Introducing May’s new books and the DARE series

This month we speak to Graham McGeoch, Mission Secretary - Discipleship & Dialogue at Council for World Mission and series editor of a new series of volumes that SCM Press is co-publishing with the Council of World Mission’s DARE (Discernment And Radical Engagement) programme.

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Hello Graham. Can you introduce yourself and explain what your role involves?

I work with the Council for World Mission and I help to co-ordinate the DARE Global Forum. Before joining CWM, I taught Theology & Religious Studies at Faculdade Unida de Vitória in Brazil. At CWM, my role includes research a publications on contemporary missiological and theological themes inspired by a liberation and decolonial approach. I am delighted with the new DARE series in partnership with SCM Press.

What about the DARE programme – what does this involve? What is the mission/are the aims, and how does this publishing fit into it?

The DARE Global Forum is inspired by Liberation Theology; its praxis, pedagogies and theories. DARE explores, shares, transforms and tries to make sense of divinities, scriptures, traditions, responsibilities, destinies, practices, experiences and biases. DARE is open to the signs of the times. DARE is conceived as the coming together of:

(1) commitments to mission at, to, with and from the margins;

(2) engagements with praxes, pedagogies and theories of liberation;

(3) testimonies of voices of counter-imperial consciousness, and testimonies to the God of life who calls us to take on the life flourishing mission.

DARE and Liberation Theology is radically interdisciplinary, interreligious and affective in its approach. This accompanies shifts in academic trends, but transcends those trends to root DARE in praxes, pedagogies and theories of struggles for liberation, decolonization and counter-imperial testimonies.

The first two DARE books of this series are being published by SCM Press at the end of this month: Facing Climate Collapse and Decolonizing Development and Religion.

What can you tell us about these?

These books are multi-contributor volumes edited by experienced scholars, recognised in their own fields. The books draw on liberationist and decolonial perspectives with contributions from the Global South and its diasporas. They introduce new voices, perspectives and analysis of major themes facing Christianity, theology and missiology.

What kind of voices is DARE aiming to give a platform to?

 The DARE Global Forum is now a network of over 500 scholars and activists, mainly from the global south. There are approximately 200 theological institutions or research centres, mainly in the global south who are part of the CWM network and partnership model. DARE's voice is diverse with people from different locations, academic disciplines and different religions. DARE scholars and activists are Empire-critical and committed to life flourishing. 

Facing Climate Collapse, as we can glimpse from the title, relates to the climate crisis, and Decolonizing Development and Religion is concerned with addressing historic and still present attitudes to mission and development stemming from colonialism. What kind of themes can we expect to see covered in the rest of the series?

Each DARE Global Forum focuses on a different theme, enabling DARE to continuously draw in new voices and continue to resource decolonial mission practice on emerging themes. Next up in the series will be Ritual, Resistance and Liberation, out in June, and The DARE Primer on Global Queer Theologies (September). Ritual, Resistance and Liberation looks at material religion and practice in contexts of resistance, resilience and ongoing searches for liberation. The DARE Primer on Global Queer Theologies is an ambitious project that has brought together, and into dialogue, queer theologians and spiritualities from  the global south with some authors being published for the first time in the English language. Future books in the series cover Reparatory Theology, rooted in the legacies of slavery work of CWM and books related to the major themes of legacies of slavery, Modern-day slavery, transformative ecumenism and education for liberation.

What are your hopes for the books and the series? Who are you wanting to reach with these books and who would you most like to read them?

Like every book produced, we hope it finds a wide readership. We hope students and teachers of theology will find new resources and conversations in the books. CWM is committed through DARE to ensuring that scholarship and books reach libraries in the global south. And we hope that the books will make contributions to global conversations on the relevant themes, perhaps informing policy initiatives in churches, other religions and civil society.

Overall, I am also hopeful that the books demonstrate liberationist a decolonial approaches in the 21st century, making contributions to wider research questions and conversations.

Can you share one thing that’s stayed with you from these first two books?

The conversations for both these books began at DARE Bangkok. The editors Luis Martínez Andrade, Seforosa Carroll, Joerg Rieger and Sanjana Das have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to work with such a variety of scholars and contexts to bring new critiques and proposals to light. I really like the mix of theory and practice in each book and the conversations that take place within the book and continue to unfold in surprising and creative ways. DARE is unique as one scholar has noted. The DARE books are unique too.

Thanks for speaking to us, Graham.

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The first two books in the DARE series are published this month: Decolonizing Development and Religion and Facing Climate Collapse. We are offering 20% off all orders of these books during May.

Graham McGeoch is Mission Secretary for Discipleship and Dialogue with the Council for World Mission. He taught Theology and Religious Studies at Faculdade Unida de Vitória, Brazil and is Visiting Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

DARE is a programme of the Council of World Mission. Attentive to the signs of the times and in response to imperial powers and powerholders that exploit, divide, despoil and threaten the world, CWM offers the DARE programme as a voice of counter-imperial consciousness. DARE partners with committed and creative thinker-practitioners of our time, sending a clear signal, to ourselves and to the world, that our call is to life flourishing.

Council for World Mission is a worldwide partnership of Christian churches. The 32 members are committed to sharing their resources of money, people, skills and insights globally to carry out God’s mission locally. CWM was created in 1977 and incorporates the London Missionary Society (1795), the Commonwealth Missionary Society (1836) and the (English) Presbyterian Board of Missions (1847).