Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Transgressive Theology
Transgressive Theology
TRANSGRESSIVE THEOLOGY
Introduction
The authors of this issue, part of the circle of US-EATWOT members and friends in solidarity, are grateful for the opportunity to have a
theological conversation with the broader audience of the international
organization, a conversation that has not happened for a while. It is our
hope and desire that this modest start, as eclectic as it is, will be the
beginning of a sustained and fruitful conversation. We are a diverse group
of theologians from diverse locations, social and epistemic, who have
been engaging each other in dialogue over the past few years and felt
the need for starting a new conversation that we are calling--as a working definition--transgressive theology. Perhaps the best expression of the
group's thinking is in the statement of life and energy reflected in the
artwork on the cover.
The concerns that have been guiding our reflection as a group as
we articulated them in a shared statement a couple of years ago when we
started this conversation are the following: Where and how do we develop
collaborations (projects, events, publications) with varied constituencies (academy, church, society) in order to maintain the necessary link
between reflection and practice? How do we incorporate transgressive
perspectives in our pedagogical praxis, in our scholarship, in the academy, in our churches, and in our social movements so that they become
avenues for meaningful resistance and radical change?
This issue reflects the different experiences of doing theology as
a transgressive tool to articulate voices of liberation from particular locations of social and intellectual struggle. Theology as we know it, is among
the first constructs that have become irrelevant for addressing the emerging questions from our experiences in a changing world and collapsing
empire. The epistemic revolution of decolonial thinking is all around us,
and the Eurocentric theology that dominated the scene for the last centuries finds itself today irrelevant. That theology needs to be transgressed.
12 Introduction
Introduction 13
able to uncover the victimization of peoples and the struggles accompanying the severity of poverty. What it demonstrates is how diversity
and race in the contemporary situation of global conflict, imperceptibly
marginalizes the poor, the exploited, those systematically and lawfully
stripped of their status as human beings. His analysis is a critique of the
use of race by those who are victims of market driven society, as a possible solution to the violence we face.
In the final article, Joseph Drexler-Dreis argues for reciprocity to
exist between theological discourses on God and the irruptions beyond
the borders of the western concepts that theology has traditionally drawn
upon to describe God. He does this by first engaging the transgressive
character of the irruption of the poor, which catalyzed liberation theologys use of the preferential option for the poor as a discourse about
God. He then considers Toni Morrisons Beloved in order to reveal the
dynamism and creativity of this irruption, which he grounds theologically by drawing on Marcella Althaus-Reids Queer Theology. From this
intersection he develops criteria by which theological discourses on God
will make a preferential option for those queer experiences that have
been excluded.
Again, we hope these articles help to begin a sustained and fruitful
discussion among the international EATWOT community and its friends
in solidarity as we respond to the significant challenges facing theologies
in our changing worlds.
Michel Elias Andraos
Gerald M. Boodoo