A Transpacific Imagination of Theology, Ethics, and Spiritual Activism: Doing Feminist Ethics Transnationally (New Approaches to Religion and Power)

Despite prolific feminist voices in Christian ethics, transnational perspectives are still underdeveloped. Similarly, ‘secular’ transnational feminist scholarship often overlooks religious faith, rituals, and spirituality, crucial to many women’s liberation movements across the globe. This book aims to fill these gaps in Christian and secular feminist scholarships by constructing a transnational feminist theo-ethics. Furthermore, by bringing the theological and the transnational together, the book offers an alternative tool in analyzing social identities beyond intersectionality (i.e., interstitial approach and interstitial integrity) and thus, renews feminist theological understandings, especially of time, memories, and healing beyond linear approaches. A renewed analytical tool would help the readers critically reinterrogate the global power structure buttressed by empire, militarized capitalism, and heteropatriarchal religious ideologies at the cost of raced, sexed, and classed bodies. At the same time, the book would create space where readers create and recreate theo-ethical visions for global peace and justice constructed upon transnational feminist praxis of solidarity and spiritual activism. Case studies offer concrete sites to inform readers about how to use transnational feminist theories at a micro- and macropolitical levels, and produce transnational feminist knowledge of God, spiritual activism, and solidarity. This book is written for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in religion, gender studies, and Asian/American studies to critically engage in the political, the theological, and the spiritual from transnational perspectives not as observers but as active participants in global politics. Acknowledgment Contents Chapter 1: A Transpacific Imagination of Feminist Theo-Ethics At the Pacific Ocean Conceptualizing Transnational Feminist Theo-Ethics: Who and How? Radical Praxis: Proximity and Reflexivity Spiritual Activism: Interconnectedness and Interstitial Integrity Decolonizing Feminist Theological Methods: Resignifying Gender and Sexuality Issues in Transpacific Feminist Theology and Ethics Bibliography Chapter 2: The Transnational, the Political, and the Theological Thinking About the Transnational, the Political, and the Theological The Transnational: Rethinking Knowledge Production Interstitial Approach and Interstitial Integrity Toward Decolonizing Theology An Interstitial Approach Interstitial Integrity Citizenship from a Theo-Political Perspective Decolonizing (Feminist) Theology Spiritual Activism: Radical Praxis Transnational Feminist Solidarity in Kwok Pui-lan’s Postcolonial Imagination Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 3: US Military Prostitution and Sexual Ethics for Peace and Justice Reframing Sexual Ethics in the Militarized World Christian Discourse on War and Sex Necropolitical Labor: Military Prostitution and Soldiering A Case of US Military Prostitution in South Korea A Case of Soldiering Bible, Prostitution, War, and Tourism: Reencountering Mary Magdalene Embodied Sexual Ethics for Peace from the Sunlit Center Sexual Ethics for Peace and Justice Epilogue Bibliography Chapter 4: COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Gender-Based Violence The Shootings Gender-Based Violence and Oppression Militarized COVID-19 and Its Impact on the Asian/American Body War on the Potentially Diseased Body Moral Injury of Caretakers War on Vulnerable Populations Sexualized Anti-Asian Racism, US Militarism, and Evangelical Purity Culture Origins of Sexualized Anti-Asian Racism Evangelical Purity Culture Radical Resurgence of Indecency: A Making of Transnational Feminist Solidarity In Search of Life-Affirming Theology Between the Ordinary and the Sacred Bibliography Chapter 5: The Memories of Killing and Interfaith Spiritual Activism The Remains of the War Ruins A Politics of Killing The Korean War: A Brief History A Palimpsest of Genocide Massacres Race, Gender, and Sexuality of Massacres Genocide as a Colonial Legacy Christian Triumphalism and Rescue Mission Toward a Politics of Love Empathy and a Storytelling Method Interdependence Feminist Spiritual Activism: A Politics of Love Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 6: The Diasporic Body of Jesus: A Feminist Ethic of Diasporas Diasporas in Feminist Theological Consciousness Framing Diaspora Vulnerability of Transnational/Transborder Crossing Colonial and Imperial Diasporas Diasporic Consciousness from Home to Home Jesus as a Collective Subjectivity of Diasporas Epilogue Bibliography Chapter 7: Yearning for Wholeness Bibliography Some chapters of this book have been revised and expanded significantly from the following materials. I appreciate their permission: Index