Identity in Community ― Toward a Theological Agenda for the Hong Kong Sar

The term ContactZone was coined in postcolonial discourse to signify the place where cultures and religions meet. It implies that first contact, cultural-religious exchange and conflict have always been determined by power-relations. Through making use of communication theories, hermeneutics and aesthetics intercultural theology generates new terminologies and theoretical tools to explore these interactions. Its scope ranges from issues such as dialogue and syncretism to fundamentalism and ethnicity. Perspectives of culture, religion, race, class and gender alike are involved in the necessary multi-axial approach. ContactZone is going to create a space where a choir of multiple voices is responding to the challenges of the cultural religious pluralism of the 21st century. Archbishop Paul Kwong (* 1950) develops the idea of "identity in community" as central to the mission and theological agenda of Christians in Hong Kong. In a wide-ranging multidisciplinary study, he analyzes diverse perspectives on the territory's recent history and compares the methodological approaches of local theologians with contextual theologies from other parts of the world. He argues that the overlapping cultural and religious identities of Christians in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China can empower Hong Kong people to embrace rather than to exclude differences and otherness, so that they can accept and live out our their identities in community without having to make a choice for one among the many.