Decolonizing Theology and Gender - Day 3
Conferees present a plenary session at Peace Camp 2023. (Courtesy of Ivan Ariel Canizal)
Editor's Note: The following article is a reproduction of one of the keynote speeches delivered during the Summer Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
During the past two days, our discussions have revolved around justice, gender, ecology and nature, economy, and racism. Throughout these talks, we have attempted to propose that behind the daily episodes of racism, exploitation, oppression, and abuse is an underlying, coherent logic sustaining them. It is not possible to address the complexities of the oppressions we have presented in full depth. However, this morning, I would like to divide my presentation into several parts that focus on some of these complexities more directly.
Firstly, my presentation elaborates on and expands upon what David briefly explained as the colonial pattern of power,[1] a concept developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano and later further developed by researchers in the decolonial field. David has already masterfully explained the concepts of Eurocentrism and representation (or rather mis-representation). It is my intention, then, to explain at least two fundamental aspects of the colonial pattern of power so that we can understand them more directly. For this purpose, I will take a few minutes to detail this concept and the ways in which it is understood. In doing so, I will primarily emphasize the categories of gender and theology and how they function within this conceptualization.
In the second part, my intention is to take Rubem Alves's theology as a starting point that allows us to transcend this colonial pattern of power, finding other ways to think about and imagine God. I will conclude with a specific invitation to imagine different theologies.
As David mentioned, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano developed the concept of the colonial pattern of power, which aims to explain how the repercussions of colonization and conquest, along with their terrible mechanisms of oppression, persist beyond the processes of independence of Latin American and Caribbean nations. In other words, Quijano argued that after the processes of "decolonization," mechanisms of control and power still permeated and continued to operate, organizing society. According to Quijano, the colonization and conquest of Abya Yala, which began in the late 15th century, had not finished spreading its tentacles, nor had it ceased; rather, it continued to function oppressively through an ideological superstructure that became embedded in the daily lives of the Latin America peoples.[2]
Quijano believed that colonization and conquest did not only end the lives and philosophies of indigenous peoples, killing and violating the original peoples. Simultaneously, they gradually imposed a worldview that centered Europe—and later Anglo-North America—as the universe's core, asserting its superiority over other peoples. While David has explained this already, it's important to note that this superiority, for Quijano, was based on a series of socio-cultural elements that were enforced through violent processes. In other words, according to Quijano and later Dussel, Cusicanqui, and Mignolo, indigenous communities needed to be erased, eclipsed and made invisible so Europe—and subsequently Anglo-North America—could assert itself as the central point of humanity
During colonization and conquest, socio-cultural processes simultaneously formed to impose the European worldview as absolute, disregarding all other worldviews as useless, archaic, illogical, or underdeveloped. This European worldview operates as an ideological superstructure of socio-cultural elements intertwined continuously. This means that the white chess pieces David mentioned do not assert their superiority individually; rather, each move represents an element of European thought, which, when moved, simultaneously affects the other pieces. Hence, the pieces do not function in isolation but as a whole.
It is important, then, to understand that the colonial pattern of power is composed of a series of elements operating continuously. Of these elements, I would like to focus on two. Firstly, in terms of gender, Walter Mignolo asserts that during conquest and colonization,
[a] global gender/sex hierarchy that privileged males over females and European patriarchy over other forms of gender configuration and sexual relations. A system that imposed the concept of “woman” to reorganize gender/sexual relations in the European colonies, effectively introducing regulations for “normal” relations among the sexes and the hierarchical distinctions between “man” and “woman.” Consequently, the colonial system invented also the categories “homosexual” and “heterosexual” (e.g., Las Casas’s [in]famous expression “el pecado nefando”), just as it invented the category “man” and “woman.” This invention makes “homophobia” irrelevant for describing Maya, Aztec, or Inca civilizations, since in these civilizations gender/sexual organizations were cast in different categories, which Spaniards (and Europeans, in general, whether Christian or secular) were either unable to see or unwilling to accept. There was no homophobia, as indigenous people did not think in these types of categories[3]
What Mignolo is trying to explain is that what we know and understand as gender today is not an unquestionable absolute philosophy but the result of systemic violence that gradually discarded countless human possibilities. During the first discussion on Tuesday, we explored how gender is never a stabilized or finalized concept. It's important, therefore, to understand that the unique ways that attempt to label individuals by forcing them to fit within exclusivist parameters are part of a complex network of colonial thought that began to be imposed during the late 15th-century conquest and colonization. From this understanding, we can affirm that the unnecessary demand to identify individuals under the categories of man and woman has roots in the European colonization of Abya Yala.
The second significant element is theology. During conquest and colonization, Christian theology was imposed that gradually displaced and discarded other ways and mechanisms of relating to the Divine. European thought organized the idea of a white-male-heterosexual God ruling the world before whom other civilizations must submit. Conquest and colonization were not only political projects but also theological ones; that is, European theology itself underpinned the violence, imposition, and oppression of indigenous peoples during colonization and conquest. For example, while Bartolomé de las Casas's writings sought to rescue the dignity of indigenous people by claiming that these communities should not be converted to Christianity through violence, it is also true that the Dominican priest argued that the salvation and conversion of indigenous communities were necessary for civilization. Thus, in order for indigenous people to be considered "civilized," they had to be converted to Christianity.[4]
It's also important to consider figures like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who maintained that because the indigenous people's lands were God's gifts to the Spanish and the indigenous people lacked dignity, and the Spanish had the right to dominate them. He proposed a theology of destruction that positioned the Spanish as favored in the Kingdom of Jesus.[5] Finally, writings like those of Bernal Díaz del Castillo tell that God tasked warriors like Hernán Cortés with conquering and possessing lands for the crown. For Díaz del Castillo, violent conquest and colonization were a divine commandment to the Spanish.[6]
These images of God laid a Christian foundation proposing that the conversion and salvation of indigenous people were necessary mechanisms for them to be civilized and considered within the category of "human." Thus, Christian theology and the visions of a dominant, abusive, violent, and oppressive God served as the basis for theological articulations that still endure today.
It is crucial, it seems, to make a crucial point at this juncture. By stating that Europe imposes an entire worldview and philosophy of life, I do not intend to suggest that this imposition occurs instantaneously. That is to say, the processes of conquest and colonization that began in the late 15th century did not happen overnight; rather, they transformed, unfolded, spread, and evolved over history. What I do intend to express is that if we carefully examine oppressive theologies and gender-based violence, we can still see the marks of European thought that began to be imposed during the conquest and colonization of America. A concise and critical summary of this can be found in the words of decolonial researcher Zairong Xiang, who claims that:
Starting in the 16th century with the Spanish and Portuguese, moving on to global dominance through direct political control in the 19th century, predominantly by the British and French, and in the 20th century by the United States, the legacy of modern European colonialism has been arguably passed on to neoliberal multinational corporations. "America" is a concept enunciated from a European, Christian perspective through the myth of the "great discovery" of a pre-habited continent with diverse populations, civilizations, empires, and even non-modern colonial powers, in order to appropriate and dominate these conquered cultures on the continent as a whole and keep Europe as the only locus of enunciation. "America" is then used as the name appropriated by the United States to refer to the country, symbolically suggesting its neocolonial and capitalist domination over the whole American continent, which makes "'Latin' America [...] a dependent sub-continent that is subaltern to the continental totality, America.[7]
I have detailed this ideological structure to enable us to examine colonialism and decolonization more deeply, suggesting that oppressive colonial mechanisms go beyond concrete actions and are sustained by a logic. In other words, European colonialism in America did not end with the independence of Latin American nations. To this day, a colonial pattern continues to organize, shape, and define the European and Anglo-North American ways of seeing and understanding the world as correct, logical, and rational.
It is theologian Rubem Alves who has argued that colonialism presents a fundamental and urgent problem for theology. Alves, a Brazilian theologian writing in 1969, realized that colonialism extended beyond physical violence and concrete actions; it was a problem of imagination. Alves explained that colonized individuals
realized that they were not simply poor. They were impoverished. Their poverty was a consequence of a colonial relationship in which the powerful dominated and controlled the imagination of the weak. Colonialism was not only a situation of the past. It was intrinsic to the relations between the poor and the rich and, in fact, the cause of the poor's poverty. But more than that, colonialism came to be seen as a relationship in which the dominated are not allowed to become creators of their own history. Their lives are reduced to a situation of reflexivity.[8]
For Alves, colonialism invented a reality in which colonized people existed solely under the colonizer's idea, were subject to the ruler's dominion, and could not imagine their own future. Thus, for Alves, God was reduced to a finalized concept that couldn't be articulated, thought, or imagined from any other reality. Based on this, Alves claimed that colonialism's greatest triumph wasn't violence, oppression, or destruction but the limitation of human imagination. This limitation chained humans to live within the reality presented by the colonizer as the only and exclusive one. In Alves's view, decolonizing theology meant dreaming, playing, and imagining a God who isn't bound by colonial logic, who doesn't adhere to pre-established parameters, or function under the rationality of the possible.
During these three days, we have delved deeply into various ways we could start adopting practices to create a more just world socially and ecologically. We've attempted to internalize the danger of repeating the same things differently and perpetuating oppressive systems. My invitation this morning aims to transcend the soft idea of "decolonizing" God by seeking a theology that is fairer and more equitable. My proposal this morning intends to suggest that we must imagine the irrational and illogical and that we must begin to think outside of what is considered "reasonable."[9]
My proposal argues that true decolonization of God isn't one that deconstructs colonial gender categories and invents other categories that attempt to contain people within their bodies. While I appreciate efforts to talk about healthier, more equitable, alternative, and noble masculinities, I also denounce that such articulations continue to uphold colonial gender labels that seek to confine people within the colonial logic, forcing individuals to define themselves as a particular thing. To me, these "decolonizing" processes lack the essential element of imagination that thinks, dreams, and articulates a God who doesn't need to configure human beings under any gender definition but recognizes them as creations of love expressing the diversity of all that is divine.
Likewise, imagining a decolonial God involves breaking theology as we know it to rethink it from what seems nonsensical. Agustina mentioned that Elsa Támez explained we cannot change the biblical text but can rethink it in light of women's experiences. Támez seeks to imagine a God that didn't make sense to the Barths or Tillichs of the world, a God that white heterosexual men did not find useful or necessary. Decolonizing God is imagining God in life experiences that may not necessarily make sense to white heterosexual men. It's also about imagining God in rotten and damaged places, in places where humans are mistreated in search of redemption. It's considering a vulnerable and poor God, one that is mistreated and in pain, naked and sexual, capable of feeling pain, infected with HIV, having a disfigured body, and existing in ways that don't make sense to us. Decolonizing God is imagining God where we never thought God could be and understanding that the power and constant companionship of God's Holy Spirit transcends what our human minds can comprehend. As Matilde Moros said, it's about "[d]oing theology from a new place, from silenced places, doing it from spaces that were not seen as a meeting place with God but as a place from which others could be denounced in the name of God." What a monumental task lies ahead. May God assist us in this endeavor.
Notes:
[1] Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad Del Poder: Cultura y Conocimiento En América Latina,” Dispositio 24, no. 51 (1999): 137–48.
[2] For further research and development on decolonial thinking and Quijano’s ideas please consult Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011); Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax Utxiwa: Una Reflexión Sobre Prácticas y Discursos Descolonizadores. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Tinta Limón, 2010); Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument,” The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337; Néstor Medina, “On the Ethics and Perils of Engaging Critical Theory: Let’s Keep It Real,” Contending Modernities: Exploring How Religious and Secular Forces Interact in the Modern World., n.d., https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/decoloniality/ethics-peril-critical-theory/.
[3] Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options.
[4] Bartolomé de Las Casas, Del Único Modo de Atraer a Todos Los Pueblos a La Verdadera Religión., ed. Agustín Millares Carlo and Lewis Hanke (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1942).
[5] Two very good theological analyses of Sepúlveda’s thinking can be found in Gustavo Gutiérrez, Dios o El Oro En Las Indias (Salamanca, España: Ediciones Sígueme, 1990); Luis N. Rivera Pagán, Evangelización y Violencia: La Conquista de América (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Publicaciones Gaviota, 2020).
[6] Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de La Conquista de La Nueva-España, Historia Verdadera de La Conquista de La Nueva España (Madrid, España: Imprenta del Reyno, 1632).
[7] Zairong Xiang, Queer Ancient Ways: A Decolonial Exploration (Santa Barbara, California: Punctum Books, 2018).
[8] Rubem A. Alves, A Theology of Human Hope (New York: Corpus Books, 1971).
[9] Rubem A. Alves, Tomorrow’s Child: Imagination, Creativity, and the Rebirth of Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
