“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…

I assume that behind the attempts to rid the public of signs of the old Confederacy is the motivation by proponents to accomplish elements of Jubilee: restoration, forgiveness, healing and the empowerment of all people in our communities to flourish. If this is the case, then, to denigrate what some people hold dear, even if…

I am not surprised by the fierce defense of the confederate flag by those who see it as a symbol of a proud heritage. I am not talking about those like Klansman Roy Pemberton, who while demonstrating in Columbia, South Carolina, chastised a man for not joining in the demonstration with other Klansmen. As Pemberton…

Was it appropriate to speak of the confederate flag as a symbol/sign that could be reclaimed and become a reminder of both the dehumanizing capacities of human beings toward other human beings and the need for God’s transformative grace to guard against such occurrences? Was it appropriate to compare this possibility with how the Church…

“What makes a people great?” I contemplated this question during the Black Church Studies conference last month, along with a few other questions that I’ve reflected upon in previous posts (“The Church as Channel of Jubilee,” “What is the black church?“, and “What is Justice?“). But only until recently could I pinpoint a potentially foundational…

I am wrestling with questions revisited at the Black Church Studies conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in the early part of May, 2015. I come again to my second question, what is justice? As I come, I am aware that I know so little about it, or better to say, I have little understanding…

What is the black church? As I mentioned in my previous post, “The Church as Channel of Jubilee,” this question was formulated while at the Black Church Studies conference convened at Princeton Theological Seminary earlier this month. Admittedly, this question (and two others to be pursued in future weeks) was not new for me, but the discussions…