Dismantling the Colonial-Capitalist Gaze: Theological Education for Earth-Commons and Planetary Liberation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57106/scientia.v15i2.226Keywords:
colonial-capitalist gaze, decolonial theology, earth-commons, planetary liberation, theological educationAbstract
This paper argues that contemporary ecological and social crises stem from a colonial-capitalist gaze, an epistemic orientation that reduces creation to resources and souls to consumers. This gaze, woven into Western theology, now structures theological education, rendering it incapable of addressing planetary collapse. We trace how theological formation became a disembedded academic discipline and dissect the gaze’s four logics within theology: a subject-object dichotomy that desacralizes nature; an extractive logic that commodifies knowledge; a logic of separation that fragments the commons; and a teleology of conquest that sacralizes domination. These logics produce a curriculum of disconnection: a Eurocentric canon, anthropocentric paradigms, and an extractive pedagogy within corporatized institutions. In response, we propose refounding theological education on the vision of the Earth-Commons, the sacred, interdependent web of life, and the project of planetary liberation. This demands four pillars: an ethos of radical interdependence, a praxis of reciprocity, a commitment to de-enclosure, and a teleology of collective flourishing. The resulting pedagogical praxis involves place-based learning, apprenticeships in communities of struggle, and assessment by co-created life. Finally, dismantling this gaze is a decolonial imperative, transforming theological education from a curator of a dying paradigm into a seedbed for cultivators of the Earth-Commons.
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