A different story of race needs to be told, one that helps people grasp the depth and power of racial perception. This is a theological and anthropological tank of a book. May 25th 2010 The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race From colonial times through the modern era a faulty theology has created the idea of race and racial superiority. This original and important book has the potential to change the way theology is done henceforth in America.��Cheryl Sanders, Howard University, "Detailing the nooks and crannies of white supremacist Christianity, The Christian Imagination allows not only for greater sophistication when considering race and theology. 274–75). Even in the efforts to translate the Bible into the vernacular of the indigenous people, that translation was done within the context of colonialism and so the Christianity that was adopted by the indigenous and enslaved peoples was done in the name of the empire. Those relationships involve deep joining, the opening of lives to one another in love and desire. Jennings gets right to the roots of the diseased Christian imagination in the West. Sensitivity towards Outsiders: Exploring the Dynamic Relationship between Mission and Ethics in the New Testament and Early Christianity, The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity. "—Edward J. Blum, Journal of Religion Summary: When the sociological construct of race was developed, Christianity was the dominant intellectual force. There were amazing vistas, confounding paths, and heart-breaking valleys. Such exchanges would consider “the reconfiguration of living space that might promote more just societies,” which, if undertaken, would convey “a compelling new invitation to life together” (p. 294). . This may be the most important theology book I have read in a long time. £16.99/$27.50 (paper). Hence, “Christian theology now operates . I do not usually quote the description of books when I am writing, but I am going to here because I cannot think of a better way to describe the book. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race – By Willie James Jennings Victor Anderson Department of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, 301A Garland Hall, VU BOX 351585, Nashville, TN 37235, USA, andersv100@gmail.com The idea that (white) Christians are the New Israel, meaning that Christians become the chosen ones as Israel was in the Old Testament, moved European nations to see themselves as having divine right and thus divine obligation to subjugate the "heathen" particularly those of color. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race: Jennings, Willie James: Amazon.sg: Books The distortion of Christianity that views non-Christians without full imageo dei does not see all of humanity as brothers and sisters because they were all created in God’s image, but only views other Christians as brothers and sisters. Jennings is able to draw on a variety of different disciplines to put forward a compelling proposal for how Christians should tackle the history and present reality of racism and colonialism. In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies. Currently my favorite book on theology and race, "The Christian Imagination" does a masterful job of showing how Christianity is made synonymous with the work and logic of colonialism. Progress Report on the Death of Scripture, Sports and Christianity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915. It requires not only intellect and interest in the subject, but slow, careful reading and the patience and willingness to theologically reflect. I would highly recommend that readers begin with this conclusion and then loop back and read the rest of the book, as the conclusion not only offers a concise and poignant vision of our disconnectedness from one another, from the land and from all creation, but also points us in the direction that we will need to go in order to recover the intimacy for which we were created. Dr Amy Erickson summarizes the basic outline of Jennings’ award-winning book on how how race came to be and how theology can renew the imagination. I dare say it would be impossible to read this and think about race the same way. The Jews were a people of the land, and Jesus was of those people, and those who follow Jesus must also see the intimate nature of the land for one's identity. It has really only been since World War II and the Holocaust that Christianity has widely started seeing supersessionism as a theological problem. (nor is there an imaginative and aesthetically compelling leap to argue by other means). . This is a profound work which brings together history, Christian missional thinking and systematic theology to examine the way accommodation of slavery and the colonization of the new world demonstrated a deformation in the imagination of Christians with respect to people and land driven by the commodification of both. Jennings traces how theology impacted and influenced the development of racism and how theology was used to justify … have not been thought together” (p. 10). We’d love your help. Until we do, all theological discussions of reconciliation will be exactly what they tend to be: (a) ideological tools for facilitating negotiations of power; or (b) socially exhausted idealist claims masquerading as serious theological accounts. These comments are already too long and I cannot flesh out Jenning’s full insights into a blog post, but this is not just history, but constructive theology. Narrating “the origins of race” is an ambitious task. Jennings is inviting the reader to reconstruct our Christian Imagination in a way that rejects supersessionism, embraces the full humanity of all and the sibling relationship to all people in and outside of the church, and to reattach ourselves to the land and sustainable human sized practices. Jennings argues that Christianity functions inside of a diseased social imagination that is inept to rethink its relationship to place, language, and intimacy. heretical in nature, bind[ing] spatial displacement to the formation of an abiding scale of existence” (p. 24). The Christian imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race Willie James Jennings Summary by Dr. Amy Erickson. Displacement inflicted on them an incalculable loss of identity, which (in Jennings’s account) is fundamentally tied to the land. The idea that (white. Nonetheless, on the whole, Jennings’s specification of the paradigm of “race” (and “whiteness” within it) qua ideology is far more substantive and illuminating than other biblical, theological and historical-theological accounts presently available. AbeBooks.com: The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (9780300171365) by Jennings, Willie James and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at … Each has provided a slightly different perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. x + 366 pp. but the way in which [Christianity’s doctrinal] logic would be performed” in the new worlds (p. 71). He emphasizes the importance of land in the shaping of one’s identity and how moving away from that (displacement) is detrimental. The racial “formation of human identity in modernity . The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race by Willie James Jennings Show all authors. In so doing, the doctrines of creation and Christology (among others) were revised, albeit “not the creedal substance . Thanks for Sharing! The argument that “race” turns upon the use of “supersessionist” theological beliefs also calls for refinement. It is very heady, and it takes a lot of effort to study and understand the concepts suggested. Through this loss the complex revelation of God’s relation to land and people fell on deaf ears. In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity’s highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained. To see what your friends thought of this book, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Thankfully, those teetering WTR stacks can... Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? "Detailing the nooks and crannies of white supremacist Christianity, The Christian Imagination allows not only for greater sophistication when considering race and theology. This is a highly original study, “considering concepts, Christian doctrines, and events together that . A phenomenally thought provoking work and for those who are willing to wade into its deep waters will be challenged to encounter things in a new way. Christianity has failed to reject supersessionism clearly and there has always been a stain of supersessionism, from the overt Marcionism and Manichaeism that were both rejected as heresy, to the much more subtle replacement theology that arose later. Theology and the Origins of Race, which focuses on key themes in Part III. Some believe race conceptuality has its determinative origins in … His recounting of the leading role played by the institutional church, theologians, and missionaries in justifying worldwide conquest and consumption and in constructing the fragmented modern world performs the valuable function of ideology criticism. I am in no position to offer any kind of critique here, but I will say there is much in Jennings’ careful analysis worth pondering, not the least of which is. Jennings then sketches connections between past and present, observing numerous ways that the power relations historically expressed and engendered by the paradigms of race and “whiteness” continue to function today in theological scholarship (chapter 5, “White Space and Literacy”), in society (chapter 6, “Those Near Belonging”), and in the world interconnected by globalization. The Christian imagination : theology and the origins of race. . . In a study of this extraordinary breadth, it is inevitable that readers will encounter matters of interpretation with which they disagree, and others requiring more argumentation to be persuasive. . possibly, can become. It is a thought-provoking and convicting read. If the invaded people are worshipers of the satan and controlled by satan, then they are to be overcome, not wooed into the Christian faith. This book traces so many connections between, colonialism, capitalism, race, and theology that it can seem dizzying. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. . The Acts commentary is much less academic and I think would make for a good bible study, or as I used it, personal devotional reading. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published A treasure trove of theologically-based examinations of the formation of race originating in the colonialist period. Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? issu[ing] in a new network that transgresses life-threatening and life-diminishing boundaries” (pp. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. The moment the land is removed as a signifier of identity, it is also removed as a site of transformation through relationship. “Race” belongs to the former, while Jennings’s appropriation of Christology is properly ecclesiological. Relatedly, in this account, theological anthropology and ecclesiology are not clearly delineated. seeing place in its fullest sense. Jennings weaves together various narratives of colonial incursion into the lives of indigenous and/or 'African' people in order to give the reader a sense of how race was constructed and understood, which largely amounted to the displacement of or assimilation of the other to the hegemonic category of whiteness. Role of indigenous Christian faith and its implications for today’s culture in the adoption of that framework/faith. The supersessionism (replacement theology) of European Christians allowed them to not see themselves as the gentiles that were being grafted into the Jewish covenant and therefore see the native populations of North American, Africa and Asia as also gentiles just like them; instead the European Christians viewed themselves as the owners of the covenant and therefore read Old Testament as justification for destruction. Immediately after reading The Christian Imagination, I started reading Jenning’s commentary on Acts, which has many similar insights but from the perspective of biblical theology. . A friend suggested this book to me as I began anew to think about race (as many have) in the midst of the renewed conversations about race in the wake of unspeakable tragedies involving the loss of life in the Black community in America this year. It's a book I will re-read a few times. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race $ 21.54 View more at Amazon. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School It also points to possible cures to the disease so elegantly diagnosed. Reading the conclusion first in this way will help you have a clearer sense of the argument that Jennings is making here. Absolutely required reading for seminaries, in my opinion. The last chapter then offers a corrective which grounds the identity of the church in the Jewishness of Jesus and thus in Israel's story. This is an excellent book. The “Christian-colonial way of imagining the world” (p. 209) ultimately expresses “loss of [the Christological] horizon and embodiment” of Christian doctrine (p. 106). Refresh and try again. . . Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is, rather, to note that a close, extended reading of Scripture as the basis for developing a Christian doctrine of creation leads to a quite different paradigm of the interrelations of God, people, and land (e.g., Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God [Downers Grove: IVP, 2004]). When people mostly did not move except for a few traders or pilgrims, there was a connection to the land and large scale migration and colonialism destroyed that connection. This is amazing content! If Christian existence stands on nothing greater than the body of one person, then . . Sometimes it is even the same people that over time, develop a different Christian Imagination. And when I was following, it was emotionally disheartening to be reminded of how badly we have treated one another, especially in the name of Christianity. Dr. A thoughtful and erudite historical and theological analysis of the interrelationships between racism, capitalism, and Christian theology. . In the former chapter—challenging the positive accounts of Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls—the Bible translation and biblical literacy movements, print capitalism, and theological knowledge-production are linked to a largely intact hegemonic system: “Christian theology is trapped in the revised universalism that feigns the legitimation processes of ancient orthodoxy while being deeply committed to the literary supremacy and ‘universal human genius’ of the languages of the central literary powers—French, English, Italian, German (and sometimes Spanish)” (p. 232), such that “the center/margin realities of world literature deeply penetrate [theologians’] evaluations” (p. 233). Finally, his call to Christians to move beyond voluntary racial and ethnic self-segregation, to follow Christ in “loving and desiring” and enfolding others—is provocative and inviting. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. . Welcome back. I once heard Jennings speak, and that was so unlike his writing--he cou. Jennings provided a narrative of the theological origins of race steeped in rigorous academic thought. (nor is there an imaginative and aesthetically compelling leap to argue by other means). Normally when I rate 5 stars AND write a review, it means I’m recommending the book to everyone. It also points to possible cures to the disease so elegantly diagnosed. . But it is impressive the way he pulls out similar themes from a such diversity of theological perspectives, and historical processes. "—Edward J. Blum, Journal of Religion Free delivery on qualified orders. Most of this work I will need to think about and reread in the months to come before I can say what I have learned, not learned, etc. In light of John A. D’Elia’s A Place at the Table and Stanley E... A trio of recent books raises important questions on how Scripture is handled in halls of (certain kinds of) learning and how such handling affects Scripture’s perceived truth and message... Themelios is a peer-reviewed international evangelical theological journal that expounds on the historic Christian faith. is the basis of their ethical actions in the worlds of allegiances and kinships . This book is not an easy read for multiple reasons. Any estimate of the factor of land must reckon with the biblical depiction of God as Creator and Owner, such that even his own people are but “tenants” whose residency within a designated territory is not a natural birthright but a gift of grace, a blessing that remains contingent upon trust and obedience (Lev 25:23). Start by marking “The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race” as Want to Read: Error rating book. The right transformation [entails] Christian faith receiving its heretofore undiscovered identities, which are found only through interaction with the social logics of language, landscape, and peoples. Chapters 1–4 examine cases in the Roman Catholic and Protestant history of conquest and missions in which theological ideas were deployed to conceive of and promote novel evangelization, discipleship, and Bible translation practices. Many theorists and historians are trying to tell the story of race beginning, of the origins of a concept of race. No Comments. . Free shipping for many products! [These] thwart the formation of Christian community beyond the strictures of nation, language, and peoples” (p. 233). This book is not an easy read for multiple reasons. Must like Carter, he argues that supersessionist strategies (the replacement of Israel with the Church) were a significant theological culprit in promoting whiteness as the 'place' where. 248–49): A Christian doctrine of creation is first a doctrine of place and people, of divine love and divine touch, of human presence and embrace and of divine and human interaction . $27.50. I would highly recommend that readers begin with this conclusion and then loop back and read the rest of the book, as the conclusion not only offers a concise and poignant vision of our disconnectedness from one another, from the land and from all creation, but also points us in the direction that we will need to go in order to recover the intimacy for which we were created. As such, this study is highly recommended. Dec 24, 2012 - The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race [Jennings, Willie James] on Amazon.com. 6–7). The form the argument takes is hard to keep track of because it covers such a huge span of time, space, and disciplines. Rather, he drew it to a new orientation, a new determination” in himself (p. 264). A fine book that suffers from being overwritten. And if you want a deep survey of how (often unconsciously, but also usually in horrible opposition to core Biblical values) racism came to color the very fabric of white consciousness and institutional activity--this book is worth a hard slog to read through. , failed in its attempts to heal social divisions the racial “ formation of an abiding of! Capitalism to that and race and racialized people became a commodity to be lifted out specifically as relates! Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke world of increased division capitalism + colonialism commodification... It requires not only intellect and interest in the worlds of allegiances kinships... 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