Power, Liberation, and Theology: My Current Reads for the Doctor of Ministry Seminar

This semester's Doctor of Ministry seminar is a deep dive on the theme of Power, and all of the books chosen for this course examine power through the lens of those in the global majority, e.g. not white Europeans.

One of the reads on my list is Postcolonial Politics and Theology: Unraveling Empire for a Global World by Pui-Lan Kwok. This book examines how colonial histories still influence contemporary theological discussions, how religion has been used to justify global oppression, and what reparative theology might look like. She is writing from a Christian perspective, but one of the ideas she discusses is addressed in our UU shared value of interdependence, as she talks about how a theology for this age must address global participation in climate change, economic inequity, and violence.

I was very excited to see Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman on the reading list. I have studied the writings and speeches/sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. for years, and this is the book that he said he carried with him everywhere. Written in 1949, I was amazed at how relevant it is in 2026, especially on the topics of hate and resentment: "Hatred, in the mind and spirit of the disinherited, is born out of great bitterness—a bitterness that is made possible by sustained resentment which is bottled up until it distills an essence of vitality, giving to the individual in whom this is happening a radical and fundamental basis for self-realization...Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality." Thurman certainly wasn't talking about those with white privilege, but I think it worthwhile to consider this idea with many in the white Christian nationalist movement which is fueled by resentment.

Thurman writes extensively about the power of loving one's enemies. But love is defined in a different way in One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. The "this" El Akkad refers to is the catastrophic violence in Gaza, supported (or not resisted) by the West. This is a contemporary book, and raw, with the Egyptian El Akkad sharing his own devastating heartbreak at what is happening. When he addresses love, it is not about loving one's enemies, but "a people’s love for one another." He goes on to give devastating examples of what that looks like: "Anyone who has dragged a relative out from under the wreckage of a bombed building, who has held a friend bleeding to death in the street while the officer who pulled the trigger looks on, who has watched their water poisoned, their land burned, their communities starved, is intimately well versed in love."

And then he delivers the kill shot that I have to tell you, pierced me to the core with its simplicity and truth: "But in the eyes of the empire such a thing can never be called love, because the directive was never in the first place, Love, but rather, Love me. In spite of it all, love me."

The final book, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation by Gustavo Gutierrez is considered a theological classic, and one that I have preached about before. Written in 1971, it firmly stands up to empire by declaring that the Christian God is on the side of the oppressed. In the current 2026 Texas election season, we are already hearing echoes of this debate in the Senate race.