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  • Postcolonial Preaching: Creating a Ripple Effect by HyeRan Kim-Cragg
  • Jerusha Matsen Neal
HyeRan Kim-Cragg. Postcolonial Preaching: Creating a Ripple Effect. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. Pp. x + 149. Hardback, us$95.00. isbn 978-1-7936-1709-5.

HyeRan Kim-Cragg’s Postcolonial Preaching: Creating a Ripple Effect makes an urgent case for the significance of postcolonial preaching in a world where mass migrations are reshaping global demographics at the same time that exclusionary nationalisms are on the rise. Kim-Cragg notes homiletic’s “palpable silence” (10) regarding the colonial reality at work in these cross-currents. The book provides an accessible introduction to the decades-long postcolonial conversation, helpfully summarizing major thinkers and defining key terms. Where Postcolonial Preaching shines, however, is in arguing for the significance and modelling of a postcolonial practical theological method.

It is possible to write a book on postcolonial practice that follows “linear, hierarchical” rhetorical norms—separating content from form (6). Kim-Cragg’s deep appreciation for practical theology’s contributions to theology as a whole, however, requires a different approach. Growing out of her work in Interdependence: A Postcolonial Feminist Practical Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018) and fueled by her conviction that practical theology has a unique contribution to make in the postcolonial conversation (2), Kim-Cragg’s chapters are organized around the image of ripples emanating from a dropped stone. The goal is not only aesthetic—though the image is compelling. It is an organic, relational approach to sermon planning.

One of the things I appreciated about this book was its ability to hold together the shifting complexities of postcolonial categories with pedagogical clarity. “ Organic” approaches to method can be hard to follow—particularly for young preachers. But not here. This is a book that is written for students, even as its insights are relevant to the academic guild. Kim-Cragg is not afraid to be concrete. The ripple metaphor is more than an image; it is an acronym for six overlapping sites of postcolonial attention in sermonic work: “rehearsal,” “imagination,” “place,” “pattern,” “language,” and “exegesis.” Kim-Cragg makes it clear that she has not placed these sites of attention in chronological order. Exegesis does not necessarily come at the end of the sermon writing process, and attention to place does not necessarily come third; rather, she [End Page 114] points to the significance of each for the other, asking students to watch for relational connections. This relationality is at the heart of Kim-Cragg’s postcolonial witness.

The impact of this relationality on the categories she describes is profound. Her discussion of “rehearsal” serves as an example. “Rehearsal” has been used in conversations about Christian practice as a way regulate Christian norms. It has described theology as a drama that requires attention to a script and direction from the wings. Christians “ rehearse” in order to learn our lines well and embody the Christian story properly, but this is not how Kim-Cragg uses the term. She reframes the category as a way to invite longing for an apocalyptic future in bodily practices of faith. She introduces time into the metaphor; our rehearsals arc toward the “Kin-dom of God”—full of “eschatological expectation” (22).

Kim-Cragg’s discussion of “place” is also crucial. The significance of place in sermon preparation and biblical exegesis is woefully underdeveloped in North American homiletic thought. When it is discussed, it is often relegated to conversations about rhetorical persuasion (pace Aristotle) or as the horizon that impacts a preacher’s interpretive work. Kim-Cragg asks different questions, such as How does place impact the ways that preachers engage themes of belonging, loss, and sovereignty in the pulpit? How do preachers engage the colonial powers and principalities that impact the place they stand–and how do they engage their own power in that place?

I found Kim-Cragg’s chapters on “pattern” unsatisfying. Attributing various sermon forms to specific contextual communities is tricky; it can flatten the complexity and creativity within these contexts themselves. Also unaddressed is how a postcolonial preacher’s embodied person impacts the negotiation of these various traditions in the pulpit. Kim-Cragg places great confidence in the ability...

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