TOWARDS A CRITICAL RACE THEOLOGY?
Traditionally, the Patristics and their work were used as apologetics to protect Christians and our propositional truth claims. Tertullian agrees with me! No Augustine agrees with me! Origen is a heretic! Clement of Alexandria? Can you say liberal?
Recently, there has been a trend in the discipline of black theology to use Early Church thinkers toward anti-racist ends. The cover story in The Christian Century: The New Black Theology highlights this move brilliantly.
“What is revolutionary about these three black theologians is that they rely heavily on dogmatic texts from the patristic period to the Reformation. Why is this novel? Because nonwhite male theologians have historically been hesitant to trust these sources—and for good reason. In the worst of times, classic theological texts have been used to oppress persons of color and women. In the best of times, the overwhelming attention given these particular voices obscured other voices, giving the impression that the only Christians speaking and writing about God for the last 2,000 years were European men. Those who did not fit that description simply did not know how to relate to a tradition that claimed to speak for but did not reflect them.”
I would highly recommend that you give the article, linked above, a read. I am filled with excitement for this trend, if you couldn’t already tell. But first, I would like to show gratitude to the theological foremothers and forefathers who came before me, the crazy Zilpha Elaws, Julia J.A. Footes and James Cones, whose sharing of the Gospel have had a great impact on me theologically. The great news about this “new” black theology, Black Theology 2.0, is that theological resources from Early Christianity, and from the Antebellum South are read as equals. These acts in themselves are subversive, for they challenge our racist, sexist academic canons in theological studies that now exists as the hegemons that racial minority scholars have to face.
Two more important and encouraging signs about this theology is that #1, these black male writers are arguing how racism against blacks has its history intertwined with the histories of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, as Frantz Fanon argued a long time ago. Secondly, the “new black theology” has begun to make Christian theology an essential resource for critical race theory in general. That is why, even though I really, really hate neologisms, I have some desire to tentatively call this new theology, to escape the black-white binary, Critical Race Theology. I am still working on it, so it is a work in progress.
For more information about what I am calling “CRITICAL RACE THEOLOGY”:
Visit J. Kameron Carter’s blog and read my review of his book: Race: A Theological Account
Read my review of, and read Willie Jennings’ The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race.
See also Brian Bantum’s blog, as well as from the evangelical perspective, Anthony Bradley’s site.
Network on FACEBOOK with theologians and religion scholars doing critical race theory:
Theology and Critical Race Theory
The Journal for Race, Ethnicity, and Religion
Society of Race, Ethnicity and Religion
You may also be interested in reading my Master of Theology Thesis, Beyond Liberated: Divine Transcendence and Cultural Hybridity in the Theologies of Clement of Alexandria and James Cone.
Related articles
- The Patristics And The Abolition of Slavery (politicaljesus.com)
