Postcolonial Reconfigurations : An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology

Collected essays exploring how to do theology (part one) and read the Bible (part two) when viewed through the eyes of oppressed peoples who have suffered - and continue to suffer - from western colonialism.

The essays assembled in this volume constitute a counter discourse to the existing understandings of the Bible and Christian theology. Applying postcolonial critical categories within the theological discipline, Sugirtharajah calls into question some of the established notions about the relationship between the Bible, theology and colonialism.Among the issues the volume deals with are: the status and standing of the Bible; colonial appropriation of biblical texts and postcolonial reappraisal of them; the fate of the Bible outside its natural habitat; the permeation of the ideologies of empire in Christian theology and biblical interpretation; potency and pitfalls of Third World theological discourse and the hazards of brokering texts from other cultures in Western metropolitan centres. Postcolonial Reconfigurations is a major critical intervention in the current debates surrounding the Bible and Christian theology. Written in an accessible style, it offers not only an illuminative reassessment, but also signals a significant next step for theological discourse. R.S. Sugirtharajah is Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics in the University of Birmingham. His most recent publications include The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters (2001) and Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (2002).