CRES Lecture - Xiaoli Yang, "Canaan Hymns: Embedded, Embodied and Empowered"

This lecture is part of the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society (CRES) lecture series 2024. 

Rev Dr Xiaoli Yang - Canaan Hymns: Embedded, Embodied and Empowered —Singing from Country Fields to the Global Stage

This lecture provides a narrative of how the collection Canaan Hymns is embedded in the context of the life and struggles of ecclesial life within the Chinese church movement, embodied in their pneumatologically-led creation, and empowered by the theology of laity and women.  It argues that the ecclesiological mode of the grassroots together with the affective style of worship and reflections form the two key characteristics of a decolonizing missiology, offering an epistemology of ‘knowing with’ in relation to missio Dei.  This is followed by further examining the mission impulse, nationalistic fever and transnational currents.  The radically inclusive and universal nature from a bottom-up construction with an affective mode of theological reflection invites all to participate in missio Dei within their own contextual particularities across denominations and national boundaries.