The Christian imagination : theology and the origins of race

Displacement: Zurara's tears -- Acosta's laugh -- Translation: Colenso's heart -- Equiano's words -- Intimacy: White space and literacy -- Those near belonging.

Summary:

Weaving together the stories of Zurara, the royal chronicler of Prince Henry, the Jesuit theologian Jose de Acosta, the famed Anglican Bishop John William Colenso, and the former slave writer Olaudah Equiano, Jennings narrates a tale of loss, forgetfulness, and missed opportunities for the transformation of Christian communities. Touching on issues of slavery, geography, Native American history, Jewish-Christian relations, literacy, and translation, he brilliantly exposes how the loss of land and the supersessionist ideas behind the Christian missionary movement are both deeply implicated in the invention of race.

Format:

Book

Website:

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1010/2009040203-b.html
http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1010/2009040203-d.html

Length:

x, 366 p. ;

Copies:

Available:*

Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Non-Fiction	270 JEN	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? 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. A probing study of the cultural fragmentation--social, spatial, and racial--that took root in the Western mind, this book shows how Christianity has consistently forged Christian nations rather than encouraging genuine communion between disparate groups and individuals.

Using his bold, creative, and courageous critique to imagine a truly cosmopolitan citizenship that transcends geopolitical, nationalist, ethnic, and racial boundaries, Jennings charts, with great vision, new ways of imagining ourselves, our communities, and the landscapes we inhabit.

Author Notes

Willie James Jennings is Associate Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School, where he previously served as academic dean. He lives in Durham, NC.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In one of the first books of its kind, Duke theologian Jennings attempts to put theology in conversation with contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism and globalization. He contends that the Christian theological imagination was historically woven into the processes of colonial dominance, thus requiring other peoples and ways of life to adapt and even morph into the colonial order of things. Drawing on narratives as diverse as Bishop John William Colenso's in South Africa and the former slave writer Olaudah Equiano's, Jennings seeks to provide both a historical account of where Christian theology faltered in its imagination of society, as well as a theological account of the way in which Christians can better tell and understand the story of the life of Jesus, who took on a human life of joining, belonging, connecting, and knowing others fully. Regrettably, Jennings's important argument gets lost in jargon ("but the analyses of this condition often don't get to the heart of the constellation of generative forces that have rendered people's social performances of the Christian life collectively anemic") and tortured prose; the book too often reads like a dissertation that would have benefited from a wiser editorial hand. (May) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

Choice Review

This interdisciplinary study of Christianity critiques supersessionism, the idea that Christians replaced Israelites as the chosen people of God, by analyzing how European Christians constructed whiteness through ideas of race, geography, and time during the Portuguese, Spanish, and English colonization of the Americas and in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. Jennings (Duke Divinity School) engages broad historical sources and cultural theory in uncommonly exquisite yet accessible prose to persuasively interpret early modern Iberian racialism, missionary practices, theological and anthropological comparisons of religions, the vernacular Bible and literacy, and the imperial distancing of land from identity. Less compelling are the ending chapters, in which the author mystifies the actual history of ancient Palestine to bestow favorable judgment on the biblical narratives of divinely elected Israelites who exterminated and replaced indigenous Canaanites. Jennings weaves together major themes to propose a fresh interpretation of the linkage between land and Israelite identity that might yield a postracial Christian theology rooted in Israelite identity. This broadly conceived study promises to reconfigure the historical understanding of race, religion, and empire in the Americas and to stimulate theological reflection on Christian-Jewish relations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. S. A. Johnson Indiana University

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Part I Displacement
1 Zurara's Tears	p. 15
2 Acosta's Laugh	p. 65
Part II Translation
3 Colenso's Heart	p. 119
4 Equiano's Words	p. 169
Part III Intimacy
5 White Space and Literacy	p. 207
6 Those Near Belonging	p. 250
Conclusion	p. 289
Notes	p. 295
Index	p. 357

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Choice Review

Table of Contents