Kim-Cragg, HyeRan. Story and Song : A Postcolonial Interplay Between Christian Education And Worship, New York : Peter Lang, 2012., Chapter 1 and 5

Chapter 1

Christian Formation through the Story

Undoubtely one of the means to shape our Christian faith is through reading The Scripture as foundation in Christian formation. The Scripture is a story and look likes a talking book. Through The Scripture we can see God’s people’s experiences living in faith to God, a story of knowing God’s actions in their life, a story of how they obey God’s will, a story of how they found their source of hope through their trouble and pain. The Scripture is more than a book of knowledge but a book that share experience being with God in life.

Unfortunately we are still influenced by white western theology and hermeneutics to read The Scripture as a cognitive book. As Asian, we have to understand The Scripture as “a telling and hearing” of story from God’s people who has experience with God. So we have to liberate our self from that influences (as a postcolonial bible approach). We do such our own new hermeneutic and connect it with our daily experience in our context (marginalized, life with people with different faith, more inclusive than exclusive). Because as Asian, we also have a some tradition with The Scripture, oral tradition – a telling and hearing story. So we can make connection between our stories with stories in The Scripture, and find how God did acted in our life. It is also important to have a vernacular hermeneutics as one of the postcolonial biblical interpretation.

Chapter 5

Christian Formation through the Song

Along with The Scripture song is essenstial to Christian formation. Song has a role in nurturing, renewing, instructing and inspiring people in their Christian faith. Song, in its homelitic function, should be connected to The Scripture in the sermon for expressesing and emphasizing the messages. It helps us understanding of The Scripture.

But we have to be critical to song that based upon text in Scripture because sometimes can be contained with particular subjective theological reflection and biblical hermeneutics that exclude certain segment in society like queers or people who was oppressed and marginalized. In the same time, song should be sensitive to those who are different from us and to be conscious of our relationship with God and with one another.

Song can help us express our Christian identity and shaping our belief, worship and even our actions. In songs, there is an interaction between intelectual and emotional component – between feeling and thougth. That why song has a important role in Christian education. Song offers a new definition of theology as a multy-sensory by incoporating the non-verbal elements, like musical, dramatic and visual. With the postcolonial approach, we have to use all non-verbal activites such as movement, sounds, gestures, music, dance, symbols, space, and song to express our belief, theology and faith. It is not new in our non-western context (as Asian and African). Verbal language in song is still important to carry faith and theology to the congregation through text. We also need to use vernacular language in our context. We can see song (as well as music) as a mirror that reflects human experiences. So its values arise from the particular context within which it was experienced socially, culturally and emotionally.

Oppinion

The Scripture as a story and Song are important to our Christian Formation. My main concern is how we liberate our self as an Asian (or African) from white western dominant theology and shift to our own Asian theology context in reading the bible and also in composing our own hymns. It is not a easy task, because many of Christians in Asia still like to identify themself to western christian thought and theology, and see their own theology – their own understanding from The Scripture and even their own songs as a second class liturgy elements.

Now it becomes our challenge as an Asian to re-formulate our theology – our postcolonial way of reading the bible, new way of hermeneutic and interpretation and our postcolonial way of shaping our Christian formation through songs.

It is better to have Christian education and worship in that understanding. By using The Scripture postcolonial hermeneutics and song that relect our own context as Asian (and African) and totally free from western way of understanding of theology and hermeneutics.