Writing – Becca Whitla

liberationist . contextual . interdisciplinary . decolonizing

My research analyzes how coloniality remains pervasively operative in all aspects of our living, being, and doing and how decolonizing approaches can challenge and enable us to reconfigure theology and church practices. I celebrate and aim to nurture diverse multicultural, multilingual and multiethnic identities in our faith communities.

Being praxis-oriented, my approach to research emphasizes the importance of understanding how identities, relationships, and social contexts are conditioned by and implicated in the history of colonialism in Canada. A scholarly emphasis on transformation aims to show how music making and liturgy can challenge this coloniality with a liberating praxis that nourishes a fuller expression of complex cultural identities in present-day Canadian contexts, especially from Indigenous communities, the Global South and other marginalized communities. My research and writing are also themselves praxical and integrated; they entail an extensive self-reflective and self-critical examination of my scholarship, teaching, and leadership and prioritize contextual and collaborative partnerships and community-based research practices.

Publications

Special Issue

Guest editor with Anna Nekola Religions: Music, Liturgy, and Theology, Forthcoming.

Refereed Journal Articles

“The Empire Sings Back: The Implications for Theology of Confronting Coloniality in Hymns” Critical Theology, Spring, 2022.

“The Theological Challenge of Territorial Acknowledgements in Liturgy.” Worship, Volume 96, January,2022.

With Néstor Medina and Ary Fernández-Albán. “Liberation Theologies, Decolonial Thinking, & Practical Theologies: Odd Combinations?” International Journal of Practical Theology, (2021).

“Liturgy in a Decolonial Key” (De)coloniality and religious practices: liberating hope, edited by Júlio Cézar Adam, Valburga Schmiedt Streck, and Claudio Carvalhaes, (IAPT.CS, 2021), 146-153.

“Postcolonial and Decolonial Perspectives on Hymnody.” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. July, 2020. https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/p/postcolonial-and-decolonial-perspectives-on-hymnody?q=Becca%20Whitla.

With Néstor Medina, “(An)other Canada is Possible: Rethinking Canada’s Colonial Legacy.” Horizontes Decoloniales / Decolonial Horizons (Volumen V.1, 2019), 13–42.

“Poison or Cure? Christianity/ies as Postcoloniality’s ‘Other.’” Interventions. (Volume 22, Issue 2, August, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1649174.

“Singing as Un Saber del Sur, or Another Way of Knowing.” Toronto Journal of Theology. 33, no. 2 (2017 Fall 2017), 289–94.

“Revolution and the Reign of God: Cuban Hymnody Gives Voice to a Distinctly Liberative Theology,” [published in two parts in] The Hymn, Volume 66, No 1 (Winter 2015), 8-15; and Volume 66, No 2 (Spring, 2015), 7-10.

Book Chapters

“Sounding Coloniality and Voicing Resistance.” In Hymns and Race: Agency, Mobility, Coloniality, edited by Philip Burnett and Erin Johnson-Williams. Routledge, forthcoming.

“Inclusion” Oxford Handbook on Music and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

“Is Catholicity Viable? Building an Intercultural-Interfaith Praxis.” In According to All: Catholicity in Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Stephen Burns and Bryan Cones. Lexington Press, forthcoming.

“Hymnody in Missionary Lands: A Decolonial Critique.” In Hymns and Hymnody: Historical and Theological Introductions, Volume 2: From Catholic Europe to Protestant Europe, 285–302, edited by Benjamin K. Forrest, Mark A. Lamport and Vernon M. Whaley, The Lutterworth Press, 2019.

“The Colonizing Power of Song.” In Decoloniality and Justice: Theological Perspectives, edited by Jean-Franc̨ois Roussel, 43–50. Saõ Leopoldo: Oikos; World Forum on Theology and Liberation, 2018

With Tom Reynolds, “Complex Identities in a Shifting World—Musical Expressions.” In Complex Identities in a Shifting World: Practical Theological Perspectives, edited by Pamela Couture, Robert Mager, and Natalie Wigg, 271-74, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015.

Book Reviews

Oramos Cantando: We Pray in Song [Hymnal Review] The Hymn 66: 4 (2015): 38.

The Color of Sound: Race, Religion and Music in Brazil by John Burdick [Book Review] Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 37 (2015): 169-171.

“Theology and the Crisis of Engagement: Essays on the Relationship between Theology and the Social Sciences edited by Jeff Nowers and Néstor Medina [Book Review],” Toronto Journal of Theology 30, no. 2 (Fall, 2014): 346-47.

Hymn Collection

Songs from the Heart: 46 Community Hymns, Toronto: Holy Trinity Church, 2007.

Encyclopedia Entries

“Let Streams of Living Justice.” In The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, edited by J.R. Watson and Emma Hornby, Canterbury Press; Canterbury, U.K., 2013.

“William Whitla” In The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, edited by J.R. Watson and Emma Hornby, Canterbury Press; Canterbury, U.K., 2013