“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”   —James Baldwin, “A letter from a Region in My Mind” The New Yorker (1962) I appreciate this opportunity to discuss and debate the implications of my book Divine Variations. Many points were raised that I…

Terence Keel’s Divine Variations is a striking and provocative work of intellectual archaeology. Keel’s unearthing of theological patterns of thought in modern racist modes of thinking that have conventionally been understood as secular is arresting and illuminating. The book’s argument amounts to a serious re-consideration of received accounts of the history of ostensibly ‘scientific’ racism….

In her book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison notes that “regardless of the author, the readers of virtually all American fiction have been positioned as white.” She then raises a question: “What does positing one’s writerly self, in the wholly racialized society that is the United States, as unraced…

One of the least remembered facts of the John Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, often analyzed as a paradigmatic case study in the history of Christian fundamentalist history in North America is the influence of George Hunter’s Civic Biology textbook (1914) upon Scopes’s thought. After the controversy, Hunter removed certain parts on evolution from his…

“But, just as we got a little below Gravesend, we came alongside of a ship which was going away the next tide for the West Indies, her name was the Charming Sally, Captain James Doran; and my master went on board and agreed with him for me; and in a little time I was sent…

What does historic Christian theology have to do with modern racial science? There are good reasons to believe the answer is “nothing.” Since Max Weber advanced his theory of secularization, arguing that modern people are disenchanted with Christian theology and have divided labor into religious and non-religious institutions, influential scholars including John C. Green and…

Tempted: I see that I must be placed in the ground and reduced to dust. A bed will be spread out for my body in the grave and therefore I said to that place of rottenness, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worms, ‘You are my mother and sister’ (Job 17:14). Comforter: Do not…

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Almost hidden within the Genesis creation account stands this singular sentence about God’s creation of humankind. Revealed is God’s creative act; implied is the dual nature of…

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion . . . ” Thus, every reader of the Christian Scriptures is presented with this design and purpose framework to understand humanity. The Genesis account includes both the uniqueness—from other created things—and the commonality—in form and function—of all humans. Christian…

  Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling, for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted. Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now. … Every place had been displaced,…

Deerfield, IL — The Henry Center for Theological Understanding is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021–2022 Henry Resident Fellowship. This year’s recipients are: Christina Bieber Lake, Gijsbert van den Brink, James Arcadi, Philip Woodward, and Jon Thompson. The Resident Fellowship program is the centerpiece of the Henry Center’s Creation Project, a multi-million dollar…

Let me begin by thanking each of the contributors for their thoughtful entries in this conversation; I thank Professor Haidt as well for a book well worth interacting with. His other commitments precluded him from responding to these contributions, so I will wrap things up, trying both to exercise sympathy with Haidt’s project and to…