Postcolonial Feminist Theology

This book engages with the critical tools of Edward Said (1935-2003) and traces the voyage of various postcolonial feminist theologians. Along four intersecting lines, postcolonial feminist theology unfolds as addressing cultural othering, religious othering, gendered othering, and sexual othering. In critical solidarity with those constructed as other postcolonial feminist theology, the book challenges the norms of Western theology. (Series: ContactZone. Explorations in Intercultural Theology - Vol. 16)

The burgeoning field of postcolonial studies argues that most theology has been formed in dominant cultures, laden intrinsically with imperializing structures. An essential task facing theology is thus to "decolonize" the mind and free Christianity from colonizing bias and structures. Here, in this truly groundbreaking study, highly respected feminist theologian Kwok Pui-lan offers the first full-length theological treatment of what it means to do postcolonial feminist theology. She explains her methodological basis and explores several specific topics, including Christology, pluralism, and creation.

Contributors examine white feminist theology's misappropriations of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dismemberment of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim canonical stories.

This book calls attention to an urgent need for postcolonial feminist approaches to practical theology. It not only advocates for the inclusion of colonialism as a critical optic for practical theology but also demands a close look at how colonialism is entangled with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, disability, and sexual orientation. Seeking to highlight the importance of the interdependence of life, the author challenges and contests the notion of independence as the desirable goal of the human being. Lifting up the experiences of overlooked groups--including children at adult-centered worship, queer and interracial youth in heterosexual and white normative family discourse, and non-human species in human-centered academic and theological realms--the book contributes to expanding the concerns of practical theology in ways that create healthy community for all human beings and non-human fellow creatures. It also takes up issues of multiple religious belonging and migration that practical theology has not sufficiently explored. These illuminating new possibilities promise to renew and even transform church communities through the inclusion of often-neglected groups with whom God is already present.

Noting that the ways of interpreting the Bible now practiced in the West are patriarchal and oppressive of those in other parts of the world, Dube offers an alternative interpretation that attends to and respects needs of women in the two-thirds world. In a provocative and insightful reading of the book of Matthew, she shows us how to read the Bible as decolonizing rather than imperialist literature.

Missionary Positions challenges common Christian assumptions about sex workers. Using feminist, postcolonial perspectives, interviews with pastoral practitioners and personal narrative, Lauren McGrow carves out a space for the dynamic theological agency and life complexity of sex workers to be acknowledged.

Postcolonial Politics and Theology seeks to reform and reimagine the field of political theology—uprooting it from the colonial soil—using the comparative lenses of postcolonial politics and theology to bring attention to the realities of the Global South. Kwok Pui-lan traces the history of the political impacts of Western theological development, especially developments in the U.S. context, and the need to shift these interlocking fields toward non-Western traditions in theory and practice. A special focus of the book is on the changing sociopolitical realities of American Empire and Sino-American competition, illustrated in Donald Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" and Xi Jinping’s hope for a “China Dream.” The shifting of U.S. and Asian relationships highlights the need to move our theological and political categories away from a vision of strongman domination and toward a postmodern, postcolonial, and transnational world, especially exemplified in the Asia Pacific context. Throughout, Kwok overturns the idea of centering one cultural framework and marginalizing others in favor of living into a multiplicity of deeply contextual theologies. She explores how these theologies are being developed in global, postcolonial contexts, through struggles for democracy and civil disobedience in Hong Kong, by efforts to reclaim selfhood and sexual identity from exploitative colonial desire, through the work of interreligious solidarity and peacebuilding, and in the practice of earth care in the face of ecological crisis.