Global patterns of migration, against the backdrop of historical colonial relations, have resulted in unprecedented religious diversity in many nations. Secularism and the rise in alternative or emergent spiritualities (typically outside of organized religions) have added further complexity to the religious/spiritual landscape of contemporary societies, creating environments of brigolage1 in which people not only pick and choose, but also tinker with the many religious/spiritual options available to them. All of these trends are expressed in Canada, a nation founded as a settler colony by the French and English on lands historically inhabited by First Nations peoples. Today the majority of newcomers to Canada arrive from Asian source countries, resulting in a substantial increase in the number of Canadians who report affiliations with religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. The number of Canadians who report “no religious affiliation” on census surveys is also on the rise2 as typified by Canada’s west coast, that has been described as expressing sacred ecologies rather than adhering to organized religions.3 Of the English-speaking nations, the United States is generally deemed the most nonsecular and religious, with a flourishing religious market of both institutional religions and noninstitutional spiritualities.4 Rapid growth of Pentecostalism in the Southern Hemisphere is adding to what were already diverse societies in South America and Africa. Noting that plurality and change are global phenomena, Amoah comments, “The reality of religious plurality can be seen everywhere in Africa.”5 Even European nations, sometimes referred to as the exception in regard to their secularity,6 have seen some increase in religious diversity, especially as they have turned to immigrant sources to fill labor market needs. Here, as elsewhere, the rise in Islamic immigrants has more recently brought to the forefront the question of religious accommodation in the face of diversity.7 Around the world, not only is there increased diversity, but also a strengthening or resurgence (sometimes with fundamentalist extremes)8 of the salience and persuasiveness of religion to individual and public life.9 These intersecting trends of global migration with increased religious pluralism, the resurgence of religion in some domains, continued secularism, and emergent spiritualities have raised questions about the role of religion/spirituality in the public realm. Whereas secular societies have traditionally held to neutrality of the public sphere and a relatively strict public–private divide, they are now considering moderate adjustments to account for the influence of religion.10 These trends have also brought back into focus the political nature of religion and spirituality where social relations of power overlap across individual, institutional, and societal levels.11
By and large, nursing scholarship has not engaged with the implications of the relations of power mobilized through religion and spirituality. Nor has it accounted for the contingent nature of religion and spirituality as situated within particular sociopolitical contexts, shaped by intersecting social categories of gender, age, class, race, and so forth. Rather, the integration of religion and spirituality discourses in nursing scholarship has tended to: (a) culturalist readings of religion, where the focus typically centers on circumscribed cultural-religious practices; and (b) universalist readings of spirituality, emphasizing a presumed shared spiritual nature of humans with individualized spiritual interpretations. Gilliat-Ray observes that the way in which spirituality is understood in the nursing profession is “culturally and geographically bounded. It is a discussion taking place primarily in the Western, Anglophone world.”12 Given these tendencies to acontextual and apolitical approaches to religion and spirituality that risk exclusion rather than inclusion, our theoretical frameworks—as mechanisms for making particular phenomena visible—become crucial in moving nursing scholarship and ethical practice in pluralistic societies forward.
Postcolonial feminism and other critical perspectives can be helpful to clarify the social dynamics resulting from the contingent and political nature of spirituality and religion. Critical perspectives take as mandate the problematizing of normative approaches to study a given field, in this case the study of religion/spirituality—in its multiple social, political, literary, religious, and historical dimensions—pertaining to nursing and nursing ethics. Critical inquiry is sometimes discounted as ideological, with the criticism that scholars follow preconceived ideas to see oppression everywhere as advocates on behalf of “the oppressed.” Importantly, from a postcolonial feminist perspective, the aim of scholarship is “not to serve particular ‘interest groups;’ rather the agenda is to unmask historically embedded taken for-granted social structures that support the status quo, that position people in particular ways, and that are major determinants of health and well-being.”13 In this chapter, I consider the contributions of postcolonial theory, arguing that critical perspectives offer invaluable analytic tools in the critical analysis of religion, spirituality, and health/nursing. In so doing, I am urging a rethinking of nursing’s typical de-emphasis on creedal religions in quest for a universal spiritual experience.14 In order to make this argument, the chapter provides an overview of postcolonial theory as one form of critical inquiry particularly salient for the study of religion and spirituality, and highlights several methodological and practice implications for nursing ethics.
The theoretical fields of postcolonialism, black feminism, cultural studies, and critical race theory have been invaluable to nursing scholarship in addressing health and health inequities,15 and offering alternatives to apolitical conflations of religion and culture, and acontextual conceptions of generic spirituality. The applications of postcolonial theory to religion and spirituality—and to the intersections of race, gender, and class with religion—have been relatively unexplored until recently. Scholars writing within cultural studies and postcolonialism have offered cogent critiques of the damaging effects of race in the everyday with an account of intersecting and historical oppressions, and have tended to name religion as an instrument of colonialism, but have offered less conceptual depth around the intersections between nation, state, religion, and culture, and little explication of the ambivalences and contradictions that characterize social relations of power in the realm of religion and spirituality. A decade ago, Robert Young scolded his postcolonial colleagues for an
unmediated secularism, opposed to and consistently excluding the religions that have taken on the political identity of providing alternative value systems to those of the West. Postcolonial theory, despite its espousal of subaltern resistance, scarcely values subaltern resistance that does not operate according to its own secular terms.16
Since then, the nexus between religion and the postcolonial is beginning to be examined, to the extent that Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin assert “there has been no more dramatic shift in recent times in post-colonial studies.”17 “Religion” as a category has become the subject of critical analysis, with observations such as that by Fitzgerald (among others) who points out the processes of separation and reification that resulted historically in the construction of religion as a field of study and the assumption of the universality of religion. He throws doubt on
modern uncritical reifications of religion as something that exists in and for itself, as something autonomous and essentially distinct from “politics” . . . religion is modern invention which authorizes and naturalises a form of Euro-American secular rationality. In turn, this supposed position of secular rationality constructs and authorises its “other,” religion and religions.18
With this development came a series of oppositional binaries (e.g., natural/supernatural; reason/faith; material/spiritual; inner/outer) that, although contested, continue to reinforce “religion” itself as an oppositional term to “nonreligious.” Fitzgerald argues that by distinguishing between the material nature (the object of scientific study) and the immaterial or spiritual nature (the object of faith), the idea of religion as a special realm of inner experience separated from the rationality of the public space (the secular state and politics) resulted.19 It is for such a project of questioning taken for-granted assumptions about religion that postcolonial theory and other critical perspectives are well-employed.
Postcolonialism, building on its central interest of the legacies of the colonial era, has developed into a body of scholarship that aims to shift the dominant ways in which “relations between western and non-western peoples and their worlds are viewed.”20 Many scholars have taken “post” to indicate the use of poststructural and postmodern forms of analysis.21 The temporal meaning of “post” is also important in denoting the historical “end” of European colonialism and extends to the evolving configurations of power that circulate as residue of the colonial era.22 Although “postcolonial” infers a literal transfer of government back into the hands of the colonized, scholars repeatedly remind us that the extent to which economic, cultural, and political influence remains means that in most situations of decolonization, there is not a truly “post” postcolonial.23 Colonialism has been a recurrent feature stretching back across the millennia, of which modern European colonialism was the most widespread. Loomba details that by the 1930s, colonies and ex-colonies covered nearly 85% of the world’s land surface. Remarkably, only parts of Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Siam, and Japan have never been under formal European government. This worldwide sweep makes the colonial experience both universally shared and geographically distinct. Flows of profits and people from the colonies to the colonizers were shared, producing the economic imbalance necessary for the growth of an empire, and in the case of European colonialism, resulting in the birth of European capitalism.24 The persistent, pervasive negation of indigenous peoples worldwide that continues to this day is rooted in colonialism.
The interrelated (and often interchanged) terms of “colonialism,” “imperialism,” and “neocolonial” all have to do with the postcolonial condition. Colonialism is defined by Loomba (2005) as “the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods.”25 Imperialism is sometimes used in a temporal sense to refer to expansionism in the era of capitalism, and also has a spatial dimension to its meaning in that an imperial country is the center from which power flows. Neocolonialism is a term sometimes used to emphasize the ongoing and contemporary forms of colonialism whereby excolonial powers and more recent superpowers such as the United States continue to play a decisive role in nations that have achieved political independence. Insidious control may continue through the neoliberal26 power of multinational corporations that artificially fix prices in world markets, and through a variety of other educational and cultural nongovernmental organizations.27 Notably, postcolonialism signifies the possibilities for ongoing resistance to all forms of domination through theory, politics, and practice with a vision for societies built on respect.
The origins of the field of study are typically attributed to scholars and activists Aimé Césaire (with his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism), Franz Fanon (with his 1952 Black Skin, White Masks and 1961 The Wretched of the Earth), Albert Memmi (with his 1965 The Colonizer and the Colonized), and Edward Said (with his 1978 Orientalism);28 and further built on by critics Gayatri Spivak29 and Homi Bhabha.30 From its inception, the field has been remarkably interdisciplinary in nature with uptake in the humanities and social sciences, especially in literary criticism, as well as in professional schools such as law and nursing. As postcolonial critique has been widely taken up in the “literary turn” and institutionalized in the Western academy, Parry31 notes that the material consequences of power differentials rooted in colonizing relations have increasingly been de-emphasized. Yet, in the real worlds of illness and suffering, health and health services, these material consequences take form in social and health inequities of tremendous significance. The critique of essentialism has been levied against postcolonialism, drawing attention to the potentially homogenizing effect of grouping the colonial experience of many under one term. Ashcroft et al. explain, “every colonial encounter or ‘contact zone’ is different, and each ‘post-colonial’ occasion needs, against these general background principles, to be precisely located and analysed for its specific interplay.”32 The integration of feminist theories with postcolonialism33 is one response to counter any homogenizing effect and to highlight intersecting forces of patriarchy and race-based colonizing that produce particular experiences of oppression for women, children, and other marginalized members of society.
Postcolonial analyses foreground certain conceptual themes that are salient for nursing scholarship at the juncture of religion, nursing, and ethics, but that have been largely absent from it. The range of key concepts explored under the umbrella of postcolonial studies is growing (indicative of the vibrancy of the field) and include: issues of slavery, migration, and diaspora formation; the effects of race, culture, class, and gender in postcolonial settings; the history of resistance and struggle against colonial and neocolonial domination; the complexities of identity formation and hybridity; language and language rights; and the ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples for recognition of their rights. More recent developments in postcolonial theory address globalization, environmentalism, speciesism, transnationalism, the sacred, economics, and the spread of neoliberalism.34 Although the language of empire and colony may seem far removed from the day-to-day concerns of nurses, holding up for scrutiny taken-for-granted assumptions that can be traced back to some form of colonizing practices holds promise for nursing scholarship and practice.
For the purposes of this chapter, the postcolonial concepts of epistemic privilege and representation of Other; race and racialization; and hybridity and identity will be applied to the topic of religion and spirituality in nursing and nursing ethics. These three domains are interlaced with social relations of power, with both domination and resistance as operatives. Likewise, the dialectics of individual and society, the local and the global are relevant to each of these domains. Inherent in contemporary postcolonial theorizing is situating human experience (e.g., everyday reality) in the mediating contexts of social, economic, political, and historical force.35
At the heart of postcolonial critique is the matter of epistemological privilege, epitomized by Eurocentricism that has taken on various historical and local forms but that consistently establish European (Western/Northern) systems and values as inherently superior to indigenous or “other” ways. Said’s Orientalism laid the foundation for this type of critique, in which he drew attention to the ways in which the Orient (and other non-European societies) was not only influenced by the West, but was in effect produced by its relationship to Europe.36 Postcolonial critics draw attention to the extent to which Enlightenment thinking (characterized by its rationalism, dualisms, individualism, objectivity, visions of development, and progress) has been taken as universal, whereby the experience of Western people (especially men) is taken as the norm for all people. Using the terminology of “provincializing Europe,” Chakrabarty speaks to the decentering endeavor of finding out how and in what sense European ideas that were deemed “universal were also, at one and the same time, drawn from very particular intellectual and historical traditions that could not claim any universal validity.”37 This line of critique opens up the possibility for Spivak’s question: “can the subaltern speak?”38
This question and the related problematic of the epistemological privilege of Eurocentricism carry particular relevance for the study of religion. Ammerman39 critiques the secularization theories that have dominated the academy and Western societies as a type of Eurocentricism that “. . . like all such stories belongs to those who have the power to speak it. It has been crafted to make sense of the lives of those whose lives ‘count’ in ways that other lives do not.”40 Shani41 similarly participates in decentering secularism narratives, pointing out that Islamic and Sikh communities reject the subordination of the religious to the political and thus challenge the Westphalian order (of separation of state and church). King42 explicates how Orientalism and Western constructions of the “mystic east” as preeminently “otherworldly,” private, and apolitical operate in conjunction to obfuscate the relations of power controlling the Orient. Similarly, indigenous peoples faced cultural and spiritual erasure through the colonizing efforts of the Europeans that constructed indigenous worldviews as “savage” and/or “exotic.” By questioning epistemic privilege and marginalization, postcolonial theory prompts questions about how discourses of secularism can create spaces for open expression of values and beliefs, and when they function as a secular fundamentalism where only certain perspectives are counted as legitimate. Even where religion is considered as a legitimate focus for inclusion in academic study, McGuire and Maduro observe that “too often, the people whose meaningful religious practices have been redefined by the powerful as not properly ‘religious’ have been the poor, women, immigrants, indigenous peoples of a colonized land, the ‘uneducated,’ the dispossessed—in short, the Other among us.”43
Thus, postcolonial theory alerts us to Westernized “lenses” through which we make sense of the world, and situations when these lenses are applied in an unquestioning, totalizing way, that places other ways of knowing and being on the periphery as Other. Jantzen, writing of the uneasy intersections of postcolonialism, feminism, and religion, suggests that Western study of religion should be less concerned with alterity (difference) and take a hard look instead “at our own investment in ‘sameness,’ and the technologies of power that we use to reinforce and impose our ‘normativity.’”44 To the extent that nursing scholarship portrays spirituality as a generic individualized phenomenon strategically distanced from religion, there is a risk of reinscribing Eurocentric epistemic privilege and Othering those expressions of religion and spirituality that do not neatly fit into a generic universal spirituality. Kwok suggests that “the appeal to universal human experience and the inability to respect diverse cultures are expressions of a colonizing motive: the incorporation of the Other into one’s own culture or perspective.”45 Yet, the propensity toward universal constructions of spirituality in nursing can also be seen as gendered resistance to the dominant patriarchal voices of organized religion, and as mirroring the eclectic, creative expressions of contemporary “lived religion.”46
In the mood of postmodern times, ethical theory—where it claims universalism—has increasingly been supplanted by contextualized ethical theories, and postcolonial voices echo this call. Yet, there remains a concern about moral imperialism and epistemic violence as bioethical theories are uncritically applied.47 Western bioethics foreground principalism in ethical decision making, framing several principles (e.g., autonomy, distributive justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, fidelity) as universal, yet, as argued by Chattopadhyay and De Vries,48 these principles are derived from Western secular belief systems that are not responsive to the cultural ethos and moral sensibilities of non-Western worldviews. Filipina ethicists Tan Alora and Lumitao articulate the results of these different worldviews,
The very character of ethics in the West contrasts with ethics in the Philippines. . . . The focus of Western bioethics is individual; elsewhere it focuses on social units. Western bioethics often is oriented to principles; Filipino bioethics, on the other hand, is not articulated primarily in principles but in lived moral virtues. Whereas Western bioethics is almost always expressed in discursive terms, Filipino bioethics is part of the phenomeno logical world of living experience. For the West, bioethics is a framework for thought, a conceptual system. For the Philippines, it is a way of life, an embodied activity of virtue.49
Along similar lines, Myser50 describes the “normativity of whiteness” present in mainstream bioethics discourse, a normativity that continues to propagate individualist emphases that are less likely to take seriously concerns regarding social justice and health inequities that fall along lines of class, gender, and race. A postcolonial lens takes seriously the charges of White normativity and moral imperialism, and requires the naming of these epistemological dominances, reflexivity regarding the complicity of us as academics in reinscribing a form of colonial relations, and shifts in power to welcome full participation of currently marginalized voices to revise mainstream ethical theories and practices.51
Epistemic privilege and construction of marginalized Other is exemplified in the race-laden discourses of the colonial era that continue to reverberate through today’s racialization of religion. Earlier the observation was made that nursing scholarship has, in conjunction with universalist portrayals of spirituality, tended toward culturalist approaches to religion as the common mode of exploring “difference” in nursing, reinforced by the frameworks of cultural competence and cultural sensitivity. A culturalist focus essentializes culture as a relatively static set of beliefs, values, norms, and practices attached to a discrete group sharing a common ethnic background. Likewise, a culturalist read of religion results in a conflation where religion is typically subsumed under ethnicity, again with enduring intrinsic beliefs and practices. Undoubtedly, the ties between religion and ethnicity are complicated and enmeshed. Asad52 observes that anthropological readings of religion (often with a search for the essence of religion) served to separate it conceptually from the domain of power. Through a postcolonial lens, the politics of race are layered on to religion and spirituality to make visible how colonizing relationships were and continue to be enacted—and resisted—through religion.
Postcolonial theory invites the study of the complex interplay of colonialism and religion in the missionary movements that coincided with the era of European colonial expansion. Historically, the “discovery” of the New World in the 15th century with the subsequent centuries of expansion required dramatic revision to the Renaissance worldview that human beings were all descendants of the same family tree.53 Race thinking resulted, which classified human beings into physically, biologically, and genetically distinct groups that allowed colonialist powers to establish dominance over subject peoples and thereby justify the imperial enterprise.54 A binary distinction was drawn between the “modern/civilized” and the “primitive/savage.” Kwok explains,
As colonial desire and imperialistic violence were masked and reconstituted in a blatant reversal as “civilizing mission,” the Christian church played important roles through the sending of missionaries, establishing churches and schools, and propagating ideas of cleanliness and hygiene. Christianization and Westernization became almost a synonymous process in the colonial period55
(exemplified historically in the Spanish-Catholic colonization of South America). The history of slavery in the United States follows a similar story of religious rhetoric implicated in the degradation of people of Color and claims of White supremacy.56 Recently, religious rhetoric mobilized a neoconservative U.S. “warrior-state” in a move of imperial violence and expansionism with the apparent support of millions of nationalist evangelicals.57
The history of missions and the complicity of the church with colonizing state powers is clearly exemplified in the residential school system, operated by several religious groups including Anglican, Catholic, and United churches, which was widespread across Canada (as in other settler colonies such as New Zealand and Australia).58 The Royal Commission on Aboriginal People59 reports that from the mid-1800s to as recent as 1996, more than 100,000 children were taken into this version of state care, under the state policy of assimilation, that included the systematic suppression of language and culture, substandard living conditions, and second-rate education. The legacies of these schools—that saw First Nations children traumatized by enforced removal from their communities and some sexually, physically, spiritually, and emotionally brutalized—continue today as intergenerational trauma, and a key factor in Aboriginal Canadians’ inequitable health status and access to health services.60 Reflecting on the coexisting horrific oppression and benevolent efforts of these residential schools in her book Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School, Furniss notes that
Native people have responded to the forces of change brought in through colonialism with both resistance and accommodation. It is not surprising, therefore, that First Nations people today have different understandings of their residential school experiences. Some students strenuously resisted the system, others quietly made the best of their circumstances, while still others became dedicated members of the church.61
Although the story of Euro-American expansion and the story of missions are deeply intertwined, the relations between them are complex, filled with discontinuities and contradictions.62 Decades ago, Memmi63 notes that although colonizers and churches often worked together to maintain ruthless colonial relation, the conversionist agenda of the churches was often seen by colonial administrators as subversive of colonial hierarchical relations. Moreover, the role of missions in providing education and health care was construed as a dangerous act by many traders and settlers.64 Mission presses were often the first places in which colonized people were able to find a voice, albeit under deeply constrained circumstances. Spiritual communities historically and presently have served as sites for generating anticolonialist resistance. For example, liberation theology (in which Paulo Freire’s work is located),65 originating in the Americas, fosters solidarity among groups from Korea to Africa to South America to the Black Church in the United States. Young observes that important sites of anticolonial resistance lie in “movements of religious revivalism: anti-colonial discontent articulated through religious movements that assert a traditional indigenous culture in the name of a utopic decolonized future.”66
With globalization, religion has reemerged as one of the key defining features of “difference.”67 Given the neocolonial configurations that continue to flow from earlier colonial dominance, it is not surprising that notions of “pagan,” “primitive,” and “infidel” are imbricated in today’s racialization of religion. The racialization of religion occurs when one’s national or ethnic heritage (real or imagined) is confounded with one’s religion (and vice versa). Joshi68 writes how South Asians (who may be a Hindu, a Sikh, or a Muslim) have been increasingly marginalized since the terrorist attacks in New York, deemed non-Christian Other. Racialization operates with a logic that makes the accompanying oppression invisible and/or acceptable by rendering non-Christian faiths as “theologically, socially and morally illegitimate in the public eye.”69
In a recent study in Canada, Sikh patients and care providers recounted situations in which they were disadvantaged in hospital settings on account of their religion and ethnicity. Their concerns ranged from a lack of regard for religious prohibitions (such as cutting arm hair during preparation for intravenous infusion), a lack of accommodation for larger groups of visitors, to the comment that racism was an underlying attitude prevalent in hospitals.70 The racialization of religion has real consequences for nurses at the level of social ethics, and my contention is that theoretical frameworks such as that offered by postcolonialism are vital to countering the discrimination and marginalization that accompanies the racialization of religion.
A postcolonial reading of religion and spirituality also draws attention to the complexities of identity and hybridity, particularly in how religion and spirituality are lived out in the everyday. Hybridity refers to the creation of new cultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization.71 Postcolonial critique has targeted modernist understandings of identity that rely on discrete categories such as same/other, rational/irrational, civilized/primitive, Christian/pagan, White/Black, male/female, rich/poor.72 These categories have been supported with a range of exclusionary practices and resistant responses. Postcolonial theories examine the agendas that drive these polarizations, undermine the distinctions, and explore the in-between spaces in which people live in the everyday. According to Bhabha, “it is in the ‘inter’—the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space— that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.”73 Hybridity creates the space for resistance to the hardened identities of colonialism, deconstructing essentialist notions of race and discrete cultural or—in the interest of this volume—religious groups. Keller et al. explain “. . . in contexts where boundaries are established to identify some as insiders, some as out, the space collapses for this in-between existence of hybrid identities . . . the systematic demand for fixed identities and absolute differences is undermined . . .”74
Applied to religion, hybridity reflects the complex mixing of individual (and institutional) religious/spiritual subjectivities in today’s global societies. Migration, gender, nationality, class, education, and age all factor into how individuals live out religion. For example, Ramji notes that although the Islamic diaspora in western countries is often viewed as a homogenous entity, second generation Muslim women in Canada created their own bricolages of religious identities within a wider Canadian context:
These are not women who are just carrying out the traditions of their immigrant parents in a kind of exercise in religio-cultural preservation; nor are they women who are simply “assimilating” to the dominant culture. . . . Their Islam is innovative rather than imitative, individual rather than communitarian, and covers . . . a vast spectrum of attitudes and behaviours. . . .”75
Employing the construct of hybridity as analytic lens thus compels reflexivity about the fluidity of the categories by which people, practices, and texts are labeled as “Christian,” “Muslim,” “Jewish,” “Buddhist,” or “secular.”76
Hybrid identities create ethical spaces for connections with alterity or the Other, what has been referred to as an “ethics of hybridity.”77 At the individual level, an ethics of hybridity is characterized by moral agency and relational connections. By blurring the boundaries of Other, colonial identities are resisted and opportunities are created for strategic engagement around shared aspects of one’s identity. At the level of the social, Leela Gandhi maps out how a postcolonial approach to an ethics of hybridity can result in a “postnational utopia” of “an inter-civilizational alliance against institutional suffering.”78 Here, the connections between postcolonial theorizing and religious concerns are accentuated, to the extent that religions address themes of suffering and utopian visions.
In summary, the analytic themes of postcolonial theory can shed new light on how religion and spirituality might be taken up in nursing ethics. Postcolonialism’s attention to epistemic privilege uncovers the Eurocentric tendencies of ethical theory and challenges us to “hear” and integrate marginalized ethical perspectives. We are challenged to critically examine the locations from which we speak and how secularized versions of spirituality and racialized religion might inadvertently silence those we provide health care to. Disrupting race-thought opens routes to social justice, whereby the racialization of religion is named and resisted. Finally, postcolonial conceptions of hybridity serve to counter essentializing tendencies in the realm of religion and spirituality, provide more accurate accounts for the ways individuals “live” religion, and open spaces for connection and moral agency. In the concluding section, I move from theory to application, discussing briefly the “methods” or strategies of postcolonialism.
Critical inquiry, such as that enabled by postcolonial theory, encompasses three strategies; those of critique, reflexivity, and praxis. In the realm of religion, nursing, and ethics, these three strategies provide counterbalance to each. As elucidated in this essay, postcolonial theory offers cogent critique of the relations of power carried forward from the colonial era to continually circulate at the intersections of religion, race, and gender. Clearly, critique is needed of the culpability of religions—often together with the joint vices of patriarchy and racism—in oppressions, violence, and exclusions that result in social and health inequities. Critique also has us interrogate the universalist tendencies of secular spiritualities and the essentialist propensities of racialized religion; critique prompts us to question whether current nursing conceptions of a generic spirituality focused on meaning and purpose (at predominantly individual levels) represent dominant voices in nursing (White, Western, middle-class) that marginalize other expressions and practices (e.g., of creedal religion, particularly non-Christian religions). Yet, there is reason to proceed cautiously with our critique in the sacred sphere, recognizing, first, that one’s faith-based values and beliefs are often held closely, definitional to one’s identity79 and, second, the indeterminancy of the mystical, transcendent realm.
The second strategy of critical inquiry, that of reflexivity, has us question: “How am I complicit in the colonizer/colonized dialectic?” and “From what epistemic location do I speak?” Spirituality discourses in nursing can be highly personalized with the implicit message that these are not open for critical scrutiny (the point made above), and yet what is required is a certain critical reflexivity that evaluates how the position one takes can unwittingly serve to advantage or disadvantage. Critical reflexivity goes far beyond “cultural awareness” to consider “otherness” within oneself. Critical reflexivity hinges self-knowledge to one’s social location in the world as antidote to self-absorption. The call is thus for a “reflexive ethics” that interrogates relations of power that preclude social justice and human flourishing and, especially, one’s complicity in these relations of power, thereby leading to praxis.
Postcolonialism’s strategy of praxis reminds us of the transformative ideals of human flourishing and social justice that are possible at the juncture of religion, nursing, and ethics. To achieve these ends, there is a need to decolonize religion and spirituality by decoupling religious oppression and spiritual engagement. Restorative, liberatory themes need to be brought to our ethical discourses to counter violent histories and to decolonize religion. Enriching our ethical discourse with various religious and theological traditions will begin the project of decentering the moral imperialism of traditional Western bioethics. As our praxis-oriented interests in the hybrid between spaces of interdependence “shift from boundary protection to border crossings,”80 inclusive moral communities will be established that focus on democratic, contextual, and respectful engagement. Inclusive moral communities not to foster sameness, but to inhabit meaningful spaces that foster “dialogical deliberation and symmetric participation.”81
Here there is pause to consider the contributions of religious ethics. Are religious ethics—as ethical frameworks that derive explicitly from religious and/or theological traditions—capable of participating in the enterprise of decolonization through critique, reflexivity, and praxis, or are they too complicit (historically and/or currently) with colonialism? This edited volume offers glimpses of how ethics aligned with a faith tradition might take up the critical work represented by postcolonial theory and other forms of critical inquiry. Concerns shared by faith traditions82 include theologies of liberation, feminism, ecology, and human rights. Cahill notes that certain features of religion make them particularly effective voices in the realm of ethics: “religions share a drive toward coherence, prophetic resistance to exploitation, and a transcendent framework for evaluating human projects . . . religion still remains a potent political force that can help to form social virtues of solidarity, commitment, and hope.”83 The role of religions in the public sphere is a contested matter, as many societies are increasingly seeing the inadequacy of distinctions between secular and sacred, public and private. The arguments against religious participation in the public realm commonly cite religiously motivated conflict, authoritarianism, faction and division, and the lack of common ground. Yet, Guinn84 contends that such arguments miss the point because religion cannot be excluded; it has an “inevitable presence” on account of the relevance religion holds in the lives of many citizens. Although there is variation as to the extent to which secularism has taken hold (with European states as the most secular), for the most part, the “secular” sphere is not neutral, “since all participants inevitably come from communities of identity.”85 The challenge ahead is that of reintegrating religious perspectives into public discourse in a way that is representative and respectful of today’s pluralistic societies, with the goal of providing a distinctive contribution to ethical discourses.
I have attempted to make a case for the contributions of postcolonial theory (as one type of critical inquiry) to the interplay of religion and nursing ethics. At the least, a postcolonial stance cautions against stereotyping and essentializing, calls for the giving of voice to marginalized groups, and brings attention to the social context and relations of power that serve as backdrop to the consideration of religion and nursing ethics. A fuller engagement with postcolonial theory calls into question the epistemic privilege that has dominated ethics in nursing and health care, disrupts race-based thinking that leads to social and health inequities, and opens hybrid spaces for social transformation.
“At its best the postcolonial embrace of complexity may stimulate not only analysis but action, not only the ironies of ambivalence but the conditions of hope.”86
1. Hervieu-Léger, cited in Berger, Peter, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas. Religious America and Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
2. Clarke, Warren, and Grant Schellenberg. Who’s Religious? Statistics Canada, Ottawa, ON. Web. 3 Jan. 2011. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006001/9181-eng.htm
3. Todd, Douglas. Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia. Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver, BC: Ronsdale Press, 2008.
4. Berger, Peter, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas. Religious America and Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations. See also: Lynch, Gordon. The New Spirituality: An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-first Century. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. See also: Wuthnow, Robert. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
5. Amoah, Elizabeth. “African Spirituality, Religion and Innovation.” Religion: Empirical Studies. Ed. Steven, Sutcliffe. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. 219.
6. Berger, Peter, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas. Religious America and Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations.
7. Casanova, José. “Immigration and the New Religious Pluralism: A European Union United States Comparison.” Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship. Ed. Goeffrey Levey and Tariq Modood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 139–163.
8. Moghadam, Assaf. A Global Resurgence of Religion? Paper No. 03-03. Cambridge, MA: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2003. See also: Thomas, Scott. The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
9. Thomas, Scott. The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-first Century.
10. Modood, Tariq. “Muslims, Religious Equality and Secularism.” Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship. Ed. Geoffrey Levey and Modood Tariq. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 164–185.
11. Ammerman, Nancy. “The Challenges of Pluralism: Locating Religion in a World of Diversity.” Social Compass 57 (2010): 154–167. See also: Banchoff, Thomas, ed. Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
12. Gilliat-Ray, Sophie. “Nursing, Professionalism and Spirituality.” Journal of Contem-porary Religion 18.3 (2003): 339.
13. Reimer-Kirkham, Sheryl, and Joan Anderson. “The Advocate-analyst Dialectic in Critical and Postcolonial Feminist Research: Reconciling Tensions around Scientific Integrity.” Advances in Nursing Science 33.3 (2010): 204.
14. Pesut, Barbara, Marsha Fowler, Elizabeth Johnston Taylor, Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham, and Rick Sawatzky. “Conceptualizing Spirituality and Religion for Healthcare.” Journal of Clinical Nursing 17.21 (2008): 2803–2810. See also: Reimer Kirkham, Sheryl, Barb Pesut, Heather Meyerhoff and Richard Sawatzky. “Spiritual Caregiving at the Juncture of Religion, Culture, and State.” Canadian Journal of Nursing Research 36.4. (2004): 248–269.
15. See, for instance, Anderson, Joan. “Toward a Post-Colonial Feminist Methodology in Nursing Research: Exploring the Convergence of Post-Colonial and Black Feminist Scholarship.” Nurse Researcher: The International Journal of Research Methodology in Nursing and Health Care 9.3 (2002): 7–27. And: Browne, Annette J., Vicki Smye, and Colleen Varcoe. Postcolonial-Feminist Theoretical Perspectives and Women’s Health. Women’s Health in Canada: Critical Perspectives on Theory and Policy. Ed. Marina Morrow, Olena Hankivsky, and Colleen Varcoe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 124–142. See also: Mohammed, Selina. “Moving Beyond the ‘Exotic’: Applying Post colonial Theory in Health Research.” Advances in Nursing Science 29.2 (2006): 98–109. See also: Racine, Louise. “Examining the Conflation of Multiculturalism, Sexism, and Religious Fundamentalism through Taylor and Bakhtin: Expanding Post- Colonial Feminist Epistemology.” Nursing Philosophy 10 (2008): 14–25. See also: Reimer Kirkham, Sheryl, and Joan M. Anderson. “Postcolonial Nursing Scholarship: From Epistemology to Method.” Advances in Nursing Science 25.1 (2002): 1–17.
16. Robert Young (2001) as cited in Taylor, Mark. “Spirit and Liberation. Achieving Postcolonial Theology in the United States.” Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity andEmpire. Ed. Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004. 48.
17. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. 188.
18. Fitzgerald, Timothy. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 6.
19. Fitzgerald, Timothy. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History ofReligion and Related Categories.
20. Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 2.
21. Crossley, Michael, and Leon Tikly. “Postcolonial Perspectives and Comparative and International Research in Education: A Critical Introduction.” ComparativeEducation 40.2 (2004): 147–156.
22. Hall, Stuart. “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.” Journal of Communicaion Inquiry 10.2 (1986): 5–27. Rpt. in Stuart Hall. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Ed. Morley David, Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1997.
23. McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-colonialism.” Social Text Spring (1992): 1–15. Rpt in Colonial Discourses and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
24. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcoloniaism. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2005.
25. Ibid., 4.
26. Neo-liberalism is a term used by many critics to describe the liberalization and globalization of market forces. This prevailing ideological paradigm leads to social, economic, and political approaches that emphasize individualism, individual freedom and responsibility; efficiency; egalitarianism; and free market economies that, in effect, shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals. See: Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. See also: Browne, Annette. “The Influence of Liberal Political Ideology on Nursing Science.” Nursing Inquiry 8.2 (2001): 118–129. Ashcroft et al. assert that neo-liberalism is significant for postcolonial studies because it has become the most obvious medium of today’s neo-colonial domination.
27. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
28. Césaire, Aimé. Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism), 1955. See also: Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Mask. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. See also: Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963. See also: Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: The Orion Press, 1965. See also: Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
29. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. London: Macmillan, 1988. Rpt. in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
30. Bhabha, Homi, ed. Nation and Narration. Routledge, 1990. And also: Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
31. Parry, Benita. Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique. London: Routledge, 2004.
32. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 171.
33. Anderson, Joan. “Toward a Post-colonial Feminist Methodology in Nursing Research: Exploring the Convergence of Post-colonial and Black Feminist Scholarship.” Nurse Researcher: The International Journal of Research Methodology in Nursing and Health Care 9.3 (2002): 7–27. See also: Bahri, Deepika. “Feminism in/and Postcolonialism.” The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Ed. Lazarus, Neil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 199–220. See also: Lewis, Reina, and Sara Mills. ed. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2003.
34. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
35. Reimer Kirkham, Sheryl, and Joan M. Anderson. “Postcolonial Nursing Scholarship: From Epistemology to Method.”
36. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
37. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. xiii.
38. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak?
39. Ammerman, Nancy. “The Challenges of Pluralism: Locating Religion in a World of Diversity.”
40. Maduro, Otto. “Religion” Under Imperial Duress: Postcolonial Reflections and Pro- posals.” Review of Religious Research 45.3 (2004): 221–234.
41. Shani, Giorgio. “Religion, Politics and International Relations. ‘Provincializing’ Critical Theory: Islam, Sikhism and International Relations Theory.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20.3 (2007): 417–433.
42. King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The MysticEast’. London: Routledge, 1999.
43. McGuire, Meredith, and Otto Maduro. “Introduction. Rethinking Religious Hybridity.” Social Compass 52.4 (2005): 412.
44. Jantzen, Grace. “Uneasy Intersections: Postcolonialism, Feminism, and the Study of Religions.” Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Purushottama, Bilimori and Andrew Irvine. Springer, 2009. 295–301.
45. Kwok, Pui-lan. Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 2005. 56.
46. McGuire, Meredith. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
47. Tan Alora, Angeles, and Josephine M. Lumitao, ed. Beyond a Western Bioethics: Voices from the Developing World. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2001. See also: Arekapudi, Swathi, and Mathew K. Wynia. “The Unbearable Whiteness of the Mainstream: Should We Eliminate, or Celebrate, Bias in Bioethics?” American Journal of Bioethics 3 (2003): 18–19. See also: Chattopadhyay, Subrata, and Richard De Vries. “Bioethical Concerns are Global, Bioethics is Western.” Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 18.4 (2008): 106–109.
48. Chattopadhyay, Subrata, and Richard De Vries. “Bioethical Concerns are Global, Bioethics is Western.”
49. Tan Alora, Angeles, and Josephine M. Lumitao, ed. Beyond a Western Bioethics: Voices from the Developing World.
50. Myser, Catherine. “Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the United States.” The American Journal of Bioethics 3.2 (2003): 1–11.
51. Myser, Catherine. “Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the United States.”
52. Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianityand Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
53. Kwok, Pui-lan. Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology.
54. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
55. Kwok, Pui-lan. Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. 17.
56. Burton, Olivette. “Why Bioethics Cannot Figure out What to do With Race.” The American Journal of Bioethics 7.2 (2007): 6–12.
57. Taylor, Mark. “Spirit and Liberation. Achieving Postcolonial Theology in the United States.” Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. Ed. Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004. 39–55.
58. Furniss, Elizabeth. Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995. See also: Fiske, Joanne. “Pocahanta’s Granddaughters: Spiritual Transition and Tradition of Carrier Women in British Columbia.” Ethnohistory 43.3 (1996): 663–681.
59. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996. Web. 15 Apr. 2011. http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ap/rrc-eng.asp.
60. Smith, Dawn, Colleen Varcoe, and Nancy Edwards. “Turning Around the Intergenerational Impact of Residential Schools on Aboriginal Peoples: Implications for Health Policy and Practice.” Canadian Journal of Nursing Research 37.4 (2005): 38–60.
61. Furniss, Elizabeth. Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School. 34.
62. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. See also: Rieger, Joerg. “Theology and Mission Between Neocolonialism and Postcolonialism. Mission Studies 21.2 (2004): 201–226.
63. Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized.
64. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
65. Lange, Elizabeth. “Fragmented Ethics of Justice: Freire, Liberation Theology and Pedagogies for the Non-Poor.” Convergence 31.1–2 (1998): 81–94.
66. Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
67. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
68. Joshi, Kyati. “The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States.” Equity and Excellence in Education 39.3 (2006): 211–26.
69. Joshi, Kyati. “The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States.” 211.
70. Reimer-Kirkham, Sheryl. “Lived Religion: Implications for Healthcare Ethics.” Nursing Ethics 16.4 (2009): 406–17.
71. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
72. Keller, Catherine, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. ed. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press. 2004.
73. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. 38.
74. Keller, Catherine, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. ed. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. 12.
75. Ramji, Rubina. “Being Muslim and Being Canadian: How Second Generation Muslim Women Create Religious Identities in two Worlds.” Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization. Ed. Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma, and Giselle Vincett. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. 204.
76. Klassen, Pamela and Courtney Bender. “Introduction. Habits of Pluralism.” After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement. Ed. Courtney Bender and Klassen Pamela. New York: Columbia University Press. 2010. 1–28. 15.
77. Ghandi, Leela, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
78. Ibid., 140.
79. Werbner, Pnina. “Religious Identity.” The Sage Handbook of Identities. Ed. Margaret Wetherell and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2010. 233–257.
80. Keller, Catherine, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. ed. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. 14.
81. Deifelt, Wanda. “Intercultural Ethics: Sameness and Difference Re-visited.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 46.2 (2007): 118.
82. Referred to as ‘interreligious global theological flows’ by Robert Schreiter, cited in Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Theological Bioethics: Participation, Justice, and Change. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005.
83. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Theological Bioethics: Participation, Justice, and Change. 3.
84. Guinn, David. ed. Handbook of Bioethics and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
85. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. “Theology’s Role in Public Bioethics.” In: Handbook of Bioethicsand Religion. Ed. Robert Guinn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 37.
86. Keller, Catherine, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera. ed. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. 10