Indigenous Theologies: Relationality and Lived Cosmologies on Land and Sea
Guest Editors: Rathiulung Elias KC and Elia Maggang
After the final session of the Yale–Edinburgh Conference on 23 June 2023, a group of us working on Indigenous theologies gathered under the shadow of New College on the Mound, Edinburgh, to reflect on our papers and the responses they had generated. Over the past two days, we had presented on various aspects of Indigenous theology and now sought to process both the reception and the pushbacks we had encountered. Most of us were members of RISC (Researching Indigenous Studies and Christianity), a network that was then meeting monthly online since 2022 for seminars and had cultivated a year of sustained engagement with Indigenous theological discourse. Insights from these online seminars were reaffirmed at the Conference: Indigenous theology, in its diversity and contextual specificity, challenges the fundamental assumptions of dominant Western theological frameworks. Its claims often require a basic and elemental re-evaluation of Christianity as expressed in Western theology. This raises critical questions: What makes Indigenous theology ‘indigenous’? How is it distinct from merely contextual or local expressions of Christian thought? What, precisely, does the term ‘Indigenous’ signify in theological discourse? We are grateful to the editors of Studies in World Christianity for inviting us to collate a special issue on Indigenous Theologies. This issue offers an opportune forum to bring these latent questions to the fore and to explore the cosmological, relational and ethical contributions that Indigenous theologies make to World Christianity. The articles represent a varied and textured account of Indigenous theologies from Central America and Asia; from land to sea; and across disciplines and themes.
It is important to note that the term ‘Indigenous’ here differs from its more familiar use in broader World Christianity discourse. Usually, the term has a more general reference, such as indigenous churches in China or Africa, or the indigenisation of theology within specific cultural contexts. In those usages, ‘indigenous’ primarily denotes human cultural, linguistic or social expressions of Christianity that have developed locally, in distinction from foreign or missionary Christianity. In contrast, the way Indigenous (sometimes capitalised to emphasise this distinction) is referred to here in this special issue has a more specific meaning. It is true that Indigenous theologies certainly include such contextual elements, but the term as used here is at once more fundamental and specific. It is related to the specific identity marker of ‘Indigenous communities’. It is characterised by the engagement of the theological, cosmological and ecological particularities of the earth itself. In this sense, it is not simply a theology from below, but a theology-from-the-land or theology-from-the-sea. It comprises a theological sensibility that encompasses their eco-social realities. A scholarly approach that might be readily recognisable in Western academia is the recent ‘more-than-human’ or multispecies turns in various academic disciplines: anthropology, digital humanities, philosophy and theology. Although it must be clarified that while Indigenous theologies align in a more-than-human approach, they are not derivative of these disciplinary turns as they are theological systems that emerge, rather, from the lived traditions and ecologies of Indigenous communities, often standing apart from the intellectual genealogies of those academic disciplines. In asserting indigeneity, then, Indigenous theologies makes a theological claim about human beings as ontologically continuous with the earth, while being insistent to stand and theologise from the positionally of marginalisation as Indigenous communities. This insight is drawn both from the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples and from their engagements with Christian thought on their own terms. Beyond its implicit more-than-human and ecologically-entangled characteristic, Indigenous theologies are more than contextual articulations of eco-theology. They are expressions of historically and culturally marginalised peoples and, therefore, socially and politically entangled in their lived experiences and particularities.
This special issue is attentive to this dual eco-social framing of Indigenous theology within World Christianity. The ‘indigenous’ (understood in general) has been a central concern in World Christianity. However, the concerns of Indigenous discourse – contentious and ongoing as they are – have conceptually and analytically been often conflated and subsumed within a broader discussion of contextuality. Since tribal/aboriginal/indigenous peoples worldwide face marginalisation and cultural diminution in their own nation states, they claim to inhabit a ‘Fourth World status’ – not necessarily space-bound or with political nation-state sovereignty, but asserting their nationhood and self-determination, with distinct history and identity. Finally, Indigenous communities are often allocated to the margins of discourse when framed in area studies or studies of nation states. The communities are not bounded by, but spill across these political and cultural demarcations. For instance, Tribal communities in the borderlands of the South and South-east Asian subregions, such as the Nagas, Chin/Zomi, Mizo; and ethnic minorities such as the Karen, Akha, and so on that are spread across the national boundaries of China, Myanmar, and Thailand; and the Gunadule people across Central America. For this reason, it is crucial to centre the discourse on the experiences and lived theologies of the communities themselves; inviting a view from the far-flung uplands, from the coastal and maritime areas, and from the margins of ‘civilisation’. We hope that this special issue is a step in that direction. At the same time, it bears repetition that this is not an exercise in essentialising Indigenous life, as though to critique Western assumptions, geographies of power and nation-states, and mainstream discourse is an affront to progress and forward movement. It is rather the opposite – that Indigenous theology is a constructive exercise to rethink the categories and grammar of theology and Christian thought, while continuing to stand rooted in their lands and seas. In these ways, each paper is a testament to the un-bounding of theological practices, concepts, ethics and cosmologies in World Christianity.
- Rathiulung Elias KC, ‘The Cosmological Challenge of Indigenous Theology: Being, Relations and Renewal’
- Anupama Ranawana, ‘Three Texts, to Restore and to Return: Centring Refusal in Indigenous Thinking’
- Jocabed R. Solano Miselis, ‘Indigenous Memories as Resistance against Epistemicide: Reflections from Experiences with Memoria Indígena in Abya Yala (the Americas)’
- Elilo Ezung, ‘Dreams and Tribals: Engaging the Oneiric among the Nagas of North-east India’
- Arvin M. Gouw, ‘Mary as Mother of the Blue Seas: An Ecotheology Proposal in Light of Climate Change’
This issue contains a review essay by Dr Pedro Feitoza, the first of what we hope will become a regular feature. Feitoza engages with three recent publications on Christianity in Latin America to draw attention to significant developing themes in the literature.
- Pedro Feitoza, ‘Review Essay: Religious Renewal and Its Directions in Latin America’
This is an excerpt from the editorial of SWC 32.2 by Rathiulung Elias KC and Elia Maggang, entitled ‘Editorial: Indigenous Theologies: Relationality and Lived Cosmologies on Land and Sea’.