Moana Eco-theology: Towards an Eco-theology of Commoning
George Zachariah serves the Trinity Methodist Theological College, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand as lecturer in Theological Studies.
During the summer of 2020, the Wendland-Cook program hosted a series of webinars under the theme: Liberating People and the Planet: Christian Responses at the Intersection of Economics, Ecology, and Religion. Originally planned as an in-person conference, these webinars featured insights from theologians and scholars of religion reflecting on our climate and economic crisis. The original papers are being prepared for a book to be released in 2021.
In preparation of the book release and to contextualize the webinars, we featured brief overviews of each of the chapters in an Interventions forum. To see the entire forum, click here. This is George Zachariah’s contribution to the forum.
Moana Eco-theology: Towards an Eco-theology of Commoning
George Zachariah
September 10, 2020
Colonization of the commons is the colonization of the planet and the people, and commoning is the praxis that liberates the commons and the commoners.
Religion has played a major role in the colonization of the commons. But religion also has the potential to be a catalyst in the praxis of commoning. The environmental history of Oceania in general and Aotearoa New Zealand, in particular, exemplifies the history of the colonization of the commons perpetuated by settler colonialism, neo-liberal capitalism and institutional racism.
Moana Eco-theology, the creative eco-theological reflections from Oceania, problematizes mainstream eco-theologies and proposes alternative methodological standpoints to envision and initiate the liberation of the planet and the people.
In the paper to come, I reflect upon Moana Eco-theology from the commons perspective drawing from the ongoing struggles of the tangata whenua (people of the land) to liberate their moana and whenua.