“This project explores a Xicane theology of resurrection and pneumatology, presenting a decolonial Xicane theology of the ancestor that attends to the fragments of Indigenous Mesoamerican beliefs regarding death and the ancestor that remain in our culture and bodies, drawing attention to the cultural memories and worldviews of the ancestors to the Xicane people for the purpose of decolonization, the healing of colonial wounds, and liberation. ”
This dissertation will argue that Xicane beliefs and traditions regarding both death and the ancestors contribute to a decolonial approach that values ancestral traditions and offers Christian theology a new way of understanding the resurrection of Christ and the Holy Ghost. I suggest that reconceptualizing the resurrected Christ as an ancestor, one who walks alongside his disciples and eats with them, offers Christian theology a way of understanding the resurrection that also honors the long-held Xicane tradition of ancestral veneration. Furthermore, a Xicane theology of the ancestor presents a pneumatology that recognizes the Holy Ghost as Christ’s ancestral presence who is near to us in the everyday, reminding us of Christ’s stance toward the “least of these” and of Christ’s crucifixion because of his preferential option for the poor (John 14:26). This ancestral pneumatology honors the Xicane tradition’s strong belief that our ancestors are present with us, reminding us of their own traditions and experiences of oppression and of how they have survived to live on in us.