Post-Colonial Theology: Finding God and Each Other Amidst the Hate

Hate is unveiled on our streets. Politics is polarized and the cohesion of communities is under stress and threat. Religious and theological leaders appear compromised or paralyzed. Robert S. Heaney grew up in a Northern Ireland where enmity paraded itself and policed the boundaries between segregated identities and aspirations. Such conflict with deep historic roots is inextricably linked to religion and colonization. The theologizing of colonialism and the ongoing implications of colonialism cannot be ignored by those who wish to understand the most intractable of human conflicts. Religious adherents and scholars are increasingly seeking to understand colonialism and decolonization in theological terms. The field of postcolonial studies across a range of contexts and in a complex network of interdisciplinary analyses has emerged as a major scholarly movement seeking to provide resources for such a task. Theologians have increasingly seen the field as a resource and have made their own contributions to its development. However depending as it does on a series of theoretical and technical commitments postcolonialism remains inaccessible to the uninitiated. Beginning with his own particular context of formation in this book Heaney provides an accessible introduction to postcolonial theology.