Deliverance belongs to the Lord! Jonah, Jesus and the Possibilities of Environmental Healing

April 04, 2023, 7:30pm Eastern Time

In this session, Rev. Dr. Brian Fiu Kolia, a second-generation Australian-born Samoan, will share about the role of indigenous worldviews in detoxing from anthropocentric hermeneutical tendencies. He will draw from his research on “The I’a Tele (Great Fish) and the Search for Jonah: A Fāgogo Reading of Jonah 1:17-2:10. Kolia engages traditional Samoan culture to explore what the Great Fish may have been experiencing when it swallowed Jonah, and what message the text has for us today in light of the impending climate catastrophe. Dr. Kolia will be joined by Rev. Dr. Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. She will offer a response based on her climate justice activism, and reflect on the message that the Passion story holds for those who have ears to hear the suffering of Momma Earth.

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Rev. Dr. Brian Fiu Kolia is a second-generation Australian-born Samoan. He hails from the Samoan villages of Sili, Satapuala (Sa-ta-pū-a-la), Faleaseela (Fa-le-a-seh’eh-lah) and Tufutafoe (Too-foo-tah-fō-eh). He is an ordained minister of the Congregational Christian Church Samoa, and a lecturer in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Mālua Theological College, while also serving as an adjunct lecturer at Trinity Theological College and Whitley College, both in Melbourne Australia. He holds a PhD from the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests are in diasporic theory, critical race theory, decolonizing readings/interpretation, Hebrew Bible, biblical hermeneutics, and cultural & indigenous/native knowledge. More importantly, he is a husband to Tanaria and a father to Elichai.

Rev Dr. Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde is a pastoral minister in the United Kingdom with the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, and the Southern Africa Coordinator of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Previously, she has served as the first female General Secretary of the United Church of Zambia, as the Gender Officer for Council for World Mission Africa region, as a teacher at the UCZ Theological University, and as the Ecumenical and Engagement officer and Chaplain at the UNZA Interdenominational Church on campus. She obtained her PhD in Gender and Theology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Her research interests include gender justice and the inclusivity of all God’s creation, and she has written and presented papers on related issues including gender and leadership in the church and theological perspectives on gender and ecology.