Description

Religion has power structures that require and justify its existence, spread its influence, and mask its collaboration with other power structures. Power, like religion, is in collaboration. Along this line, this book affirms that one could see and study the power structures and power relations of a religion in and through the missions of empires. Empires rise and roam with the blessings and protections of religious power structures (e.g., scriptures, theologies, interpretations, traditions) that in return carry, propagate and justify imperial agendas. Thus, to understand the relation between religion and power requires one to also study the relation between religion and empires.

Christianity is the religion that receives the most deliberation in this book, with some attention to power structures and power relations in Hinduism and Buddhism. The cross-cultural and inter-national contributors share the conviction that something within each religion resists and subverts its power structures and collaborations. The authors discern and interrogate the involvements of religion with empires past and present, political and ideological, economic and customary, systemic and local. The upshot is that the book troubles religious teachings and practices that sustain, as well as profit from, empires.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Collin Cowan

1. Stand Down, Sit Up, and Talanoa
Jione Havea

Part One: Dare to Discern

2. Rescuing Christian Faith Traditions from Empire
Deenabandhu Manchala
3. Transforming Discipleship: Faith, Love, and Hope after Empire
Jooseop Keum
4. Turn to the World: A Mandate for Orthodox Theology
Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi
5. Appropriation of Religious Symbols as Political Capital
M. P. Joseph
6. Empire, Deep Solidarity, and the Future of Resistance
Joerg Rieger

Part Two: Dare to Disturb

7. Chanting Down the Shitstem-Resistance with Anansi and Rastafari Optics
Michael Jagessar
8. The Chicano Student Movement as Religious and The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán as Scriptural and Utopian
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
9. Religion as the Ethico-Political Practice of Justice: Ambedkar as Guide
Y.T. Vinayaraj
10. Babblers to the Rabble, Prophets to the Powerful: Mission in the Context of Empire
Allan Aubrey Boesak
11. (Global) Climate Crisis and (Detroit) Water Struggle: “Re-Schooling” Chr

Product details

Published 27 Nov 2018
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 222
ISBN 9781978703544
Imprint Fortress Academic
Dimensions 230 x 160 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

Related Titles

Get 30% off in the May sale - for one week only

Environment: Staging