CMU Faculty

Sunder John Boopalan

Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies

John was born in Pondicherry, a former French colony and costal city, and spent his early years in India. After six years in the United Arab Emirates, he joined his larger family in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) city in Karnataka, India. He spent a decade in the United States where he also taught as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Episcopal Divinity School.

As an interdisciplinary writer and researcher, John's expertise is in the areas of political theologies and ethics, with personal emphases in the areas of Dalit Christianity and redress of structural or systemic wrongdoing. John's classes, like his written work, approach theological themes through interdisciplinary analyses with insights from multiple disciplines, including critical race studies, cultural theory, and ethnography. John encourages students to be inquisitive about subtexts behind presenting issues and cultivate a deep curiosity regarding the role of social, cultural, and religious conditions that influence human desire and action.

John combines research and teaching with public theological thinking with various audiences, academic and popular. An example of such engagement includes his role as Christ Seminar Fellow (Westar Institute), a publicly engaged scholarship enterprise with leading scholars in the field to explore ‘Christologies of the People.’

Learning, teaching, and writing, for John, are more than intellectual pursuits, and part of a larger calling to be part of an embodied transformation of self and world. Having lived in the midst of various sorts of differences, John recognizes the challenges they present and, more importantly, believes in the promises they offer for bringing people together. At CMU, John is a member of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and Inter-Cultural Health Committee where he brings his expertise in understanding structural wrongs in a way that makes practical sense.

John’s current research seeks to develop a theology of hospitality with the understanding that hospitality cannot be legitimately delineated without first describing the conditions that make hospitality possible. This is driven by the realization that human persons continue to live under the shadow of a past that has left communities polarized by hostile identity-based differences.

John speaks four Indian languages. He loves cooking and believes in the wonder working power of God, food, and laughter. John is an ordained minister in the Progressive Baptist tradition and was involved in pastoral ministry for over three years before coming to CMU.

Education

PhD Religion and Society, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2016; ThM (Systematic Theology) Princeton Theological Seminary, 2011; BD (MDiv equivalent ) United Theological College, 2009; BSc St. Joseph’s College, 2004

Work in Detail

Teaching

• Reading the Bible as a Witness to Liberation
• Christianity and Indigeneity
• Laugh at the Devil: Laughter, Resistance, and Solidarity
• Scripture as Dialogue
• Religious Traditions of the World
• Eat, Love, Reflect

Research

Peer Reviewed Books

2017 Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites. New Approaches to Religion and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Peer Reviewed Articles

2021 "Renewing Dalit-Indigenous Theological Dialogue." In Bangalore Theological Forum 53/1: 166–86. Co-authored with Indigenous (Mizo) theologian RC Jongte.

2020 "Religious Amnesias, Mythologies, and Apolitical Affects in Racist Landscapes." In Religions 11/11: 615, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110615.

2020 "Saving the World through Ethnography." In Journal of World Christianity 10/1: 9-22.

2016 "Doing Constructive Theology with B. R. Ambedkar: Where Theology and Ethics Kiss." In Bangalore Theological Forum 48/2: 58-69.

2014 "Telling Stories about the Emergence of Israel: Privileging the Roots of 'Our' Rootlessness." In Bangalore Theological Forum 46/2: 89-100.

2012 "What Augustine Also Says: Recovering 'Subversive' Depositories of Meaning in De Trinitate." In Bangalore Theological Forum 44/1: 107-123.

Select Book Chapters

2023 "Religion and the Production of Affect in Caste-Based Societies." In Global Visions of Violence, eds. Jason Bruner and David Kirkpatrick. Rutgers University Press. 142-158.

2022 "Embodying Transnational Christian-Muslim Solidarities and India and Canada." In World Christianity and Interfaith Relations, ed. Richard Fox Young. World Christianity and Public Religion Series. Augsburg-Fortress. 203-212.

2021 "Heterogeneity's Midwifery Role in Identity Transformation." In World Christianity, Urbanization, and Identity, eds. Raimundo Barreto, Moses Biney, and Kenneth Ngwa. World Christianity and Public Religion Series. Fortress Press.

2021 "Understanding Hindu-Christian Relations Through the Lens of Caste." In Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations. Edited by Chad Bauman and Michelle Voss Roberts. Routledge.

2019 "Holy Proximity." In One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets, ed. Celene Ibrahim. Eugene: Wipf & Stock. 13-16.

2016 "Justice Amidst Violence: Missed and Available Opportunities." Afterword. In K. Daniel, Mirage: A Sri Lankan Dalit Novel, trans. Subramaniam Jebanesan. Edited by Richard Fox Young. Colombo. 277-291.

2015 "Hybridity's Ambiguity (Gift or Threat?): Marginality as Rudder." In Many Yet One?: Multiple Religious Belonging, ed. Joseph Prabhakar Dayam and Peniel Jesudason Rufis Rajkumar. Geneva: WCC. 135-148.

2012 "Pentecostalism in Asia." In A Reader in Asian Theology, ed. Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar. London: SPCK. 97-107.

Web-Based Publications

See essays at the online compendium Political Theology Network

2021 "Injustices of Ableism and Ageism During the Pandemic: A Call for Intergenerational Solidarity." In Vision 22/1 (2021): 52-59. https://press.palni.org/ojs/index.php/vision.

2017 "Role of Men in Gender Justice." In Consensus: A Canadian Journal of Public Theology, 38/2: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol38/iss2/8.

Select Book Reviews

2020 Spirituality, Community, and Race Consciousness in Adult Higher Education: Breaking the Cycle of Racialization. By Westbrook, Timothy Paul. New York: Routledge, 2017. In Reflective Teaching.

2018 How Youth Ministry Can Change Theological Education -- If We Let It. Edited by Kenda Creasy Dean and Christy Lang Hearlson. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016. In Reflective Teaching.

2018 Teaching with Tenderness: Toward an Embodied Practice. By Thompson, Becky. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. In Reflective Teaching.

2015 Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India. By Chad M. Bauman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. In Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 37/2: 284-286.

2015 Black Prophetic Fire. By Cornel West and Christa Buschendorf. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014. In The Arts in Religious & Theological Studies 26/2: 41-42.

Applied

Sample of Invited Talks
2019 "2019 Martin Luther King Day Celebration, Keynote Address"
First Congregational Church, Sharon, Massachusetts, January 27

2018 "Justice and Care in Conversation with James Cone"
Andover Newton Seminary at Yale University, New Haven, November 18

2018 "Limits of Liminality: Reimagining Identity"
Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, November 1

2018 "Rituals of Humiliation: Understanding Race and Caste"
Union Theological Seminary, New York, February 21

2017 "Memory, Grief, Agency: Caste and Racial Oppression and Healing"
Candler School of Theology, Emory University, December 1

2015 "Considering Faith and Life as Asian Americans"
Youth Retreat, New York Korean Evangelical Church, New York, December 28-30

2011 "Communist Christians, Feminist Muslims, Atheistic and Beef-Eating Hindus"
Asian and Asian American Association Spring Banquet, Princeton Theological Seminary, April 4

Community

Editor for Politics of Scripture, Political Theology Blog

Editor and Peer Reviewer for Indonesian Journal of Theology (open access)

Consulting Editor and Peer Reviewer for The Conrad Grebel Review (Pandora Press)

Peer Reviewer for Journal of the Society for Christian Ethics (Georgetown University Press)

Peer Reviewer for Political Theology journal (Taylor & Francis)

Peer Reviewer for Religions (MDPI)

Peer Reviewer Wabash Center Journal on Teaching (open access)

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