Decolonizing Church

Emerging Voices Speak

Néstor Medina, Becca Whitla

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9780228025979
• Topic: Theology & Religion

As Canada wrestles with the legacy of colonialism, a new understanding of the church is emerging. Racialized and marginalized voices within the church are daring to make sense of their own experiences and understanding of Christianity, turning their faith traditions into a force for decolonization.
Decolonizing Church brings together varied theological voices to explore how Christian scholars and church leaders can reconfigure theology, ethics, and church practices. The volume aims to open conversations about how churches can engage the task of redressing the colonial legacy and its harms, and, in so doing, model the gratuitous disruptive power of the good news. The contributors come from diverse places and communities of identity – Indigenous, immigrant, racialized, LGBTQ2AI, disability, and gender – which shapes the way they speak and write, practice theology, and view church structures. Readers will find a range of genres including storytelling, ethnographic narrative, personal and biblical reflection, and practical wisdom. Drawing on decolonial thinking, the book offers other ways of knowing, being, and doing church.
Decolonizing Church blends theory and practice as it addresses justice concerns that are at the forefront for the church, for theological education, and for society at large.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Half Title 1
• Introduction
• 1 It Is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance: Kwakwaka’wakw and Haíɫzaqv Traditions Transforming Christianity by Receiving the “Other”
• 2 The Case for My Decoloniality: The Alchemic Need to Turn the Researcher into a Storyteller
• 3 At the Kitchen Table with 嫲嫲 Mah Mah: Reclaiming Delilah
• 4 An Anthropology of Decolonizing Among Filipino Canadians
• 5 Seeking Decolonizing Peace Across Intersecting Colonial Memories
• 6 Los Hijos del Maíz: Narratives on Religion and Culture Among Mexican Migrant Farm Workers in Southwestern Ontario
• 7 Cripping the Failed Body of Christ
• 8 Relationally Speaking: Indigenous Women Unsettling Jesus Toward Decolonial Healing
• 9 Good News for Whom? Black and Indigenous Peoples’ Shared Histories, Struggles, and Solidarities
• 10 Syncopating to a Decolonial Rhythm: Theoethical Musings on Liturgy
• 11 Decolonizing to Indigenize
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Index