Empowering Hybrid Agency in Christian Education: A Postcolonial and Poststructural Approach

Taking a critical perspective on agency as a potent birthright, examined through the stories of others, this book closes the vast theoretical and practical divide between our perceptions of external power and the power everyone holds.

However small we may feel, the agency within every single one of us is a greatly undermined and underappreciated power that can change the world for better or worse. Presenting narratives of diverse individuals and marginalized people, this book asks the reader to reflect on how they use their own inherent power in their daily lives, community, faith, and social and cultural contexts. As both influencers and followers of our societal, religious and cultural norms and the perceived world around us, we re/create new norms in our own right, while at the same time un/consciously allowing ourselves to be subservient to existing and prevalent norms around us.

Agency, as explored by Dr. Moon Jung Choi throughout this book, bestows upon us the power of choice, action, and reformation. Through theoretical and contextual explorations in the fields of theology, philosophy, and psychology, this book works to identify critical and unexplored areas of agency as the means of passionately engaging our individual and collective will to transform our perspective and the norms of our time. Out of a myriad of choices, we can choose/act to be destructive, opt for maintaining the status quo, or decide to use our power to bring about profound transformation. With its accessible language and memorable analogies, both biblical and contemporary, this book shines a light on the power of our agency with practical and theoretical suggestions to ensure readers have a guided pathway to a new future.

Moon Jung Choi, PhD, is a Christian educator and ordained Presbyterian minister