Original Research - Special Collection: VukaniBantuTsohangBatho - Spirituality of Black Liberation
A white theologian learning how to fall upward
Submitted: 30 June 2022 | Published: 14 December 2022
About the author(s)
Jakub Urbaniak, Department of Historical and Constructive Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South AfricaAbstract
As a theologian coming from Europe, a ‘postcolonial import’ into South Africa, it is my white privilege in particular that continues to queer my understanding of a social revolution on which our future, as a people, may depend. In this article, I seek to turn my personal experience of grappling with my whiteness into the source of my reflection. Drawing inspiration from fallism – a recent student movement that inscribes itself into a larger decolonial ‘struggle against the globalised system of racist capitalism’ – I ponder what it could mean, in the South African context, for whiteness to fall upward (Rohr). Here, the metaphor of ‘falling upward’ as a kenosis of whiteness is considered specifically with regard to a white theologian’s (my own) attempt to open spaces that could be filled with blackness.
Contribution: This auto-ethnographic essay inscribes itself into a transdisciplinary study of theology and race from both socio-cultural and religiospiritual perspectives. The author’s personal reflections, inspired by his own engagement with the fallist narratives and his ever-evolving attitude towards the blackness–whiteness binary, as experienced in the South African social and academic contexts, are shared as a means to crack open the societal and theological (notably Christian) imagination, both of which appear to suffer from a serious crisis.
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Crossref Citations
1. Who Must Lead Decoloniality: A Practical Theological Interrogation on the Possible Qualification to Lead Decolonisation: A South African Study
Magezi Elijah Baloyi
Phronimon year: 2024
doi: 10.25159/2413-3086/13880