Abstract

Postcolonial theory ought to inform how we do Christian social ethics in North America. This essay engages postcolonial critiques of the "impossibility" that intellectuals can address the needs of unrepresented groups. It also examines postcolonial theorists' move to localize European thinking and, in so doing, to recognize European thinking as both "indispensable and inadequate" to justice-oriented work. The essay engages contemporary post-colonial theory with the writing and work of Howard Thurman, William Stuart Nelson, and Bayard Rustin, midcentury black American Christian intellectuals, in order to show how postcolonial theory may be useful for contemporary Christian social ethics.