post colonialism, like racism, is a forgotten agenda

I think it is hard for us to remember that the version of the Gospel that we in North America ascribe to in the mainline churches is not a standard or accepted version of the Gospel. We have taken a story, written for the oppressed and molded it to fit our desire to do good while remaining the oppressor.

The Gospel doesn't ask the oppressor to do anything at all for the oppressed. It asks only that the oppressor become one of the oppressed. (Give away all your possessions and come follow me, not start a soup kitchen on Saturday afternoons.) It is the oppressed who are asked to do good to each other in Jesus' name.

If there is any fault in the Anglican ideal (and anyone you ask will have a different idea of what it is, being Anglicanism) it is that it remains trapped in the founding ideal that England ought/need only have one church, neither catholic or reformed. In a post colonial world this translates into a confederation where each nation/culture/confederation of like minded possess the monopoly on Christianity in that local or grouping. We do a lot of ecumenism in a lot of places, and we even engage in some international Anglican crossover, but we persist in believing that location makes right, and that it supercedes common identity.

We are to be forgiven, however, as those two competing ideas are both foundational to Anglicanism. It isn't who gets ordained or what theology that divides us, it is, really, simply, do we believe we are a local church with a preference for ecumenical relations with other churches or are we a global church within various cultural contexts. I suppose it depends on whether you think postmodernism is dead or alive.

Something no one seems to be talking about and that I am wildly interested in is post-Colonial relations between the Anglican remains around the world. We are really busy especially in America funding MDGs in the second and third world but through the Gospel lens that Jesus came to ask the rich to take care of the poor. That is still colonialism, even if you wrap pretty .07 percent ribbons around it, even if you let the people in those countries tear themselves apart in the name of democratic freedom. Mission is the work of the church but giving up all you have and following Christ is how you become the church in order to do the mission.


(Been reading again. Liberation theology and Eric Law and post convention blogs of all stripes.)