Resistance against unjust (wicked) cultures and imperial powers is at the heart of scripture. In many cases, the resistance is waged against external systems or the misappropriation of scriptural texts and traditions. In some cases, however, scripture resists oppressive cultures and powers that it also requires, certifies and protects. At other times, and in different settings, the minders of scripture speak against the abusive cultures and power systems that they inherited and whose benefits they milk. Scripture and Resistance contains reflections by authors from East and West, South and North, on resistance and the Christian scriptures around a rainbow of concerns: the colonial legacies of the Bible; the people (esp. native and indigenous people) who were subjugated and minoritized for the sake of the Bible; the courage for resistance among ordinary and normal people, and the opportunities that arise from their realities and struggles; the imperializing tendencies that lurk behind so-called traditional biblical scholarship; the strategies of and energies in post- and de-colonial criticisms; the Bible as a profitable product, and a site of struggle; and the multiple views or perspectives in the Bible about empire and resistance. In other words, the contributors, as a collective, affirm that the Bible contains (pun intended) resistance.
Foreword Collin Cowan Preface 1. Negotiating, with Scripture and Resistance Jione Havea DARE TO REREAD 2. Ephphatha! DARE to be Opened! Scripture, its Civil War and Shakenness Graham J. Adams 3. The People against the Empire: Biblical Understandings Nestor Miguez 4. The Text Collectors: White Dutch Biblical Appropriation Janneke Stegeman 5. Gemma Augustea, Imperial Paradox, and the Matthean Resistance Raj Nadella 6. Cornelius the Centurion meets the Ethiopian Eunuch, in a Jeepney Revelation Enriques Velunta 7. The Oppressor has Ceased Rogelio Dario Barolin DARE TO RESIST 8. A Decolonial Reading of Ephesians: For Resisting the Postcolonial Empire Jin Young Choi 9. Using the Bible to Resist Empire in the Caribbean's Jamaica Stephen C.A. Jennings 10. "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself": A Call to Resist and Transform Economic Empire Cynthia Moe-Lobeda 11. The Bible: Globalized Commodity in the New Strategies of Neocolonialism Nancy Cardoso Pereira 12. Scripture as a Site of Struggle: Literary and Socio-historical Resources for Prophetic Theology in Post-colonial, Post-apartheid (Neo-colonial?) South Africa Gerald O. West 13. Views, Voices, and Choices: Reading Readers of Luke-Acts and Empire Tat-siong Benny Liew
