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Black Light Course Online Protocols

12/6/2025

 
Black Light Online: Protocols
We think it is helpful to establish certain protocols in relation to how we all participate in the Black Light course. These are not intended to be unduly prescriptive but to enable sessions to run smoothly and to offer maximum opportunity for all to participate. Please note these points:
1. The host will notice your arrival in the ‘waiting room’ and will admit you once the Zoom session is open from 7.00 (the course itself starts at 7.10).
2. Unless you are unable or unwilling to be visible, please turn on your video when you join.
3. Please mute your microphone when you join and keep it on mute unless you are actually speaking, as this cuts out background noise. This is especially important with such a large group on Zoom.
4. If you have questions or comments during presentations, please write these in the chat box, which the host will be monitoring.
5. If these are requests for clarification, the host will either interrupt the presenter if necessary or more likely ask them to address these at the end of the presentation.
6. Other questions and comments will be addressed in the plenary discussion that follows the breakout groups (if these are used).
7. Presentations will not be recorded, but recordings of a previous course will be available to anyone who misses an evening for which they had registered. 
8. Please be aware that any participant can save the chat conversation, so don’t write anything that you don’t want to be saved by others, and please use what you save for your own use and don’t circulate it to others.
9. In any plenary session, if you want to voice a question or make a comment, you will need to unmute yourself.
10. The chat box allows you to send messages to everyone or to specific persons so, to avoid overloading the conversation, please only send to everyone if this is necessary.
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Why did Jesus speak Aramaic? A Biblical Theology for a Decolonised Mission Rev Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana

3/6/2025

 
One of the emerging shifts in the field of mission studies is the need to re-imagine global missiology in the light of societal and public shifts. There are several ongoing conversations about different ways missiology needs re-imagining but one that is crucial for our current context is the need to interrogate the proximity of mission to power. Jesus and his followers were on the other side of power as they lived under Roman imperial colonisation and this living on the margins of an out-post of an empire continued into the patristic period (early church history with Church Fathers) for many Christians. But the enthronement of Constantine as emperor of Rome (reigned AD 306-337) led to what I am describing as a Constantinian shift that had the implications of Jesus’ followers now on the side of power and colonisation. What is the impact of this Constantinian shift on the history of mission and what can we learn from Jesus’ kenotic living that prophetically challenges colonisation and religious nationalism? In this essay titled, Why did Jesus speak Aramaic? A Biblical Theology for a Decolonised Mission, I reflect on some of these issues proposing five marks of mission decolonised, that is, a suggestion of five critical things that Jesus embodied to interrogate power.
Continue reading the article by clicking this link 

https://cmmw.org.uk/2025/04/11/why-did-jesus-speak-aramaic-a-biblical-theology-for-a-decolonised-mission/

Racial Justice Resources List

2/6/2025

 
Click on the links or download the full file below.
​
Title: We really need to talk about race
Source: https://redletterchristians.org.uk/we-really-need-to-talk-about-institutional-racism-part-1/
Notes: Article about institutional racism from Red Letter Christians.

Title: We need to talk about Race Home groups
Source: https://homegroups.org.uk/series/we-need-to-talk-about-race/
Notes: Online resources (6 videos and reflective material) to accompany Ben Lindsay’s book ‘We need to talk about Race’ - Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches.

Title: Belonging: We need to talk about race, becoming a culturally sensitive organisation
Source: www.powerthefight.org.uk
Notes: CPD Training course offered by Power the Fight. 6 hour training course focusing on the three phases of Audit, Awareness and Action.

Title: Black Lives Matter
Source: Tear Fund 
https://www.tearfund.org/-/media/tearfund/files/about-us/blm-guide.pdf
Notes: A guide to help you respond to racial injustice. Includes prayers, bible studies, staff reflections, resources list. An organisational guide.

Title: The Reconciled Church
Source: www.trchurch.co.uk
Notes: 8 week course about racial reconciliation, 2 day retreat for minorities that lead, online resources to support learning. All UK focused and based.

Title: From Lament to Action
Source:
https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/FromLamentToAction-report.pdf?mc_cid=1181e42b10&mc_eid=59e9155288
Notes: CofE report

Title: Resources from MJR - Movement for Justice and Reconciliation
Source: 
https://www.mjr-uk.com/resources.html
Notes: Addressing the legacy of colonial slavery and industrial exploitation MJR offers an extensive list of resources, talks and podcasts, blogs, books, articles, reports and links. 

Title: Racial Justice Network
Source: https://racialjusticenetwork.co.uk
Notes: UK based organisation key focus is to engage with white people and communities to unlearn racism. Provides training and activism, resourcing through reports, blogs articles and events.


Title: Racial Justice Sunday 2023 Stephen Lawrence Day
Source: www.ctbi.org.uk 
Notes: Racial Justice Sunday resources provided by CTBI’s sponsoring churches. The 2023 resources remembering and reflecting on the 30th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence who died on April 22nd 1993. Racial Justice Sunday will be on 11.02.24 with the theme: Exodus! Justice for God’s people on the move.

Title: Racial Justice Resources 
Source:
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/liturgical-resources-racial-justice-sunday
Notes: CoFE Liturgical Resources for Racial Justice Sunday & Exodus God’s people on the move by CBTI

Title: UKME - Dioscences of Oxford Resources
Source: 
https://www.oxford.anglican.org/ministry/continuing-ministerial-development/ukme-resources/
Notes: Talk on race and Equality in the church (soundcloud), Going deeper online lectures: 3 Youtube clips Structures, Barriers and Authenticity - Mr Raj Patel, The Absurd Necessity of Black Lives Matter -  Professor Anthony Reddie,a Home for the Paroikeis - Dr Sanjee Perera. Listening and Learning.

Title: Christian Learning Resources
Source:
​https://www.stpauls.co.uk/racial-justice
Notes: St Pauls have a number of films, podcasts and written reflections exploring issues around racial justice, talks and conversations with leading theologians and practitioners. All easily accessible in their online learning library.

Title: Visions of Colour
Source: www.baptist.org.uk
Notes: Online 6 part video course with anti - racism as its key focus.

Title: CYF Racial Justice Resource
Source:
www.baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=294216
Notes: Resource for those who work with children and young people.

Title: Racial Justice CLM church
Source:
https://www.clmchurch.co.uk/racialjustice
Notes: UK based church signposts to helpful resources.

Title: Racial Justice Sunday Liturgical Resources
Source:
​https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/liturgical-resources-racial-justice-sunday
Notes: CofE service resources.

Title: Racial Justice Resources
Source: Dian R Garland, School of Social work, Baylor University
https://socialwork.web.baylor.edu/research-impact/center-church-community-impact-c3i/how-we-do-it/resources/racial-justice-resources
Notes: A variety of resources, mainly American based but helpful information on racial justice work.

Title: Troubling Waters Leaders Guide
Source: 
https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Troubling_LEADERS_Guide_2018.pdf?_ga=2.178668710.388053759.1700677095-1591644785.1700677095
Notes: Troubling the waters for healing of the church. Resources for white Christians on Privilege and Partnership. Framed around the christian calender from Advent to Pentecost. Content for facilitators to lead a congregation into an extensive personal journey over a sustained period of time. 

Title: Troubling Waters Participant Guide
Source:
https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Troubling_PARTICIPANTS_Guide_2018.pdf?_ga=2.115699588.388053759.1700677095-1591644785.1700677095
Notes: Troubling the waters for healing of the church. Resources for white Christians on Privilege and Partnership. Framed around the christian calender from Advent to Pentecost. Content for an extensive personal journey over a sustained period of time. 

Title: Racial Justice Evangelical Lutheran Church America
Source:
https://www.elca.org/resources/racial-justice
Notes: A number of downloadable resources and guides
Including:
Title: One Body Many Members.  
Part 1: One Body, Similar Members, Leadership Readiness, Leadership
Source:
https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/One_Body_Part_1.pdf?_ga=2.77112215.388053759.1700677095-1591644785.1700677095
Notes: A Journey for Christians across Race culture and class
A very detailed resource (63 pages) with reflections, scriptures leading a process of change.
Part 2: Meeting Our Neighbours Again for the First Time.
One body part 3:
https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/One_Body_Part_3.pdf?_ga=2.123766792.388053759.1700677095-1591644785.1700677095
Notes: A Journey for Christians across Race culture and class.


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Post Colonialism - Stuart Murray Williams

31/5/2025

 
The Black Light course introduces and explores the subject of post-colonialism. Post-colonialism has been on the agenda in academic circles for some decades, ever since the European empires started to disintegrate and their former colonies achieved independence. But it is now impacting society at a more popular level. Undoubtedly, the Black Lives Matter movement provoked this broadening of the conversation, as perhaps also has recognition that Covid-19 disproportionately impacted Black and other minority ethnic communities.

Several sports teams have renamed themselves and/or changed their mascots in order to remove cultural references that are now perceived as inappropriate. Some street names and other geographical markers have been changed. Post-colonial perspectives on sport, fashion, employment, education, social care, health and other spheres of life are becoming mainstream. 

There is already, and undoubtedly will continue to be, sustained resistance to this. Some unashamedly espouse white supremacy. Others resist any rewriting of history or adjustments to the educational curriculum. Some decry multi-culturalism, exhibit personal prejudice or collude with institutional racism. Others are sympathetic but are reluctant to grapple with the depth and pervasiveness of racism, white privilege and the legacy of colonialism. Resistance will come in the form of weariness in the face of the massive and complex changes needed at many levels if there is to be greater justice.

Post-colonial studies over the past fifty years have explored the history of empire and the effects of colonisation, examining the motives and cultural assumptions of the colonisers and the consequences, both intentional and unintentional, for those who were colonised. They document policies and practices that exploited, oppressed, victimised and dehumanised subject populations, and also highlight the suppression of local cultures, languages and value systems. They reveal the extent to which oppressed people internalised this oppression and became assimilated into the structures and mindset of their colonisers, coming to accept this as the natural order of things. 
 Drawing on this evidence, post-colonial strategies and policies are developed with a view to challenging the cultural assumptions, power structures, political and economic systems and global inequalities that are the legacies of a fading era and unjust and inappropriate in a post-colonial context. These analyses have fuelled and inspired indigenous movements and anti-racist initiatives across the world. Post-colonial studies deconstruct and emancipate. They involve fresh accounts of historical events and reassessment of the cultures and achievements of subjugated peoples. They delegitimise and disrupt power structures, give voice to those who have been silenced and disenfranchised, and empower those who have been marginalised to became agents of transformation.

Post-colonial studies insist that colonialism is not merely a past phase but a contemporary reality. Some use the term ‘neo-colonialism’, insisting that globalisation represents a form of colonialism, and that new forms of colonialism will arise unless we are vigilant and understand the nature of this phenomenon. Others prefer the term ‘coloniality’ to highlight a presumption that European cultures are the only truly modern cultures, based on capitalist economic systems, rationality, science, technology and neoliberalism. Whiteness is regarded as the norm and as the basis for ‘othering’ those who are different, and Eurocentric norms are enforced through the use of the state and the economic system. 
 Despite greater sensitivity to post-colonialism, in many western initiatives that challenge corruption and encourage peace, justice, democracy and the rule of law there is an implicit, and even explicit, conviction that western models are preferable. And in many academic disciplines and policy papers, much greater attention is paid to western treatises, case studies and ways of framing issues than to contributions from other parts of the world. 

One of the most significant contributions of post-colonialism on theology has been its challenge to western theologians and biblical scholars to renounce any claim to offering a normative or acontextual approach. All theologians and biblical interpreters operate within a historical and cultural context and we are inevitably influenced by this. I come to the Bible as a white, male, middle-aged, university-educated, middle-class, fairly affluent westerner. I bring to the biblical text my assumptions, experiences and questions, which lead me to interpret this in particular ways, to prioritise certain passages and to not see things that to others are obvious. Hopefully, I will also be open to seeing new things and having my assumptions challenged as the Holy Spirit speaks to me through the Scriptures, but I need the help of brothers and sisters who are in different contexts and have different life experiences.

Post-colonial theology has been emerging alongside other post-colonial studies. Although western theologians have participated in this, many of the most significant contributions to post-colonial theology have come from African, Latin American and Asian writers or from Black theologians in the West. An early British example is Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes, edited by Anthony Reddie and Michael Jagessar. Anthony Reddie has also offered a post-colonial perspective on the Brexit debate. Theologizing Brexit offers a trenchant critique of the white entitlement, xenophobia, racism and ‘othering’ that characterised much of this debate – and the very limited challenges offered by the churches to this narrative. Post-colonial approaches to biblical interpretation have also emerged. Sri Lankan scholar R. S. (Rasiah) Sugirtharajah has written an introduction to post-colonial approaches to biblical interpretation, and there are post-colonial commentaries now on every book of the Old and New Testaments.  
 Theologies and approaches to biblical interpretation from Majority World contexts may be more self-consciously contextual than traditional western forms of biblical interpretation and theology, or may be labelled as such by western theologians clinging to the myth of their own universality, but post-colonial theology requires all theologies to be acknowledged as contextual, including European theologies. This opens up opportunities for mutual learning across cultural contexts.​

Stuart Murray Williams

​POST COLONIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (2024)

1/5/2025

 
​POST COLONIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (2024)

Ronald Nathan

Asante, Molefi Kete. 1987 The Afrocentric Idea. Temple University Press Philadelphia
Blouet, Olwyn M. 1980 To Make Society Safe for Freedom: Slave Education in Barbados, 1823-33 In the Journal of African American History Vol. 65:2 Spring 1980.
Bradnick, David 2011 Postcolonial Theology . 25 November 2011 
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc1095
Brown, Christopher L. 1999 ‘Empire without Slaves: British Concepts of Emancipation in the Age of the American Revolution.’ The William and Mary Quarterly Vol.56:2 African American Worlds (Apr. 1999) pp 273-306.
Davis, David Brian 2020 The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Oxford University Press
Erskine, Noel Leo 1998 Decolonising Theology A Caribbean Perspective Africa World Press.
Fanon, Frantz 1961 The Wretched of the Earth Trans. Paris, France. Francois Maspero

Ford, David 2007 The Theological Legacy of the Slave Trade. www.old.ekkelsia.co.uk

Heaney, Robert S. 2019 Postcolonial Theology: Finding God and Each Other Amidst the Hate. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books.

Keller, Catherine 2012 Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire Chalice Press.

Lackey, Michael 2002 ‘Frantz Fanon on the Theology of Colonization’. In the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History John Hopkins University Vol. 3:2 Fall 2002.
Loomba, Ania 2005 Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2005

McClaren, Brian 2011 ‘Post-Colonial Theology’ in www.redletterchristians.org
(Jan 31, 2011).

Piketty, Thomas 2014 Piketty on the U.S.: The birthplace of freedom and progressive taxation www.pbs.org broadcast May 14 2014 2:31pm EDT.
O’Murchu, Diarmund 2014 On Being a Postcolonial Christian: Embracing an Empowering Faith. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform

Reid, Jennifer 2015 Religion, Postcolonialism and Globalization. Bloomsbury USA Academic

Ringmar, Eric 2019 International Relations: A Non-European Perspective. Open Book Publishers

Smith, K.H. et.al. 2014 Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations IVP Academic

Sugirtharajah R. S. Ed.  1998 The Postcolonial Bible. Sheffield Academic Press

2001    The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial, And Postcolonial Encounters. Cambridge University Press 

Young, Robert 2001 Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Blackwell: Oxford,  
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