The heart of embodied theopoetics beats for liberation

When white light hits a prism, it refracts into a colorful spectrum of various wavelengths. Shining a light on the theological academy, Theopoetics in Color emerges as one such spectrum. Fourteen contributors add their tints to the study and practice of theopoetics, which is concerned with imaginative and embodied forms of theological meaning-making.

As an academic subject, traditional theopoetics centers the experiences of White scholars and especially White men, leaving other scholars unseen and unheard. There has been a mounting resistance to the theological academy’s “phallogocentrism” (a term treated by Lis Valle-Ruiz in the second chapter), which marginalizes the embodied experiences and knowledge of anyone deemed other. However, the goal of this collection is not simply to replace traditional theopoetics and assert the dominance of theopoetics in color. Rather, it aims to reshape the subject, putting flesh on its bones and breathing new life into it.

In this way, Theopoetics in Color seeks a mutual rehumanization, correcting what Paulo Freire calls the “distortion of the vocation of becoming more human” that is oppression. The heart of this embodied theopoetic movement beats for liberation and serves as a timely reminder of the work that still needs to be done. The theological world recently mourned the death of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of Latin American liberation theology. His theopoetic—his “creative God-reflection from the space of the body and toward the totality of liberation,” as coeditor Oluwatomisin Oredein writes in the introduction—is apparent in each chapter of this book, expanded and enriched by the content and contexts of the collaborators.