Transdiasporic Covenants: Mark 3:31-35 and the Decolonial Reconfiguration of Kinship in Global Black Thought

This article extends the U.S.-centered reception history of Mark 3:31–35 by examining its function as a theological grammar for kinship reconfiguration in global Black Christian contexts. Amid colonial ruptures that weaponized biological lineage, the pericope has enabled the formation of transdiasporic covenants—border-crossing kinship formations grounded in covenantal obedience, refusing genealogical nationalism. Drawing on postcolonial, womanist, and queer theoretical frameworks, this study traces the text's decolonial potential through exegetical deepening and comparative snapshots from the Caribbean, Black Britain, and South Africa. The article argues that Mark 3:31–35 offers not pastoral consolation but an anti-national ecclesiology, dislocating family from blood, land, and state. The result is a reusable category for migration theology, refugee ecclesiology, and queer exile, urging the global church to adopt this grammar of survival.