Over the last quarter of a century the field of biblical studies has seen radical changes in the conception, practice and teaching of biblical criticism. In Decolonizing Biblical Studies, Fernando Segovia analyzes the models and practices at work in biblical criticism and pedagogy, in particular the emerging voices of the non-Western world. By exploring the principles that underlie all contextual readings of scripture -- Hispanic/Latino(a), Black, feminist, and Third World -- he offers a powerful challenge to the dominant paradigms of biblical interpretation. Book jacket.

The second annual conference of the Theological Society of Malawi was held at the historic Ekwendeni Campus of the University of Livingstonia from 14 to 16 September 2021. It took up the urgent theme of the decolonization of the theological curriculum. Though Malawi has been an independent country for 58 years, coloniality still stalks the land. This book calls theologians to take a lead in decolonization, while navigating the educational task in an online age. With more than twenty institutions teaching theology at tertiary level in Malawi, and now united in the Theological Society of Malawi, there is huge potential to learn from each other in developing the theological curriculum in the country. While the primary audience is unashamedly a Malawian one, this book might also prove relevant in other contexts where there is a reckoning with past and present experience of colonialism. The book is a call to action and is published in the hope that it will have lasting impact on the teaching and learning of theology in Malawi and beyond.

Andrew M. Mbuvi makes the case for African biblical studies as a vibrant and important emerging distinct discipline, while also using its postcolonial optic to critique biblical studies for its continued underlying racially and imperialistically motivated tendencies. Mbuvi argues that the emergence of biblical studies as a discipline in the West coincides with, and benefits from, the establishment of the colonial project that included African colonization. At the heart of the colonial project was the Bible, not only as ferried by missionaries, who often espoused racialized views, to convert “heathens in the distant lands,” but as the text used in the racialized justification of the colonial violence. Interpretive approaches established within these racist and colonialist matrices continue to dominate the discipline, perpetuating racialized interpretive methodology and frameworks. On these grounds, Mbuvi makes the case that the continued marginalization of non-western approaches is a reflection of the continuing colonialist structure and presuppositions in the discipline of biblical studies. African Biblical Studies not only exposes and critiques these persistent oppressive and subjugating tendencies but showcases how African postcolonial methodologies and studies, that prioritize readings from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed, offer an alternative framework for the discipline. These readings, while destabilizing and undermining the predominantly white Euro-American approaches and their ingrained prejudices, and problematizing the biblical text itself, posit the need for biblical interpretation that is anti-colonial and anti-racist.

Elizabeth Foster examines how French imperialists and the Africans they ruled imagined the religious future of sub-Saharan Africa in the years just before and after decolonization. The story encompasses the transition to independence, Catholic contributions to black intellectual currents, and efforts to create an authentically "African" church.

Andrew M. Mbuvi makes the case for African biblical studies as a vibrant and important emerging distinct discipline, while also using its postcolonial optic to critique biblical studies for its continued underlying racially and imperialistically motivated tendencies. Mbuvi argues that the emergence of biblical studies as a discipline in the West coincides with, and benefits from, the establishment of the colonial project that included African colonization. At the heart of the colonial project was the Bible, not only as ferried by missionaries, who often espoused racialized views, to convert “heathens in the distant lands,” but as the text used in the racialized justification of the colonial violence. Interpretive approaches established within these racist and colonialist matrices continue to dominate the discipline, perpetuating racialized interpretive methodology and frameworks. On these grounds, Mbuvi makes the case that the continued marginalization of non-western approaches is a reflection of the continuing colonialist structure and presuppositions in the discipline of biblical studies. African Biblical Studies not only exposes and critiques these persistent oppressive and subjugating tendencies but showcases how African postcolonial methodologies and studies, that prioritize readings from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed, offer an alternative framework for the discipline. These readings, while destabilizing and undermining the predominantly white Euro-American approaches and their ingrained prejudices, and problematizing the biblical text itself, posit the need for biblical interpretation that is anti-colonial and anti-racist.