Political Theology Needs Its Own “Pivot To Asia” (Kwok Pui-Lan)

His anti-imperial rhetoric challenged the aggression of the capitalist powers and the havoc they had wreaked in China and in other parts of the world. His appeal to Marxist social analysis and his critique of idealist Christianity anticipated the liberation theology that came decades later.

A postcolonial approach to political theology insists that people like Wu Yaozong and many others like him around the world, who had raised their voices against colonialism and imperialism, must be included in the historical memory of political theology. Today, if the climate for political theology in Europe and the US is postmodern and postsecular,4 the context for political theology in the Global South continues to be postcolonial and “de-imperial”.

The geopolitics of the world has shifted and Asia Pacific will dominate world affairs in the twenty-first century. The US government has spoken about the “pivot” from the Middle East to Asia. Asia Pacific has become a strategically important military theater for the US, especially in the disputes among the Asian countries over the control of islands and resource-rich waters in the South China Sea. But surprisingly we find political theologians still focus largely on the Atlantic as if the world has not changed!

A postcolonial political theology in the Asia Pacific will need to emphasize that “Asia Pacific” was a regional structure formed as a result of European and American colonial impetus. Taiwanese cultural critic Kuan-Hsing Chen argues that the process of disentanglement from the colonial legacy will be long and tortuous. The first component is a decolonization process and the recovery of postcolonial subjectivity.

The second process is to “de-Cold War”, since the Cold War has disrupted and truncated the evolution of political structures in the Asian region. The third is de-imperialization, which involves an honest critique of the desire to identify with empire and collaborate with imperialist projects.

Chen in his Asia as Method calls Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong “subimperial spaces,” because they have colluded with imperialist desires of Japanese and American empires.  China is competing for hegemony in this region and the slogans of “China dream” and “big country rises up” show its ambitions.

The new development in the Asia Pacific requires us to pay much attention in our theological reflection to militarism and the arms race, and their effect on people’s lives. The “war on terrorism” has brought not only devastation and insecurity to the Middle East, but also fierce arms races in many Asian countries.

There is a realignment of power as China and the US are vying for military hegemony in the region. The old frameworks such as just war theory and the use of force for self-defense are no longer adequate in the age of preemptive strike, weapons of mass destruction, costly collateral damage, and undeclared wars (as in the use of drones). We will need new theological and ethical principles to critique the use of military might in exerting global hegemony.

The people have not remained passive or silent in the expansion of military, political, and economic power and might. The past several years have seen massive grassroots organizing and demonstrations. The Occupy Movement across the globe, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and the rise of people’s power in Myanmar are but a few examples.

These movements have shown the rising political consciousness of the multitude. Through songs, posters, slogan, symbolism, street theater, and live-streams, the protesters have created a new political culture. They have formed transnational networks through the social media and challenged the old form of democracy in what they called direct democracy.

As the older forms of imperialism have been replaced by a de-centralized and de-territorialized “empire”, as Hardt and Negri argue, political resistance will take new shape. If empire is based on globalization from above, people’s resistance movements demonstrate the power of globalization from below. A postcolonial political theology needs to pay attention to new forms of politics that are evolving and bear witness to people’s unceasing quest for freedom and dignity.

This is especially important as racism, xenophobia, and bigotry dominated the airwaves during much of the presidential campaign in 2016. In order to speak to the present situation prophetically, political theologians must decolonize our minds and disengage ourselves from Eurocentrism and the colonial syndrome. A necessary first step is to rethink about the history, scope, legacy, and concerns of doing political theology.

Kwok Pui-lan is William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, USA, and a former President of the American Academy of Religion. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including Postcolonial Practice of Ministry(Lexington Press, forthcoming) and Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2005).