César García, PhD Candidate

In my years of experience at the Mennonite World Conference and as a pastor and denominational leader in Colombia — a country with a postcolonial context of inequality, war, and violence — I have seen how the way churches speak about God in contexts of suffering has social implications for those churches and contexts.

My research, “How to Speak of God in Contexts of Suffering: Theological Method from an Anabaptist Perspective” investigates how different theological styles have affected the way churches speak about God in the Colombian reality, the contextualization of the Gospel in that reality, and how this might serve as a model for other contexts of postcolonial suffering and oppression.

I approach this topic from the perspective of the Anabaptist Church tradition. Churches that belong to this tradition have often found themselves in contexts of suffering. Therefore, the first purpose of this project has to do with proposing a theological method that is coherent with that distinct perspective. Using the Lukan narrative as a resource to offer relevant ways of contextualizing theology in a postcolonial setting, I propose a theological method that appeals to churches that face contexts of suffering – like in Colombia. This work challenges churches of those contexts to remain truthful to a relevant way of speaking of God in situations of suffering.