Week 9 Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualizing Colonial and Contemporary Violence Against Women in Africa – Amina Mama – Castle

I was surprising that even the violence against women in Africa was affected by the British colonialism. These colonial gender ideologies have been intertwined with the European patriarchal imperialism and the masculine administration structure. What really struck me is that even the natives were part of the acceleration of the violence during this colonial period “primarily in the form of neocolonialist economic policies” (:251).

Week 9 – Survival and Invention: Indigeneity in the Caribbean – Peter Hulme – Castle

Definition of the indigeneity of the Caribs is I think very hard to make because there are not a lot of resources found, and if any, there are mostly by “visitors.” Therefore, I support what Hulme says that it is crucial that the Caribs open to other groups outside the island to gain wider angle to see themselves as Hulme points out.

Week 9 Representing Sati: Continuities and Discontinuities – Rajeswari Sunder Rajan – Castle

The paradox in this article makes me sad. The Indian widows in the precolonial period were sacrificed to the crucial ritual that they were to choose or forced to be burned alive. And even though widows in the British India were emancipated from the ritual, their lives were still miserable, living in death for the pressure of the tradition. Rajan tells me well to understand the paradox through the three different periods: precolonial, colonial and postcolonial working along with feminist literatures.

Week 9 Ch. 8 Mission of the Church – Fuellenbach

I think the whole point of this chapter is the kingdom of God and its mission through the church. I agree that today’s Christian churches should consider the inculturation of the Christian message and dialogue with other religions, which are addressed in this article. Above all, God loves the world and wants to fulfill His love towards every nation, race and culture; therefore, the church as His servant must follow the universal love of God.

Week 9 Wednesday – Class Reflection

Today’s class gave me a chance to consider the attitude of my church toward the youth group. My church is conservative Presbyterian and it does not seem to understand the “transformation of secular realm,” which is one of the aspects of the emerging churches. Once I started hip-hop worship dance and the more than a dozen of nonbelievers came to church for 6 months until the church committee stopped them from dancing in the church. I remember what a book says, “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred.”

Week 9 Monday – Class Reflection

It was awesome to hear a short history of the birth of the “emerging churches” in UK and USA even though I had already read the book “Church Next” and “Emerging Churches.” I am still so into those discourses that are geared toward establishing a sort of kingdom-minded ministry. I am looking forward to seeing what the emerging churches would look like after some decades later. I hope that they would not end up having faded away as some of experimental church models but being influential to all other churches.

Week 8 – Reply to Paul Kim’s Weblog

That’s right Paul Kim. I agree with you that they did not establish a egalitarian structure in their churches. However, the patriarchal church structure seems very necessary in order for them to understand the concept of God the father and His son. In their first attempt of understanding the trinity, I assumed that they might have had a hard time with grasping the meaning of “Father in heaven” Jesus often called God. This may have brought them to be more naturally patriarchal. As Jesus the son of God obeyed his father, the apostles of the church was to obey Jesus, and the congregation was in turn to obey the apostles. My thinking, however, is that today’s Western cultural shifts would not understand this system any more because of strong individualism coming along with autonomous idea.

Week 8 – The Prose of Counter-Insurgency – Ranajit Guha – Castle

The three made-up types of discourse about the insurgency of India may be primary, secondary and tertiary. The last discourse is considered to be radical and very indigenous, critiquing colonialism. However, this still has not been independent by itself to recover its place in history because of the paradigm, which is formed by the primary and secondary discourses. – This is inspiring to me to think about the power of the bureaucratic and elite discourses in history.

Week 8 – God at the Crossroads: Sophia – Sugirtharajah

I think that the description of Sophia in this article is so expected to give a chance to people who are eager to experience some kind of maternal characteristics of God in their lives under patriarchal society. God as Father can be seen any distant from them but through the transcendence of Sophia they may be able to get closer to the absolute being, attaining vigor and wisdom for their hard times.

Week 8 – Maori “Jews”: Resistant Reading of John 5.10-47 – Mary Huie-Jolly – Sugirtharajah

Interesting article that gives me an insight that one saying of Jesus in John could be used as a powerful tool for the British colonialism toward the tribe Maori. I have come to be a bit afraid that I may find any sort of intention in today’s churches to abuse the Scripture not as a power against the evil one but for its own dominant power over the congregation.