1st Edition
Contextual Theology Skills and Practices of Liberating Faith
This book advances that history by exploring stories, images and discourses across a worldwide range of geographical, cultural and confessional contexts. Its twelve authors not only enrich our understanding of the significance of the contextual method, but also produce a new range of original ways of doing theology in contemporary situations.
The authors discuss some prioritised thematic perspectives with an emphasis on liberating paths, and expand the ongoing discussion on the methodology of theology into new areas. Themes such as interreligious plurality, global capitalism, ecumenical liberation theology, eco-anxiety and the anthropocene, postcolonialism, gender, neo-pentecostalism, world theology, and reconciliation are examined in situated depth. Additionally, voices from Indigenous lands, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe and North America enter into a dialogue on what it means to contextualise theology in an increasingly globalised and ever-changing world.
Such a comprehensive discussion of new ways of thinking about and doing contextual theology will be of great use to scholars in Theology, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Science, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Global Studies.
Foreword by Robert J. Schreiter
Acknowledgements
Doing Situated Theology: Introductory Remarks about the History, Method and Diversity of Contextual Theology
Sigurd Bergmann & Mika Vähäkangas
Can Contextual Theology Bridge the Divide?: South Africa’s Politics of Forgiveness as an Example of a Contextual Public Theology
Dion Forster
Contextual Theology on Trial: African Pentecostalism, Sacred Authority, and Sexual and Gender Based Violence
Chammah Kaunda
Gender, Ethnicity and Lived Religion: Challenges to Contextual and Liberation Theologies
Elina Vuola
Ecumenical Liberation Theology: How I Experienced its Arrival in Germany and Europe after 1968
Ulrich Duchrow
Economy, Greed and Liberation Theology: A Critique from a Border Location in India
Atola Longkumer
The DissemiNation of Vikings: Postcolonial Contexts and Economic Meltdown
Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir
Reclaiming Tradition as Critique of Oppression
Teresa Callewaert
Speaking from Experience: Comparing Mahdawi-Pentecostal Approaches to Equipment for Mission and its Theological Justification
David Emmanuel Singh
Theology in the Anthropocene – and Beyond?
Sigurd Bergmann
Theology of "Eco-Anxiety" as Liberating Contextual Theology
Panu Pihkala
Contextualization through the Arts
Volker Küster
World Christianity as Post-Colonializing of Theology
Mika Vähäkangas
Biography
Sigurd Bergmann is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, and Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at Munich University. His research covers religion and the environment, and religion, arts and architecture, and among his multiple books and articles are Weather, Religion and Climate Change (2020), Religion, Space and the Environment (2014), In the Beginning Is the Icon (2009), and God in Context (2003).
Mika Vähäkangas is Professor of Mission Studies and Ecumenics at Lund University, Sweden. His research covers Christianity in Africa, intercultural and interreligious relations in World Christianity, and bridging empirical studies with systematic theology. He is the author of multiple publications in Theology and Religious Studies including Context, Plurality, and Truth (2020), and Between Ghambageu and Jesus (2008).
