-life situations characterized by uncertainty, pain, conflict, and violence. Acknowledging this enables us to read ourselves into their stories and read their stories into our lives. We remember we were slaves in Egypt. We remember we were slave-owners in Egypt. We ruled in Pharaoh’s court. Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us even while we experience real persecution and fear real enemies. Read this way, the Bible as Living Word questions, convicts, and inspires us to participate with God in transforming the world. Stories from somewhat analogous contexts can help us read Scripture more responsibly. Most of the Bible emerged from contexts characterized by various manifestations of persecution and oppression,

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contexts in which people were preoccupied by survival. Those of us who are neither persecuted nor oppressed and harbor contrasting preoccupations can seek out and learn from those whose experiences bear a family resemblance to those described in biblical texts. 5 Most of the stories I share come from Afghanistan, a country that has all the attributes that Hanson and Oakman consider necessary for comparative studies with first-century Palestine. 6 Contemporary Afghanistan is also highly militarized, occupied by shifting combinations of indigenous and foreign troops opposed by various forms of violent and nonviolent resistance. To help keep this broader perspective, let us pause and remember the future. Remember prophetic visions of how the world will be, but is not yet. Imagine a world in which all have enough and none too much, in which all enjoy the fruit of their own labor, rest beneath their own vines and fig trees, eat the crops they tend, and live in the houses they build. Imagine streets that resound with the laughter of children, and grandparents living out their days in peace. Imagine truth spoken in the public square, judgements made for peace, swords beaten into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, and the nations don’t learn war any more. Imagine fields yielding their fruit and the skies their dew in season, and wellbeing enjoyed by all. Remember. Imagine. Imagine Shalom. LEARNING TO LISTEN, LEARNING TO SEE: STORIES OF HIDDEN VIOLENCE I assume that violent conflict is the context in which many people of God are called to bless the earth. The challenge that many privileged Christians face is that we can’t see much of the violence that pervades contemporary and biblical worlds. Our experience and cultures blind us to power and privilege, injustice and oppression. 7 When we experience the world as good and safe, we presume the world is good and safe for everyone. It isn’t. The United Nations highlights four contemporary global crises: deepening inequality, entrenched human deprivation, increasing violent conflict, and widespread environmental degradation. 8 These mutually reinforcing crises are manifestations of pervasive structural violence. These crises become ever more intractable as capitalism deepens and appropriates more and more resources to produce products and services for the “bankable” few. 9 If we are insensitive to the violence entrenched in cultural, political, and economic relations, we will be complicit in it, and our missional endeavors will be more likely to destroy Shalom than to build it. How can we learn to see violence that surrounds but doesn’t touch us? Attending to the stories of people affected by violence might take us part way. But listening doesn’t just happen. Vulnerable people are often

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silenced, pushed to the margins, or ignored. They speak softly, and even in their silence. Yet, if we have ears to hear, their whispers and their silences are all around us, in the world and in the Bible. A Story of Violent Peace Invited to evaluate a development program in central Afghanistan. I walk for days through remote mountain valleys, asking groups of people to describe their lives, the best times, the worst times, why one time was better or worse than another. Over and again, this is what I hear: “During peace time they [the government, landlords, their retainers] take half your grain, the best of your animals, your rugs and yoghurt. They take your sons as laborers and your daughters as maids. They take everything, give nothing back, and expect you to be grateful. During war time, the government cannot tax you and landlords cannot collect rent. If you are unlucky, you may be looted, your crops burnt, your sons killed. But perhaps the war won’t come your way. You may lose one or two sons as soldiers but, God willing, you will be able to feed and clothe your other children. During peace, the cities grow fat while we farming families grow food and starve. In war time, no-one is fat, but we starve last. We long for peace, but not any peace . . .”

Listening to stories like this is not easy. They reveal sides of our own history we prefer to deny. I like to think of myself as a peacemaker. This story reminds me that I have benefited from and perpetuated violence. Not individually, not personally, but through the historical dispossession and continued marginalization of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Not intentionally, not consciously, but through the unquestioned patterns and habits of daily life. Stories like this confront me, a Christian development practitioner, because so much humanitarian work depends on and perpetuates systems and structures which maintain my privilege and violate the poor. They confront me, a well-off person, because establishing Shalom is primarily the responsibility of people like me. Shalom in a special way is the task and burden of the well-off and powerful. They are held accountable for Shalom. The prophets persistently criticized and polemicized against those well-off and powerful ones who legitimized their selfish prosperity and deceived themselves into thinking it was permanent. 10

The Biblical witness is that the poor are poor not, primarily, because of their own sin, but because of the sin of past and present idolatrous generations who claim that resources belong to those who accumulate them, rather than to those in need. Listen long enough, and I am compelled to confront the violence within my own nation, my own church, my own heart.

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A Story of a Road That Wasn’t Made A series of village meetings decide that a road is their most pressing priority. We negotiate an action plan in which the village supplies labor and locally available materials and the project contracts technical expertise and procures materials beyond the village’s reach. When the time comes to begin work, villagers who eagerly voted for a road are nowhere to be found. Why? We ask men, one or two at a time, working their fields, collecting water, walking or riding donkeys to town. We ask women, younger women in their houses, older women guarding watermelon fields. We hear the same story again and again. “What is a road to us? Road or no road, we travel by foot or by donkey. Roads only make our donkeys’ hooves sore. But if a road is built, who will maintain it? Will a truck-owner or landlord lift a spade? They’ll say, ‘This is your road, the people’s road.’ And our children will go hungry while we repair ‘our’ road, a road we never wanted. Why didn’t we speak in the village meetings? Who do you think we work for? Truck-owners. Landlords. People who want the road!”

I often remember this story and often retell it. Not everyone recognizes the violence. No guns, beatings, or imprisonment are involved. To most of us, roads are self-evidently good. Few of us empathize naturally with daily laborers for whom death shadows every day worked without pay. It still bothers me how close we came to building that road. If we hadn’t lived in the village and only visited occasionally. . . . If we hadn’t asked people individually. . . . If they hadn’t known and trusted us. . . . If we had worked mainly through village elders. . . . If we hadn’t paused to put the pieces together. . . . If donors had been anxious for results. . . . If our team had rushed to achieve something tangible. . . . If our experiences of roads had led us to try to convince people that they really did need the road they said they didn’t want . . . A Story of the Price of Wheat I travel from the village to visit another humanitarian agency in town. Conversation extends over an elaborate meal. I listen as my colleagues bemoan the price of bread and describe how they lobbied the government to legislate a lower price and plan to import free flour. I return to the village that night and sit beside exhausted neighbors, men who trudged 30 hot dusty kilometers to the bazaar and 30 hotter dustier kilometers back, their donkeys staggering under loads of wheat, 70 kg, unsold. We share bread, tea and silence. What can they say when the price of wheat is lower than production costs and they have nothing else to sell? Nothing but their children. What can I say? What will I tell my colleagues in town? They are not bad people and they mean well. Besides, I am their guest. I say nothing. What will I tell my agency, my church, friends in wheat-donating countries? They are not bad people and they mean well. I say nothing.

Living with a poor agrarian community while maintaining friendships with middle-class urban Afghans allowed me to observe how charity

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(doing things for the poor rather than with them) protects middle-class people while perpetuating the exclusion of the poor. I learned that ostensibly impartial systems and laws do not treat everyone the same. Unfortunately, I did not use my friendships well. I told stories people wanted to hear, stories for which they asked. In Afghanistan, stories of Australia made middle-class Afghans feel poor and did nothing to help my friends understand what it felt like to be poor. By keeping silent, I denied them an opportunity to change. In Australia, village stories aroused compassion, prayer, and financial support but did little to help Australians understand how arrangements that protect and benefit us rob others of safety, dignity, and life. By keeping silent, I denied them an opportunity to change. Why did I do this? Was I afraid of being confrontational? Did I not know how to speak truth without condemnation? Was I afraid of interrogating my own comfort and status? Or didn’t I really believe that change was possible? Did I have too little faith? MISSION AND OVERT AND COVERT VIOLENCE Overt violence is almost always superimposed on the covert violence of structural injustice and intersects with dynamics of power and privilege, domination and subordination, inclusion and exclusion. If we engage only the surface of things, the violence we see, our efforts to build peace are likely to produce more sophisticated insidious forms of violence. 11 The difference between the way Jesus sent out his disciples and the way Christian relief and development agencies often operate is revealing. Jesus’s disciples traversed a harsh violent landscape with nothing but the clothes they wore, the staffs they carried, the sandals on their feet. Utterly dependent on those who received them, they went as sheep among wolves, expecting to be betrayed, hated, and persecuted. Death was a real possibility, and they were not to fear it. Why, then, when Christian humanitarian workers are injured or killed, do we ask: Who slipped up? Who was negligent? What security policies and protocols failed? Security management strategies often isolate humanitarian staff from local communities and insulate them from the realities of local life. What do our cars, equipment, evacuation, and insurance policies convey about where we find security and in what or whom we trust? What is conveyed when those who have been given the ministry of reconciliation fly out of trouble spots whenever they ignite? Do such practices foster respect, trust, and solidarity? Or, do they legitimate the use of force to protect us (but not them) and achieve our goals (but not theirs)? What price are we prepared to pay to live toward the kingdom—or to die for it? Do we preach peace while we erode its foundations?

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Stories of Sowing Peace and Sowing War In Afghanistan, as in the Bible, Spring is the time that kings go out to war. I walk with five Basic Veterinary Workers to a bazaar several hours away to buy animal medicines. Sahmatali insists we wait at every village while he drinks tea with the elders. I grow impatient: Will we reach the bazaar before it closes? Sahmat explains: “Enemies make themselves. You have to work to make friends.” A few months later, I visit the veterinary office of an international agency in town. I only recognize one face. Briefly alone, I ask, “Why so many Pashtuns in a non-Pashtun area? Your office used to have every ethnicity. You are now the only non-Pashtun here.” He whispers, “Staff are appointed in Pakistan. The Director is Pashtun.” “But what about the expatriate Director?” “He signs off on a list of names: Mohammed this, Ali that, Hafiz something else . . . Even if he visits, we all look and sound the same to him.” A year later, back in the village, Sahmat’s oldest brother is called out of a graduation ceremony for his adult literacy course. He returns moments later, ashen faced. “Taliban has taken Mazar. We are dead men.” The following days are tense: fields empty, streets deserted. No children play. Even the animals are silent. People huddle in fear-filled rooms. I listen. Nobody leaves the room, nobody enters, yet news arrives that Taliban are looting, raping, plundering nearby villages—we are all going to die. We wait. And wait. Nothing happens. My neighbor’s son and other boys are on military duty in town. Their mothers and grandmothers weep: No body to wash. No burial prayers. No grave. “How do you know your sons are dead?” “Who could survive Taliban?” Days pass. One by one, night by night, the lads return: thin, hungry, footsore, alive. My neighbor’s son sought cover the moment Taliban entered town. He didn’t move for days—Talibs were everywhere—then he sneezed. The Talibs gave him food and water. They told him when it was safe to leave. He tells the village, “We don’t need to fear Taliban, not all of Taliban. The soldiers I met were village lads. They know how to plough, they have donkeys, they grow wheat. They don’t want to fight. They just want to go home. They are just like us.” Every returned soldier tells a similar story. But Taliban is the enemy and the enemy is always evil. No-one listens. A week passes. Two weeks. I spend hours lying on the floor. I read Primo Levi one word at a time, rationing the pages. Mostly I do nothing. I don’t think. I don’t pray. I don’t eat. Each day an Afghan colleague delivers the same message: “The agency brought our families here. The agency must get us out. Tell them to send a helicopter.” Each day I give the same response: “I’ll radio the agency and convey your message. They are as concerned for you and your families as they are for me. We have a car that can carry both your families any time you decide to leave.” “And our belongings?” “We are ten people and one car.” When I radio the agency, they remind me to evacuate with the radio and solar system, the agency’s belongings. They ask if I want the Red Cross to evacuate me from Mazar — a choice no Afghans have.

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Chapter 12 Taliban comes. Six years pass. Taliban falls but does not leave. Sahmatali, the peace-maker, is one of two village men killed during those six years.

These stories raise many issues: the quiet commitment of local people to relationships that make for peace; the potential for development programs to exacerbate divisions; the power of fear; the potential for empathy and kindness to bridge enemy lines; the implicit messages humanitarian agencies send about whom and what they value; the cost of making peace. A Story of Fathers Who Have No Choice Returning to the village where once I’d lived, I asked, “Tell me about the last ten years? What’s happened? How has life changed? How do you feel about it?” We discuss the seasons, when it rained and when it didn’t, when locusts came and when they didn’t, a flood that swept crops away. Then we talk about conscription. “The Northern Alliance took everything. If a commander saw a sheep he’d eat it. If he saw a healthy man, he’d take him. People who could afford it send their sons to Pakistan or Iran so they don’t get taken as soldiers. Some even send boys to America or Australia. But we need our sons to work the fields so we can eat. So we hid in the mountains, stayed out of the village, ploughed our fields at night. Taliban were different. They took one sheep in ten and one man for 10 or 20 houses. They gathered the elders and told us to choose. So we raised money, all the money we could, and offered it to whoever would take it. The men who went were desperate, the poorest of men. They took the money, bought rice, oil and flour, gave it to their wives, and kissed their children. They knew they wouldn’t come back. You say there is no conscription in your country? Who would fight if they had a choice?” A woman whose husband had gone with Taliban asked if I’d seen him among the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants is often just another way of blaming the poor for their poverty. Many combatants come from the poorest sectors of society—not because poor people like fighting more than others; they simply have fewer options. A little due diligence is prudent before entering or remaining in conflict zones. What additional dangers might we introduce? What might we achieve? In situations of open warfare, it is rarely possible to do much practical work. I remember heated debates among humanitarian workers in Afghanistan: Does relief do more harm than good? Do humanitarian interventions prolong conflict and suffering? Does our presence camouflage the external economic and political interests driving this war? Do our attempts to alleviate its consequences make it easier for our governments to deploy military forces in the first place? Should we accept funds from groups that, however indirectly, support warring parties? Should we ac-

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cept funds from philanthropic foundations associated with the military industrial complex? Should we accept funds from our own governments—all active belligerents in this war? Does relieving local leaders of civic and familial duties make it easier for them to go and stay at war? When fighting escalates, should we expose our teams to immediate danger or wait for the situation to improve? What would suspending projects cost participating communities? What would it cost our local colleagues, many of whom fear unemployment more than war? Is just being there the point? Is our role to share the vulnerability and the pain, to witness the other side of the story, to tell the other side of the story? MISSION AND THE IMAGE OF GOD Mission calls us to recognize the image of God, not only in the poor, but also in those we fear most, the very people who have killed, maimed, and tortured. Mission is not easy. Stories of Constructed Enemies and the Grace of God Taliban retreats. In their wake, a different warlord rules each corner. Everyone with a gun does what is right in his own eyes. As I walk to the office, young men who once lowered their eyes respectfully, and old men who once raised hands in peace, spit and glare. Some pass a finger across their throat, an eloquent pantomime of slaughter. Even the gentle bread seller mutters, “Now you’ve lost your big white cars you know what it’s like to go on foot like the rest of us.” I protest, “I’ve always walked. . . . Every time I buy bread from you, you see me walk . . . ” But I am no longer the neighbor who walks to buy bread. I am the face of evil, the enemy, America, the people behind Taliban—or so everyone thinks. I feel hurt. I am frightened. At the same time, I understand the resentment and hatred. I work for an NGO: cars help us work efficiently and comfortably. I also walk through the dust and mud and listen enough to know that cars symbolize power and conspicuous wealth, and that travelling in white cars conveys messages of separation, superiority, mastery and immunity. How cars are interpreted depends on whether you ride in them or endure the dust and fumes they leave behind. Two years later, the guns are all gone. Taliban rules Mazar. I take a taxi to the airport. People crowd the shade outside the gate, men closer to the road, chaddari-clad women further away. I ask the closest man, “Uncle, would you tell me which way to go?” He ducks his head and flicks his eyes to the white turbaned guard at the gate. Of course, Taliban. I turn to the women but they flinch away, veils rustling. I approach the Talib, head lowered respectfully, and ask, from a respectful distance, “Brother, which way should I go?” He doesn’t answer. He must have heard me. I raise my eyes. The Talib is looking straight through me. He does not see me. He cannot see me. I do not exist. For a moment I am stunned: So this is what it feels like to be invisible. Then rage

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Jean Paul Lederach explains that we construct enemies in several stages. 12 At first, all that happens is that we look at other people and focus on our differences rather than on what we share. Then we view their difference in a negative way. We decide that they are a threat to us, that they are wrong. Then we begin to see ourselves as intrinsically better and more worthy than the other people. Then we de-humanize the other people and erase, or refuse to see, the image of God in them. Having done that, we no longer accord our enemy the dignity, consideration, or respect that we naturally accord other people. They deserve no kindness. They have no rights. We feel no compassion when they suffer. We commit atrocities against them and feel no guilt. Reconciliation reverses that process. It begins when we acknowledge our common humanity, our sinfulness and grace, and recognize the good in the other person: We don’t need to fear Taliban, not all of Taliban. They don’t want to fight. They just want to go home. They are just like us. Reconciliation depends on recognizing our own potential for evil: What, but for the grace of God, might I have done? This is what Miroslav Volf calls “solidarity in sin.” 13 A Story of a Man Who Forgave Wendy Strachan worked in Africa with Scripture Union. 14 She describes how, during the prolonged war in Sierra Leone, rebels would storm into a village and ask, “Short sleeve or long sleeve?” Your answer determined whether the machete severed your arm at the wrist or the elbow. The people who did this were often children, children abducted from their villages, trained, drugged, and sent back to kill and maim. Bambe was 15 years old when the rebels came to his village. They demanded money. There was no money. These were subsistence farmers—there was never any money. So they beheaded his father. Then they accused the villagers of protecting government soldiers. And they beheaded his uncle. And then they turned to him. They told him to put out his arms and he knew what was coming. By a miracle Bambe got to a hospital, where there were no bandages or medicine. By another miracle he was taken to another hospital. By a third miracle he survived. But the real miracle is this. Bambe told Wendy, “I saw the person who killed my uncle and my father here in Freetown. Some friends found him in the streets and dragged him to me. I knew it was him. I knew my friends would kill him if I asked them to. But I

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thought, ‘That could have been me. I could have done those things. I am just like him.’” Bambe wept as he spoke.

The miracle of forgiveness is born in acknowledging solidarity in sin: That could have been me. I could have done those things. I am just like him. Forgiveness transcends the cycle of violence. It frees us to live toward a future not defined by the past. REMEMBERING THE FUTURE, BREAKING FROM THE PAST It is not always helpful to focus on the causes of conflict because the forces that keep conflicts going may have little to do with why they started. Once fighting starts it is difficult to stop. Even war can become familiar. In 2003 and 2004, rural Afghan communities were asked to surrender their guns. Their initial response was, “We can’t do that! We’ve never lived without guns. Our weapons are dearer to us than our wives.” But they did surrender their guns, or buried them, and discovered new possibilities for freedom and society. One village elder explained, From my youth, my weapon never left my shoulder. It was part of me. You see this man beside me. He is closer than a brother to me. Yet, with a gun on my shoulder and a gun on his, we were one against the other, forever trying to get each other in our sights. People say many things about Taliban, but I say this: When Taliban disarmed us, my neighbor became my brother again. We are no longer one against the other. Without guns, we live together, side by side.

Tragically, the International Intervention in Afghanistan soon relinquished its early disarmament strategy and promoted rearmament instead. Brazil has long held the dubious distinction of ranking among the world’s most unequal countries. 15 Dom Hélder Câmara once challenged visiting North Americans: If you are appalled by what you see here, please don’t try to start a revolution for us—a revolution from which you can flee when real bullets start flying. If you really want to help us, go back to your own country and work to change the policies of your government that exploit us and keep our people so poor. 16

How does Hélder Câmara’s advice apply to our missional praxis? Perhaps we would contribute most by working for cultural and structural change among our own people. What influence might we exert where and how? Might company directors and shareholders put aside questions of profit and personal ambition to ask how their corporations affect the world? Might economists devise systems and structures that enhance life without relying on ever-increasing levels of consumption? Might theologians and ethicists focus less on abstract problems (such as the problem of evil or justification by faith) or quandary ethics (such as the moral

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rights and wrongs of torture, stem cell research, abortion, and euthanasia) and examine rarely questioned habits that, cumulatively, shape the world? Might governments develop nonviolent alternatives to war? Might parents think less about, “What is in the best interests of my child?” and more about, “How will the way our family lives shape the world our great-grand-children inhabit?” It helps to remember that “the biblical vision of Shalom stands against all private arrangements, all separate peaces, all ghettos that pretend that others are not there.” 17 THE STORIES WE CHOOSE TO LIVE BY: THE STORY GOD CALLS US TO LIVE Our missional commitments affect the stories we seek out as well as those we tell. Asking people to tell and re-tell stories of personally experienced or perpetrated violence can solidify trauma in personal and social memory, shaping individual and collective identities, until violence becomes the lens through which future experiences are interpreted and possibilities engaged. This makes violence the defining reality when it needn’t be. Save the Children psychologists working in Kabul expected children to be traumatized by and fear the violence of war. The children, they discovered, framed their lives, hopes, and fears in terms of family relationships and the daily rhythms of life. They feared mad dogs and traffic police more than bombs and rockets. 18 What Bible stories do we tell and how do we tell them? Christian congregations who have little immediate experience of violence tend to read the pain and injustice out of the Bible and focus on things that are positive, personal, and spiritual. Reading this way, they assume that God promises things few people experience. What would happen, I wonder, if our nativity plays included the wails of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted? What would happen if our churches sat with the grief of Hebrew slave-mothers and Egyptian families mourning their first-born? What would happen if we recited the Lord’s Prayer while feeling the hunger of those denied daily bread; the desperation of debtors robbed of dignity, freedom, and children; the fear of those for whom evil is an everyday reality from which no deliverance comes? How would the world change if our congregations attended more to the pain of God, God’s heart torn apart by a people who claim to worship God yet, collectively and unknowingly, push the needy aside and grind the faces of the poor? The Bible’s stories of violence and mercy, woundedness and healing, anger and grace, destruction and salvation, despair and hope articulate pain and make space for grief. But the Bible doesn’t stop there. God’s story transcends the cycle of violence through the miracle of forgiveness and resurrection love. Ugandan poet Susan Kiguli expresses this well:

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Because I love this Land I hold a thousand tears in the cup of my skinny hand. I carry ten thousand wails in the deep hollows of my ears. I host a million bloated babies in the deep brown of my eyes. I house ten million graves in the curls of my thinning hair. I have stored pouches upon pouches of pus in the blisters of my heart. So we do not talk about them; we do not sing about them. How can we sing of things we do not know? How will we sing about old men’s guts eaten out by hunger, old men’s eyes closed for fear of watching axes tear the heads off their grandchildren? How can we explain missing ears, lips, noses, lone limbs traversing the land without their owners? How can we ever talk about these things without tumours of bitterness teeming in our hearts? No wonder we are silent. I will not talk about them I will talk of other things Of the man who hung naked on the tree and sweated sorrow for us. I will sing only of water and blood flowing out of a side and a voice that whispered, “It is finished.” I can speak about glory wrapping darkness in a shroud and storing it in an eternal grave. I will dwell on love of a heavenly prince clothed in earthly tatters fighting swindlers in the temple of God. I will tell of a little child talking to bearded men about his Father’s Love. I will sing about a risen Son and transcending peace. I will dance of the victory of love embracing love This is the only way I can ever walk upright. 19

The only way I can ever walk upright. The only story I can bear to tell. The story God calls us to live—a story in which violence does not have the final word. NOTES 1. An earlier version of this chapter was presented to the 2006 Micah Network Triennial Consultation in Thailand. The title is inspired by Walter Brueggemann’s statement: “The origin and destiny of God’s people is to be on the road of Shalom which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater anticipations” (1976, 16).

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2. John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 3. Public psychologists demonstrate that certain types of emotionally engaging narratives, compared to empirical information, are more likely to motivate and generate behavior change: Anne Kearney, “Understanding Global Change: A Cognitive Perspective on Communicating Through Stories,” Climatic Change 31 (1994): 419–41; Doug McKenzie-Mohr, “Promoting Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing,” Journal of Social Issues 56.3 (2000): 543–54; Joanna Collins, Gillian Thomas, Rebecca Willis, and James Wilsdon, Carrots, Sticks and Sermons: Influencing Public Behaviour for Environmental Goals (London: Demos and Green Alliance, 2003); Robert Gifford, “Environmental Psychology and Sustainable Development: Expansion, Maturation and Challenges,” Journal of Social Issues 63.1 (2007): 199–212. Philosophers and theologians stress the ethical potential of imaginative engagement with narratives: Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, “From System to Story: An Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics,” in Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones, 158–90 (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1997); Margaret Somerville, The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007); Paul Ricoeur, “Toward a Narrative Theology: Its Necessity, Its Resources, Its Difficulties,” in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination, 236–48 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Trevor Hart, “Imagination and Responsible Reading,” in Renewing Biblical Interpretation, edited by Craig Bartholomew, Collin Green, and Karl Moller, 308–34 (Carlisle: Paternoster/Zondervan, 2000). 4. Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilisations (London: Continuum, 2003), 59. 5. Daniel Smith-Christopher, “Abolitionist Exegesis: A Quaker Proposal for White Liberals,” in Still at the Margins: Biblical Scholarship Fifteen Years after the Voices from the Margin, edited by R S Sugirtharajah, 128–38 (London: T&T Clark, 2008). 6. Kenneth Hanson and Douglas Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998); Chris Johnson, Afghanistan: An Oxfam Country Profile (London: Oxfam, 2004). 7. Moss Nthla, “A Black View of White Christianity,” Working Together 3 (1999): 1–5. 8. UNDP, Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone (New York: UNDP, 2016). 9. Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development (London: Palgrave, 2001); Hoogvelt, “Globalization and Imperialism: Wars and Humanitarian Intervention,” in Revitalising Communities in a Globalising World, edited by Lena Dominelli, 17–42 (London: Routledge, 2018). 10. Walter Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1976), 21. 11. Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace—or War (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999). 12. Jean Paul Lederach, The Journey toward Reconciliation (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999), 43–50. 13. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 81–85. 14. Wendy Strachan, When the Sinners Are the Sinned Against (Gold Coast: TEAR Australia, compact disc, 2005). Used with permission. 15. Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: In History and Now—An Overview,” Policy Research Working Paper 6259 (Washington DC: World Bank, 2012). 16. Robert McAfee Brown, Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), 44. 17. Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision, 21.

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18. Jo de Berry, Fariba Nasiry, Anahita Fazili, Sami Hashimi, Said Farhad, and Maryam Hakimi, The Children of Kabul: Discussions with Afghan Families (Kabul: Save the Children Federation/UNICEF, 2003). 19. Susan Kiguli, “Because I Love This Land,” in Eye of the Storm, edited by David Pluth, Pierre-Francois Didek, Susan Kiguli, and Nicolas Michel, 51 (Nairobi: Camerapix Publishers, 2002). Used by permission.

THIRTEEN Reassembling the Oikoumenē Kathryn Poethig

I want to expand the meaning and membership of our contemporary ecumene (from the Greek oikoumenē), the “whole inhabited earth.” While we now include nonhumans (animals and ecosystems) as participants in a peaceable, sustainable earth, I take from the arguments of de Sousa Santos that we need more radical projects to “reassemble the social” and affirm an “ecology of knowledge” that includes the worldviews of marginal communities in conflict zones. Embarking on a transdisciplinary “anthropology of the imagination,” my current work takes seriously the social imaginary of local religious communities who seek out the invisible world for guidance and solace. It focuses particularly on religious dreams in “undreamy times.” 1 I consider the role of epiphany dreams during and after revolutionary conflict, particularly in Cambodia. In refugee camps, living rooms, and among friends, I’d heard personal refugee accounts of those who endured Cambodia’s “travesty of history” from 1975 to 1979 when the Khmer Rouge walked into the capital Phnom Penh and declared “Year Zero,” inaugurating a revolutionary communist regime in which a quarter of the population was exterminated or died of malnutrition. While all cities were evacuated, the most stunning was Phnom Penh, where members of the former regime were assassinated or sent to interrogation centers such as Toul Sleng. Choeng Eck, a field of mass graves outside of town, is the most notorious of the hundreds of “killing fields.” The regime ended in early 1979 when newly socialist Vietnamese invaded, occupying Cambodia for a decade until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991. 2 This political world saturated with violence is also set within a Cambodian Theravada worldview that is often neglected. 3 Mediating the 181

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spirits and interaction with the supernatural are integral to Cambodian cosmology. Boramey (or parami) are spirits associated with Buddhism and manifest benevolent supernatural power. Boramey can be the attribute of a statue, such as the Leper King, 4 or a manifestation of mytho-historic figures (generals, kings) who possess a medium. 5 The boramey often speak through dreams. Neak ta, on the other hand, are guardians of the land. Friends noted that during the Khmer Rouge era neak ta were disrupted and the palm trees would not bear fruit. Preta, hungry ghosts, inhabited desecrated holy spaces. Buddha statues were decapitated, churches were destroyed, wats (monasteries, temples) were used for storage and torture, and mosques became pig pens. 6 The “killing fields” were saturated with phantasmic terror, populated with roaming preta because the near-dead had been violated, and when dead, not properly buried. 7 They could not continue on to the next life. I’d had encounters with preta and boramey in my time with Cambodians both in Asia and the United States. My spooky meet-up with a preta occurred on a travel seminar to Phnom Penh coordinated through San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1992. A decade after the Khmer Rouge departure, the city still seemed bedraggled and slightly surreal, residents four-to-a-bicycle plying Monivong Avenue, dark nights interrupted by generator-driven pools of light. Bats hung like overripe fruit in the naked trees near the UN Transitional Authority compound. Even the most prominent wats were derelict and forlorn, decapitated heads of the Buddha laid out near their stupas. So it was not entirely surprising that after a visit to Choeung Ek, my roommate looked wan. She sat at the corner of her bed and shot me a nervous glance, “When you lie down, do you see anything?” “No.” She hesitated, “When I lie down, I see three men with machine guns at the foot of my bed.” Chills shot up my back. The room suddenly felt ominous and cold. We improvised an exorcism, and when we ran out of ideas, we went to sleep. I was startled awake by the pressure of a ghostly body on top of me. I plopped a pillow over my head, praying feverishly, until—whoosh—the room felt clear. “A preta, a hungry ghost,” mused a Cambodian friend when I relayed the story later. There seemed to be many preta prowling around Phnom Penh. Boramey, the beneficent power of supernatural entities, offers a shared sense of “spirit” across religious communities—if you understand it as attributed to material objects (statues, amulets, holy water) and holy persons (saints, gods). I have been investigating its cross-cosmological significance in relation to statues who appear in dreams, requesting to be re-

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covered from rivers, caves, and rice fields. I first learned about statue recovery from a Vietnamese Catholic priest at Wat Champa, a Vietnamese immigrant fishing village along the Mekong. The priest relayed how, when Wat Champa was a Khmer Rouge commune in the 1970s, an elderly Khmer man was afflicted by a recurrent dream. Each night, a “lok ta” (old man) appeared, saying “Take me out of the river and I will help you.” Deep into the third night, the man slipped to the Mekong and found a statue stuck in the mud. He hid it. The lustral water he poured over the statue healed both humans and beasts. Who was this powerful spirit? The statue’s identity was a mystery until a ragtag band of Vietnamese settlers arrived in Wat Champa and, recognizing it, called out “St. Francis Xavier!” For several years, the embattled Khmer and Vietnamese communities shared admiration for the power of the saint and his statue. 8 Hungry ghosts and dream encounters are often left out of our texts and disappear from the “refugee narrative” upon arrival in the United States. Even in theological work on conflict, one doesn’t often read about signs that offer survivors critical information, the statues, amulets, or tattoos that protect at border crossings, or apparitions of Mary or Kwan Yin who appeared to Vietnamese when their engines stalled in the sea or pirates trailed them, or neak ta who inform a mother that her daughter is dying, or Jesus appearing to a Buddhist prisoner of the Khmer Rouge with advice that saves him. At the refugee center in the Philippines, I met a snake who had replaced Rithy, son of a refugee woman who disappeared at the Thai-Cambodian border. Are these phantasms of the superstitious? Langford, in writing about Lao refugees struggling with American hospital protocols, asks, “How do we make sense of [. . .] ghostly figures [. . .] without ‘anthropologizing’ or ‘psychologizing’ them, that is, without reducing them to examples of cultural belief or psychic symbols of trauma?” 9 As a North American Christian lesbian in the secular age, I, like most academics, dismissed interaction with the spirits, trees, and dreams as peripheral to the real revolutionary work of materialist theory and political theology. I dare to argue here that scholars, activists, peace professionals of the North must develop a broader “ecology of knowledge” 10 to learn how certain communities interact with the invisible realms and employ different contours of being and knowing (that statues call out in dreams, hungry ghosts haunt). How can we “reassemble our ecumenes,” be more elastic with the boundaries of our real, learn how to learn about different ways of being, so that the worldviews of those we study, advocate for—and resist—are constitutive of a range of personhoods? By this I mean, how our personhood is reflexive and reconstituted by the social worlds we occupy.

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ECUMENE AS AN EMPIRE OF EXCLUSION A claim to “reassemble” the ecumene requires some attention to its genealogy. Christianity refers to the oikoumenē as the church and the church’s intent to bring the gospel to the whole world. Thus, the ecumenical world is made up of churches united in their difference. 11 But the notion of the ecumene has an imperial history. On a conceptual level, it maps out the spaces we consider “inhabited.” It distinguishes between realms of the known and realms of the unknown. In this sense, it foregrounds de Sousa Santos’s notion of abyssal thinking, which I will refer to later. Greeks divided their oikoumenē as “the inhabited world” into three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. 12 Beyond these worlds lay barbarian lands. When Rome colonized the Hellenized world, they took oikoumenē to mean first “the entire Roman world,” then “the whole inhabited world,” which were civilized by their imperial practice. 13 Like the Greeks, Rome depicted those beyond the imperial borders as fantastic and grotesque, people with heads like dogs and cannibals. 14 New Testament writers referred to the oikoumenē as the imperial (ungodly) world fifteen times in the gospels. Joseph and Mary, for example, return to Bethlehem due to an imperial decree that “all the world” (oikoumenē) be subject to census (Luke 2:1). This ecumene-as-exclusion continued through the Middle Ages. Cartographers inscribed imaginary creatures in the terra incognita (unknown world) at the margins of the map. The advent of modernity brought new practices to re-mythologize the “known world’s” view of the margin. One can see this in two maps a decade apart. The famous Nuremberg Chronicle (or “Book of Chronicles”) appeared in 1493 at the triumph of Catholic Spain’s Reconquista over the Moors of Andalusia. Its biblical world history shows three continents populated by Noah’s sons: Shem in Asia, Ham in Africa, and Japeth in Europe. Shunted to the terra incognita are the excluded races: one-footed Sciopods, reverse-footed Antipods, bearded women, and one-eyed monsters. 15 In 1507, a decade after the Nuremberg Chronicles, Waldseemuller’s World Map redrew the known world. One of the most important maps in the history of European cartography, it reveals a world ripe for conquest: a continent separated from Asia and a new ocean, the Pacific (First Maps of the World). 16 Though not visually present, Incas, Mayans, and other New World “savages” will replace the Sciopods at the margins. Dussel claims that the modern ecumene came into being when Europe advanced against the Islamic world to the east and “discovered” the Americas to the west. 17 In so doing, Europe was able to reposition itself at the very center of this newly conceived world. Dussel asserts that contemporary modernity was born when Europe, by posing against an “other,” could colonize “an alterity [otherness] that gave back its image of itself.” 18 Quijano and Wallerstein argue that it was Europe’s coloniza-

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tion of the Americas that forged our modern conceptions of ethnicity, race, gender, nation, labor, and economic development. 19 For decolonial theorists, the architecture of this “coloniality of power” is based on an epistemic falsehood, a pensiemente unico in which no alternative ways of thinking are possible, once again forced to the margins. BEYOND PENSIEMENTE UNICO Decolonial theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos challenges the politics of knowledge implicit in pensiemente unico as an example of “abyssal thinking,” an epistemological divide dominated by one side, Western knowledge, considered valid, rational, and normal. This divide completely obscures the non-Western side of the abyss. In this newer version of the medieval terra incognita, this non-Western realm does not exist, its exclusion so radical that its knowledge is not even accepted as an alternative to Western scientific truth. In other words, abyssal thinking eliminates its own co-presence. The world beyond Western modernity’s hegemonic thought is an invisible, non-dialectical absence. “There are beliefs, opinions, intuitive or subjective understandings, which, at the most, may become objects or raw materials for scientific enquiry.” 20 Post-abyssal thinking pushes back against this occlusion and assumes a radical co-presence of both realms of knowing, so that practices and agents on both sides of the line have equal standing. 21 De Sousa Santos works out this “cognitive justice” by foregrounding an anti-imperial “epistemology of the South.” 22 This is not a geographical South, but a multiplicity of epistemological souths, counter-knowledges emerging from peoples’ struggles. Taken together, they produce an “ecology of knowledge” that affirms a diversity of knowledges beyond scientific knowledge and widens the territory of the knowable. De Sousa Santos concedes that preparing the conditions for a post-abyssal thinking is a complex task. Western theory has to be deprived of its abyss(m)al characteristics, prominent among them a claim to universality and the monopoly of truth. How do we as white Northern academics engage with a post-abyssal way of knowing? How do we balance our incredulity, or temper the stories of others, or interrogate the inexplicable? Deborah Bird Rose, a white American anthropologist who has worked among Australian Aboriginal people and with animals on the edge of extinction, suggests that we attend to reflexive epistemologies. 23 For Bird Rose, learning to listen is a “situated connectivity,” a process of knowledge production that occurs when both knower and known are mutually embedded in an encounter. When knowledge is exchanged, both parties are changed. Learning is a reflexive process of participant observation that requires one’s whole being. She argues that this kind of openness leads to scholarship

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“that is dialogical, reflexive, and attentive to process, and that extends beyond the human and into the lives of plants, animals, and all manner of extraordinary beings and modes of communication.” 24 A post-abyssal reflection on my encounter in Phnom Penh would consider its multiple interpretations (as sleep paralysis, as preta, as projection). It can be set within new affirmations of the “extra-ordinary,” 25 ways to investigate the “super-natural,” 26 and new histories of popular mysticism 27 in which the real might also be true. 28 These scholars ask how one investigates the invisible. How does one act differently in a world that the “Holy Spirit” shares with multiple ethereal entities that are not “anthropologized”? ECUMENE REASSEMBLED An ecology of knowledge assumes new ontologies, new notions of the social. For Latour, the social is a basis for associations. It does not exist a priori to that exchange and is not limited to humans. In his controversial critique of the fundamental basis of sociology, he defines the social “not as a special domain, a specific realm, or a particular sort of thing, but only as a very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling.” 29 This reassembling refers to a radical relationality best understood by Latour and others as an assemblage. An assemblage thus clusters every “thing,” such as a statue, God, a landmine, utterances, happenings, or events, as composites or assemblages of affective relations rather than, as is traditionally held, isolated substances. 30 Latour attributes agency not only to humans or sentient beings, but also to inanimate entities (vinegar, guns, hammers, paper). He calls these entities quasi-agents or “actants” that (or who) participate in social interactions. Actants are anything that “modif[ies] other actors through a series of” actions. 31 Agency is thus determined as one thing modifying another. Vital materialists and speculative realists argue that actants are garbage dumps, video games, and cyborgs. 32 They are not objects but subjects of a flat, ontologically plural community. As political ecologist Jane Bennett argues, if they are subjects, then they are politically constituted and demand a hearing. 33 Furthermore, Latour argues, it is essential to deconstruct the assumptions of (Western) natural science because we do not want to “eliminate entities from the pluriverse.” 34 Such a radically broadened notion of the social and its pluralities challenge the very basis of a human-centric ecumene. But how do we interact with this plurality of worlds? What choices of communication are available in an ecology of knowledge? Who “speaks” for whom, and in what language?

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DREAM WORLDS IN THE NEW ECUMENE In this reassembled ecumene, which affirms a plurality of persons communicating within an ecology of knowledge, I turn back to the story of St. Francis and dreams as a mode of communication with different interpretations on either side of the abyss. There are conflicting understandings of the nature of dreams. Western dream theory rests on the notion of what Taylor has called a “secular self.” 35 For Taylor, the secular “buffered self” assumes firm boundaries between self and other, between mind and body. Western notions of the self and psyche assume that dream material is generated “within” the person. 36 In Taylor’s useful (though simplistic) typology, the European pre-modern self was “porous.” The “enchanted” world of the “porous self” is a space in which spirits and cosmic forces “cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical.” 37 Those with a porous self might consider dreamscapes as an interpenetrating dimension, borderlands of the visible/invisible, dead/living, awake/sleep in which figures come “from outside.” Such dreamers consider their bodies available for visitations. In Cecconi’s ethnography of the dreamlife of Peruvian peasants during the conflict between Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian army, many received premonition dreams and were visited by dead relatives. 38 The case I offer below is based on a particular kind of appearance: epiphany dreams. Epiphaneia means “manifestation.” 39 Epiphany dreams consist of the appearance to the dreamer of an authoritative personage who may be divine or represent a god, and this figure conveys instructions or information. This is certainly an Abrahamic perspective in relation to dreams, as we note the biblical stories in which God or angels offer directions in dreams. 40 In 2008, almost thirty years after the Khmer Rouge era, another Catholic statue, this time of Mary, was recovered from the Mekong. During the most auspicious days of the Cambodian calendar—Khmer New Year— Buddhist Vietnamese fisher-folk pulled an encrusted, six-foot statue from the murky water. Catholic Vietnamese neighbors immediately recognized the statue as Our Lady of Lourdes. The Buddhist fisher-folk set a price so steep that their Catholic neighbors despaired. That night, Mary’s spirit circled the ceiling of the Buddhist fisherman’s house where her statue was kept, so frightening him that he convinced his friends to donate the statue to the church before she cursed them. The Vietnamese Mary Queen of Peace parish built a high grotto for the statue and called her “Our Mother of the Mekong.” It was assumed that the statue had been dropped overboard by Vietnamese Catholics fleeing the violent anti-Vietnamese purges of the 1970s. Four years later, during the 2012 ASEAN meeting in Phnom Penh, another statue of Mary with the infant Jesus was recovered from the

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Mekong. In this case, a Buddhist Vietnamese fisherman dreamed the directive: I dreamed about Jesus. He asked me to pick up the statue, but when I went there, I cannot pick up. I draw the boat away from the shore. Even though we used two boats, we still cannot pick up, and we try with 4 boats and still cannot lift. Later on, I went out to rent a crane to pick it up. We brought the statue back to the preah vihear. And then I woke up and looked at my watch, it was 5 to 3am. 41

He immediately went out and enacted his dream. Both statues are greatly venerated, drawing weekly busloads of pilgrims from Vietnam. But questions linger about these statues and the ways they have transformed this small Catholic Vietnamese fishing village, a community at the periphery of the Khmer political body. If we take as a form of real the intervention of spirits through their statues into our hybrid ecumene, are the statues actants? And if so, we encounter different methodological questions. What do the Marys want? And since the interpretation of dreams is such a long historic and varied practice across cultures, what criteria might we use to evaluate the veracity of a multi-faith epistemology? CONCLUSION This chapter has challenged the membership implicit in a “whole inhabited earth” as a starting point for other questions. I have considered the decolonial challenge to Western modernity which has obscured other knowledges, peoples, and realities, and proposed a reassembled ecumene that offers a radically different way to experience the world, one in which simultaneous other worlds coexist with the quotidian world we occupy. I want to consider the invisible world and its entities because it is the most obscured in the fields I know—religion and peacemaking and progressive Christian theology. Many methodological questions emerge from a decolonial transdisciplinary study of religious communities in conflict zones. In theology’s implicit transdisciplinarity, I wonder what questions we pose about (and to) a phenomenon if we assume that the phenomenon is a subject and thus has agency? What does Mary want? Research questions become theological. My concern is also driven by my interaction as an outsider with communities in conflict zones, primarily Cambodian. It has demanded some “reflexive learning” to enter into ways of knowing quite different from a North American mentality. How many progressive theologies refer to epiphany dreams and ghosts? Within an ecology of knowledge, what resources exist to determine the spirits that liberate and afflict? What does a politics of discernment mean? If we Western scholars and Christian theologians consider an ecology of knowledge that welcomes multi-

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ple ontologies, 42 what are the implications for a progressive Christian oikoumenē in the global ecumene? NOTES 1. Amira Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter. Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 2. The Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict, signed on October 23, 1991, by nineteen governments and four warring Cambodian groups, brought an end to the Cambodian-Vietnamese War. It also initiated the UN Transitional Authority Commission (UNTAC), the first time the UN took over governance of a state. See Heonik Kwon, Ghosts of War in Vietnam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 3. See Ian Harris, Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice (Oahu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005). 4. Chan Sophea Hang, Stec Gamlan, and Yay Deb, “Worshipping Kings and Queens in Cambodia Today,” in History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia, edited by John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie, 113–126 (Oahu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004). 5. Didier Bertrand, “The Names and Identities of the ‘Boramey’ Spirits Possessing Cambodian Mediums,” Asian Folklore Studies 60 (2001): 31–47. 6. David Chandler, A History of Cambodia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007). 7. Peg Levine, Love and Dread in Cambodia. Weddings, Births and Ritual Harm under the Khmer Rouge (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2010). 8. See Katherine Ewing, “Dreams from a Saint: Anthropological Atheism and the Temptation to Believe,” American Anthropologist New Series 96.3 (1994): 571–583. 9. Jean Langford, “Spirits of Dissent: Southeast Asian Memories and Disciplines of Death,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25 (2005): 143; see also Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 105. 10. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges,” Revista Critica de Ciencias Sociais (2007; http:// www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santosen.html; accessed November 15, 2016). 11. See the “Common Vision and Understanding of the World Council of Churches” (14 February 2006), a policy statement adopted by the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and commended to member churches and ecumenical partners for study and action in September 1997 (http://www.oikoumene.org/en/ resources/documents/assembly/2006-porto-alegre/3-preparatory-and-backgrounddocuments/common-understanding-and-vision-of-the-wcc-cuv). 12. Eric C. Stewart, “Reader’s Guide: New Testament Space/Spaciality,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 42 (2012): 143. 13. Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). 14. Stewart, “Reader’s Guide”; James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 15. Karin Friedrich, “Review of Chronicle of the World: The Complete and Annotated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 by Hartmann Schedel,” The Slavonic and East European Review 82 (2004): 749. 16. “Columbia or America: 500 Years of Controversy,” First Maps of the New World, Cornell University (https://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/columbia-or-america/ maps; accessed December 12, 2016). 17. Enrique Dussel, “Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures),” Boundary 2 20.3 (1993): 65–76.

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18. Dussel, “Eurocentrism and Modernity,” 66. 19. Anibal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Americanity as a Concept. Or the Americas in the Modern World-System,” International Journal of Social Sciences 134 (1992): 549–552. 20. de Sousa Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking,” 80. 21. de Sousa Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking.” 22. . Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014). 23. Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 24. Deborah Rose Bird, “Recursive Epistemologies and an Ethics of Attention,” in Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field, edited by Jean-Guy Goulet and Granville Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 89. 25. Jean-Guy Goulet and Granville Miller (eds.), Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). 26. Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016); cf. Jeffrey J. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 27. Robert Orsi, “Abundant Histories: Marian Apparitions as Alternative Modernity,” Historically Speaking 9 (2008): 12–16. 28. Amy Hollywood, Acute Melancholia and Other Essays. Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 29. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7. 30. Mark Bonta and John Protevi, Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). 31. Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature. How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 75. 32. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Nick Srnicek, The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne, Australia: re.press, 2011). 33. Bennett, Vibrant Matter. 34. Bruno Latour, “Which Cosmos, Whose Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck,” Common Knowledge 10 (2004): 458. 35. Charles Taylor, “A Secular Age: Buffered and Porous Selves,” The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere (2008; http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/09/ 02/buffered-and-porous-selves/; accessed December 12, 2016). 36. David Shulman and Guy Stroumsa (eds.), Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 37. Taylor, “A Secular Age.” 38. Arianna Cecconi, “Dreams, Memory, and War: An Ethnography of Night in the Peruvian Andes,” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 16.2 (2011): 401–424. 39. Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 40. Kelly Bulkeley, The Wilderness of Dreams: Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Shaul Bar, A Letter that Has Not Been Read: Dreams in the Hebrew Bible (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union Press, 2001). 41. Hu, Phang Van, personal communication with author (December 19, 2012). 42. Cf. Kathryn Poethig, “Visa Trouble: Cambodian American Christians and Their Defense of Multiple Citizenships,” in Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases, edited by Dwight N. Hopkins, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta, David Batstone, 187–202 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

FOURTEEN Theology at the Nexus of Spirit and Life Kim Yong-Bok

The most outstanding sign of our times is the intense suffering of human persons and other living beings throughout the world, as they are systematically victimized under the global US empire. The US empire today is the unambiguous subject of our spiritual conversation. For a social scientific analysis of this dominant empire, we rely upon the insights of the late Ninan Koshy, an Asian ecumenical scholar, a prophet, and a pilgrim for world peace. Koshy was a highly esteemed world ecumenical leader. In 2002 he published a booklet titled War on Terror which proposed that empire should be the main focus of missiological discourse for the ecumenical movement. 1 Just before he passed away, Koshy wrote a major article on the implications of nuclear power plants and the nuclear industry. 2 In it he critiqued the National Security Strategy of the United States of America released by the George W. Bush administration, which asserted the need “to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction,” 3 and the report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which called for development and deployment of global missile defenses “to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world.” 4 Koshy pointed out that this national security strategy was really about a Pax Americana enforced by dominant military power, with US military forces deployed around the globe to protect US interests. In this early part of the twenty-first century, in fact, the cosmos faces the unprecedented threat of destruction. Far surpassing the ravages of 191

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natural disasters, there is now the possibility of “omnicide” in the form of cosmic disaster that could annihilate earth and its eco-sphere. I use “Zoecide” (“zoe” for “life”) to refer to the total destruction of life on earth, as in the various forms of historical genocide: ethnic, tribal, racial, gender, caste, religious, ideological, national, political, economic, military, and ecological. Fragmented analyses do not capture the reality of such Zoecide; we need to grasp it as an interconnected whole. We are now developing an integral study of life, calling this “Zoesophia” (life wisdom), which must include all the convergent stories of death, killing, and destruction of living beings. We may call the whole story of this destruction “Thanatography,” which is the opposite of “Zoegraphy,” the integrated story of life of all living beings. DISCERNING THE TIMES: SPIRITUAL HERMENEUTICS I propose that we apply a new approach from the spiritual realm to discover the Zoegraphy of all living beings. Considering the immensity of the global threat, we need a fresh method—a “Spiritual Hermeneutics” that can recover the full reality and implications of the Spirit, because life as a whole is a spiritual reality. Many religious texts express the living reality of the Spirit: “The Spirit of God is upon me to preach the gospel! God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; God has sent me to proclaim that the captives will be released, that the blind will see and the oppressed will be set free” (Luke 4:18). Open your eyes! “Their groaning echoes throughout the universe, and is joined by the Spirit’s groaning” (Romans 8:26). And appropriating Romans 8:2: “The powers and principalities of this world”—now with comprehensive destructive might in the form of the global empire— are “causing the whole creation to groan, in bondage, waiting for its liberation.” The fundamental assumption of a Spiritual Hermeneutics is that creation as a whole is a spiritual reality of life and death. This affirmation is an essential part of liberating spirituality from its castigation as “premodern” and “superstitious” under the media technocratic power complex. The true nature of the spirit is creative selfhood for conviviality (living together) among all living beings. Spiritual Hermeneutics makes several affirmations: 1. Life is Spirit: All living beings are creative spirits in conviviality (living together). People are part of this community of living beings who are sustained by the land as their abode of life. But the present reality of all beings is their life under empire. We will discern this reality through a hermeneutics of spirituality. 2. The story of life: Zoegraphy is the integrated story of koinonia of all living beings in the original garden of life, circling toward a “fiesta

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of life” as the omega point in the cosmic oikos, the abode of all living beings. 3. Entering spiritual discernment: Through our Hermeneutics of Spirituality (or Spiritual Hermeneutics), we affirm that all living beings are spiritual subjects; this affirmation is the starting point. Rejecting any discourse that obscures reality, we foster creative, convergent discourses that help us to understand life fully. Rejecting the spiritual-material dichotomy, we refuse any fragmented spiritual discourse that masks reality. We need a creative convergence of our rich spiritual traditions toward a holistic discourse on spirituality. This must be done from the perspective of the spirits of living subjects who are oppressed, victimized, and longing for conviviality. Their spirits are groaning, agonizing, and envisioning. This means that we are recasting traditional theology as Spiritual Hermeneutics and that we are beginning with the experiences of actual, living beings. Spiritual Zoegraphy From the perspective of the Spirit that is present in all life, we recognize victimized beings and their search for conviviality. We may understand: (1) God as the foundational spirituality of creation in the context of darkness (Marduk) and chaos (Tiamat) in the creation narrative; (2) Christ as the incarnational spirituality of the cross and resurrection against the Deus of the Roman Empire; and (3) Holy Spirit groaning for revitalization of life throughout the cosmic abode. All living beings are spiritual subjects and exist in convivial community on earth. This is our general affirmation. We intend to engage in conversations on the Spirit of the Cosmos, the Spirit of the Earth, the Spirit of the Community (village, nation, state, etc.), the Spirit of the Body (as diverse, individual and collective), the Spirit of the human being, and the convergence of the Spirits of land, sea, and space in the cosmic abode. We will engage in conversations toward a Feast of Life among the community of all beings of this Earth and our cosmic oikos (household). But first, we need to grasp the reality of life under its current domination by empire. THE EMPIRE FROM A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE Transnational corporate power is draped in a cloak of spirituality. It believes in the virtue of production and unlimited growth as unquestioned “goodness,” particularly since the disintegration of socialist state economies. The original notion of the liberal state is based on private property and capitalism, which are regarded as guarantees of life for a free indi-

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vidual. Thus private poverty is sanctified as the essential good for human life and human freedom (a view that may be traced back to Thomas Hobbes). Crude neoliberalism believes that the expansion of the private corporation in capitalism is essential for the progress of human civilization and for overcoming the people’s poverty and deprivation. Therefore, the free market system is the best way to conduct economic transactions, and this means privatizing production, systems of exchange, the land, and its natural resources in addition to the global financial and monetary systems. Thus private property has become a “Holy Cow.” This process has taken over the power of the nation states and their institutions, eclipsing legal and ethical systems, and it is using the tools of technocracy as well as the education and communication systems. The liberal and neoliberal capitalist corporations, now transnational, have integrated to forge the global market regime. In the process, this economic corporate power has incubated greed as its motive power in a pseudoreligious fashion. Mammon has become a core spiritual entity. Its market propaganda resembles religious fetishism; its technological instruments display apparently magical skills demonstrating omniscience and omnipotence. Prime examples are the current regimes of nuclear technocracy and bio-technocracy. The global corporate power nexus has integrated the global geopolitical regime into its embrace, claiming ultimate legitimacy, unilateral domination, and unlimited power. This new power has used the absolute claims of messianic fanaticism in its national security regime, and this has provided the entry point into the era of omnicide or Zoecide. The US empire—an imperial state among nation states—claims hegemonic sovereignty over all the political powers in the world, exerting control through the all-powerful global “Nuclear, Military, Industrial, Media, Academic Complex.” This historical trend has precedents—that is, the despotism based on divine claims that was manifested in archaic forms in the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome and the political powers of Chin, Indus, and Ganges. In the twenty-first century, modern political powers such as ultranationalist fascism, Nazism, and ideological totalitarianism are joining the ranks as rivals to the empire. We see alarming political developments around the world: in the United States a new form of white, Zionist racism cloaked in Christian evangelicalism is on the rise, along with Islamophobia; in Europe, the seeds of neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist political forces are sprouting; in West Asia, the Zionist regime is firmly established in the State of Israel; the Hindutva fascist political force is becoming entrenched in India; Japanese neo-nationalist power is manifested as Japanese “Abeism”; Slavic nationalism is rising in Russia; and Chunghwa Chinese culturalism is in a budding stage.

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This is the dynamic vortex produced by the US empire as it seeks to establish imperial hegemony on earth in pseudo-religious terms. The global empire’s obvious purpose is to expand its borders in pursuit of global hegemony and control over economic resources, consolidating the interests of the neoliberal global market. Its wars are also a new form of crusade, justified through religious language and theological claims. US military power is glorified in the name of peace, the power of money is glorified in the name of prosperity, power of science and technology (technocracy) exalted in the name of solutions to all of civilization’s problems, the power of culture (media and communications) glorified in the name of enlightenment, and self-righteous Christianity is elevated to justify imperial tyranny, which now gives ultimatums in the triumph of liberal capitalism. All of these are signs of ultimate blasphemy. Imperial Power in Symbiosis with Religion The empire is supported by a special brand of religion. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about this in his book The Structure of Nations and Empire, and how the empire requires the existence of gods and exercises power through religious quests for ultimacy and universality. 5 The global empire has manifested itself in regional, interregional, and global realities. Take the apartheid regime in Palestine, in the midst of the West Asian states. The historical roots and legacy of this West Asian apartheid system lie in the historical confrontation between the Christian Roman Empire and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It is one of two pivot points on the current global geopolitical ellipse. The other pivot is the Korean peninsula. East Asian geopolitical dynamics have evolved into the contemporary legacy of ideological apartheid caused by hegemonic rivalry among the East Asian powers of China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. The East Asian legacy goes back to the nineteenth century of Western colonial expansion and includes the Cold War legacy in Korea. Asian socialism basically has a nationalist thrust and therefore stands against imperial domination. Another example is the remaining racial apartheid anchored in South Africa (which began to dismantle in the last part of the twentieth century). The South African legacy goes back to the Western colonial domination over Africa, which began with the slave trade. This racial apartheid is being reshaped in the global context as it is rekindled in many places such as the United States. Yet another example is the situation of the Dalit people of India. Dalits have been the most degraded, downtrodden, exploited, and least educated in society. They have been socially, culturally, religiously, economically, and politically subjugated and marginalized through three thousand years of serfdom that reduced them to the status of “non-people.” Clear-

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ly, Dalit liberation should be deeply grounded in their identity as spiritual subjects. The wounded psyches, souls, and spirits of the Dalit people as victims of Hindu religious ideology reveal the nature of India’s neoHindu religious nationalism. The oppressive ideology of Hindutva universalizes the hegemonic reign of political power not just over the lives of the Dalit people but over the whole Indian people and land. Zoecide and Thanatography We need to probe deeply into the historical legacy of Zoecide and Thanatography. The genocidal violence inflicted by the empires in their history of conquests and hegemonic wars is beyond calculation. The brutal atrocities committed in the course of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere have revealed the true nature of the global empire, which has carried out arbitrary, unilateral military actions against the peoples of those countries. How many were lost in the conquests by the European imperial powers against the Americas? Some calculate that Native American victims of genocide total as many as 110 million. One of the theological justifications for that genocide was the establishment of the Kingdom of God in America—a sort of Christian political Zionism. Then there were the victims of World War II. How many people suffered and were victimized during that war? Then there are the nuclear victims, whose number is in the millions. Korean Discussion The Korean people’s self-determination and sovereignty have been continuously violated since 1876, when the Japanese invaded the peninsula and forced a “peace treaty” on the Korean Kingdom. Soon after that, in 1894, the Korean people carried out a major movement of historical transformation—the Donghak Peasant Revolution. The royal regime invited the Chinese to suppress the revolution; meanwhile the Japanese started the Sino-Japanese War to take over Korea and used military means to expel Russian influence from the country (Russo-Japanese War, 1905). The Anglo-American powers secretly approved Japanese hegemony over Korea (Taft-Katsura Secret Agreement, 1905). At this time, Japan forced the Korean Royal Court to accept the status of Korea as a Japanese Protectorate. Korea was forcibly annexed to Japan in 1910 and remained a Japanese colony until 1945. Japan’s 1937 invasion of China, which sparked the Sino-Japanese War, led Japan into World War II. During the war, the Korean people were forced to serve the Japanese colonial rulers as forced laborers in Japanese military industries and as sex slaves (“comfort women”) to the Japanese military in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. It is estimated that about

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100,000 Koreans were among the people hit by the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the end of the war, the Korean land was occupied by the US military south of the 38th parallel and by the USSR military on the northern side, through the forced division of the peninsula. Then Korea became the victim of the Cold War, which was a direct cause of the following Korean War. The historical legacy of the Korean War and the division of Korea under a violent state of ceasefire has been maintained for the last seventy years. More than five million Koreans died, and more than ten million Koreans became refugees and were separated from their families. Now the cloud of potential nuclear war hangs over the peninsula. This cloud has existed since the Korean War but has intensified recently through direct threats of nuclear military confrontation, as is manifested in the military exercises simulating nuclear war. For more than a century, the Korean people—of both the North and the South—have aspired to self-determination, unified sovereignty, and peace. We have expressed this longing in our historical movements from the middle of the nineteenth century until now. We are convinced that the political powers of the nation states and their international institutions are completely inadequate for the task of making peace on earth. Therefore, peoples around the world must act together. In Korea, we as a people now see an opportunity to move together toward a life of peace and conviviality. Yet the Korean situation cannot be understood through socialscientific or political calculations. The Korean people have a long legacy of spiritual responses, which take the forms of resistance, transformative envisioning, and convergent spiritual movements led by the Christian, Donghak, Buddhist, Confucian, and Seon (仙) religions, as was seen in the March 1st Independence Movement of 1919. This tradition and legacy were effective in the Korean minjung (grassroots) and democratic movements of the 1970s and 1980s as well as in the current democratic peace movement, as is demonstrated in the 1973 Theological Declaration of Korean Christians and the 1988 Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace on the Korean Peninsula. These parallel the Kairos Document of South Africa in 1985 and the Kairos Palestine Document in 2008. Zoecide: Life as a Spiritual Reality Through its acts of domination, suppression, and ruination, the empire destroys the capacity of living beings as subjects of their own lives. We are at a pivotal point between the denial of life in favor of a dead, mechanical existence and the celebration and nurture of the life force on our planet. This pivot is dramatically displayed in the battle for the living

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ecology of Jeju Island versus the life-killing power of the United States Navy. The cancerous body is approaching the end of its life. We are an exploding population living on dwindling resources. Oil companies now go to extremes to find the last of the oil, drilling deep in the ocean and fracking the land for oil and gas, which causes pollution and earthquakes. Rainforests are torn down to create oil palm fields. Worst of all, a small elite group now has the power to annihilate the entire planet with their nuclear devices. As the cancer of war and exploitation spreads, people are enslaved to the minority elites and their life-denying culture. Ecocide is expanding as a result of biological manipulation, with the biotech industry promoting medical engineering and contaminating the earth with untested GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Life under the Empire Today people and all other living beings face the reality of empire and live under the threat of its power. There have been many empires in world history, but today’s empire is radically different from those of the past. The US empire is not yet fully formed and is still growing toward its end. The first important characteristic of the empire is its global reach, organizing the world into a mono-polar hegemonic order. Since the disintegration of the USSR, which ended the bi-polar order of the Cold War era, the US empire has reigned as the sole superpower due to its overwhelmingly superior military forces. Global institutions like the United Nations, originally created to secure world peace, are now politically subsumed under the empire, as is demonstrated by the ongoing US wars. Ninan Koshy wrote that “the nuclear arsenal is the center of the military power of the Empire. All nuclear powers are under US politicalmilitary strategic control.” 6 Following established US presidential practice, the Obama administration allocated USD 1 trillion for nuclear research and development, which continues without pause today. The empire wields control over earth’s life through a massive, constantly growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Its super-efficient military technocracy also extends to the cosmos, with its capacities for cyber warfare, biological warfare, and biochemical warfare. The spiritual, religious, and academic dimensions of empire also factor into this equation. Its absolute claims show total disdain for accepted legal, ethical, and religious standards. Under the empire, enemies are created and demonized—consider George W. Bush’s designation of the “axis of evil”—through the media’s propaganda and war-mongering. “Prosperity theology” is preached to justify economic greed. The triumphalism of the liberal elite reflects the tenet of “manifest destiny” (US expansion as destined by God). Other forms of pseudo-religiosity operat-

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ing under the empire include the commodity fetishism of cultural market hegemony, the scientific triumphalism of technocracy, ecological chauvinism, and Islamophobia. At the same time, countless spiritual beings— the poor, the enslaved, and the oppressed—are constantly victimized under the empire’s ecocidal rule. RESISTANCE TO EMPIRE THROUGH SPIRITUAL ACTION Victimized spiritual beings are the most blessed, for they are the first to resist empire, to transform the power of the empire, and to create the oikos of conviviality for all living beings. These spiritual beings have begun to exert their spiritual energy (Ki) to heal themselves as spiritual subjects of life, to cure their wounds, and to restore their communities of life through recovery and restitution, for right relations of justice and for a blessed life of conviviality. There is a spiritual convergence among the faiths of religious communities, nations, and ethnic communities (native Adivasi communities, indigenous communities, and original communities) in search of a new reality. The demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula is one location where this process is taking place. The power of the empire will ultimately be expelled for a liberated, convivial life of peace. In South Africa, this process has begun, and we hope to see the Palestinian people overcome the Zionist power, which is also an extension of the empire. We hope that the Dalit people’s movement will overcome Hindutva power. Remembering that all living beings in the cosmos are spiritual subjects, that the earth is a spiritual entity that houses all living beings, and that the cosmos is our spiritual household (Oikonomia Pneuma), we need to gather Zoesophia (Wisdom of Life) in order to realize a convergence of the life-wisdom of all living beings as free, co-creative subjects of life. Their spiritual life may be understood through the discourse of Zoegraphy, the story of common life together. Zoesophia and Spiritual Hermeneutics Zoesophia and Spiritual Hermeneutics involves several affirmations: First, God the Spirit is the Creator of all living beings, who are God’s partners in life. Living beings affirm themselves as spiritual subjects of life. The Spirit of God communes with living beings from the moment of creation, initiating a spiritual covenant, and sustaining them in spiritual partnership and communion. The Spirit of Jesus the Christ dwells (incarnate) among living beings. Every living being (Saengmyeong—生命體) is a spiritual self, a spiritual subject with spiritual dynamics of creative selftranscendence.

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Second, the cosmic oikos is the spiritual household of living stones and living beings. The empire, symbolized as Leviathan, Tiamat, and Behemoth, causes omnicide through domination by omnipotent power, ultimately claiming to expel the gods. Political power must become service (stewardship) to sustain all living beings as subjects of life so that life may flourish in fullness. Third, on oikos and empire: the neoliberal economic, technocratic regime of limitless growth based on greed must be transformed into a convivial household of Ubuntu and SangSaeng, sharing love and koinonia. Fourth, on land and empire: the geopolitical, nuclear technocracy of the Military, Industrial, Media, Academic Complex (Nuclear MIMAC) must be transformed into the peaceful garden of life. Fifth, on polis and empire: the politics of technocratic power must be transformed to secure the sovereign rights of all living beings in local community polity, in national governance, and in international political institutions. Sixth, on koinonia and empire: by overcoming contradictions and reconciling conflicts, true koinonia and conviviality can come to be. Violence from discrimination and segregation by class, race, gender, ethnicity, or ability must vanish. Seventh, on body and empire: the health and integrity of living bodies will be free from medical and psychological manipulation. Eighth, culture will be freed from the fetishes, intoxication, and devilish “magic” of the empire. Ninth, spirituality will be freed from false religions and false gods. All these dimensions will converge to form an integrated vision of the fullness of life in conviviality among all living beings. NOTES 1. Ninan Koshy, War on Terror: Reordering the World (New Delhi: LeftWord, 2002). Koshy was also the chief drafter of the “People’s Charter on Peace for Life” and the “Ecumenical Call for a World without Nuclear Weapons.” 2. Ninan Koshy, “The Empire and Asia,” Theologies and Cultures 2.1 (2005): 4–25. 3. U.S. National Security Strategy: Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/ pa/ei/wh/15425.htm). 4. This is a Project of the New American Century (2000; https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses). 5. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empire: A Study of the Recurring Patterns and Problems of the Political Order in Relation to the Unique Problems of the Nuclear Age (San Francisco: Scribner, 1959). 6. Koshy, War on Terror, 7.

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Index

abject(s, ed), 77, 78, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 96 actants, 186, 188 affordable care act, 79 Afghanistan, 10, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 175, 196, 223 afraid, 5, 170 agency, 7, 22, 36, 40, 41, 42, 169, 171, 186, 188 agriculture, 101, 106 ancestor, 11, 12, 77, 91, 135 anxiety, 25, 165 apartheid, 7, 21, 23, 25, 35, 36, 40, 44, 141, 156, 195 assemblage, 186 assimilation, 21, 96, 97, 103, 104, 107 authoritarian, 144 authoritative, 42, 44, 45, 187 avatar(s), 54, 135 blackness, 36, 41 blasphemy, 195 border(s), 68, 72, 74, 82, 104, 114, 117–118, 120, 183, 184, 195 Brexit, 63, 64 Cambodia, 10, 57, 181–182, 182, 183, 187, 188 Canaanite, 8, 111–120 cannibals, 184 caste, 81, 111, 191 city, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88–90, 90, 91, 133 civilization, xi, 20, 42, 44, 56, 96, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 108, 158, 194 Cold War, 195, 197 coloniality, 7, 17–18, 23–24, 25, 28, 41, 184 compassion(ate), 52, 53, 64, 70, 71, 156, 170, 174 complicity, 127, 129, 140

conflict zones, 10, 165, 172, 181, 188 conquest, 38, 39, 42, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 184 contextualization, xii, 56, 60, 155 conversation, 1, 18, 28, 35, 36, 40, 42, 53, 128, 169, 191 conviviality, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200 cosmos, 50, 133, 191, 193, 198, 199 counter-creation, 9, 133, 134, 135–136 counter-creativity, 9 cross-scriptural, 59–60 cross-textual, 60 crowding diseases, 102 crusade, 195 cyber, 198 Dalit(s), 50, 111, 112, 117, 119, 195, 199 decolonial(ity), 6, 7, 17–18, 25, 28, 36, 184, 185, 188 decolonization, 5, 7, 17–18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25–27, 28, 42, 98 democracy, 7, 37, 40–41, 42, 44, 46, 100, 160 dignity, 8, 87, 112, 118, 126, 150, 156, 170, 174, 176. See also indignity discovery, xi, 2, 55, 85, 98, 98–99, 130 discrimination, 21, 25, 83, 97, 114, 161, 200 dispossession, 35, 39, 100, 107, 168 distribution(s), 65, 87, 89. See also redistribution domination, xii, 18, 23, 25, 87, 89, 98, 101, 106, 108, 142, 156, 158, 161, 170, 193, 194, 195, 197, 200 dream(s), 10, 11, 42, 105, 181–188 economic(s), 9, 10, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 57, 64, 70, 101, 106, 125, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 156, 158, 162, 166, 167, 172, 184, 191, 194, 195, 198,

217

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Index

200. See also religio-economic; socioeconomic economy, 23, 43, 96, 97, 107, 141, 153, 159, 162 emancipation, 12, 19, 22, 126 empathy, 172 empowerment, 159 enchanted, 187 epiphany, 10, 181, 187, 188 equality, 23, 89, 161. See also inequality erotic(ism), 86, 88, 91, 118 Eurocentric(ism), 17, 35, 41, 42, 44–45, 141 evangelism, 6, 9, 86, 130, 136, 144 exclusion, 35, 86, 87, 91, 114, 161, 169, 170, 184, 185 excrement, 82 exile(d), 3, 78, 134 exotic, 1, 2 expansion(ism), 19, 56, 80, 83, 98, 130, 194, 195, 198 exploitation, 23, 87, 97, 98, 156, 198 extremism, 153, 157 faith(s), 10, 21, 37, 38, 42, 44, 45, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 66, 69, 72, 73, 113, 115, 116, 119, 129, 131, 132, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 157, 161, 170, 175, 188, 199. See also interfaith fear, 7, 42, 63, 68, 72, 112, 126, 135, 144, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177 feminist, 8, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119 fishing, 182, 188 forgiveness, 10, 53, 175, 176 genocide, 44, 191, 196 guru(s), 54 healer(s), 28, 107, 114, 117, 119 healing, 8, 111, 112, 114, 115–116, 119, 144, 145, 146, 176 heathen(s), xi, 8, 95, 98, 126, 130, 153 hegemony, 22, 25, 27, 157, 195, 196, 198 heretics, 129 Hiroshima, 196 holocaust, 97, 100 home(s), xi, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 37, 66, 69, 78, 80, 84, 90, 119, 120, 129, 130, 171, 174

homeless, 90, 146 homophobia, 81, 144 hope(s), 7, 10, 12, 46, 57, 65, 67, 72, 77, 86, 126, 129, 130, 135, 136, 154, 155, 157, 161, 176, 199 identity, 9, 20, 21, 22, 27, 51, 52, 59, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 98, 104, 112, 114, 115, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 157, 182, 195 Ilizwi, 7, 45 imagination, 10, 26, 97, 108, 112, 130, 134, 181 immigrant(s), 8, 78, 79, 82, 84, 87, 88, 91, 182 imperialism, 18, 22, 23, 24, 56, 87, 90, 115 inclusion, 78, 95, 115, 136, 170 inclusive, 125, 142 inculturation, 20, 22, 28 indigenization, 20, 26 indigenous, 12, 35, 78, 84, 166, 199; indigenous knowledge, 35; indigenous land, 80; indigenous peoples, 4, 80, 84, 87, 91, 95, 96, 97–98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 168; indigenous perspective, 86 indignity, 12. See also dignity inequality, 25, 146, 167. See also equality injustice(s), 24, 53, 81, 83, 87, 97, 148, 153, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 170, 176 interfaith, 125. See also faith interrogation, 181 intersectional(ity), 5, 114 islamophobia, 7, 194, 198 justice, 9, 24, 53, 64, 70, 73, 81, 83, 87, 89, 125, 134, 135, 139, 141, 146, 148, 149, 150, 155, 156, 161, 167, 185, 199 Kakuma, 7, 65, 66–67, 69–70 kenosis, 132 killing fields, 181 koinonia, 192, 200 labor(er), 153, 167, 168, 169, 184, 196 legitimation, 96, 98, 104

Index living theology, 57 localization, 20 Luís Alejandro Velasco, 3 manifest destiny, 198 manifestation(s), 58, 74, 86, 166, 167, 181, 187 Marduk, 133, 134, 193 margin(s), xi, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 78, 111, 112, 117, 136, 141, 150, 158, 159, 162, 167, 184 marginalization, 26, 87, 107, 113, 114, 161, 168 marginalized, 7, 45, 71, 112, 115, 118, 119, 135, 136, 155, 160, 195 materialist(s), 143, 183, 186 metaphor(s), 45, 50, 58, 115, 116, 140 migration, 68; immigration, 79, 82 militarization, 153, 159 minjung, 50, 197 Muslim(s), 8, 54, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 78, 79, 81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 91, 107 Nagasaki, 196 naming, 39, 50, 51, 52, 81, 131 nationalism, 17, 22, 28, 98, 104, 153, 156, 194, 195 native(s), 1–12, 22, 44, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 128, 196, 199 necropolitics, 84 omnicide, 11, 191, 194, 200 organic, 142, 165 orientalism, 88 otherness, 97, 114, 116, 117, 184 Palestine, 125, 166, 195, 197 Pantocrator, 129–130, 135 peasant(s), 187, 196 pedagogy, 149 persecution, 10, 64, 129, 132, 154, 155, 156, 159, 166 polarization, 7, 64, 72, 74, 153 poor, 4, 7, 37, 42, 43, 44, 50, 63, 64, 66, 73, 113, 129, 136, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 157, 159, 161, 162, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 192, 198 pornification, 9, 140, 143, 149

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porous, 187 postcolonial(ism), 7, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 97, 111, 114, 116 post-truth, 63, 64, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 147 poverty, 21, 25, 36, 41, 82, 102, 146, 147, 161, 172, 193, 194 prison(er), 44, 73, 81, 96, 132, 146, 157, 172, 183 prosperity, 9, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 168, 195, 198 queer(s), 130, 132 race, 23, 35, 36, 39, 42, 44, 78, 84, 100, 103, 111, 114, 128, 141, 184, 200; racial apartheid, 195; racial caste, 81; racial contract, 100; racial exclusion, 35; racial discrimination, 21, 25, 161; racial prejudice, 36 racism, 35, 36, 40, 42, 126, 158, 194 rape, 65 realists, 186 reassembling, 186 reconciliation, 3, 40, 118, 170, 174 redistribution, 25. See also distribution refugee(s), 7, 64, 64–65, 66, 67, 68–70, 71, 72, 96, 158, 181, 183, 197 religio-economic, 149. See also economic requerimiento, 100 resistance, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 97, 98, 118, 133, 153–162, 166, 197 respect, 2, 3, 5, 8, 43, 63, 78, 82, 87, 88, 100, 139, 142, 150, 170, 174 SangSaeng, 200 security, 66, 68, 74, 115, 119, 144, 146, 170, 191, 194 segregation, 141, 200 site(s) of struggle, 40, 45 slavery, 35, 80, 81, 102, 125, 126, 128, 149, 156, 161 socioeconomic, 159. See also economic sovereignty, 56, 99, 100, 194, 196, 197 spiritualism, 9 Standing Rock, 80 stateless, 158 stigma(tize), 64, 130 stranger, 86, 166

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Index

subaltern(ity), 8, 11, 24, 111–112, 115, 118, 135 subordination, 18, 114, 170 sunken place, 78, 79, 80, 82, 88, 90, 91 superior(ity), 26, 35, 42, 78, 99, 102, 115, 158, 173, 198 supernatural, 53, 85, 181, 182 superstitious, 183, 192 supremacy, 35, 42, 98, 100, 130, 153, 160 survivor(s), 3, 84, 183 symbiotic, 19, 59, 144, 146 symbol(s), 26, 35, 36, 46, 50, 58, 82, 83, 85, 129, 131, 133, 154, 183 technocracy, 194, 195, 198, 200 terrorism, 7, 63, 68, 69, 156 terrorist(s), 65, 68, 69, 191 theologies of the opaque, 85 Tiamat, 133, 193, 200 trafficking, 79 transgender, 8, 78, 79, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 91 translation, 20, 21, 27, 36 transnational, 79, 193, 194 trauma, 176, 183 tribals, 11, 50, 99, 104, 191 Tupaia, 1–2, 3, 5, 11 tyranny, 195

ubuntu, 200 underside, 4 victim(s), 3, 9, 35, 63, 82, 115, 132, 140, 195, 196, 197 voice(less), 6, 7, 9, 55, 71, 82, 86, 89, 91, 112, 114, 128, 131, 135, 142, 159, 177 vortex, 78, 195 vulnerability, 112, 118, 132, 161, 172 wall(s), 6, 8, 82, 95, 96, 98, 104, 142 war(fare), 10, 64, 66, 81, 82, 98, 100, 104, 106, 126, 130, 160, 167, 168, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 191, 196, 197, 198 water(s), 1, 80, 105, 107, 108, 145, 169, 171, 177, 182, 187 watershed, 158 wealth, 9, 24, 25, 100, 101, 140, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 154, 173 World War, 104, 196 xenophobia/c, 81, 116, 144 Year Zero, 181 Zionism, 196 Zoegraphy, 11, 191, 192, 199

About the Contributors

Peter Cruchley is a mission theologian who works for Council for World Mission as the Mission Secretary for Mission Development. He spent twenty-five years in pastoral ministry in Wales, UK, and in teaching Mission, Introduction to Bible, and Church History at Cardiff University and St Michaels Theological College, Llandaff, Cardiff. He has published two books, God at Ground Level (2008) and Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land? (2001), and numerous articles in the International Review of Mission. Jione Havea is a native Methodist pastor from Tonga and a research fellow with Trinity Theological College (Aotearoa New Zealand) and with the Public and Contextual Theology research centre (Charles Sturt University, Australia). Jione has taught at institutions in Tonga, the United States, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand; and recently authored Jonah: An Earth Bible Commentary (2020) and edited Sea of Readings: The Bible and the South Pacific (2018), Religion and Power (2018), Scripture and Resistance (2019), and People and Land (2019). Roderick R. Hewitt is a Jamaican and serves as the academic leader for Research and Higher Degrees in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. He lectures and publishes within the disciplines of Systematic Theology, Ecumenical Theology, and Missiology. His vast ecumenical experience includes the Council for World Mission, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and the World Council of Churches. He has published widely in many journals, and his book publications include Church and Culture (2012) and the co-edited Ecumenical Missiology (2016) and Postcolonial Mission (2010). Sindiso Jele was born in Zimbabwe and is an ordained minister of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA). As a minister, Jele worked in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa, in both rural and urban contexts, with the poor and the rich. At the time of writing, Jele is a mission practitioner working with the CWM. Eunice Karanja Kamaara is professor of African Christian ethics at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, and international affiliate of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Indiana. Kamaara’s pri221

222

About the Contributors

mary areas of research are African Christian Ethics and International Health Research Ethics. She actively engages in inter-disciplinary, interpretive action research: ethical, medical, socio-anthropological, theological, and gender approaches to Christianity and development today. Jennifer Leath is the assistant professor of religion and social justice at Iliff School of Theology, and Senior Pastor of Campbell Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Leath has also pastored in Media, Pennsylvania, and White Plains, New York. She was a 2014–2015 Women’s Studies in Religion Program Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. Leath is a cofounder of the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics & Social Justice (CARSS) at Columbia University, where she also worked as the assistant director for research. Samuel Ngun Ling actively participated as a leading figure in national ecumenical bodies in Myanmar and Asia and currently serves as a professor of systematic theology and president of the Myanmar Institute of Theology, Yangon, Myanmar. His publications include Communicating Christ in Myanmar: Issues, Interactions and Perspectives (2005, 2014), Christianity through Our Neighbors’ Eyes: Rethinking the 200 Years Old American Baptist Missions in Myanmar (2014), and The Meeting of Christianity and Buddhism in Burma: Its Past, Present, and Future Perspectives (2017). S. Lily Mendoza was born and raised in San Fernando, Pampanga, Philippines, then migrated to the United States in 1995. She is an associate professor of culture and communication at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; author of Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipino American Identities; and lead editor of Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory. Her research interests include indigenous and post/colonial studies, ecology and communication, theories of identity and subjectivity, and cultural politics in national, post- and transnational contexts. Surekha Nelavala is an adjunct faculty member at United Lutheran Seminary, Gettysburg, Philadelphia, teaching courses in Biblical hermeneutics and integrated courses of cultural studies, feminist studies, and postcolonial studies. She is an ordained Lutheran minister from India and rostered in the ELCA. She is committed to bringing scholarship and people together in praxis-oriented liberating hermeneutics. She has two monographs to her credit, and has published several articles and essays in academic journals and books. Kathryn Poethig is Professor of Global Studies at California State University Monterey Bay. She has published on the citizenship debates during

About the Contributors

223

Cambodia’s transition and the Dhammayietra, a post-conflict Buddhist peace walk, and feminist inter-religious alliances for peace in the Philippines. She served on the leadership team of People’s Forum on Peace for Life, a Global South-based Muslim-Christian initiative resisting empire and militarized globalization for a decade. Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa is a Zambian national and teaches dogmatics, ecumenical studies, and social ethics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). His prior research focused on the ecumenical debate around the tension between ecclesiology and ethics, and his current research interests include ecumenical theology, decolonial thought, the discourse on God in African Theology, and spirituality in Africa. Deborah Storie is Adjunct Faculty at Whitley College (Melbourne), Honorary Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Divinity, and Pastor at Footscray Baptist Church. She first visited Afghanistan from 1992 to 1998 when she lived in a rural village as part of a community development programme. Since then, she has facilitated project evaluations in several regions of Afghanistan and returned several times to work with charitable humanitarian organizations in a variety of capacities. Vuyani S. Vellem teaches in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics and is Director of the Centre for Public Theology at the University of Pretoria. He is an author of journal articles and book chapters, and coeditor of books, including Prophet from the South: Essays in Honour of Allan Aubrey Boesak (2014) and Bible and Theology from the Underside of Empire (2016). A social commentator, he has continued to work for justice and tackles issues at the foundational level. Kim Yong-Bock was born in Cholla province, South Korea, and worked in the spirit of Minjung theology long before the CCA conference in 1979. Kim worked as an advisor for the CCA in Japan, where he set up a center of Documentation for Action Groups in Asia (DAGA) and was in charge of a URM research project on the role of transnational corporations in Asia. Kim affirms that theological biography is fundamentally an open process: “Well the story of your life is not an objective account as to what happened; the story of your life is always different, when you tell it, according to the time and according to the context.”