Race: a theological account

Arguing that at the root of modern racial thinking is the effort to constitute Western identity as overcoming its internal, Oriental Other, the Jews, in Race: A Theological Account this book engages this problem for what it is: a theological problem. This book contends that the modern race question and the modern Jewish question are linked through the theological problem of the constitution of modernity's racial imagination, a constitution grounded in Christian supersessionism, or the effort to oust all things Jewish from the Western imaginary. Filling out this imagination is whiteness, nonwhiteness, and the negative anchor of the entire scheme, blackness. Beyond outlining this problem is the constructive task of reimagining Christian identity and theology beyond its tyrannical modern performance inside of whiteness. The book engages texts by patristic writers (like Maximus the Confessor), antellebum writers (like Frederick Douglass and Jarena Lee), and contemporary writers (like Michel Foucault)

Prologue: the argument at a glance -- Prelude on Christology and race: Irenaeus as anti-gnostic intellectual -- Part I. Dramatizing Race: A Theological Account of Modernity: -- 1. The drama of race: toward a theological account of modernity -- 2. The great drama of religion: modernity, the Jews, and the theopolitics of race -- Part II. Engaging Race: The Field of African American Religious Studies: -- 3. Historicizing race: Albert J. Raboteau, religious history, and the ambiguities of blackness -- 4. Theologizing race: James H. Cone, liberation and the theological meaning of blackness -- 5. Signifying race: Charles H. Long and the opacity of blackness -- Interlude on Christology and race: Gregory of Nyssa as abolitionist intellectual -- Part III. Redirecting Race: Outlines of a Theological Program: -- 6. The birth of Christ: a theological reading of Briton Hammon's 1760 Narrative -- 7. The death of Christ: a theological reading of Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative -- 8. The spirit of Christ: a theological reading of the writings of Jarena Lee -- Postlude on Christology and race: Maximus the Confessor as anticolonialist intellectual -- Epilogue: the discourse of theology in the t…