Candidly Speaking: Dialogues for the End of Empire - Hardcover

by Christine J. Hong (Author), Anne Carter Walker (Author), Patrick B. Reyes (Foreword by)

Candidly Speaking incorporates personal letters as dialogue which invites the reader to listen in on intimate conversations between two anti-colonial scholars and friends (one hybrid Cherokee and white, one Korean in diaspora), who focus on navigating the world in communities striving to flourish in a time when empires are collapsing. Through letters framed as chapters that engage complex histories, contemporary challenges, and personal stories, the authors write back and forth weaving together anti-colonial practice through facing interconnected histories and realities, hybrid identities, solidarities, interdependence, accountability, and ancestral practices of dialogue.

This book invites readers to embrace the creativity of anticolonial dialogue through relationships and practices in theological education and beyond--practices that challenge the oppressor/oppressed dialectic in the creation of decolonial futures. Persons, communities, leaders, and scholars are invited to embrace a future focused upon highly relational ways of being that privilege the role of story and dialogue in resisting the continued attempt to erase persons and histories through a colonial project breathing its last breath.

Author Biography

Christine J. Hong is Associate Professor of Educational Ministry at Columbia Theological Seminary, passionate about storytelling. She guides students and spiritual communities through decolonizing their religious traditions.



Anne Carter Walker is Dean of Students and Affiliate Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Vocational Formation at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and past president of the Religious Education Association.