Challenging Boundaries in Acts 8:26-40: Toward seeing “othered bodies” through Decolonial Feminist Eyes

Cartography, the scientific name for “mapping”, sets boundaries that separate people and places. As a metaphor, it is “another name for stories told by winners”, which may also refer to the politics of knowledge production captured in biblical texts. As such, stories mapped by hegemonic powers ignore the presence, knowledge, and insights of the marginalized “othered”. Reception history of the story mapped in Acts 8:26-40, and by implication sermons preached on this biblical text, primarily lends itself to the advancement of the Christian missionary task – proselytization. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch has generally served as a literary prop to “proclaim the Good News”. Explicit references to racial and sexual identity markers in the text are generally “glossed over” and the unnamed character is seen as the “other” in need of salvation. This paper explores how, when seen from a decolonial feminist perspective, a different picture of the unnamed Ethiopian eunuch emerges. The argument made here is that when hegemonic understandings of the biblical text are questioned, boundaries that separate people and places are challenged to reveal a theological map of radical inclusivity.