Week 7 – Hanne Lund’s comments on “The Decolonialization of Yahweh”

I agree with Hanne that we are not able to fully understand God as we see “through postcolonial lenses” and the famous saying of ”God is God and we are not.” We do tend to read everything according to the context we live in as we really have no option of being 100% unbias with our understanding of anything, including Scripture. I–along with most of humanity–struggle with wanting to play God’s role in creation while pretending that we have Him completely figured out and thus know best. We need to be open to others’ interpretations of life, traditions, culture, but most importantly the Bible.

Week 7 – Race Against Time: Racial Discourse and Irish History – Luke Gibbons

I was appalled at how different colonialists classified those in Ireland in the same class as they viewed black people, what they called “niggers.” Humans should not be so cruel and degrading to others no matter what their skin color, whether white, yellow, black, brown, blue, green, orange, or even purple! People–especially Christians–should treat one another as God’s beloved and beautiful creation as our differences and unique qualities contribute to that beauty…  

Week 7 – Inventing Ireland – Declan Kiberd

Kiberd describes the difficulties for Ireland to deanglicize even within their literature as he captures “the dilemma of whether to write for the native audience–a risky, often thankless task–or to produce texts for consumption in Britain and North America” (Castle, 459). English had become the sophisticated language of Ireland during colonialism. This article brought to my mind two things: first, Spivak’s “The Burden of English” and second, “Why be a second-rate version of someone else when you could be a first-rate version of yourself?” I think the Irish, as is true with many colonialized cultures, went through the latter question while searching for their own authentic identity.    

Week 7 – Adulteration and the Nation – David Lloyd

Lloyd uses the term “adulteration” to illustrate the Irish unfaithfulness to their own national identity apart from the English colonization of Gaelic songs, writing, traditions, etc. It makes me sad when others see their culture as being condemned rather than a tool of God’s grace and love, and yet missionaries of the past–no matter how wonderful their intentions–were at least partially to blame for many cultures’ low national-esteem. I pray that God will help each of us be missionaries that edify each culture we encounter.

Week 7 – Cutchery Tamil versus Pure Tamil – Hephzibah Israel

Missionaries translated the Bible into Cutchery (Tamil and Telegu languages mixed) Tamil–the language of the lower castes–which caused much conflict among Protestant Tamils because many of them viewed the “‘missionary Tamil’ of Fabricius as ‘pure’ Tamil against the ‘cutchery’ tamil of Rhenius” (Sugirtharajah, 280). These reserves of translating from “missionary Tamil” to “cutchery” Tamil, I feel, is much like many Westernized Christians’ view of contextually translating the Bible (not word for word but rather for the meaning of the Word) into other cultures’ languages.  

Week 7 – Decolonizing Yahweh: A Postcolonial Reading of 2 Kings 24-25 – Kari Latvus

In this article, Latvus reiterated something I was taught in my undergrad: Scripture must not be read solely as interpreted by Westernized Christianity but rather must be contextualized and be studied as non-biasly as possible, even in regards to the interpretation of Yahweh. In order to do this, however, Christians must be willing to have their enculturated worldview questioned, which I believe is the most difficult part of maturing in my faith walk. 

Week 7 – Emergence of the Church – Fuellenbach

I enjoyed how Fuellenbach stressed the importance of “contextualization and solidarity with the poor” (104), especially when he was expounding Peter’s converted worldview of Gentiles being unclean to nothing of God’s creation being impure or unclean (Acts 10:1-11:18). The Jewish/Gentile split in Christianity is much like that of Westernized/non-Western Christianity today. Furthermore, Fuellenbach points out that Christianity should be inculturated/contextualized by stating, “The church has to move from being, for example, the local church in India to being the local church of India.” (98) Yay contextualization!