Week 8 – Response to Jalissa King’s reflection on Fuellenbach, Ch. 6

I agree, Jalissa. In my response to Fuellenbach, I stated, “People should realize that people should enjoy and possibly apply the strengths of each model to the Church while realizing that no church is perfect, as all of creation is fallen.” In other words, if the Church were still perfect as in creation, it might still be able to reach all peoples; however, the Church is fallen and thus we need the diverse models and church structures to appeal to a variety of people groups. I personally cannot wait for the day when people of every tribe, tongue, and nation are praising our Living God in His throne room in different spoken and music languages: all different and yet in perfect harmony with one another, never creating conflict.       

Week 8 – The Use of Models in Ecclesiology – John Fuellenbach

I was intrigued to see the differences in strengths and weaknesses within each model of the Church: as Institution, as Communion, as Sacrament, as Herald, and as Servant. People should realize that people should enjoy and possibly apply the strengths of each model to the Church while realizing that no church is perfect, as all of creation is fallen.

Week 8 – On Naming the Subject: Postcolonial Reading of Daniel 1 – Philip Chia

I found the issue of “naming the subject” rather intriguing as I had never connected Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego’s being given names by Nebuchadnezzar as a form of dominance. I actually prefer receiving a name from the people within the culture I am entering so that I can have a more holistic experience. I feel that someone giving me a name is a kind of initiation or welcoming into the culture so as to say, “We accept you here.”

Week 8 – The Sign of Orpah: Reading Ruth through Native Eyes – Laura E. Donaldson

This article really made me reflect on liberation theology’s response to reading the Bible. I was always taught as a child that Ruth was the faithful daughter-in-law who stuck by Naomi through thick and thin while staying within the lineage of the former husband—as was the custom within Judaism. Seeing Orpah as the hero for sticking firm to her non-Jewish traditions, gods, culture, etc. had never crossed my mind until reading this article. I can see why subaltern people would prefer this liberationist reading of Ruth rather than one of her conformity to another culture. In fact, this article made me think twice this morning when my pastor was using a black rock and a white rock to symbolize darkness versus joy and celebration.

Week 8 – Colonizing Gender in Colonial Australia: The Eliza Frazer Story – Kay Schaffer

The Eliza Frazer story is one of “a white Englishwoman shipwrecked in Australia in 1836” (Castle, 357) who, caught in the dichotomy of ethnocentrism and “others,” tells three separate stories to three different groups of people in order to get the most of what she can from each group. People often tend to change their story’s emphasis depending on what those around them want to hear. As long as they are constantly telling the “others” the truth…or is it?

Week 8 – Crimes and Punishments – B. Hodge and V. Mishra

Frank the Poet’s writings about the brutal treatment prisoners such as himself underwent as a “convict” according to the dominant culture’s standards. These poems alongside the “bushranger” stories are comparable to the old western cowboy movies, Robin Hood, or the Mask of Zorro as the “social bandit” (Castle, 344) becomes the commoners’ hero because he defiantly outwits the dominating culture’s rules.

Week 8 – Sending the Younger Son Across the Wide Sargasso Sea: The New Colonizer Arrives – Moira Ferguson

I find Antoinette’s reaction–suicide–to her reluctant husband versus her long-awaited full acceptance of her ex-slave friends intriguing because it seems that she is going through a cultural complex of where her worldview and loyalties should lie. I also think her husband’s reaction”to advance and retreat” (Castle, 313) from the marriage solely for the purpose of inheriting Antoinette’s father’s plantation. People should not be treated as commodities, which is what Antoinette had to go through regardless not only because she was a white creole but also because she was a woman. How her identity had to have been marred to comment that “others ‘hated us. They called us white cockroaches…Nobody wants you’” (Smile Please in Castle, 315).