from The Christian Century
Race: A Theological Account
reviewed by Peter J. Paris
J. Kameron Carter's book on race was published in the auspicious year of 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. It could not have come at a better time.
Despite its ubiquity in all dimensions of U.S. life, few scholars have explored the theological origins of race as a phenomenon. Carter's approach in his long-awaited treatise on the subject is quite different from what most of his readers might expect. Instead of beginning with a discussion of the European encounter with Native Americans and Africans, Carter begins with the discipline of theology.
Carter is primarily interested in how theology contributed to the process by which humans came to be viewed as racial beings, and thus was a willing ally in the modern project of empire building. He contends that theology reconstituted itself in order to establish race as the defining characteristic of modernity. This shocking claim establishes Carter's argument as a revolutionary critique of theology's affirmation of modernity as a racial project.
More specifically, Carter argues that modernity's racial imagination originated in the process by which Christianity was severed from its Jewish roots. The modern West began viewing Jews as an alien, inferior race and their religion as the nemesis of Christianity. This type of reasoning implied the natural supremacy of white European peoples and the corresponding superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Carter's thinking dovetails to some extent with Cornel West's critical race theory and Michel Foucault's theory of sexuality.
Carter views Immanuel Kant as the theorist who provided the philosophical grounding for modernity as a racialized theological project. By placing white Europeans at the apex of the human order, Carter claims, Kant constructed a worldview that substituted whiteness for the doctrine of creation, a viewpoint that Western theologians readily adopted. Yet Carter fully realizes that the political dimensions of Kant's worldview were set in motion three centuries earlier by both European colonial expansionism in the Americas and the enslavement of African peoples. He concludes that Kant's racial theory is unintelligible apart from those earlier conquests of nonwhite peoples.
Going yet farther back in history, Carter discerns parallels between contemporary struggles against "European whiteness" and Irenaeus's second-century struggle against the Gnostics. Both the Gnostics and modern racists were bent on extricating Christianity from the Jewishness of Jesus; both distorted the theology of God's incarnation in a Jewish body to exemplify the covenantal relationship between the Jews and their God.
In short, Carter sees many similarities between the anti-Gnosticism of Irenaeus and the antiracism of African-American Christianity, as well as similarities between their respective Christologies. Both Irenaeus and African-American Christianity strive to dismiss all notions of Christian supersessionism and to restore God's covenantal relationship with the Jews as the anti-Gnostic and nonracist canopy under which all true Christians should live.
Read the Full Review HERE
Race: A Theological Account
reviewed by Peter J. Paris
J. Kameron Carter's book on race was published in the auspicious year of 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. It could not have come at a better time.
Despite its ubiquity in all dimensions of U.S. life, few scholars have explored the theological origins of race as a phenomenon. Carter's approach in his long-awaited treatise on the subject is quite different from what most of his readers might expect. Instead of beginning with a discussion of the European encounter with Native Americans and Africans, Carter begins with the discipline of theology.
Carter is primarily interested in how theology contributed to the process by which humans came to be viewed as racial beings, and thus was a willing ally in the modern project of empire building. He contends that theology reconstituted itself in order to establish race as the defining characteristic of modernity. This shocking claim establishes Carter's argument as a revolutionary critique of theology's affirmation of modernity as a racial project.
More specifically, Carter argues that modernity's racial imagination originated in the process by which Christianity was severed from its Jewish roots. The modern West began viewing Jews as an alien, inferior race and their religion as the nemesis of Christianity. This type of reasoning implied the natural supremacy of white European peoples and the corresponding superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Carter's thinking dovetails to some extent with Cornel West's critical race theory and Michel Foucault's theory of sexuality.
Carter views Immanuel Kant as the theorist who provided the philosophical grounding for modernity as a racialized theological project. By placing white Europeans at the apex of the human order, Carter claims, Kant constructed a worldview that substituted whiteness for the doctrine of creation, a viewpoint that Western theologians readily adopted. Yet Carter fully realizes that the political dimensions of Kant's worldview were set in motion three centuries earlier by both European colonial expansionism in the Americas and the enslavement of African peoples. He concludes that Kant's racial theory is unintelligible apart from those earlier conquests of nonwhite peoples.
Going yet farther back in history, Carter discerns parallels between contemporary struggles against "European whiteness" and Irenaeus's second-century struggle against the Gnostics. Both the Gnostics and modern racists were bent on extricating Christianity from the Jewishness of Jesus; both distorted the theology of God's incarnation in a Jewish body to exemplify the covenantal relationship between the Jews and their God.
In short, Carter sees many similarities between the anti-Gnosticism of Irenaeus and the antiracism of African-American Christianity, as well as similarities between their respective Christologies. Both Irenaeus and African-American Christianity strive to dismiss all notions of Christian supersessionism and to restore God's covenantal relationship with the Jews as the anti-Gnostic and nonracist canopy under which all true Christians should live.
Read the Full Review HERE
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