Cosmopolitan Theology

Namsoon Kang

Description

In Cosmopolitan Theology, author Namsoon Kang proposes a theology that embraces and at the same time moves beyond collective identity position and group-based allegiances. It crosses borders of gender, race, nationality, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability. Kang offers a vision of a global community of radical inclusion, solidarity, and deep compassion and justice for others. Blending theology with philosophy, she crosses borders of academism and activism, and the discursive borders of modernism, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism.Cosmopolitan Theology sheds a new light both in academia and the community of Christian believers by providing a public relevance of Jesus' teaching of neighbor-love, hospitality, and solidarity in our world today.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Theology
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Chalice Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780827205369
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

COSMOPOLITAN THEOLOGY

ForDean SunghyunandJames Jihyun, my more than me

I love you and I am smiling at you wherever I may be. –J acques D erriDa

COSMOPOLITAN THEOLOGY

Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, NeighborLove,andSolidarity in an Uneven World

Namsoon Kang

Copyright ©2013 by Namsoon Kang. Bible quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from theNew Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations marked Inclusive are fromThe Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation, copyright 2007, by Priests for Equality. Published by Rowman & Littleîeld Publishers, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations marked NIV are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface  1 Dreamingthe Impossible: Thinking, Judging, ActingOtherwise From Metanarrative toGlocalizedNarratives Beyond Tyranny of Binarism: TheoryIsPractice Dreamingthe Impossible:A Prophetic Call

 2 Cosmopolitanism as Mobilizing Discourse forDoing Theology EnvisioningPlanetary Love Cosmopolitanism: Major Aspects and Characteristics Types of Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms

 3 Cosmopolitanism: Philosophical and Political Discourses Diversifying the Genealogy of Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitan Condition: Cosmic Citizenship and Equality of Beings Cosmopolitan Rights and the Vision for theEndsKindom of ThinkingwithKantagainstKant: The Contradiction between Cosmopolitanism and Human Geography Cosmopolitan Justice and Crimes against Humanity

 4 CosmopolitanTrans-ReligiousSolidarity: BeyondReligious Tourism The Rhetoric of Religious Plurality: Other Religions— Tokens or Signiîcant Others? Politics of Recognitionand Its Theological Implication Beyond Religious Tourism: Teaching and Learning Religious Plurality as Creating aDissentReligious Culture of CosmopolitanTrans-ReligiousSolidarity

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1 6 10

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12 18 31

48 48 54

69 73

81

92

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95 101

104

 5 Cosmopolitan Theology ofNatality: Toward Neighbor-Love 106 as Passion for an Impossible Community of Justice Natality—the Miraculous Event of 106Ever-New Beginning Thanatopolitics—Impotence ofDepoliticizedNeighbor-Love 113 in the Face of theUnperson

Politicizingthe Neighbor with the Face of the Contemporary Homo Sacer Cosmopolitan Theology ofNatality: Toward aCommunity of Justice

 6 Cosmopolitan Theology ofPlanetary Hospitality Being Religious: AnEvent of Facingthe Otherthe Face of ThinkingwithPaulagainstPaul: Pauline Cosmopolitanism as a Foundation forUniversal Singularity Cosmopolitan Theology ofSolidarity of Singular-Plurality Cosmopolitan Theology ofPlanetary Hospitality

 7 The Impossible Necessity of Dreaming theKindom: Toward aPublic Theology-to-Come Double Bind:The Impossibility and Necessity of Dreaming theKindomof God Cosmopolitan Theology asPublic Theology-to-Come Cosmopolitan Theologians asPublic Theologians-without-Passports

Notes Bibliography

Index

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126 126 130

134 150

180

180

184 187

191 215

237

Acknowledgments

To begin at the beginning is to invite oneself to the world of gratitude, interconnectedness, and memory of events and people from the past, present, and future. I realize, however, there is adouble bind in acknowledgments: necessityandimpossibility. I owe a big “thank you” to so many people around the world. However, it is impossible in this genre calledacknowledgmentsfor me to list all the names of those countless people in my life journey who kindled and rekindled my passion for this cosmopolitan project. It is frustrating to realize theimpossibilitythe gratitude that I owe.of showing I would like to thank Brad Lyons at Chalice Press for embracing this book project with enthusiasm. I also thank my editor, Gail Stobaugh, for her inînite patience and great advice. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Steven Sherwood at TCU for his astute and meticulous assistance in the preparation of the manuscript; he clariîed the content throughout. I would like to express my profound gratitude for the many exchanges that I have had over the years with my students at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. My conversations and seminars with them inspired, motivated, and developed ideas and insights in this work. I must express my deep gratitude to my tireless research assistants—Adam DJ Brett, Sam Castleberry, and especially Robert Kyle Warren for his tremendous work for indexing. My intellectual-academic debts constitute an indescribable world. I thank the colleagues-friends in different regions of the world whom I have known and worked with through WOCATI (World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions) since 2002, and who have challenged, motivated, encouraged, and afîrmed me in what I think, theorize, act, and judge. The countless encounters with them have helped me see the signiîcance of human facesour differences in theopolitical-philosophical positionalities,regardless of doctrinal beliefs, value systems, cultural codes, or sociobiological attributes and orientations. I am deeply grateful to Catherine Keller for her ongoing companionship with me throughout my personal, intellectual, academic journey. My debts to her constitutes an unmappable domain. Although I înished the manuscript of this book with the current waves of cosmopolitan discourse in mind, I have been thinking and reecting on these issues for a long time. I revised and expanded bits and pieces of the material here from earlier publications and presentations. In particular,

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portions of the presentation that I gave at the Transdisciplinary Conference at Drew University in 2007 appeared as “Toward a CosmopolitanTheology: Constructing Public Theology from the Future” in a Fordham University Press volume edited by Stephen D. Moore and Mayra Rivera, titled Planetary Loves: Gayatri Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology(2010). I also explored other ideas in my presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2010. In the end, the issues of human identity, our curiosity about one another, our care for one another, and our endless responsibility to one another might matter the most to us all, which one cannot fully comprehend through self- enclosed academic languages.

Namsoon Kang Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.A., 2013

Preface

This book began as a presentation for the Transdisciplinary Conference in 2007 at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA. It was both a privilege and a joy for me to spend unique time and space with Gayatri 1 Chakravorty Spivak and other wonderful theologians during the conference. I had originally intended to publish only the presentation as one of the chapters in the book from the conference. However, as I began to revise the presentation, I found myself increasingly convinced that I needed to expand the presentation paper into something like the current form. This book is the result of my conviction that theology is not just a professionalized discourse that offers intellectual insights and pleasure in academia only, although such intellectual joy is also an important part of human life. I believe theology should be about one’s way of life, a kind of gaze into oneself and others, and a mode of one’s profound existence in the world. Cosmopolitan discourse has deeply intrigued me, primarily because it provides one with apublic gazewith which one can relate oneself to others in a different way. If we begin to regard all people we meet simply as fellow- humans, fellow-citizens-of-the-cosmos, regardless of their gender, skin color, physical/mental ability, sexual orientation, social class, or citizenship and nationality, it is not hard to imagine what the world would look like. A world in which every individual human being becomes an equal fellow citizen of thecosmosmay seem impossible to envision. However, I believe that dreaming animpossibledream, envisioning a seeminglyimpossiblethe taskworld, is itself of theologies and that the disparity betweenthe world-as-it-is(reality)andthe world-as-it-ought-to-be(ideality) is where aprophetic callcomes in. Acknowledging and trying to narrow down the disparity between reality and ideality requires a passionate commitment to transformation and betterment of the world and the humanity in it. The primary readers I have in my mind for this book are students— both close and distant students. I wrote this book as if I were talking to my students, who have been the source of my inspiration, insights, passion, and love for the world. They have also served as signiîcant interlocutors who have shaped my sense of responsibility for myself, others, the world, and the Divine.Amor mundi—the love for the world—is the greatest lesson that I have

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