Contested Contextualization

The particularity of place in the economy of God’s relationship with the creation is a consistent thread throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It has had to be reckoned with across the history of the Christian tradition, not least because of belief in the incarnation of Jesus, the Christ, in first-century Palestine. Contextualization, inculturation, or contextual theology arose as a noble field of study within missiology in the final third of the twentieth century, partly as a response to the end of colonialism. Contested Contextualization attempts to review this field critically and make a unique contribution to it from several perspectives in the twenty-first century. Utilizing prior field research in the North of England, the book takes a regional starting point for this enterprise and asks what a northern theology might look like in England, embedded as it is in a post-colonial world. This requires taking seriously both the contested nature of context as well as the coloniality that the North experiences. Out of this particularity the book offers a thickening of the meaning and practice of contextualization for continuing reflection within World Christianity.