Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the American Global South

Abstract

Spirit Outside the Gate—the second installment of Oscar García-Johnson’s trilogy — offers a bold proposal for Latinx theology and missiology, buttressed by two key concepts. The first, Transoccidentality, marks García-Johnson’s theoretical contribution to de/postcolonial theory. Even though “imprints” of 400 years of Eurocentricity remain unerasable, Transoccidentality promises a new imaginary, a new horizon for those who live in the Other America that neither attempts to unring the bell of modernity nor remains subservient to the domination of coloniality. The first five chapters are occupied with a demonstration of Transoccidentality as the dethronement of Europe from the geo-center of knowledge. The liberation of the Global South requires nothing less than a revolution in epistemology itself; that revolution is Transoccidentality.The rest of the book is devoted to the second key concept: Spirit Outside the Gates. Riffing on the Christology of Orlando Costa, García-Johnson wants to push our theological imaginations beyond their theological, political, sociocultural, and utopic “gates.” But he needs to move past Christology (not Christ), too long used as a weapon in the theological tragedy of colonial wounding. Pneumatology, however, bears a promise forward. Parenthetically, this working concept of pneumatology borrows a great deal from the likes of Jürgen Moltmann and D. Lyle Dabney. Thus it is the Spirit that leads him beyond the gates to affirm unreservedly that Original Americans and their descendants knew and know God the Spirit apart from their alignment with Western creedal orthodoxy.Extending George Tinker’s Native American theology, García-Johnson interprets particular moments in which Original American religion and Christian pneumatology bear a striking similitude. There was a near identity between the theological-cosmology of the Qoñamuro (Urcos) people and, in particular, the pneumatologically rich tri-history of Joachim di Fiore. There is deep resonance between the so-called animistic rituals of the Afro-Creole descendants of the Yoruba and Pentecostalism—yea, even the North American Pentecostalism of William Seymour. Most striking, however, is García-Johnson’s reflection on the border Spirit of immigration: abuelita-madres-comadres-tias pneumatologies (235). In the experiences of the immigrant women, we find a Wild Child (Third) Article theology ready to blow the gates off of our colonial spirit-cages and call us on a theological adventure. This is all to say, the Spirit of the God of Jesus Christ was and is present to the peoples of the American Global South.García-Johnson is quite adamant that these two key concepts cannot be delinked. The decolonializing project of Transoccidentality and the more constructive pneumatological material do not bear a prolegomenon-content relationship. The pneumatology of the Global South is not accidentally decolonializing. The movement away from Eurosupermacist epistemology and the movement toward a decolonial pneumatology are, theologically, the same. Only a theology of the Spirit can be truly “glocal”; that is, it alone can allow contextual and localized knowledges simply to be neither more nor less than they really are. In turn, García-Johnson locates his own (intensely personal) project within a category that he calls “Transoccidental Mestizo(a) Theology”: this book is an artifact of the knowledge of a Catholic, American Baptist, Pentecostal “Chiquita Banana kid.”As is likely clear, Spirit Outside the Gates is an ambitious project, tackling de/postcolonial theory, liberation theology, and pneumatology. One wonders, however, whether the book itself suffers from the Herculean nature of its agenda. It is often haltingly dense—both in content and in style—and several passages require patient rereading.One also may be left hoping for a deeper engagement with the discernment of Spirit in the Original America. It occupies the space of only one chapter. Precisely because this task seems logically central to the book and because it marks an exciting way forward for pneumatological thinking, a more detailed discussion of the Spirit’s presence in Original American religion—in a manner similar to that of Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong’s project—would have been appreciated.That said, the work ought to come as a great boon to several interested parties: those who are committed to the theological work of decoloniality; those who are committed to the work of pneumatology; and those who hope to see the world of Latinx theology flourish. To the first party, Oscar Garcia-Johnson has offered the category of Transoccidentality. To the second, he has narrated a poignant account of the Spirit as the Decolonial Healer. To the third party, he has offered a work of serious and engaged theological scholarship that draws upon precisely the kind of sources North American theology has long neglected.