Mother Tongue Theologies

Poets, Novelists, Non-Western Christianity

Darren J. N. Middleton, Middleton

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781556359651
  9781498251600
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630879686
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Recognizing that one-third of the world's Christians practice their faith outside Europe and North America, the fourteen essays in Mother Tongue Theologies explore how international fiction depicts Christianity's dramatic movement South and East of Jerusalem as well as North and West. Structured by geographical region, this collection captures the many ways in which people around the globe receive Christianity. It also celebrates postcolonial literature's diversity. And it highlights non-Western authors' biblical literacy, addressing how and why locally rooted Christians invoke Scripture in their pursuit of personal as well as social transformation. Featured authors include Fyodor Dostoevsky, Constantine Cavafy, Scott Cairns, Chinua Achebe, Madam Afua Kuma, Earl Lovelace, V. S. Reid, Ernesto Cardenal, Helena Parente Cunha, Arundhati Roy, Mary Martha Sherwood, Marguerite Butler, R. M. Ballantyne, Rudyard Kipling, Nora Okja Keller, Amy Tan, Albert Wendt, and Louise Erdrich. Individual essayists rightly come to different conclusions about Christianity's global character. Some connect missionary work with colonialism as well as cultural imperialism, for example, and yet others accentuate how indigenous cultures amalgamate with Christianity's foreignness to produce mesmerizing, multiple identities. Differences notwithstanding, Mother Tongue Theologies delves into the moral and spiritual issues that arise out of the cut and thrust of native responses to Western Christian presence and pressure. Ultimately, this anthology suggests the reward of listening for and to such responses, particularly in literary art, will be a wider and deeper discernment of the merits and demerits of post-Western Christianity, especially for Christians living in the so-called post-Christian West.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part One: Eastern Christianity
• Chapter 1: The Ambiguity of Suffering
• Chapter 2: The Unorthodox Greek Orthodoxy of Constantine Cavafy
• Chapter 3: In Lieu of Logos
• Part Two: Christianity in Africa and the Caribbean
• Chapter 4: The Collision of Two Cultures
• Chapter 5: Jesus of Nazareth in Ghana’s Deep Forest
• Chapter 6: Essential Being
• Part Three: Christianity in Central and South America
• Chapter 7: “They Come Smiling Out of the Morgue”
• Chapter 8: The Syncretism of Candomblé and Feminism in Helena Parente Cunha’s Woman between Mirrors
• Part Four: Christianity in Asia and the Pacific Islands
• Chapter 9: The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Chapter 10: Converting the Idolatrous Heathens
• Chapter 11: Conflicts between Christianity and Korean Shamanism in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman
• Chapter 12: Christianity’s Cross-cultural (Mis)Translation in Amy Tan’s Fiction
• Chapter 13: Images of Religion in South Pacific Fiction
• Part Five: Christianity in Native America
• Chapter 14: Native-Christian Syncretism in Two Louise Erdrich Novels
• Contributors
• For Further Reading