Caribbean Theology - Day 3
The Caribbean is much more than sun, sand, beaches, and palm trees. It is a mosaic of languages, races, ideologies, cultural heritages, economic organizations, and religious backgrounds. Its population represents a group of forced migrants that had to adopt new identities. Like a phoenix Caribbean people emerge, in the middle of a society that speaks English, French, Dutch, Papiamento or French Creole languages, to reflect critically on their life through the lens of their faith.
Decolonizing Theology and Gender - Day 3
A 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 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. 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.
Decolonization - Day 3
Decolonizing theology involves a process of critique, dismantling, and reimagining of dominant theological interpretations and practices, with the aim of promoting a more just and inclusive theology based on the diversity of our contexts and life experiences. A decolonized and decolonizing theology is not complicit with oppression, but above all, is a Christian theology and spirituality conscious of its history of domination and exclusion and resists and reimagines differently.
Feminist Theology: Demanding Justice From Our Faith - Day 2
Feminist theologians began to work supporting the struggle for equity and dignity for women. The goal is to rescue women from the unfavorable situation they suffered both in social and intellectual life, as well as in religious life. For this reason, they embarked on a reconstruction project with the purpose of decentralizing masculine discourses and reinterpreting myths of female representations that fostered discrimination and did not respond to the reality of flesh-and-blood women.
Nature vs. Humanity - Day 2
Understanding the relationship between humanity and nature in a way that decentralizes this separation between is vital in the current world, one which still largely maintains that nature is a resource for and in service of human production and development. If human-nature relationships do not exist separately, then the ways in which people identify and relate are also influenced by the ways in which nature has been exploited for capital and development. In other words, the violation and abuse of nature is a violation and abuse of humanity itself.
Ecological Justice - Day 2
Let’s imagine for a moment that we are the architects of a colossal building called “Development.” Its foundation is built upon the exploitation of a planet we perceive as endlessly generous. Our theological beliefs have elevated us to a position of supreme dominance over this construction, distancing ourselves from non-human life and justifying our excessive plundering. But what happens when this building starts to crack as temperatures rise, oceans warm, and human lives are endangered? Today, with the accelerated climate change and human displacement we face, our building is teetering on the edge. It is time to examine the very foundations of our notions of justice, development, and progress and ask ourselves: Are we constructing a monument to our prosperity or digging our own grave?
Racism, Faith, and Christian Ethics - Day 1
The Bible is clear and unequivocal in affirming that all human beings have been created in the image of God (Gen 1:26) and therefore, are equal. Eradicating racism is the restoration of the image of God in humanity. Seeking God is the challenge and opportunity to reclaim and vindicate our human condition. It's reestablishing communion with God and with our neighbor.
Deconstructing Gender: Moving Towards Justice and Equity - Day 1
This week, we will be working on a theme centered around mountains, and understanding them, in many cases, as theological ideas that have tried to tell us who God is and how to understand our fellow human beings. As we move these mountains, we must question theologies that have been established as unquestionable and absolute for centuries. Rethinking gender and theology from diversity and fluidity also implies questioning our own ideas of God, the Sacred, biblical interpretation, church, and community.
Social Justice - Day 1
Social justice is not simply an adjustment of inequalities within existing systems. Instead, it is a radical transformation of these systems and a reevaluation of the ways in which these systems reflect and perpetuate inequalities. It requires a recognition of cultural diversity, resistance to forms of power that perpetuate inequality, and a commitment to decolonization and autonomy. These are the themes we must address in our discussions and efforts to achieve social justice.
Seeds, Mountains, and Quantum Energy
Pain and suffering can destroy us, but on the other hand, it can help us grow constructively. It can tear a community apart, but it can also integrate it and make it stronger. Having faith like a mustard seed, capable of "moving mountains," is a metaphor for quantum mechanics. It conveys the idea that the smallest amount of faith or energy can have a powerful impact on life. The problem isn't whether the disciples had enough faith. Their inability to heal the young man wasn't due to a lack of belief, but a lack of love. The question is: Do we have enough love?