Introduction: Decolonizing New Testament Studies? Beyond Eurocentrism to Reshaping the Discipline

Abstract

Set in the context of current calls for the decolonization of universities, curricula, and academic disciplines, this essay first outlines what this might mean in the discipline of New Testament studies, highlighting both the formation of the discipline within a particular western European context and the need to move beyond the disciplinary practices shaped by this history. It then introduces the papers collected in this special issue, not by summarizing each paper individually (the abstracts of each provide this summary) but by identifying certain themes and issues that emerge from the collection. Both the contextualized character of these various studies and their modes of ethical, political, and theological engagement raise challenges for the discipline as a whole.

The call to ‘decolonize the curriculum’ in universities and other educational institutions has acquired a new level of prominence in recent years. There are networks, reports, research projects, and publications all concerned to address this challenge. With formal political processes of decolonization lying in many cases well in the past, this is, in a sense, no new challenge. Indeed, there have been voices through the years calling for precisely this kind of reassessment across a range of disciplines, in now classic works such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind, published in 1986, or Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies from 1999 (wa Thiong’o 1986; Smith 1999). In our own discipline, Fernando Segovia and Musa Dube were arguing for the ‘decolonizing’ of biblical studies in the late 1990s, and R.S. Sugirtharjah published his collection of Voices from the Margin in 1991. ¹ Among the key stimuli for the current prominence of concern is the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, which began at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2015, and later became prominent at the University of Oxford. ² Another pivotal moment was the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which led to world-wide protests under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement, originally established in 2013 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012. ³ For whatever reasons, decolonization, and specifically the call to decolonize the curriculum, has a new level of prominence across multiple disciplines, although the call is by no means universally welcomed. ⁴

What the decolonization of academic institutions, or of an academic discipline, means and requires is, however, by no means straightforward to define. Political processes of decolonization—the ending of colonial rule and the handing over of governance and control to an independent nation—are more clearly and easily demarcated, even if this point of transition does not neatly bring relationships of (neo)colonial dependence and unequal power to an end, such that critical analysis of the relationship with (former) colonial powers remains important. The call for a decolonizing of academic disciplines assumes, for a start, that these disciplines continue to be shaped by their formation within western European institutions, by the particular methods and epistemologies that emerged from that context, and by the unequal, colonial configurations of power that gave white European men the status and resources with which they could study the world, and placed other peoples into the category of objects of that research. ⁵ A glance at the standard histories of the academic discipline of New Testament studies reveals how far it is presented as a western European (and, to some extent, North American) story, with its central (male) figures boldly pursuing the ‘scientific’ study of the New Testament’s historical and literary problems. ⁶ A commitment to decolonization indicates an insistence that disciplinary practices should no longer be determined by this history. Along with a critical analysis of such disciplinary traditions, decolonization therefore requires that the voices, epistemologies, perspectives, and priorities of scholars who represent the excluded underside of these colonial histories and relationships should be given their proper place within the discipline—and that means not merely accepted as representative of the range of approaches that the discipline can encompass, but as defining its essential tasks, methods, and goals.

Making such work constitutive of the discipline may require another critical step: one of the established marks of traditional European (and North American) New Testament scholarship is that it presents itself not as the product of a specific context (to be critically analysed within the research) but as a disembodied, detached, ‘view from nowhere’, and as such, makes a claim to universal relevance. Work from Africa, Latin America, India, and elsewhere in the so-called Global South, by contrast, is often, as we see in the essays presented here, concerned to relate the New Testament to a specific context, and thus labels its perspective accordingly. This makes it easier to marginalize, or at least to regard as of ‘local’ interest only, in comparison with the ‘international’ scholarship produced in the centres of power in the West. Raewyn Connell, discussing the traditions of social theory and the discipline of sociology, makes a similar point, contrasting the ‘claim to universal relevance’ of the ‘northern’ theory that ‘originates in the metropole’—a claim that requires that its specific origins ‘remain tacit’—with the specificity of ‘southern theory’ that originates in what she terms the ‘periphery’: ‘Intellectuals in the periphery cannot universalize a locally generated perspective because its specificity is immediately obvious. It attracts a name such as “African philosophy” or “Latin American dependency theory”, and the first question that gets asked is “how far is this relevant to other situations?”’ (Connell 2007: 44).

One essential facet of a response to this issue is to examine and illuminate, critically, the ways in which Euro-American historical scholarship is a product of particular contexts and histories that shape the parameters, methods, and focus of the enquiry, such that all scholarship is ‘contextual’, whether this is acknowledged or not (see, e.g., Lawrence forthcoming). The corresponding facet is to insist that scholarship that does relate itself explicitly to its context of production is equally worthy of our attention, even if our own context is different, particularly if we aspire to participate in an international, global discipline.

With this challenge in view, as part of a wider project exploring what it might mean to decolonize New Testament studies, this special issue brings together a range of papers addressing the decolonial challenge produced by scholars from, and working in, the Global South. ⁷ Fundamental to this exercise is the conviction that such voices are not merely interesting, or representative of the rich diversity of contemporary New Testament studies, but crucial to the evolution of the discipline and to the ongoing reformulation of its tasks, methods, and goals. Given the continued dominance of western Europe and North America within the international scholarly discipline—around 86% of the members of SNTS are from these regions, according to a 2018 membership list ⁸ —decolonization requires the kind of transformation that will give ‘southern’ scholars a central place within the discipline’s structures and institutions. A further impetus to this challenge stems from the fact that, with an ongoing shift of Christianity’s active adherents to the Global South, a majority of people who have a religious stake in the New Testament now live in these parts of the world (see Zurlo, Johnson, and Crossing 2019, esp. 9–10). ⁹

I am very grateful to all those who helped me make contact with the scholars whose papers are presented here, ¹⁰ and also, and especially, to the scholars themselves, who have not only produced their papers in a timely manner but also engaged in sometimes extensive editorial correspondence as we prepared the essays for publication. ¹¹ A number of the papers were presented and discussed in online seminars hosted by the Centre for Biblical Studies at the University of Exeter, in order both to help authors to shape their papers for publication and also to enable staff and students at Exeter to engage with scholars, perspectives, and contexts which challenge and extend our vision of the discipline and its tasks. ¹² Presenting and writing in English required a number of the authors to operate in a language that is not their first, and I am both grateful for their willingness to do so, and also conscious of the extent to which this remains a barrier—one of many, to be sure—to participation in international scholarly fora.

With my initial invitation I provided a brief orientation to the topic, and the issues I hoped might be addressed, but tried to leave the scope of the papers open, in an attempt to give the authors sufficient freedom to present and practice their scholarship as they wished, rather than overly influence their output. So that readers can see the extent and nature of this orientation, I have included in an appendix the content of this initial invitation, excluding only practical information on format and deadlines.

I will not here offer a summary of each paper, since that is already provided in the abstract that opens each essay. Instead, I conclude this introduction by identifying what seem to me some of the key themes and challenges that emerge. It is worth noting, first, that these essays, in their various ways, draw on European and American scholarship in developing their interpretation of New Testament texts. In some cases, they do so in an explicit attempt to bring together the ‘traditional “Western” methods of biblical study’ and the cultural insights of ‘“contextual” indigenous reading’ (Fatilua Fatilua); in other cases, there is, alongside the engagement, a critique of the ways in which these traditional methods, and the discipline as a whole, devalues and excludes other epistemologies (Wayne Te Kaawa). Furthermore, several of the scholars here represented received their training in the discipline during doctoral studies in western Europe or north America. What this suggests, it seems to me, is that decolonization of the discipline will not involve the wholesale rejection of, or intellectual separation from, the methods and results of the ‘western’ academy; but it will entail both a critique of these methods (and their exclusionary practices) and an integration of other cultural, epistemological, and methodological perspectives. To adapt Connell’s vision for a decolonized sociology, such an integrated discipline would aim for ‘mutual learning on a world scale, in which different formations of knowledge are respected but enter into educational relations with each other’—including critique. ¹³

One feature shared in common by all the essays is a concern to relate the interpretation of New Testament texts to the challenges of a specific contemporary context. This concern is addressed in a considerable variety of ways, but many of the essays deploy a kind of analogical method that seeks to understand the New Testament text in its own context, at the same time relating it closely to a contemporary context (e.g., Juan Alberto Casas Ramirez; Layang Seng Ja; Marilou Ibita). ¹⁴ Fatilua makes the point explicitly that this kind of method aims to provide illumination in both directions: shining fresh light on a New Testament text by bringing some new cultural dynamic to bear upon it, and offering fruitful insights into a contemporary challenge, and possible modes of action within it, via engagement with the New Testament.

The ways in which specific colonial histories impact upon these strategies of interpretation also varies. Layang Seng Ja writes in the context of the contemporary military regime in Myanmar, but addresses a critical issue in Gospel interpretation that she sees as a product of the kind of Christian theology brought by western missionaries long ago. Wayne Te Kaawa writes in the settler colonial context of Aoteraoa, New Zealand, where the impact of colonization on the indigenous Māori remains a pressing contemporary issue, not least in the fields of theology and biblical studies. David Joy argues that the task of decolonizing biblical studies in the Indian context requires a critical attention to the impact of empire, both in the ancient world of the New Testament and in contemporary interpretation. Johnson Thomaskutty also sees the impact of empire in approaches to biblical translation, highlighting the importance of Bible translation—a topic traditionally neglected within the discipline of New Testament studies ¹⁵ —as an ideologically loaded exercise that can fail to take account of the languages, needs, and perspectives of subaltern communities. Other authors relate the challenge of decolonizing New Testament studies not so much to direct features of their colonial histories, but to contemporary challenges with a range of roots and causes. These include Marilou Ibita’s concern with teenage pregnancy rates in the Philippines, Juan Alberto Casas Ramírez’s focus on victims of violence in Colombia, and Gesila Uzukwu’s argument about the impact of African cosmologies on the reception of Philemon and the contemporary endurance of patterns of master-slave relationship. Others are more concerned with some of the religious challenges with which biblical interpreters must engage, such as Viateur Habarurema’s focus on a Markan exorcism story in the light of contemporary African Pentecostalism, or Sergio Zapata Grajales’ reading of John 9 in the light of the model of misión integral, or ‘integral mission’, that has been so influential within Latin American evangelicalism. Based on this range of perspectives, decolonization of the discipline does not always mean a direct challenge to specific legacies of a particular colonial history—though it may well mean this—but more broadly a reconfiguration of the discipline such that it addresses the particular concerns and priorities of interpreters from the Global South.

As will be evident from these brief comments on the content of the essays, another feature they share in common is that their engagement with the New Testament and with contemporary issues comes from a theological and ecclesial perspective. Institutional location, in seminary, theological college, or ecclesially affiliated university, often further supports or presumes such engagement. Again, the particular mode of this engagement varies, from the explicitly theological statement of Sergio Zapata Grajales, that the purpose of using scholarly methods for interpreting the New Testament is ‘to hear the voice of God and to participate in the mission of God’, to Marilou Ibita’s call to pastoral and social action to address an issue like teenage pregnancy, or Layang Seng Ja’s appeal to Myanmar Christians to imitate the earthly Jesus in standing up against injustice and standing with the oppressed. But in their various ways, all of the authors present their interpretation, at least in part, as a contribution or challenge to inform the ways that Christians believe and act in the contemporary world.

This explicit mode of theological and ethical engagement raises an issue that has haunted the history of New Testament studies ever since it was conceived, post-Enlightenment, as a ‘scientific’ rational discipline that operated free from the constraints of doctrine or belief, but which was nonetheless frequently seen as making an essential contribution to the tasks of Christian theology. ¹⁶ The challenge of decolonizing the discipline seems to raise this conundrum in a fresh form. Without pretending to offer an adequate discussion, let alone resolution, of this issue, there seem to me to be three possible models of the discipline’s future, only one of which is potentially adequate.

The first model reflects the insistence that a scholarly discipline cannot be ‘confessional’ and therefore must be rigorously separated from ecclesial or theological commitments. The problem here, as these essays together make abundantly clear, is that such a model of the discipline will exclude precisely the kind of work that interpreters in the Global South are concerned to produce. In effect, the ‘rules of the game’ will continue to be set by western gatekeepers, who will allow into the fold only those who agree to operate within the assumptions of the rationalist secular western worldview.

A second model is the mirror-image of the first, locating the discipline of New Testament studies within the disciplines of Christian theology and placing it essentially in service of the Church. This model, which isolates the discipline within the walls of the Church, would be damaging and retrograde, since it would (re)insulate the discipline from the profoundly important contributions and challenges that a wide range of (non-Christian) interpreters is able to bring—challenges to historical reconstructions, and particularly challenges to presumptions of Christian superiority and to the negative and damaging caricatures that New Testament scholarship has sometimes generated, especially of Jews and Judaism.

The third model is one that condemns the discipline to continue with its awkward, difficult, and often contested efforts to include within its scope both theological and historical approaches, both approaches that eschew any contemporary ‘application’ and approaches that generate ethical appeal and calls to action. Allowing interpreters within a discipline to express and to presume in their work a variety of worldviews, and a variety of stances with regard to contemporary engagement, leaves a host of difficult questions (By what criteria are scholarly interpretations to be evaluated? What are the limits of what counts as scholarly discourse? How are incommensurable perspectives to communicate?). But it seems to me that decolonizing the discipline of New Testament studies cannot viably be pursued unless the discipline makes space—and space in the centre, as it were, not merely at the margins—for the kinds of contextually, theologically, and ethically engaged readings represented in this collection.