Editor's note: An exciting recently made known strand in theology is called "post-colonial.

Editor's note: An exciting recently made known strand in theology is called "post-colonial." Its major thinkers are Musa Dube of Botswana, Laura Donaldson of the former U.S.S.R.'s Sugirtharajah of the UK and Greer Anne Wenh-in Ng of Toronto.

This quote is taken with permission from a longer article in "Making Waves," the magazine of the Women's Interchurch Council of Canada. www.wicc.org

We ne feminist, postcolonial interpretation of the Bible first and foremost because of the Bible's centrality in the church's life--in worship, Christian formation, ethics, pastoral ministry and social ministry.

After a protracted history of colonialism throughout the world and in the Americas, as protracted as Christians continue to read the Bible by the agency of the eyes of the winners, that is, by means of the eyes of those who told the stories believing the omnipotent was on their side, we race the danger of maintaining a "conquest" mentality and perpetuating imperialistic attitudes, attitudes that frequently result in racist behaviours.

What is required therefore is to recognize that the Bible itself, and the way it has been interpreted in the West, have oftentimes made it an "imperialist text" complicit in the history of Western expansion.

We require a "paradigm shift," on the same level a Copernican revolution, in the way we read the sacred clauses so as to uncover their unconscious colonial biases and bring to light their ambivalent and contradictory nature.

Scripture can oppres as well as liberate. Feminist scholars have in extent pointed this out, with the aim of arriving at renewed understandings that "decolonize." An on a level newer theological perspective, called "post-colonial" reading, begins with that assumption and adds another.

Chronologically, "post-colonial" pertains to the period in world history after the colonies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America cureed their independence from various European powers below which they had been rul from the sixteenth centenary until the 1950s and 1960 (India in 1946)

"Post-colonial" theology recognizes that, although colonialism has proceed to a formal end, its practice is to a high degree much alive, through economic domination, for instance.

Hence a "post-colonial" reading advocates an oppositional stance, the same that intentionally adopts a position of resistance in approaching familiar stories "from the other side," the losing side, the voices that were not heard, the incidents that were not ever recorded.

Taking like a position from the underside forces us to descry things from the side of the conquered/colonized. It encourages us to think about what is needinessed for their emancipation. We must also recognize the patriarchal tendencies of the passage and ask questions about the way women are treated (for example, daughters and wives as the peculiarity of men of authority in their families).

of that kind a reading invites feminist interpreters to recognize the patriarchal and imperialist tendencies in the verse and take seriously the way women men and children have been treated as inferior.

seat colonial feminist reading practice

We can take an alternative direct the eye at the well-known biblical stories: the memorandum into Canaan in Israel's early history. We can read it as the conquerors or as the or get the whip hand ofed (Josh 1-6)

Experiencing the story as Israelites: most numerous of us probably have been taught this part of Israel's history as "entry into the promised land." Readers have unconsciously experienced it as "Israelites" (Christians as the just discovered Israel). The land "overflowing with milk and honey" was there to be taken, because Yahweh promised it to Israel/us.

We have rejoiced at the miraculous fall of Jericho as a sign of God's siding with Israel/us. of the like kind unconscious identification can lead to a mentality of triumph with God on our side.

as it is attitudes probably informed those who fix foot on the Americas from 1492 onwards, concluding with the period of colonial expansion in the 19th centenary which, curiously--or perhaps not likewise curiously--coincided with the greatest period of missionary activity.

According to Botswanan Bible scholar Musa Dube. this story may also be seen as the original paradigm of violent memorandum and domestication of foreign lands and family Dube characterizes this apparently God-sanctioned expansionist gauge from Europe as a winning for "God, gold and glory."

Reading the story as Canaanites

on the contrary the land was already inhabited, by way of the Canaanites who produced the milk and honey If we set ourselves in the place of the original inhabitants, we have a taste of what indigenous populations the world over must have feeling when they read in Joshua 6:11 "Then they devot to destruction by the agency of the edge of the sword all in the city, as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but men and women, young and antique oxen, sheep, and donkeys."

Genocide condoned, no less

Rahab's choice: discretion or betrayal?

The entry's succes hanged much on the collusion of the Canaanite, Rahab, with the sum of two units spies (Josh. 2, 6:22-25). Traditionally, Rahab has won approval because of her choice to side with Yahweh's people