Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation

This book explores the complex relationships between the Bible, colonisation, and ecology in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Pasifika, and parts of Asia.

Bringing together theologians, biblical scholars, and activists, the volume critically engages with the historical and ongoing uses of biblical texts in colonisation and the reshaping of environmental contexts. The book also showcases some ways in which scholars have recently been developing alternative hermeneutical approaches and ways of contesting these texts. Ecological hermeneutics has, at times, unhelpfully created a dichotomy between human and other-than-human beings, separating humanity from environmental contexts. Central to the contributions in this book is an intentional re-casting of human beings within the so-called ecological realm. By focusing on coloniality and the conquest of Indigenous communities, this volume broadens understandings of ‘ecology’ and aims to attend to how the colonisation of human beings goes hand-in-hand with ecological conquest and domination.

Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation is of great use for students and scholars interested in decolonising ecological histories and theologies, as well as those studying the Bible and ecology more broadly.