Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the American Global South

by Oscar A. Garcia-Johnson

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2019

Overview

Throughout the history of the Christian church, two narratives have constantly clashed: the imperial logic of Babel that builds towers and borders to seize control, versus the logic of Pentecost that empowers “glocal” missionaries of the kingdom life. To what extent are Westernized Christians today ready for the church of the Pentecost narrative? Are they equipped to do ministry in different cultural modes and to handle disruption and perplexity? What are Christians to make of the Holy Spirit’s occasional encounters with cultures and religions of the Americas before the European conquest?

Oscar García-Johnson explores a new grammar for the study of theology and mission in global Christianity, especially in Latin America and the Latinx “third spaces” in North America. With an interdisciplinary, “transoccidental,” and narrative approach, Spirit Outside the Gate offers a constructive theology of mission for the church in global contexts.

Building on the familiar missiological metaphor of “outside the gate” established by Orlando Costas, García-Johnson moves to recover important elements in ancestral traditions of the Americas, with an eye to discerning pneumatological continuity between the pre-Columbian and post-Columbian communities. He calls for a “rerouting of theology”—a realization that theology cannot make its home in Christendom but is a global creation that must come home to a church without borders. In this volume García-Johnson

• considers pneumatological insights into de/postcolonial studies
• traces independent epistemic contributions of the American Global South
• shows how American indigenous, Afro-Latinx, and immigrant communities provide resources for a decolonial pneumatology
• describes four transformations the American church must undergo to break free from colonial, modernist, and monocultural structures

Spirit Outside the Gate opens a path for a pneumatological missiology that can help the church act as a witness to the gospel message in a postmodern, postcolonial, and post-Christendom world.

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Key Features

• Offers a constructive theology of mission for the church in global contexts
• Traces independent epistemic contributions of the American Global South
• Seeks to recover important elements in ancestral traditions of the Americas

Contents

• Part I: The Narrative: The American Global South: Challenges and Visions
• Part II: The Gate: The Geopolitics of Western Theology and Mission
• Part III: Outside the Gate: In Search of Ungating Christian Logics in the American Global South
• Part IV: Decolonial Pneumatologies in the American Global South
• Part V: Perspectives on Theology, Whiteness, and Global Designs

Praise for the Print Edition

García-Johnson’s text is richly embroidered with images, voices, and stories from the Americas that suggest that pneumatology is an indigenous mode of theologizing through which a decolonial Christian theology can emerge. I warmly commend this volume for its theological insight from below. It comes from a world in which it is far from clear that everything happens for a purpose, and the boundaries and categories imposed from above are experienced as arbitrary and unjust. In such a context, the Spirit is seen to be present and active ‘outside the gate,’ at the margins. Those at the margins see what is out of view from those at the center and challenge the borders of our theological systems.

—Kirsteen Kim, professor of theology and world Christianity, Fuller Theological Seminary

García-Johnson’s Spirit Outside the Gate practices ‘epistemic healing’ because it provides a challenging, interdisciplinary bridge between Christian theology/pneumatology and Latin(o/a) American decolonial thought. This is an essential text for thinking theologically beyond the gates of the Occident.

—Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, associate professor of Latina/o studies and religion, Williams College

Product Details

• Title: Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the American Global South
• Author: Oscar García-Johnson
• Series: Missiological Engagements
• Publisher: IVP
• Publication Date: 2019
• Pages: 224
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Church in South America

About Oscar A. Garcia-Johnson

Appointed assistant professor of Systematic Theology in 2008 after teaching at Fuller for ten years as an adjunct professor. García-Johnson’s writings include The Mestizo/a Community of the Spirit: A Latino/a Postmodern Ecclesiology (2008) and a chapter in Vivir y servir en el exilio: Lecturas teolólgicas de la experiencia latina en los Estados Unidos (Living and Serving in Exile: Theological Lectures of the Latin-American Experience in the United States) (2008), as well as two forthcoming publications, Ministry on the Roof: A Latino/a Theology of Co-Service and Theological Foundations for Latino/a Ministry (Fundamentos Teológicos para el Ministerio Latino). He is a member of the Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana. In addition to instructing courses at Fuller, García-Johnson has trained lay leaders at the Alberto Mottesi School of Evangelism and is ordained in the American Baptist Church (ABC), for which he has served as a regional resource minister and planted four new churches in California. Areas of Expertise, Research, Writing, and Teaching: Postmodern ecclesiology, theology and culture, doctrine and spirituality School of

Sample Pages from Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the American Global South