Monday, January 12, 2015

footnote 29 My thanks to Shannon Taylor

91YefmTsDtL Waiting for me when I got back home from holidays was Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Theologies: Storyweaving in the Asia-Pacific. Edited by Mark Brett and Jione Havea, published by Palgrave Macmillan in their Postcolonialism and Religions, it is 264 pages of gold. Sixteen chapters that explore post-colonial theologies in colonial contexts, particularly in dialogue with indigenous Australian and Pacifica peoples. It is a very, very rich set of essays, that cover issues including acknowledging traditional owners, masculinity and Pacifica contextual theologies.

Like the U2 book from a few weeks ago, this -hard- cover also is stunningly, beautiful – a painting by Mark Yettica-Paulsen (who also has a great chapter on Mission in the Great South Land. An Indigenous perspective, which will be compulsory reading for my mission classes from now on.)

I have a chapter, which I co-wrote with Uniting Church Congress Minister Tim Matton-Johnson. Titled “This is my body? A postcolonial investigation of indigenous Australian Communion Practice,” it explores the elements – bread and wine – and the shapes they take (or can not take) as they move between cultures. It is a dialogue with William Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire and Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ, along with a search through Australian mission history to reflect on the absence and presence of local symbols in the celebration of Eucharist.

It is a chapter which, when I sat down to re-read it tonight, I decided I was very, very pleased with. Including footnote 29 “My thanks to Shannon Taylor for her research assistance in this section.”! She had done some initial literature searching in one section of the paper and so it was a great thrill to acknowledge that as the article was written.

Posted by steve at 09:24 PM

2 Comments

  1. I really enjoyed the article when I read the version that the Worship Working Group saw. I’m interested in how you came across Cavanaugh’s work in relation to this. Had you previously read it? I’m asking a serious question about research method here. You make excellent and unlikely connections between sources and I’m interested to hear about how you do that so well.

    Comment by Craig Mitchell — January 12, 2015 @ 9:49 pm

  2. Welcome back Steve – hope you all had a good break – this looks like an interesting read…..have you ever been out to Salisbury on a Sunday? Have to take you and Lynne out there sometime……..

    Comment by Jenny Brisbane — January 20, 2015 @ 9:08 pm

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