Four doctrinal loci order this essay: Scripture, Trinity, kingdom and eschatology. Though far from exhaustive when tasked with surveying this region, each locus highlights ruptures marking the theological landscapes of Canada and the USA. These ruptures simultaneously reflect and provoke questions of authority, access, power, identity, place and language amid talk of the divine. As an example: who (the Triune God, theologians, colonisers) or what (Scripture, sociopolitical institutions) defines concepts such as ‘traditional’ and ‘disruptive’? This question is but one in a field of enquiry as vast as the acreage from Montreal to San Jose, California. Amid such vastness, the aforementioned doctrines offer theological landmarks of a sort. More precisely, they form a confessional quadrilateral that is at once bounded, yet porous, akin to the diversity of North American interpretations of Christianity.

In systematic, and typically more Eurocentric, expositions, prolegomena serve as ports of entry. They map terrains to be covered, track elements of methodology and post epistemological boundaries. Across dusty and recent pasts, however, many ‘first words’ failed to dissect structures of colonisation, systems of exploitation and economies of extraction that privileged certain voices at the expense of others. Said failures blocked access to the sacred as demarcated by biases both implicit and explicit.

A prolegomenon disrupted, however, attests to the dynamisms of North American theological endeavours. It speaks neither first nor last words definitively, but rather to the threefold form of the Word and to the pluriform expressions of divine revelation. It seeks to attend to the spectrum of lived Christianities that populate the region, cognisant that no one document can encompass the vitality of these evolving faith systems. Thus a prolegomenon disrupted is less a ‘first words’ than an ‘other words’ method.

These other words accentuate the contested reality of Christianity in North America. Across borders national, state and theological, notions such as conservative, liberal, heretic, literal, metaphoric, social justice, Bible-based, orthodox, mainline, progressive, secular, eco-spirituality, true believer, end-times and ‘spiritual, but not religious’ attempt to coexist. Often, however, they compete for sanctified validation.

Amid such contestation, this essay approaches Scripture, Trinity, kingdom and eschatology as confessions both concentrated and expansive. As concentrated expressions of faith, these doctrines crystallise theological resonances across difference. It is key, however, to remain mindful that resonances co-opted by human drives for empire-making have risked and continue to risk calcification into ideology or idolatry.