Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology

To transcend or to live in-beyond does not mean to be free of the two different worlds in which one exists but to live in both of them without being bound by either of them.

- Jung Young LeeIn this work Jung Young Lee proposes a framework that justifies and undergirds development of contextual theologies without becoming itself dominating. Lee aims to address the dilemmas of contextual theology not by moving one or another group from the margin to the center, but by redefining marginality itself as central. Marginality, he contends, is not only the experience of being outside the dominant group or in-between groups, but also "in-beyond"-a holistic, process-oriented definition that highlights the catalytic, transformative potential of living at the creative nexus of worlds. Lee's insight into marginality leads him directly into a new model for contextual theologies that focuses not on historical experience but on creative potential. His chapters work out concretely what such a notion can mean culturally, methodologically, and doctrinally to a movement that professes to follow the very paradigm of creative marginality, Jesus Christ.

Jung Young Lee is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Theological School at Drew University.