Category: Podcast

This is part of a series of posts on the topic of Hawaiian theology. Start with part 1.

The study of Hawaiian theology is a very intricate and fragile affair. The intricacies are bound up in part with the multi-ethnic reality of Hawaii. One must also account for the oral nature of communication historically and presently. One scholar here in Hawaii shared with me how difficult it is to study Hawaiian theology since Native Hawaiians have so often resorted to oral means of communication such as songs and chants to convey theological concepts.

How does an oral form shape a theology? For one, it suggests that personal connection to an authoritative link in the tradition of oral communication is essential. This authoritative link is viewed as a trustworthy and wise elder, not simply someone who has technical mastery of a skill or discipline in a particular field. Moreover, it requires that one take all the more seriously the recipient of the message’s own personal integrity and capacity to receive the communication. I recall the story of a discussion that took place between an elder in an indigenous community and his nephew. The nephew wished to receive wise instruction from his uncle. Before his uncle shared the information with the youth, he sized him up to see if he was mature enough and worthy of trust to share such instruction with him. The same level of scrutiny does not go into written forms of communication in that the personal connection is often lost. There is often no transmission from person to person, as in the case of person to person oral communication.

Moreover, the oral framing of theology suggests that there is greater flexibility since the process of communication is more dynamic and evolves more than with written communication. This statement should not be taken to suggest that there is no concern for precision in that in some contexts teachers and students go to great lengths to convey accurately the tradition. Nonetheless, oral communication involves a level of spontaneity and organic development often lacking in written communication. Once communication is fixed in writing, there is the tendency to fossilize it rather than see it as part of a growing, dynamic tradition.

One would hope that greater attention to the growing, dynamic nature of such a tradition would guard participants and students of such dialogical endeavors from becoming ideological and argue that their interpretation alone has validity. Rather, it is hoped that they situate themselves in a manner so that they listen to others’ perspectives and articulations of tradition in the effort to preserve and develop the tradition and keep the conversation going. It is my conviction that the dynamics that go into the making of Hawaiian theology convey a more open, egalitarian and less authoritarian posture than is found in many other contexts, for example, in the continental United States, for the heart of communication is talking story together in an ongoing, dialogical fashion.

Theological dialogues are more intricate and fragile than monologues in that there is give and take and response and differentiation as well as synthesis as the dialogue proceeds. Any relationship that is truly relational is intricate and fragile and any textually based theology could learn a thing or two from a model of theology that is based in talking story. For theology to live it must be spoken and practiced in dialogical relation to others. I would much rather talk theological story around a table with people of one heart and unique perspectives than dictate from podiums to blank slate brains. Besides, the latter do not exist. Everyone has something to share. The real question is: will I take time to listen, learn, and enter into the conversation in a vulnerable and transparent manner that involves risk for all people at the table? To be continued…

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

What is Hawaiian theology, and what goes into the making of it? The answers to these questions are far beyond my comprehension because there are so many facets to them. Still, they are worth exploring. This post begins to explore them. Along these lines,  it is worth addressing questions of cultural preservation as well as transformation and the contextualization of the gospel in the Hawaiian culture, as with any culture. Not that one ever answers fully such questions, but if one is not addressing them, it is quite likely that by default dominant and even hegemonic cultural forces that may be alien though present to the Hawaiian context (or any context for that matter) end up co-opting and reframing the categories in service to empire so that what is distinctively Hawaiian is lost.

These are not esoteric issues to me that have no pertinence to my life and work, or those for whom I care. I constantly reflect upon them wherever I am—whether in places like the Pacific Northwest, England, Japan, or in Hawaii, where I am teaching a class on comparative theology presently. In this course, I am analyzing categories and themes present in many forms of Western theology and Black theology, as well as giving sustained consideration to theology developed in distinctively Hawaiian terms. My ethnically diverse colleagues and I in the class are wrestling through these issues in a robust manner. I have found our discussions very enriching and thought-provoking.

We have noted the complexity of getting at a distinctive Hawaiian theology, and for numerous reasons. For one, there is the multi-ethnic texture of Hawaiian culture. It is not uniform. Given that such diversity is not separated out into various remote spheres, but is lived out in close proximity to other ethnic heritages on a small group of islands, one has to be able to articulate how the various ethnic strands distinctively contribute to the making of a uniquely Hawaiian theology where their particularity is accounted for in synthetic and dialectical relation.

Some Hawaiian jokes and songs reverberate with generalizations that speak to the cultural particularities and how they come together on these islands, such as “Mr. Sun Cho Lee” by Keola and Kapono Beamer. The song closes with words getting at how amazing it is that the various ethnic groups can live together given how much fun they poke at one another.

One cannot develop a theology based simply on such songs, although they do shed some light on the situation. Theology has to move beyond sound bites. As Hawaiians themselves say, people need to “talk story with one another.” In other words, people need to enter into dialogue to unpack the meaning of such songs’ lyrics, even challenging the generalizations where appropriate. People and their cultures are more than generalizations. While generalizations have some staying power because they get at certain dynamics that are present in a given culture, they are often reductionist in outcome. Thus, it is important to immerse oneself in people’s lives in given cultural settings, getting to know their stories and the songs and chants that arise from within their souls and what gives rise to them. Such inquisitiveness and curiosity do not convey weakness and an infantile mindset, but rather an expansive spirit. Moreover, such qualities are essential to the development of contextualized theologies against the backdrop of amorphous and hegemonic theologies of empire. To be continued…

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

This is part of a series of posts on the topic of racialized theology. Start with part 1.

We often look at Black theology as contextual theology, but fail to see that all theology is contextualized. It is all enculturated. White western theologians like myself present contextualized theologies, too. This statement is not intended to relativize a given theology or to say that it is unbiblical, but to say that there is no such thing as an unenculturated gospel.

Here I call to mind a statement by Lesslie Newbigin: “The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion.” (Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: the Gospel and Western Culture [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986], p. 4). The Japanese Christian intellectual Uchimura Kanzo put the matter in the following way:

A Japanese by becoming a Christian does not cease to be a Japanese. On the contrary, he becomes more Japanese by becoming a Christian. A Japanese who becomes an American or an Englishman, or an amorphous universal man, is neither a true Japanese nor a true Christian (Kanzo Uchimura, “Japanese Christianity,” in Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, ed. Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene [New York: Columbia University Press, 1958]; reprint, H. Byron Earhart, ed. Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and Interpretations, The Religious Life of Man Series, ed. Frederick J. Streng [Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1974], 113 [italics added]).

Kanzo then proceeds to argue that the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther and John Knox “were not characterless universal men, but distinctly national, therefore distinctly human and distinctly Christian,” adding that Japanese saved as “‘universal Christians’ may turn out to be no more than denationalized Japanese, whose universality is no more than Americanism or Anglicanism adopted to cover up their lost nationality” (Ibid., 113-114).

It is critically important that we discern how culturally embedded we and our theological constructs are. If we are blind to this reality, we will be blind to the danger of imposing our theologies on others. Thus, it is important that we announce ourselves when we enter the room for theological conversations. Our own ethnic heritage, for example (and we all have one, not simply Koreans or Brazilians or African Americans, but also Anglos…), should be accounted for in the framing of our theological perspectives, as well as our socio-economic milieu, among other dimensions. As we enter into dialogue with theologians of other perspectives and cultural contexts, we will also become more aware of our presuppositions and situated theologies and be able to cultivate richer theological perspectives as a result of such conversations… To be continued.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.