A white theologian learning how to fall upward

Abstract

As a theologian coming from Europe, a ‘postcolonial import’ into South Africa, it is my white privilege in particular that continues to queer my   understanding of a social revolution on which our future, as a people, may depend. In this article, I seek to turn my personal experience of grappling with  my whiteness into the source of my reflection. Drawing inspiration from fallism – a recent student movement that inscribes itself into a larger  decolonial ‘struggle against the globalised system of racist capitalism’ – I ponder what it could mean, in the South African context, for whiteness to fall  upward (Rohr). Here, the metaphor of ‘falling upward’ as a kenosis of whiteness is considered specifically with regard to a white theologian’s (my own) attempt to open spaces that could be filled with blackness.

Contribution: This auto-ethnographic essay inscribes itself into a transdisciplinary study of theology and race from both socio-cultural and religiospiritual perspectives. The author’s personal reflections, inspired by his own engagement with the  fallist narratives and his everevolving attitude towards the blackness–whiteness binary, as experienced in the South African social and academic contexts,  are shared as a means to crack open the societal and theological (notably Christian) imagination, both of which appear to suffer from a serious crisis.