The Canaanite Woman and Urban Liberation Theology

Abstract

This article draws on the culturally transgressive encounter between the Canaanite woman and Jesus in Matthew 15 to consider the nature of social space, diversity and social exclusion on urban housing estates. The article re-frames key emphases within liberation theology, arguing that urban liberation theologies need to be characterised by the prioritising of insignificance, the practice of liberative reversals and a hermeneutics of liberative difference. These key themes are rooted in a recent research project working alongside unemployed young men from a Birmingham housing estate to raise questions for the ways in which the church understands ‘urban mission’ today.

City-making from below: A call for communities of resistance and reconstruction

“…3 Liberation theologies, opting for poor and oppressed communities, critiqued developmental approaches that create dependency and under-development. Scholaractivists such as Shannahan (2013), Hankela (2014) and Nixon (2014) have appropriated liberation theologies for the struggles of local urban communities.…”