In the decades following the era of decolonization, global Christianity experienced a seismic shift. While Catholicism and Protestantism have declined in their historic European strongholds, they have sustained explosive growth in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This demographic change has established Christians from the Global South as an increasingly dominant presence in modern Christian thought, culture, and politics. Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity unearths the roots of this development, charting the metamorphosis of Christian practice and institutions across five continents throughout the pivotal years of decolonization. The essays in this collection illustrate the diverse new ideas, rituals, and organizations created in the wake of Western imperialism's formal collapse and investigate how religious leaders, politicians, theologians, and lay people debated and shaped a new Christianity for a postcolonial world. Contributors argue that the collapse of colonialism and broader cultural challenges to Western power fostered new organizations, theologies, and political engagements across the world, ultimately setting Christianity on its current trajectory away from its colonial heritage. These essays interrogate decolonization's varied and conflicting impacts on global Christianity, while also providing a novel framework for rethinking decolonization's modern legacies. Taken together, this book charts the relationship between decolonization and Christianity on a truly global scale. Contributors: Joel Cabrita, Darcie Fontaine, Elizabeth A. Foster, Udi Greenberg, David Kirkpatrick, Eric Morier-Genoud, Phi-Vân Nguyen, Justin Reynolds, Sarah Shortall, Lydia Walker, Charlotte Walker-Said, Albert Wu, Gene Zubovich.

Decolonizing Christianity traces the dramatic transformation of Christianity from its position as the moral foundation of European imperialism to its role as a radical voice of political and social change in the era of decolonization. As Christians renegotiated their place in the emerging Third World, they confronted the consequences of racism and violence that Christianity had reinforced in European colonies. This book tells the story of Christians in Algeria who undertook a mission to 'decolonize the Church' and ensure the future of Christianity in postcolonial Algeria. But it also recovers the personal aspects of decolonization, as many of these Christians were arrested and tortured by the French for their support of Algerian independence. The consequences of these actions were immense, as the theological and social engagement of Christians in Algeria then influenced the groundbreaking reforms developing within global Christianity in the 1960s.

“How curiously different is this white God from the one preached by Jesus who understood faithfulness by how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alien, the incarcerated and infirm. This white God of empire may be appropriate for global conquerors who benefit from all that has been stolen and through the labor of all those defined as inferior; but such a deity can never be the God of the conquered.” Echoing James Cone’s 1970 assertion that white Christianity is a satanic heresy, Miguel De La Torre argues that whiteness has desecrated the message of Jesus. In a scathing indictment, he describes how white American Christians have aligned themselves with the oppressors who subjugate the “least of these”—those who have been systemically marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—and, in overwhelming numbers, elected and supported an antichrist as president who has brought the bigotry ingrained in American society out into the open. With this follow-up to his earlier Burying White Privilege, De La Torre prophetically outlines how we need to decolonize Christianity and reclaim its revolutionary, badass message. Timid white liberalism is not the answer for De La Torre—only another form of complicity. Working from the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew, he calls for unapologetic solidarity with the sheep and an unequivocal rejection of the false, idolatrous Christianity of whiteness.

The first book in the new Postcolonialism and Religions series offers a preview of the series focus on multireligious, indigenous, and transnational scholarly voices. In this book, the once arch enemies of Religious studies and Postcolonial theory become critical companions in shared analysis of major postcolonial themes.

This dissertation, "Grassroots Ecumenism: Christianity and Decolonization in France and Algeria, 1940-1965" is the first major study of how French Protestant and Catholic engagement in the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) reshaped Christianity in the modern world and influenced global religious movements like Ecumenical Movement and Vatican II. The moral questions that surfaced during the Algerian War, including the French military's use of torture, the repression of civilian populations, and debates about the legitimacy of the Algerian nationalist positions forced Christians across the world to rethink the role of Christianity in imperialism and its future in a postcolonial world. This dissertation examines the shifting dynamics of Christianity's role in the French empire, from the role that Christianity played in supporting the moral foundations for French colonialism in Algeria, to the ways in which Social Christianity, which emerged in France in the 1930s and 40s, undermined these same moral arguments, including the belief that French colonialism was both benevolent and the only means through which Christian interests could be protected in Algeria. Using private and governmental archives from France, Switzerland, Algeria, and Tunisia, this dissertation argues that the Algerian War, the most brutal and violent conflict over decolonization in the French empire, was a testing ground for the decolonization of Christianity itself. It traces a group of French Christians who used Christian theology and morality to argue for social justice for colonized peoples, and even political independence. Although many of these Christians were arrested and tortured for their support of the Algerian population, they worked toward a decolonization of the church in Algeria by initiating a dialogue with Algerian Muslims and working with them to solve some of the grave social problems that were at the root of Algerian discontent. This project thus traces the transformation of Christianity from its position as the moral foundation of European imperialism to its role as a radical voice of political and social change in the era of decolonization, and the complex tensions that resulted as Christians attempted to renegotiate their place in the emerging Third World.