A TRIBUTE TO VITOR WESTHELLE

A TRIBUTE TO VITOR WESTHELLE

Vitor Westhelle, the professor of systematic theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, is known for his innovative theological engagements through which he interstices theology, philosophy, and politics.  Being immersed in the traditions of the church, at the same time allowing it to listen to the voice of the other and the cries from the margins, Vitor envisions an ‘in-breaking’ within the systematic framework of theology.  For Vitor, theological framework has to be deconstructed and re-constructed in order to attend to the alluring and enigmatic silences of the subaltern.  Traversing through the formative discourses of Christian doctrines while re-reading them in dialogue with their own heresies, Vitor re-positions himself as the most innovative theologian and a visionary poet in the contemporary postcolonial theological school of thought.  It was my privilege and honor to be his advisee in the PhD program at LSTC and to travel along with him into the political-poetical world of systematic theology (Thank you George Zachariah for introducing me to Vitor and to LSTC).  

Ordained in the Lutheran Church in Brazil (IECLB), Westhelle served several congregations and was the coordinator of the Ecumenical Commission on Land (CPT) in Paraná where he was an enabler and a companion with those struggling for land and justice. Westhelle is a highly-acclaimed speaker throughout academic circle and the Church. He has been the advisor to the Executive Council of the Lutheran World Federation from 1990-97 and lead various committees and programs for LWF. Westhelle currently serves on the editorial council of Dialog, Lutheran Quarterly, International Editorial Council of Margens: Revista Brasiliera de Estudos sobre Pós-modernidade, Estudos Teológicos (EST-Brazil), Cuadernos de Teología (ISEDET-Argentina),Numen: Revista de Estudos e Pesquisa da Religião (UFJDF, Brazil), Bulletin of Contextual Theology, South Africa, Bibliografia Bíblica Latino-Americana (São Paulo, Brazil). Westhelle authors many books including The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (Fortress, 2007), [in translation, O Deus escandaloso: Usos e Abusos da Cruz, trans. Geraldo Korndörfer, (Sinodal, 2008]); Word in Words (CSS, 2009), The Church Event: Call and Challenge of a Church Protestant (Fortress, 2010), After Heresy: Colonial Practices and Post-Colonial Theologies (Cascade Books, 2010), and Eschatology and Space (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Theological Churrasco

Vitor's students define his theological framework as Churrasco—a Latin American dish which is a beautiful mix of various ingredients and tastes. Locating himself in the Liberation-postcolonial-subaltern theological stream, Westhelle defines history as the ‘place of transcendence’ where God and humanity/ creation collaborate.  for him, history is the place of theopraxis.  It is in this theopraxis, that life in ‘fullness’ is envisaged and the displaced-the disenfranchised- the colonized experience apocalypse.   It is a liminal place -a non space- of weak epiphany. The God in this weak epiphany is not a God of power and order; rather, it is a God of vulnerability and disorder.  Meditating on the crucified God, Westhelle affirms “what the cross does is precisely this re-orientation of our gaze to this limit, the eschata.  

Westhelle emphasizes the epiphany of God within the historicity and the materiality of bodilyness.   God is encountered within, never outside the complexities of life.   Salvation is not an eruption from outside but within the materiality of life.  Historicity is not enclosed within; rather, it is open and eschatological.   History is the im/possibility of the reign of God that makes the prophetic challenges against injustices possible today.  Taking his cue from Walter Benjamin’s ‘chips of Messianic time,’ Westhelle’s methodological point of negativity embodies a hope against hope- a faith that endeavors to allow the rupture of the eschatological moment in everyday life with its rules, expectations, systems and institutions.

Theology of Cross 

Vitor has written widely on the theology of Luther, and on the themes of Liberation, Creation, the Apocalyptic and Eschatology. The cross-theme, in particular, theologia crucis, defines who Westhelle is as a theologian. For him the theology of the cross is not a doctrine but that which you live by, a usus passionis. It is the cross-ing that arrests his attention and through his writings he tries to find categories to name and cross differences without suppressing them but rather lifting them up: liminality, chora, stasis, hybridity, adjacency,eschata, margin, borderline, chiaroscuro, etc. He strives to convey that the gospel is the transgression of “legal” domains, semantic fields with their protocols, or régimes of truth, while being neither and both the abolition and the completion of the law.

Church that Happens!

While discussing the role of theology to define church as a sign, Vitor Westhelle brings the qestion of re-presentation in to the debate.   By drawing on the ideas of Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, and Spivak on poiesis and praxis/ economia and politia, he asks the pertinent question whether church represents or re-presencing or not presenting something. Here, Westhelle exposes the inherent dilemma embodied in the definition of church as a sign.   It is an important question with regard to the authority and validity of the sign- the church.  According to Westhelle, the ecclesia does not stick to a particular locus in its engagement with  economia and politia; rather it finds itself in a ‘third space’ in between them.  Church is not just given or produced; rather it is an event. Thus according to Westhelle, church happens!    Following the Reformed tradition, Westhelle contends that church is non-essential but lives in its functional features.   For him, church exists in its signifying practices of proclamation of the Word of God and the sacraments which necessitate interpretation and appropriation.   At the same time, he is hesitant to fix ecclesia in its functional locale alone.  Drawing on the Derridean concept of ‘Gift,’ Vitor argues that there is a divine ‘secret’ in the tradition of the church which is interpreted and passed on to generations as ‘constitutive memories’ in many ways and thus those ‘imitations’/ ‘performances’/ ‘significations’ constitute the contemporary experiences of church event.

Creation and the Right to the Land 

Westhelle engages with the theology of Creation from the perspective of the displaced in Latin America.   According to Westhelle, the term ‘created order’ that is used in the story of creation in the book of Genesis is an ambiguous concept, since the category ‘order’ is an ideological disguise for domination, repression, and persecution.   He explains: “order becomes the moral parameter to speak about God’s will in the midst of the cosmos, justifying the organization of the state.   Where order is granted by the head of the state, where order is the result of the demiurgic work of the “invisible hand” of capitalism, where order is the patriarchal hierarchy, the stability and control of the whole society is granted.”  Westhelle argues that the question of ‘order and progress’ was the colonial agenda established in Latin America by the colonizers.  ‘What lacks order, lacks goodness.’ ‘Lack of order is evil.’   Here the logic of order becomes a tool for annihilation and marginalization.  In this sense, a resistance to this ‘order’ is a ‘disorder’ or chaos. Unlike the process theologians who approache creatio ex nihilo as a pre-biblical cosmogony, Westhelle argues that it has been used in the Bible especially in Pauline letters and Maccabees in terms of doxology. For him, creatio ex nihilo is a doxological affirmation of the resurrection of the flesh of the oppressed.  Westhelle, for theology of creation for the displaced people of Latin America is nothing but a question of place/ space or non-space.

Eschatology and Space

The question of place or no-place in the theology of creation is well explained in Westhelle’s recent book Eschatology and Space.   He argues that the spatial dimensions of the eschaton have been glaringly absent from western theological discourse.   Alluding to Enrique Dussel, Westhelle contends that eschatology is the final realization of the proximity of the origin.  Eschaton is the location in which the reversal of the order occurs.  For him, “the eschatology of the theologies of liberation is not about the order and progress, which suggests a longitudinal paradigm, but about limits, borders, and margins.   Its attempt is to make these margins visible, for they are the turning point to another world, a world that can only be devised by those who dare to stand at its threshold and remove the veil that hides the truth beyond it.   And herein lies the meaning of ‘apocalypse.’”  

Westhelle makes use of the Derridean notion of khora to explicate this apocalyptical content of non-space, or the question of displacement, as he defines khora as “the space produced in the rupture of space that in itself is no space.”  These experiences of displacement or non-space are the breaking points, transitions, or new beginnings that are hard to fathom.   It is the non-space of the weak epiphany through which the kairos meet khora and the displaced people meet the crucified God.   Westhelle’s God is a marginal God-a subaltern God as it re-imagines the location of margin as the non-space of eschaton.  His notion of eschatological space redraws the western notion of transcendent God and invokes the marginal and alluric. 

Y. T. Vinayaraj

Atonement or Redemption?

Atonement or Redemption?

In one of the recent Lenten meditations, a young theologian (who is my favorite and beloved) opines that “prostration” or “kumbidil” which is very common in the Holy week liturgy, is an act of repentance.  According to him bending and kneeling signify our acknowledgement of sinfulness and getting up points to the promise of life. I appreciate these kinds of efforts to validate our liturgical practices and traditions. But, the problem here is that it gives us the notion that sin is a personal problem to be rectified and the affirmation of life is a private achievement. How do these acts of repentance, whether it is personal or collective (as a church), becomes an act of hope for the ‘socially imposed sufferings’ of the people.  This is not just a problem with some of the liturgical practices; rather it is a fundamental problem inherent in our atonement theories and theologies. The agonistic politics and the theologies of the marginalized have been trying to define sin and suffering in their respective socio-political contexts in order to bring out the social logic of salvation in Christian theology. I think, neither our Lenten liturgies nor our spiritual practices are adequate to force us to the agonistic politics of redemption which invokes us to become a crucified one as it was practiced by Jesus the Christ on the cross.

The atonement theories played a crucial role in christian theology to make suffering a ‘representative act.’ I think, in these theories, the immediate socio-political context of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was neglected and it was rendered as an act of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘penal substitution.’ The feminist/ womanist theologians are very critical of this notion of vicarious suffering where the suffering itself has been valorized and justified. They bring out the contextual difference between the socially imposed suffering and the symbolic/ liturgical act of suffering.  On the basis of these embodied spiritualties and theologies, we need to construct a relative ontology of the Flesh through which we all participate in the process of our redemption along with God who is inherently embodied in the agonistic politics of the crucified as it is exemplified in the Christ-event.  It is here the crucified body becomes salvatory in itself. It is here we are invoked to move from the ‘liturgies of the representative act to the street theaters of the everyday life’ to embody the promise of hope through crucifying our lives.  

Y. T. Vinayaraj

Abstract of the forthcoming article Beyond the Atonement: Re-reading the Doctrine of Atonement in the Postcolonial context of Agonistic Politics and Necropolitics          

Postcolonial Body and Theology: Intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar

Postcolonial Body and Theology: Intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar                                                        

  Y. T. Vinayaraj

  The body of the dead man on the cross

is not reducible to its fundamental thingness.

In fact, the figurative dimension is already there,

poetic, clothed in appearance: the face of the shadow.

Achille Mbembe (2001:223) 

Achille Mbembe, the African political thinker, interrogates Christian Theology for being inadequate to address the question of necropolitics-the material destruction of the human bodies and populations- in the postcolonial world.  According to Mbembe, the Continental philosophers and theologians delimit the whole discussion within the Western cultural/ political/ philosophical tradition and neglect the people who are born to be killed and never have a human life outside of the politics of death.  Following Frantz Fanon, Mbembe signifies a radical political theology of postcolonial body that offers a materialist and immanent turn for Christian theology. In the same vein of thought,  B. R. Ambedkar proposes sharp criticism towards the efficacy of the Christian doctrines and sacraments in the colonial-postcolonial Indian context of caste discrimination and pollution. Ambedkar brings the question of the untouchable body in the sacramental discourses of the Christian theology. Ambedkar interrogates Christian theology for being inherently transcendental and immaterial to address the materiality of the ‘untouchable’ body. This article offers a constructive proposal for a radical political theology of postcolonial body by intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar.  

Abstract

(Article to be published soon) 

Liturgy, Politics and Theology

Liturgy, Politics, and Theology

Liturgy is considered to be foundational for Christian theology. As James K. A. Smith contends in his new book Imagining the Kingdom (2013), liturgies transform us through counter practices in contradiction with the current individualistic, consumeristic, and materialistic discourses and practices that de-form us. However, the contemporary political thinkers are very much skeptic about the treatment of bodies in this Christian liturgical anthropology that render bodies as either inherently sinful or mute which can be ‘trans’-formed from outside.  Political thinkers like Achille Mbembe argue for the transcendentability within the materiality of human bodies.  Do we need a new Christian liturgical anthropology that attends the politicality and the poeticality of human bodies and social bodies and re-invents a postcolonial theology of de-transcendentalized God?  At the same time we have to answer the question, what does political theory have to do with liturgy and theology?

It was Giorgio Agamben the well-known Italian political thinker who exposed the ‘mysterious’ (in Latin sacramentum) relationship between liturgy, politics, and theology through his well-read books The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (2007) and Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty (2013) and argues that Christian theology legitimizes the notion of sovereign power and its governmentality through its liturgical practices and ceremonialities.  According to Agamben, in liturgy, the ontology and the praxis of God, the mysterious relationship between God and the world, Christ the high priest and priest the (ad)minister, and the celebrant and the recipient are endlessly distinguished and superimposed.

This paper intends to offer a critical engagement with the Agamben’s liturgical/ (post-biopolitical) political thought in order to construct a radical political theology which affirms the political becoming of human bodies and the theological destabilization of a 'transcendent Other' God.   

  

Y. T. Vinayaraj

Abstract

Currents in Theology and Mission, forthcoming issue

Why not Arundhati Roy?

Why not Arundhati Roy?

Life is always hermeneutical. Reading and re-reading make our life-world more relevant and meaningful. The complexity and the density of the issues of life make our reading or re-reading critical and crucial.  Hermeneutics becomes political when it purposefully tries to dismantle the hegemonic power structure that is embodied in it. Texts are not just words re-produced; rather they are engaged with, contradicted with and re-constituted with the questions that are addressed to the politicality and the poeticality of life. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is a product of such critical engagement. Ambedkar knew that every act of annihilation of caste is a critical engagement with the casteist notions, knowledges, and practices. Ambedkar was not hesitant even to engage with the proponents of caste in order to deconstruct caste epistemologically, theologically, and politically. Annihilation of Caste bears such desires for critical dialogical engagement. For Ambedkar, writing this book was nothing but an act of political hermeneutics.  

However, I don’t understand when Arundhati Roy tires to initiate a similar act of political hermeneutics with the Ambedkar’s text in the contemporary political context, why it becomes so “dangerous” and “nasty”.  As a reader and as a well-acclaimed writer, it is her right to read and to write about a book which has had a significant role in constituting or reconstituting the Indian polity. What is problematic when she writes a note on it?  Arundhati is not just a writer; rather she is the one who actively participates in many of the contemporary human right political engagements and social justice movements.  She has already demonstrated her ideological commitment to the cause of justice and equality. She does not claim that she tries to introduce or patronize Ambedkar. She admires Ambedkar and acknowledges his efforts to the process of de-casteizing Indian society. It is the commitment to the politics of justice that brings Ambedkar and Arundhati in a same stream of social democracy  which is not at all founded on any notion of hierarchy, patriarchy, and sovereignty.  

Ambedkar was very clear about the nuances of the epistemology of caste which legitimates the marginalization of certain sections of peoples rendering them as less-human. For him, it was a product of the Brahmanic-Hindu hegemonic ideology and theology and it is to be encountered by the modern secular ideals of social democracy and social morality. He proposed a political philosophy that is methodologically founded on the Deweyan pragmatism, Marxian analysis, and the Buddhist philosophy. Ambedkar critically engages with all these ideologies and envisages a novel political philosophy to annihilate (not just liberation) or to deconstruct the casteist human bodies and social bodies. Body whether it is human body or social body, is to be decastiezed by denying each and every discourses of caste which is biopolitical (Michel Foucault) and necropolitical (Achille Mbembe). Ambedkar was very convinced about the intricacy of the caste which necessitates a deconstructive engagement (Derrida) of all in order to annihilate it discursively. For him, it was a site of the political engagement in which all are welcomed to deconstruct their fixed notions of social locations-the notions of self and the other--victim and subject. It is an epistemological space to which all are invited to go beyond the fixities of identity and ethnicity and envisage social agency and space.  Whether it is caste or patriarchy, it is an epistemological space that necessitates critical political engagement of all in order to annihilate it permanently from our social knowledges and practices. It is in this rhetorical space in which we all are challenged to “quite” the notions of otherness and envisaged the political warmth of the “deconstructive embrace” (Spivak).    

As a Dalit theologian I would love to end this note by alluding to Sathianathan Clarke, the prominent Dalit theologian who defines the ‘plasticity’ of the term Subaltern (Clarke, 2008:277). Denying the essentialist and the identitarian social location of the subaltern in the struggle for social justice and equality, Clarke signifies the role of all who epistemologically and politically participate in God’s liberative act in this world. According to Clarke, the preferential option for the subaltern is not based on any identitarian advantage; rather it is because of their unrelenting critique towards all hegemonic power structures like caste, patriarchy, and hierarchy and the uncompromising commitment to the political process of democratizing the democracy. I think, it is in this participation of counter political practice and epistemology that bring the writing of Ambedkar on Annihilation of caste and the reading of Arundhati on Ambedkar’s text (the Doctor and the Saint) together without denying their ‘irreducible singularities’.    

Y. T. Vinayaraj 

Ecumenism and Marginality

Ecumenism and Marginality:

Re-imagining Ecumenical Engagement with the Margins

Y. T. Vinayaraj

Ecumenism as it is defined by the Ecumenical Movement stands for the communion of churches and the integrity of whole creation.  Since its formation in Europe in the beginning of the twentieth century as a missionary conference (Edinburgh, 1910), the Ecumenical Movement has been relentlessly working for the accomplishment of the greater unity of the people of God. Whether it is in the account of the ‘costly obedience’ (Ronde, 1993) to envisage ‘a responsible society,’ (New Delhi, 1961) or the ‘costly commitment’ (Ronde, 1993) to the ‘covenanting communion’ (Tantur, 1996) the Ecumenical Movement has always been trying to be united in its mission despite the doctrinal disagreements. As the site of the missiological engagement, the marginalized has always been a focus of the “Life and Witness” of the Ecumenical Movement. In spite of the doctoral differences in the “Faith and Order,” the Ecumenical Movement has been able to find a converging point in its missiological responsibility to the marginalized. However, the complexity and the contingency of the term marginality today evoke new perceptions of social responsibility, ethics and theology. The new contestations on marginality throw new questions on the logic of ‘Oneness’ and thus the Ecumenical Movement has to encounter certain interrogations on its theological definition of ecumenism and the positioning of marginality at its ‘soteriological end.’ This article argues that marginality as the site of ‘irreducible singularity’ makes the logic of ‘Oneness’ impossible and thus the theology of ecumenism is on its way to end; unless its theology of God, mission and politics are re-conceived in terms of the logic of ‘manyness.’ This crisis cannot be addressed by cosmetic doctrinal revisions or administrative restructuring; rather it demands a radical deconstruction of the theology of ecumenism itself. The argument is placed here by treating the notions of ecumenism and marginality in their philosophical/ epistemological/ theological trajectories as it was historically appropriated and disseminated in the “Faith and Order” as well as in the “Life and Witness” of the Ecumenical Movement.

Abstract

 -Recently published in PROPHETIC ECUMENISM: THE JOURNEY AHEAD, edited by Rev. Dr. Christopher Rajkumar (Thiruvalla: NCCI & CSS, 2014), p. 109-120.   

Ambedkar, Politics, and Theology

Yahu Vinayaraj

Political thought, whether it is of the ‘West’ or the ‘Rest’ bears the signature of a theology. It was Giorgio Agamben who exposed the Christian theological inheritance of the Western political thought. Agamben theorizes the social location of the bare life—people live outside of the territory of laws of immigration, nationality and citizenship which reconfigure the notions of state, law and justice.  Agamben’s political theory of ‘the state of exception’ signifies a radical turn in the Continental political thought as it is being appropriated or even critically engaged by the postcolonial political philosophers.  Taking the cue from those critical engagements with the Continental philosophical thought, this study tries to analyze B. R. Ambedkar’s political thought in the contemporary postmodern/ postcolonial context and explores its theological implications for envisaging a subaltern political theology in Indian context.

 As in the case of Agamben, the political thought of Ambedkar which is termed as the subaltern political thought exposes the hegemonic epistemological foundation of Indian socio-political order which excludes certain sections of people in the account of the social practice—caste that is legitimized by certain elitist epistemologies and theologies.  As an interlocutor of colonial modernity, Ambedkar’s political intention is to explore the possibility of democratizing of the democracy on the basis of a social ethics which is rooted in Indian materialist philosophical discourses.  Here Ambedkar’s political thought remains unique due to its non-Western philosophical foundation while exploring the multiplex habitations within the colonial modernity.  This study tries to re-read or re-locate Ambedkar in the philosophical discourses of the Indian political thought while allowing him to interact with the other post-Continental political thinkers as well. It is argued here that Ambedkar’s political thought signifies a radical turn not only in the Indian political thought but also in the Continental political philosophical tradition. Theological engagement with Ambedkar’s political thought doesn't mean just attaching certain Christian categories like God, Christ, kingdom of God or liberation to his political thought and argue that he is eligible to be called as a liberation theologian; rather it is to explore deep into his epistemological discontents with Christian theology and Christianity on his way to envisage radical social democracy in India.   

Abstract

Forthcoming article in Theology for Today, March Issue, ECC, Bangalore, 2014. 

GETS PAPER PRESENTATION ON 20TH APRIL 2012 AT CHICAGO

DR.JOSEPH MAR THOMA METROPOLITAN VISITS LUTHERAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CHICAGO ON APRIL 12TH, 2012

Dean of Studies Dr. Michael Shelley, Director of Advanced Studies Dr. Esther Menn, Dr. Vitor Westhelle, and Rev. Y. T. Vinayaraj (PhD student)

Ecumenism

Paper presented at the seminar on Edinburgh 1910 and Beyond at ECC Whitefield, Bangalore on 28 November 2009 and published in “Theology for Our Times” in Oct. 2010.



Re-defining Oikoumene: A Subaltern Perspective

We are at the threshold of the centenary celebrations of Edinburgh Missionary Conference held in 1910. Edinburgh conference was held in the context of fulfilling the quest for Christian unity and the world wide evangelism. The major task of the conference was to create internal alliances and co-operation among various missionary agencies. There was a genuine quest for Christian oneness in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ who is being sent as the light to the nations. So, the mission to the ‘non- Christian’/ ‘non- European’ world was the major agenda of the Edinburgh conference. Of course, it was one of the foundation stones from which the global ecumenical movement has been built. As an international missionary conference, Edinburgh conference was first of its kind and it marked the history of ecumenical engagement in the arena of world Christian mission.

However, the concepts of unity and the notion of universalism used to fulfill these ecumenical aspirations in the beginning of 20^th century were rooted in the modern enlightenment epistemological foundations which unfortunately paved the ways to colonialism and globalization in the latter part of world history. Thus the time has come to re-visit the epistemological foundations[1] of the modern universal ‘western mission’. It was a ‘mission’ to search for ‘the missiological other’. Today the ‘missiological other’ has become capable enough to speak for themselves and to deconstruct[2] the way they are treated in the meta narratives[3] of the modern mission historiography. Along with this, a re-visitation of the missiological strategies of the modern ecumenical movement becomes an imperative. To put it unambiguously, the concept of ‘Oikoumene’ itself is to be re-defined from the perspective of the ‘missiological other’ in the changed epistemological and theological context.

The word ‘subaltern’ generally refers to the marginalized/ subordinated/ subjugated/silenced/ forgotten people of histories.[4] It includes the histories of the people of Dalits/ Tribals/ Adivasis/the minorities/women and the other rejected peoples of Indian social history. Of course, the ecumenical movements have had a long history of missiological engagement with the subaltern realities in India. But it is the time to review its missiology, ecclesiology and theology from the perspective of the ‘missiological other’.

I. Defining Oikoumene: Epistemological Pathways…

The word ecumenism is derived from the Greek word oikoumene, which means the whole inhabited earth. In the beginning of the 20^th century, when the church union movement was becoming prominent, this word had become the sign of the unity of whole Christendom. Oikoumene is the key word in the history of the global ecumenical movement till this day. This word comprises the whole content, challenge and hope of the ecumenical task that is Christian unity. At various stages of the evolution of the ecumenical movement, the vision of oikoumene was enlarged from the unity of Christian churches to the unity of whole humanity and finally to the unity and integrity of the whole of God’s creation.

There is a historical progression and shift in the understanding of the concept- oikoumene within the history of the ecumenical movement.[5] This shift was not a natural process rather it was necessitated due to the epistemological shifts in the understanding of social relations, institutions and theological engagements. In fact, the history of the ecumenical movement itself is the history of the process of defining the category oikoumene.

1.      First phase

In the Roman times, the word oikoumene was used as a synonym of the Roman Empire. It divided the whole world as the civilized and uncivilized world. The whole ‘mission’ of the Roman Empire was to extend its imperial power through the programme of Pax Romana. This was also a call for unity cutting through diversities.[6] The modern missionary movement also bears the scars of modern western colonialism. Colonial modernity that epistemologically founded on the European enlightenment and Euro centrism, defined the modern Christian mission as the ‘White Man’s burden to reach the un-reached/ un-civilized/ un-developed/ un-evangelized of the ‘other’ parts of the world.[7]

Theologically speaking the early modern ecumenical theology was Christo- centric in content and ecclesia-centric in mission and that is evident in the discussions of Edinburgh (1910), Jerusalem (1928) and Thamparam (1938) conferences. It was the universal Christ in whom the all other cultures are expected to interact and transform. Carrying gospel to the non-Christian/ non-European world’ was its agenda. It was a Christianization programme through which it affirmed the universality of Christ and Gospel. Here oikoumene was defined in the sense of the unity of the world wide Christian church. This missiology was ecclesiastically centered and expected the growth of the Christian church universally.[8] By the tangential connection with the enlightenment programme, however, its strategy became anthropocentric and in nutshell androcentric in content. Missiologically speaking it was a period of searching for the ‘missiological other’.

2.      Second phase

The post-world war situation was conducive to the formation of freedom movements and the formation of nation states all over the world. Ecumenical formations like World Council of Churches (WCC) and other global/ national/ local ecumenical establishments initiated the discussion on the Christian role in the formation of a responsible society (Whitby-1947 and New Delhi-1961). The Vatican-II had played an important role in the shift in the understanding of ecumenism. The emergence of liberation theology and its focus on the preferential option for the poor shifted its emphasis to the struggles of the marginalized and oppressed. It was in the context of the emergence of new world economic order based on the internationalization of capital and labour that it began to exercise its economical domination on the so-called ‘third world countries’. In this crucial phase, the Ecumenical Movement re-defined its faith and theology in solidarity with the struggles of the marginalized and enlarged its geography and ethnography to the Asian-African-Pacific- Latin American cultures and people.

Uppsala (1968) initiated the discussion on new humanism and new creation through which the ecumenical movement showed its theological allegiance towards anti-poverty, anti-racist, anti-hegemonic development mission strategies. By creating discourses on Kingdom of God in this phase, the ecumenical movement dwelt upon the issues of ‘just, participatory and sustainable society’ (Nairobi-1975, Melbourn-1980, San Antonio-89) and expressed its commitment to the transformation of society and state. It was a methodological shift from the church centered theology to the kingdom centered theology.

3.      Third phase

It was the new social movements in late 60’s and 70’s like Black movement / ecological-green movements/ feminist movements/ anti-war initiatives and Asian- African subaltern movements/ de-colonizing movements that challenged the Eurocentric missiology and theology of the ecumenical movement to shifts its foci to the people centered theological engagements.[9] The slogan- ‘theology by the people’ challenged the concept of the universal theology and initiated the theological pluralism i.e. the contextual theologies. The emergence and growth of Black/ Feminist/Dalit/ Tribal/Minjung and other Asian-African-Pacific contextual theologies envisaged a new era in the history of the ecumenical theological engagements.

Theologically, it was a shift from an anthropocentric vision to the life-centered vision[10] (Canberra-1991) and thus the ecumenical movement re-defined the meaning of oikoumene in the wider sense of solidarity and unity. We call it as the wider ecumenism. Since then the ecumenism has been defined in the wider sense of relationships that encompasses the integrity of whole creation. In a way, it was an initiative to re-define the meaning of oikoumene relevantly, by rejecting the foundationalist epistemology of the modern ecumenical missiology and theology.[11] It was an effort to go beyond the humanistic, existentialist, essentialist and liberationist foundations of modern epistemology and acknowledge the political and epistemological difference of the various life worlds. Of course, oikoumene in the latter part of the world church history has become a counter imagination of unity in the context of fragmentation, marginalization and globalization.

Need for the shift…

In fact, the third phase marked the epoch of the postcolonial/ postmodern/ post-enlightenment in the process of re-defining the meaning of oikoumene in the history of the ecumenical movement. By rejecting the unitary notions of modernity, like scientism, liberal humanism and Marxism, this new epistemological shift gives special attention to the so-called ‘other’/ ‘marginal’/ ‘local’/ ‘little’/ ‘mission field’ histories or narratives of life worlds. This epistemic shift is marked by the emergence of micro-politics of the repressed groups. Steven Seidman sketches out the political content of this epistemic shift:

Today scientific knowledge and Western reason bears the scars of its many wars. Its dreams are shattered and its confidence irrevocably shaken. In past generations, science and western reason triumphed grandly by means of a relentless assault on its competitors: religion, myth, narrative, moral philosophy, folk knowledges. Today, it is as if those repressed rivals have turned to take their revenge.[12]

In the new epistemic shift, these ‘repressed rivals’ are engaged in the process of re-locating their subjectivity and social space by deconstructing the notion of the other/ marginal/ variation/ low subjectivity, ascribed to them in the colonial meta narratives of social/ ecclesiastical historiography. Indian subaltern movements, thus, Dalit/ tribal/ feminist theological engagements are to be re-looked in its epistemological differences and not to be located as an appendix or as the hyphenated theologies of the colonial Mission Theology.  

II. Edinburgh 1910 and Beyond: Re-defining oikoumene in the changed socio-theoretical and theological framework by which the subaltern movements find hope in their journey towards counter humanism.

Here we discuss some challenges and perspectives that aroused from the mission discourses of Edinburgh 1910. It is intended to re-define oikoumene and its mission foci on the basis of the new socio-theoretical-epistemological and theological framework.

1. Re-visiting the ‘Missiological other’: Deconstructing the missiological and ecclesiological metanarratives to give way for the ‘local’/ ‘little’ narratives of the ‘missionized’ people.  

Modern Christian mission was the mission to ‘the lost sheep’. Sociologically speaking, the mission envisaged by colonial modernity was empowerment programmes in order to ‘lift up’ the ‘weak’ and the ‘vulnerable’ to the modern/civilized/ developed civil life. Thus we had the ‘missions’ to Africans/ Afro-Americans/ Asians etc. Of course this has impacted changes in the life worlds of the missionized people, but on the other hand, it neglected their social agency for engaging to re-draw their own subjectivity, social space and social status. It was an empowerment programme. Empowerment is always a programme from outside while the internal discourses, habitus, practices and episteme remain intact. 

The whole historical meta narratives of the modern missionaries and mission agencies were reports of their sacrificial work among the ‘uncivilized people’. It is interesting to read some of these reports and see how these mission fields are being represented in the mission narratives by the European missionaries. The time has come to re-read these colonial ‘missiological meta narratives’ and create new ‘little’/ ‘local’ conversion stories of the so-called ‘missiological other’. The challenge here is to admit the active agency of a people and accept the epistemological/ politics of difference of their life worlds. It is the quest to be re-read/ re-present them as a ‘self’ and not as an ‘other’ or ‘binary opposite’. 

Thus the meaning of oikoumene is to be re-defined so that the ‘colonial other’/ ‘the missiological other’ could be re-visited and re-located in the history of Christian missions and in the discourses of ecumenical movement. It is a call to re-write/ re-read/ re-present the mission histories and church histories in the subaltern perspectives. Today the ‘missiological other’ has become capable enough to de-construct their subjectivity and social agency. Thus mission in the modern sense has become impossible. In the postmodern sense mission is everywhere and not to be focused in a particular region or culture or people. It can be ‘from everywhere to every where’. There is a hermeneutical imperative to attend the plural-local life affirming engagements or resistances of the subalterns in order to acknowledge and recognize the political/ epistemological differences of the plural life worlds. Thus the mission as it is envisaged in the project of modernity has become impossible today due to the death of the ‘missiological other’.

2. Recognizing Differences: Re-drawing the unity- diversity dialectics and affirming the dignity of the difference in the ecumenical missiological / theological engagement 

As we have discussed, ecumenism that is defined in the modern epistemological framework fulfils the theological quest for the unitary notions of human kind on earth. But in this postmodern/ postcolonial epistemological context, it is not the unity but the question of difference that disturbs us seriously. Recognizing differences as a key social structuring principle disturbs foundational notions of the subject, knowledge, history, theology and politics that give coherence to much current social/ theological thinking. The unitary assumptions of the modern Ecumenical Movement finds trouble when it attends the different cultures as ‘marginal’ or ‘inferior’ or ‘low’ that has to be empowered  and accommodated. Ecumenism needs to be redefined from the theoretical framework of ‘the politics of differences’ so that the so-called ‘marginals’ can be attended differently and specifically.

The politics of difference admits the dignity of the difference. It is a postmodern phenomenon where ‘the repressed other’ is returned with full dignity. Every thing that had been relegated to ‘margins’ as ‘deviations’ by the totalizing comprehensions and thoughts is now in a path of return. The subjectivity and the social space of the ‘missionized people’ in the mission fields are being constructed in the given missiological discourses and that is to be revisited in order to re-construct them. The mission in the postmodern sense is an invitation to a kind of hospitality where both the ‘host’ and the ‘stranger’ deconstructs each other and finds a renewed status mutually by celebrating their rights to be different.[13] It is an invitation to enter in to a renewed understanding of relationship. It is the responsibility for the other, being for the other.[14] It is an invitation to engage with new imaginations, new relationships, new practices and new dialogues of fraternity. The unity that neglects the dignity of the difference is hegemonic. It is in the differences that we find our potentialities and strength. All the subaltern movements are to be located in their own specificities and particularities. Dalit itself is a plural category where we particularly attend the issues of Dalit women and children. 

Thus treating Dalits or Tribals or Women as a collective/ essentialist/ unitary category and creating solidarity programmes while keeping the paternalist consciousness, seems untenable today. In the changed theoretical-theological-epistemological context, ‘solidarity’ means a re-imagination of ourselves; not mere a sense of ‘standing along with’ or ‘speaking for’ or ‘representing somebody’. It is not just the burden of constituting some slogans for the transformation of the ‘other’, while keeping ourselves intact. It is a new journey of re-looking our own faith, tradition, theology and ontology. Thus doing theology means reconstituting our own ontology and theology. Christian faith is a total commitment to the ongoing journey of finding ‘our-selves’ dialogically and transforming our life-world theologically. While defining theological discourse as a dialogical engagement, Gadamer contends: “It means that one’s own horizon ends up being largely rejected by the critical capacity to see oneself from an enlarged perspective that includes the view point of the Other”.[15] Thus, in the postmodern context theological locatedness is very important. Who is speaking for whom gets importance here. This is the hermeneutical importance of the particular theologies like Dalit / tribal/ feminist theologies in the changed epistemological context. The ecumenical theology is exhorted not to represent subaltern theological engagements rather re-read and re-constitute itself in the light of these plural innovations.

3. Re-locating Subaltern Resistances as the critical engagements for a dialogical social democratic civil society and not as social violations or dividend activities of fragmentation in this post-globalized context   

In this post-globalized era, the word Empire cannot be reduced to the uniform mode of capitalist world economy. There are multiple political/ cultural hegemonic centers and thus today the Marxian basis of centre-periphery notion has become meaningless in the world system analysis. Thus ecumenical theology in the 21^st century must go beyond the theological framework of liberation theology. The resistance against the Empire cannot be monolithic and unilateral. And there is no single absolute ‘imperial other’ as such. There should be plural resistances and micro social engagements beginning from kitchens that extend to streets and working spaces. Both, homogenization and heterogenization, resistance and marginalization, globalism and territorialism are the different sides of globalization. The unilateral resistance against Americanization sometimes tends to forget the process of Indianization (Brahmanization). This is the pitfall of post-colonialism.

Of late, the subaltern movements have turned to micro-politics in order to uphold their social agency and social position in the democratic social situation. They do not believe in a uniform civilization or class struggle any more. They tend to re-locate themselves as self reflexive social agents by engaging creatively in the local situations. By intervening creatively in the immediate social relations they are confident enough to envisage a social democratic civil society not as the ‘victims’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘rebels’. While referring to the recent Dalit land struggles in Kerala, Sunny Kapikadu, a Dalit activist and scholar says, “These are not just struggles for some raw materials of livelihood, rather they are the new searches for new social capitals which in turn make us active social agents of a democratic civil society in this post globalized context”. There is a need to uphold the political difference of the contemporary subaltern resistances and to reject the already cooked solutions for the transformation of the ‘marginalized’.

4. Retrieval to community: Re-defining ecumenical theological engagement as committed to the building up of pluriform- dialogical-local kingdom communities that carry the eschatological vision of Oikoumene

Community is not a new topic in the theological discourses of the ecumenical movement. It was there since 1960’s where we had the discussion of new humanism and new creation. The discussion on koinonia (Canberra 1991 & Santiago 1993) extended its meaning to a wider understanding of relationships. We have even discussed oikoumene as the “one house hold of life”.[16] However, we haven’t yet attended this issue epistemologically.

By giving minimum space for interaction and pluriformity, community in the modern epistemology envisages pseudo-uniformity while locating the social partner as ‘the constitutive other’.[17] This has been analyzed by Kevin Vanhoozer as the major methodological failure of the modern theology of dialogue.[18] In contrast to this, in postmodern epistemology, community invites its social partners to re-constitute their subjectivity constructions (the self and the other) dialogically by initiating new practices of mutuality and become self-reflexive social agents of a democratic society. [19]By re-imagining the ‘other’, both the Other and the self comes to deconstruction and reconstitution. This is the social-theoretical-theological basis of the concept of perichorative[20] trinity. 

The history of each community is a collection of stories of re-imagination of subjectivity and social positions by resisting the disintegrating/ hegemonic power discourses. Just and dialogical interactions of these plural local engagements enrich the wider democratic relationships in a civil society. The challenge before the subaltern movements is to promote and enable their liberative traditions to re-locate them to be the imagined counter communities of anti-hegemonic discourses, which make them self-reflexive social agents not as mere victims in the contemporary democratic situation. It is here they need to find plural communities of faith and solidarity at large.

The idea of the local church emerged in the biblical consciousness that we need a counter community of just practices in order to reproduce/ re-form divine subjectivities of the kingdom of God. Re-reading/ interpreting the text and functioning of the liberative ritual re-memories are discursive engagements to keep alive the counter imperial logic in all life situations. Thus in the hegemonic context of globalization the little counter traditions/ practices are important in order to create a wider network against the forces of Empire. It is the pitfall where the modern missiology and theology failed. By neglecting the plural local traditions, it neglected the potentiality of various little traditions of resistance and hope. A community without traditions of (ritual re-) memories and liturgical practices cannot exist in this age of wild amnesia-a programme of the Market. Church as it embodies the counter traditions of resistance and the memories of hope becomes the wide possibility of coming together for the transformation of all. It is here the ecumenical theology must find importance in the plural local traditions where the local communal theological engagements become the signs of the eschatological vision of oikoumene. By promoting the plural theologies of communal counter practices and engagements and envisaging of a collective pilgrimage of hope, ecumenical movement fulfills its call and commitment to participate in the process of missio dei. 

Conclusion

The subaltern communities are today in the struggle of re-locating their social agency and space. They are in the theological engagement of re-presenting themselves as active social agents of democratic society. By re-drawing their subjectivity constructions and re-presentations of their social spaces as the ‘missiological other’, they are engaged in the process of reconstituting new communal practices of liberation and solidarity. The quest for oikoumene is not to have a universal vision of mega-pseudo- unity of all ‘the variations’ rather celebrating the dignity of the political/ epistemological differences of the ‘other’/ ‘local’/ ‘little’ life worlds. The history of the mission of the ecumenical movement is to be assessed and analyzed in terms of its local/ particular engagements of transformation by envisaging rainbow communities of counter practices and interventions including the subaltern engagements. 

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[1] Epistemological discussions help us to problematize the authority and the content of our knowledge. According to Gavin Hyman, modernity was a quest for universally valid epistemological foundationalism and it was characterized by a drive for certitude, universality and mastery. On the other hand postmodernism provides the way for epistemological and anthropological pluralism. Gavin Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001),p.11

[2] Deconstruction is a postmodern method by which it brings out the politics behind the construction of meaning.

[3]  Meta narratives are the overarching philosophies.

[4] According to the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the term subaltern designates non elite or subordinated social groups.

[5] Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition (Geneva: WCC, 1991)

[6] K. M. George, “ values for New Ecumenism in Asia” in Living in Oikoumene edited by Hope s. Antone (Hong Kong: CCA, 2003), 78-87

[7] Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press, 2003), 22

[8] Konrad Raiser, Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, edited by Nicholas Lossky et all.,  (Geneva: WCC, 2002), 1119

[9] T. V. Philip, Ecumenism In Asia (Thiruvalla: ISPCK& CSS, 1994), 39

[10] Konrad Raiser, To be the Church (Geneva: WCC, 1997), 39-40 

[11] Ibid. 41

[12] Steven Seidman, Contested Knowledge, Social Theory in the Postmodern Era (UK: Blackwell, 1994), 327

[13] Jacques Derrida, Hospitality in Derrida-Habermas Reader, edited by Lasse Thomassen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 208-209

[14] Immanuel Levinas, Ethics and infinity. Conversations with Phlippe Nemo, trans. Richard A Cohen (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 52

[15] Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 297

[16] Konrad Raiser, To be the Church (Geneva: WCC, 1997), 74 

[17]The community in modern epistemological understanding is a social order in which relationships are connected externally and determined by contracts rather than custom or tradition.

[18] Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press, 2003), 19

[19] Stanley J. Grenz, John R. Franke,  Beyond Foundationalism, Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context, (Louisville; Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 209.

[20]