Decolonizing Christianity

“How curiously different is this white God from the one preached by Jesus who understood faithfulness by how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alien, the incarcerated and infirm. This white God of empire may be appropriate for global conquerors who benefit from all that has been stolen and through the labor of all those defined as inferior; but such a deity can never be the God of the conquered.” Echoing James Cone’s 1970 assertion that white Christianity is a satanic heresy, Miguel De La Torre argues that whiteness has desecrated the message of Jesus. In a scathing indictment, he describes how white American Christians have aligned themselves with the oppressors who subjugate the “least of these”—those who have been systemically marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—and, in overwhelming numbers, elected and supported an antichrist as president who has brought the bigotry ingrained in American society out into the open. With this follow-up to his earlier Burying White Privilege, De La Torre prophetically outlines how we need to decolonize Christianity and reclaim its revolutionary, badass message. Timid white liberalism is not the answer for De La Torre—only another form of complicity. Working from the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew, he calls for unapologetic solidarity with the sheep and an unequivocal rejection of the false, idolatrous Christianity of whiteness.

This book traces Christianity's change from European imperialism's moral foundation to a voice of political and social change during decolonization.

In June 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 Calls to Action that urged reform of policies and programs to repair the harms caused by the Indian Residential Schools. "Decolonizing Discipline" is a response to Call to Action 6––the call to repeal Section 43 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which justifies the corporal punishment of children. Editors Valerie Michaelson and Joan Durrant have brought together diverse voices to respond to this call and to consider the ways that colonial Western interpretations of Christian theologies have been used over centuries to normalize violence and rationalize the physical discipline of children. Theologians, clergy, social scientists, and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis leaders and community members explore the risks that corporal punishment poses to children and examine practical, non-violent approaches to discipline. The authors invite readers to participate in shaping this country into one that does not sanction violence against children. The result is a multifaceted exploration of theological debates, scientific evidence, and personal journeys of the violence that permeated Canada’s Residential Schools and continues in Canadian homes today. Together, they compel us to decolonize discipline in Canada.

The increasing interest in postcolonial theologies has initiated a vital conversation within and outside the academy in recent decades, turning many “standard theologies” on their head. This book introduces seminary students, ministry leaders, and others to key aspects, prevailing mentalities, and some major figures to consider when coming to understand postcolonial theologies. Woodley and Sanders provide a unique combination of indigenous theology and other academic theory to point readers toward the way of Jesus. Decolonizing Evangelicalism is a starting point for those who hope to change the conversation and see that the world could be lived in a different way.

In the decades following the era of decolonization, global Christianity experienced a seismic shift. While Catholicism and Protestantism have declined in their historic European strongholds, they have sustained explosive growth in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This demographic change has established Christians from the Global South as an increasingly dominant presence in modern Christian thought, culture, and politics. Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity unearths the roots of this development, charting the metamorphosis of Christian practice and institutions across five continents throughout the pivotal years of decolonization. The essays in this collection illustrate the diverse new ideas, rituals, and organizations created in the wake of Western imperialism's formal collapse and investigate how religious leaders, politicians, theologians, and lay people debated and shaped a new Christianity for a postcolonial world. Contributors argue that the collapse of colonialism and broader cultural challenges to Western power fostered new organizations, theologies, and political engagements across the world, ultimately setting Christianity on its current trajectory away from its colonial heritage. These essays interrogate decolonization's varied and conflicting impacts on global Christianity, while also providing a novel framework for rethinking decolonization's modern legacies. Taken together, this book charts the relationship between decolonization and Christianity on a truly global scale. Contributors: Joel Cabrita, Darcie Fontaine, Elizabeth A. Foster, Udi Greenberg, David Kirkpatrick, Eric Morier-Genoud, Phi-Vân Nguyen, Justin Reynolds, Sarah Shortall, Lydia Walker, Charlotte Walker-Said, Albert Wu, Gene Zubovich.

An investigation of what consolidating religion as a technology of peacebuilding and development does to people's accounts of their religious and cultural traditions and why interreligious peacebuilding entrenches colonial legacies in the present. Throughout the global south, local and international organizations are frequent participants in peacebuilding projects that focus on interreligious dialogue. Yet as Atalia Omer argues in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding, the effects of their efforts are often perverse, reinforcing neocolonial practices and disempowering local religious actors. Based on empirical research of inter and intra-religious peacebuilding practices in Kenya and the Philippines, Omer identifies two paradoxical findings: first, religious peacebuilding practices are both empowering and depoliticizing and, second, more doing of religion does not necessarily denote deeper or more critical religious literacy. Further, she shows that these religious actors generate decolonial openings regardless of how closed or open their religious communities are. Hence, religion's occasional usefulness in peacebuilding does not necessarily mean justice-oriented outcomes. The book not only uses decolonial and intersectional prisms to expose the entrenched and ongoing colonial dynamics operative in religion and the practices of peacebuilding and development in the global South, but it also speaks to decolonial theory through stories of transformation and survival.

The first book in the new Postcolonialism and Religions series offers a preview of the series focus on multireligious, indigenous, and transnational scholarly voices. In this book, the once arch enemies of Religious studies and Postcolonial theory become critical companions in shared analysis of major postcolonial themes.

What does it mean to be a white settler on land taken from peoples who have lived there since time immemorial? In the context of reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, Unsettling Spirit provides a personal perspective on decolonization, informed by Indigenous traditions and lifeways, and the need to examine one's complicity with colonial structures. Applying autoethnography grounded in Indigenous and feminist methodologies, Denise Nadeau weaves together stories and reflections on how to live with integrity on stolen and occupied land. The author chronicles her early and brief experience of "Native mission" in the late 1980s and early 1990s in northern Canada and Chiapas, Mexico, and the gradual recognition that she had internalized colonialist concepts of the "good Christian" and the Great White Helper. Drawing on somatic psychotherapy, Nadeau addresses contemporary manifestations of helping and the politics of trauma. She uncovers her ancestors' settler background and the responsibilities that come with facing this history. Caught between two traditions – born and raised Catholic but challenged by Indigenous ways of life – the author traces her engagement with Indigenous values and how relationships inform her ongoing journey. A foreword by Cree-Métis author Deanna Reder places the work in a broader context of Indigenous scholarship. Incorporating insights from Indigenous ethical and legal frameworks, Unsettling Spirit offers an accessible reflection on possibilities for settler decolonization as well as for decolonizing Christian and interfaith practice.