John Boopalan
Sunder John Boopalan is Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Canada. He is the author of the monograph, Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites. John’s recent works include “Religion and the Production of Affect in Caste-Based Societies” in Global Visions of Violence (Rutgers University Press, 2023) and his co-authored (with Mizo Indigenous theologian RC Jongte) essay, “Ethnography and Crucified Bodies: A Liberationist-Incarnational Approach” in Ethnography as Theology and Ethics (Bloomsbury Press, 2024). In addition to working on a book manuscript on baptism, identity and hospitality, John is writing a children's book based on the biblical story of Ruth that speaks to the challenge and promise of friendship across difference.Symposia
While the visual medium is thus dominated by whiteness, there exists simultaneously a whiteness that permeates textual and other worlds in biblical scholarship.
Essays
If the approach of Job’s friends is an unworthy model, then what else can we do as we listen to the complaints of those who continue to suffer bodily harm in our own time?
The lectionary texts for this week call us to recognize and pursue a spirituality that is holistic; a spirituality that cares for the needs of the poor; a spirituality that takes the side of the needy against the powerful; a spirituality that entails a revolution of the heart; and a spirituality that takes the question of neighbourliness seriously. Such a spirituality would put us on the path of revolutionary neighbourliness.
As we ask what it means to love in the face of such loss, Hannah appears with her tears, words, and song to teach us lessons about loss and love. Hannah reminds us to think twice (or thrice) before speaking too soon.
This widow of Mark 12 is the same widow of Psalm 146 and the same widow of the Torah that God promises to uphold, protect, and do justice for. We are called to do the same.
Imagine a world in which we stop at every news of death. Imagine a world in which we do not trivialize or rationalize death. … Have we over-theologized life after death?
As we reflect on what it means to resist vulnerability and consolidate military power, much could be said in connection to our own political moment. Given the proliferation of weapons of war and the investment in such weaponry by nation-states and stakeholders who see buying shares in war-related machinery and technology as a profitable enterprise, the privileging of a good heart—“the LORD looks on the heart”—is a most urgent political posture.
If Christians believe in a God of the oppressed, it is incumbent upon them to similarly locate themselves on the side of the oppressed.
Choosing God, choosing lands, and choosing the peoples one lives with, both then and now, is no easy task. Nevertheless, the good news, while not always easy or comforting, is that the borders of our identities and lands have always been permeable. Could that be our embodied witness?
As tempting as it might be to assign murderous impulses to so-called former colonial times, Christians would do well to pay attention to how such logic continues to operate today in theological and political thinking.
Embodying the best of the prophetic tradition, the text encourages us to consider that religion, in fact, does have functions: liberation, feeding the hungry, inviting vulnerable strangers into our homes, and undoing injustice.
A truly progressive society is one that is able to feel the wounds and pain of the most marginalized and excluded. Such a society’s task, consequently, is to heal and anoint the wounded. Perhaps, that task is better undertaken by embracing the work of mourning.
On the one hand, there is in the foreground “a land flowing with milk and honey.” On the other hand, as one reads the text with modern eyes and ears, the problematic language of inheritance, possession, and settlement the chapter begins with rightly alarms readers concerned about occupation of stolen lands using theologically justifying language.
In her very presence, the widow performs the political act of bringing to light oppression and injustice. Our task is to learn how to see her.
I believe the recognition that wisdom and love go hand in hand cannot simply be abstracted as some general and vague love for the world and its persons. It is, in fact, a general and abstract love that often becomes complicit in ways of death.
What if we treated death and suffering as having the last word? How would that change us and the world we live in?
If God invites dialogue and intervention and is moved by human persons, God is thus open to changing God’s mind. This picture of God has implications for human interactions. In cultural and political movements, people often make up their mind and are unpersuaded by what other people say or do. When these others are suffering others, being unpersuaded is a mark of tyranny. When evidence of malevolent intention is presented and the evidence is brushed aside in favour of aligning with larger—national or otherwise—interests, impassibility is a crime.
Mothers like Hagar who bear the weight of racism in the wilderness (Genesis 21:14) are always on the verge of losing their children—inferiorized by racist prejudice. These mothers’ voices are crying out, “Do not let me look on the death of the child” (Genesis 21:16).
As tempting as it might be to assign murderous impulses to so-called former colonial times, Christians would do well to pay attention to how such logic continues to operate today in theological and political thinking.
Embodying the best of the prophetic tradition, the text encourages us to consider that religion, in fact, does have functions: liberation, feeding the hungry, inviting vulnerable strangers into our homes, and undoing injustice.
“Can’t the disadvantaged be advantaged without disadvantaging us? Does their uplift necessarily have to entail our own loss?”
The posture that invites those who are struggling for freedom to “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you” is a political posture laden with messianic power.
In her very presence, the widow performs the political act of bringing to light oppression and injustice. Our task is to learn how to see her.
Does theology aid or hinder memory work vis-à-vis structural wrongs? What fresh theological framework may political theology employ for assistance in transformative memory work?