Kwok pui lan biography of martin luther

She converted to Anglican Christianity when she was a teenager. Kwok started her B. She gained her Th. She has published in the disciplines of feminist theology , postcolonial theology and biblical hermeneutics from her personal perspective as an Asian woman. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality. In , Kwok was elected president of the American Academy of Religion.

She writes, "as leaders, we have to bring the tribe along. Those of us who are pioneers have the responsibility of opening the door a little wider for others to come. Kwok was a recipient of the Lambeth Awards , under the category Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship, "for outstanding leadership and contribution to Asian Feminist and Post-Colonial Theology rooted in an Anglican ecclesiology".

Kwok argues that Asia has been transformed through warfare , religion, Western Christianity, and technology.

Kwok pui lan biography of martin luther

Families and the role of women in society have been greatly shaped by "economic and political changes in the Asian countries which ultimately affect familial patterns, the status of women, reproduction and traditional gender roles. Female labor in Asia is something that has been overlooked, as most "women are employed mostly in dead-end, low-skilled or semi-skilled manufacturing jobs, in retail or the service sector.

For Dr. Kwok Pui-lan, Christianity can create a new hope within the life of Asian women, but also needs to grapple with the sexism and patriarchy that is a part of the moral tapestry and organizational behavior of Western Christianity. Writing in feminist theology , postcolonial criticism and biblical hermeneutics , Kwok has maintained as her identity as an Asian woman, incorporating it into her work.

She explains:. As Asian Christian women, we have our own story, which is both Asian and Christian. We can only tell this story by developing a new hermeneutics: a hermeneutics of double suspicion and reclamation. Kwok has engaged with postcolonial theory in her work, most prominently in Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology , where she argues against the inadequacies of traditional feminist theology.

She states that traditional feminist theory has not sufficiently considered the experiences of non-white women, and the effects of colonialism , neocolonialism and slavery. De La Torre has counted that there were fifty-three sessions at the annual meeting related to colonialism or postcolonialism. He raised the concern whether this mainstreaming of postcolonial studies in the academy would lead to its losing its subversive or activist edge.

He noted that when liberation theology began to gain traction in the academy, it lost its close connection with social movements for change. I have also noticed that in recent years, there has been increasing engagement with decolonial or postcolonial theory by religion scholars of different traditions. Given the long history of colonial influences on the study of religion, I welcome this self-critical scrutiny of the ways we teach and study.

The transformation of the field will hopefully lead to more organic knowledge of the religious practices of the oppressed and not just the elites. While working on the book, I became keenly aware that we need more work on political theology from the Asia Pacific. With Lester Ruiz, I co-convened a group of Asian and Asian American scholars from many different countries to discuss this topic for about three years.

We are going to publish a book based on our Zoom conversations that are transpacific, interdisciplinary, and interreligious. Political theology will not be the same if we shift our gaze from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which is long overdue. Adapted from a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 19, This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Spanish version of the book.

The s was a time of protests among students in many parts of the world. In Hong Kong, students took to the streets to demonstrate against government corruption and colonial rule. A Theology of Liberation begins with a critique of the theological enterprise. It offers a new definition of theology as critical reflection of praxis. Reflection cannot exist without praxis.

But praxis also needs the aid of critical reflection. The book helps me fathom the vocation of a theologian, because Gutierrez is someone steeped in the Christian theological tradition who cares about the suffering of the non-person. The s was the period when contextual theology began in Asia. But except in the Philippines, Asian countries have not been shaped by the Christian tradition.

Thus, the kind of living theology emerging from Asia could not rely on the Christian paradigm alone but had to take into consideration religious and cultural elements of Asian peoples. It was eye-opening for me to see that Asian mask dance, poems of dissidents, folk idioms, stories, protest songs, and shamanistic practices found their way into theologizing for the first time.

The vast majority of God's poor perceive their ultimate concern and symbolize their struggle for liberation in the idiom of non-Christian religions and cultures. As Latin American theologians paid more attention to popular religiosity and the religious heritages of black and indigenous peoples in the continent, they opened new avenues of dialogue with Asian and African theologians.

Gutierrez has also expanded his views on the culture and religiosity of the poor. As Maria Clara Bingemer points out, in the new Brazilian edition of his theology of liberation published in , Gutierrez wrote a long preface and emphasized the importance of dialogue with African and Asian theologies. He acknowledged the fact of religious pluralism and the emergence of interreligious dialogue as challenges of our time.

They argue that we need to pay attention to the ways patriarchy intersects with poverty, militarism, gender and sexual violence, and political discrimination. In the last two decades I have worked in postcolonial theology. What I found missing in A Theology of Liberation is a more nuanced analysis of the subjecthood of the poor and the colonized.

Influenced by Marxism, the book has a rather homogenous and flat description of the poor. Many have pointed out that the poor need to be examined through the critical lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and culture. Postcolonial theory opens up a space to interrogate the construction of colonial and postcolonial subject. It asks, what decolonization process would enable a postcolonial or a politically engaged poor subject to be formed.

I have been keenly aware of the cooptation and collaboration of the colonized in the colonial project. I have found that a binary and clear distinction between the colonizers and the colonized is less than satisfactory, for it does not speak to the ambivalence and mimicry of the colonial subject. For the colonial system would not have been sustained for so long without the complicity and collaboration of the colonial subject willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously.

I also find that the paradigm of liberation theology can be over-determined if it is not open to critique. The paradigm starts with social analysis of oppression—be it class, race, gender, and sexuality—and then Jesus Christ is seen as the liberator of all from suffering and exploitation. Jesus can be seen as identifying with the suffering people or as the savior who intervenes in human history.

As the late Marcella Althaus-Reid has pointed out, Gutierrez has included the poor as theological subject, but his theology is still traditional in the sense that it continues to work within the existing paradigm. As we think about the future of liberation theology, what kind of questions do we need to ask? As we have entered the Anthropocene age, in which human activities have significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems, churches and faith communities have important roles to play to transform moral values, change consumerist patterns, advocate policy changes, foster international cooperation, and shape a green culture.

Leonardo Boff and other liberation theologians have already linked ecological degradation with liberation. We need to shift our anthropocentric model in theology to a much more complex and expansive planetary model. This means we can't talk about equality, human rights, and social justice, with taking seriously our collective responsibility as humans to the nonhuman species and our roles in the evolutionary processes of the planet.

As a theologian of Chinese background, I also ponder how the rise of China has impacted my response to the book and what kind of future I imagine. When Gutierrez wrote the book, the cold war was raging. Today, we witness a new cold war between China and the US. Much to the chagrin of Gutierrez, his theology will be considered orthodoxy in China for China has been waging a war against Western imperialism for a long time.

The change of China from Communism to state capitalism raises the question of what happens after the social revolution? Today, it is no longer dependency or developmentalism, but the forces of globalization and neoliberal economy that are shaping the world. President Joseph Biden talked to President Xi Jinping of China recently and decoupling between the two biggest economies in the world will not be easy.

We need to think about political theology in Asia Pacific that takes into consideration the contestation of two empires with different cultural, religious, and political outlooks. This comparative political theology needs to look beyond Western Christianity to widen its critique of religious and political ideologies shaping world politics.

For fifty years, A Theology of Liberation has challenged us to think about the nature and scope of theology and the vocation of a theologian. This challenge remains. And I know doing theology is a commitment and a vocation. On this twentieth anniversary, what have we learned as the human community? What have we not learned? How might we learn anew and again?

For indeed when language reaches its limits, when we are at a loss of words, we turn to the artists among us. A number of students wore armbands with the Chinese characters minzhu democracy on them. Some of them clearly did not understand Chinese, for the Chinese characters on their armbands were upside down. As I entered the Yard, I saw a sea of white strips tied around the arms of graduates in their black or crimson academic gowns.

Instead of jubilatory, the mood of the Commencement was subdued. My fellow Harvard graduates wanted to remember those Chinese students who would never graduate and make it to their commencement. Standing in solidarity with the Chinese students, these graduates bore witness to their aspiration for democracy and freedom. On the twentieth anniversary of June 4, Tiananmen Square was relatively quiet and heavily guarded by the police.

Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region, was the only place in China where a public candlelight vigil could be held. Several Christian groups in Hong Kong have helped organizing these annual vigils and pushed for the vindication of the June 4 demonstrators. The tears of Tiananmen mothers have not dried. The curse of the wrongful deaths has not been lifted.

Williams, Assistant Dean of Worship and Music, have put their soul and energy in planning for these worship services. These services and the weekly evensong offered by the Episcopal and Anglican Studies at the school have enriched my spiritual life and sustained my academic pursuit. They provide a supportive and welcoming environment for me to explore the hidden face of God that has yet to be revealed.

As a theologian, I consider theology and spirituality as deeply integrated, partly because I come from a Chinese background. The neo-Confucian philosophers in the medieval period debated about the relationship between knowing and doing. I am firmly with the camp that emphasized that knowing and doing should go hand in hand. I so admired Dr. It is not easy to study together; it is even harder to worship together.

For others, it is so natural. As I was thinking about this, I remembered the address given by Dr.