ABSTRACT
By a nice irony it was as the idea of a dominant ideology came under attack that the notion of hegemony came to prominence as perhaps the key term of cultural politics-an indication that we cannot do without some framework for thinking of domination. It raises important questions for theology. Does Jesus' teaching on servanthood (Mk 10.42f) or Paul's emphasis on the triumph of weakness ( 1 Cor 1) mean that Christians should always seek to be on the margins, always eschew hegemony? Is the option for the poor, now fashionably discussed in terms of subalternity, another case of romanticizing the victim and a continuation of what some see as 'the Christian narrative of suffering and redemption that underlies colonial or imperialist domination in the first place'?1 Christendom obviously aspired to hegemony, and this seems to have been the vision of Coleridge, Arnold, and perhaps of T.S.Eliot.2 Today this is widely regarded to be a mistake, but in the light of hegemony theory, can we be so sure? Jean and John Comaroff argue that it was the aim of the early Nonconformist missionaries in South Africa to impose hegemony on their would-be subjects. 3 Are they right, and if so, were the missionaries wrong? Chris Row land and Mark Corner argue that it was the function of the Book of Revelation to overthrow hegemony, and that it has so acted throughout the history of the Church.4 But is hegemony necessarily negative? If not, how should the Church construe its task in relation to it?
