J. Kameron Carter on Language and the Theological Roots of Scientific Classification

I have been waiting a very long time for the video of Carter’s lecture on “Language and the Theological Roots of Scientific Classification: Jose de Acosta and the Production of Modernity’s Racial Imagination.” A year in fact.

Part of the problem for the wait is that somehow I missed Scott’s alert back in March. Somehow I missed it, despite longing to share this with others. Boy I feel stupid. Anyways…

The lecture itself is incredibly helpful for understanding the modern colonial project. I cannot stress enough how crucial this lecture is for linking Carter’s thesis in his book Race to current life. I wish he’d put it in his book. But even if one doesn’t buy all of Carter’s thesis, this lecture stands on its own. Following one of the lecture’s clear implications, the colonial practice is racist because theo-scientific racial classification is part of the “inner architecture” of colonial-scientific life.

Without further delay, WATCH IT:

And the careful viewer could see me in the audience, more specifically, my better side!

Carter’s Race Reviewed

From The Christian Century, Peter J. Paris’ review of J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Account:

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’s call for a new kind of theological imagination that moves beyond the traditional theology that strips Jesus Christ of his Jewishness is an insightful approach to the difficulty that confronts 21st-century theological discourse. Few scholars have demonstrated so convincingly how ancient theologians such as Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Great can be helpful resources for current theological discussions about race, colonialism, slavery, tyranny and oppression—to mention only a few major problems we have inherited from the theology of race and modernity.

As an ethicist, I look forward to future writings by Carter that relate his theological enterprise to the thought and practice of the social gospel movement, the various African-American religious struggles for racial justice, and especially the work of Martin Luther King Jr. It is more than a little troubling that Carter did not discuss such figures and events in this major work. Nevertheless, it is a great book by any standard. Its breadth and depth are impressive beyond measure.

For those of you having a difficult time with certain assertions made about modernity and racism on this blog, it would do you well to read through this book very carefully. I have found it very helpful and informative and one would probably misunderstand anything more than the general thrust against modernism’s inherent colonialism without exposure to this book.

Misguided Ways of Dealing with Race and Racism

In the wake of Obama’s inauguration, I’ve seen a number of responses across the news, on the internet, and amongst friends. And so, what follows is a brief endeavor to list a few problematic responses and point out their underlying logic. Interestingly, the logic of each point in the list that follows, have much overlap between each other.

Colorblind: Some people (I’ve only heard this from Christians lately) still seem to think that the proper way to deal with race is to act like one shouldn’t see race. I have a sinking feeling why this is still so prevalent is because it was Contemporary Christian Music’s way of dealing with race (when it rarely did). To accept the colorblind philosophy is to accept a notion of making what is visible, invisible. Essentially, to be colorblind is to divest a person and people group of their story — the history that has formed them as a group. Specifically when this comes to race in America, such a move ignores the historical context of suffering and community bonding in the face of structural oppression that at least still fuel vestiges of privilege. This skips steps that have yet to be made. Justice and reconciliation looks the past straight in the face and deals with the repercussions that occur today. Thus, to ignore one’s story and the formation of the community past that still exists out of necessity today, is to take away one’s positive relationships, while ignoring struggles. This in effect dehumanizes people and leaves people exposed to the rending of the foundation of identity: relationships. In sum, we still live in a world where the color of one’s skin plays an important role in our historical and contemporary stories and actions. We should not ignore this by claiming to be colorblind.

Just let the old people die out, because their tired, old fight doesn’t translate today. Post-race means we’re past our history and we’re pretty much past racism: We aren’t post race. J. Kameron Carter has an excellent critique, and shows that racial categories are predicated on modernism and its theological and scientific grounding. Racial categories are in themselves racist. Also, to live in the modern world is to live in a racialized world. Even if we could adequately deal with Obama’s hybridity in public, we’d still be in some form of racial categorization, but probably taking a step in a positive direction that recognizes the hybridity in most (if not all) of us.

But how do we square the imposed racial categories of modernity’s scientific and theological logic with the need for community in the colorblind point above? For instance African Americans, Asian immigrants, Latin/South American immigrants, Native Americans, etc. form their own communities, partly out of survival. These communities are good, even though they have been categorized with the modernist racial category. This survival is done in the face of colonial violence and a theological divestment of their humanity. In fact, one could say that these communities of the oppressed function as the salvation for those who do not see their own humanity slipping away as they are the ones who have enforced these colonial categories.

But to find the good in the oppressed communities still stays within the racial modernist structure. Thankfully there is something else. To divest a person or people group of a skin color, that is considered beautiful by God, is partly the action of a terrible creation theology. Creation theology does not have a semi-gnostic persuasion that turns colors to grey, but helps recognize what is created and encourage flourishing. Even if colorblind philosophy is only symbolic, insomuch that it attempts to address the racist assertion of a qualitative difference between skin color, the right response does not mean the elimination of beautiful skin color. Thus, while the skin color is beautiful and God given, the divisive work of racial categorization must be dismantled by first looking it in the face, rather than ignoring it. Both the colorblind philosophy and its new protégé, post-race, take the strides that have been made and assert them as the fulfillment of MLK Jr.’s dream, while ignoring MLK Jr.’s warning against colonial America. So where can we all stand? In solidarity.

Therefore (either because we should be colorblind, or the old people live in a different world) don’t speak about the racial categories, its divisive: Well, not really. If the racial categories still exist, and if privilege still exists in structures, then to call for us to ignore the currently divisive, racial, modernist structure is to yet again ignore reality in favor of a white narrative (Yes, I’m using white here as a symbol. Don’t get your underwear in a knot.).

If someone else, like a white person, said this…: From my post on Rev. Wright: Dr. Wright is also not a “reverse racist” (as if only whites could be true racists…). This is not to say that a black person cannot be racist, however, what Newt Gingrich purports assumes that racism does not continue to exist in any large way. Yet, if what Wright does say is true, understood within a racist culture at large, than it merely rings true. However, Wright is not engaged by others at the level of his and his community’s experience. Instead, Wright’s words are taken from his mouth – from his black body and black context – and put into a white person’s body and context. In some senses, it seems that even Wright speaking cannot be understood as a black person speaking; rather, culture at large must think of him as a white person. How is that not itself racist, stripping him of his own humanity? Sure, maybe if we took Wright’s words and gave them to an oppressive people, the content of the words might sound racist, because they would be coming from the oppressive people’s lips. The body and context from whom the words come from are infinitely important. To call Wright a reverse racist merely on the basis of what he said in his speeches, based on forgetting the black community’s story and acting like he is a white man, is bullshit. This is just another way to marginalize a black man speaking prophetic truth.

So what common theme ran through this list of points? Divestment. To divest someone within the category of race is going to lead to some form of racism. Hell, to divest a person or community of the opportunity to be wrong likewise divests them of their humanity, as it fetishizes them rather than recognizes their failure. Divestment — racism — can only be met first by a honest and deep look that continues until the community is no longer segregated. I’m looking at you, church.

Still more Impressions from Carter’s Book

1. I like Carter best when he isn’t explaining someone. Granted, he seems to do a good job of explaining the relevant data he seeks to engage, but he feels a bit constrained. I think its a good constraint, however; he seems to really take his time to make sure that the voice of his subject is accurately heard. But when he begins to build on or critiques what he has previously outlined, he is a hell of a lot of fun to read in my opinion. He goes after it. Its refreshing. So take heart, those who feel a bit bored during the introductions, he does get more energetic later.

For instance, in the third chapter (the first chapter of part two), he begins to take off on page 143, after nearly twenty pages of introducing Raboteau. The introduction is quite necessary, but when he gets into the difference of history faith and religious faith, narrative, whiteness and then into an outline of icon theology, I’m pumped. I wish I could simply quote the last half of that chapter for this post.

2. Remembering Icon and the Western loss of the Icon. Speaking of getting pumped, reaching back to Icon through Raboteau’s orthodoxy is more than a terrific addition. Western Christianity is absolutely bankrupt in its theology when it comes to Icons and the recognition of Nicea II. And icons functioning as a christological visibility and invisibility engaging with history? Iiiiinteresting… and helpful.

3. As far as I am concerned, Carter’s critique of James Cone (chapter 4) is right on target. Oh, and Carter spends much of the time going over the change between Early Cone, who subscribed to Barth, and Later Cone, who subscribed to Tillich. Interestingly, Carter does affirm Cone’s critique of Barth by way of von Balthasar’s similar critique of Barth. Cone wasn’t out to lunch when he said Barth wasn’t all that helpful for him.

4. Carter does avoids mentioning R. Niebuhr when critiquing Cone. However, its been said that Niebuhr’s theology was from Tillich, whom Carter focuses on for the later Cone. I suppose it makes sense and works, but I would’ve liked to have read some about Niebuhr, particularly because of how much Cone does rely on Niebuhr’s anthropology now. The irony of Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History is that the book critiquing America never mentions racism.

5. Carter has some terrific citation notes in the back. Some are quite long, but I love them that way. The breadth that Cone mentions about Carter is carried on in the footnotes with many smaller conversations ranging from Robert Jensen, John Howard Yoder, Aquinas, George Lindbeck, John Milbank, and many more, while there is much more on Foucault, Kant, Barth and others essential to his project. His notes start on page 381 and end at 467. Many, many notes tend to look like the following:

By this I simply mean that Foucault’s argument will help me chart the way in which modern racial discourse contributes to the construction of religion as a category through which one gains knowledge of modern “man.” As William T. Cavanaugh has put it, in modern terms, religion refers to the imagining of a “set of beliefs…[as arising more or less out of]personal conviction and which can exist separately from one’s public loyalty to the state.” William T. Cavanaugh, the Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 31. Now while there are other serious limitations to Cavanaugh’s analysis–particularly, that his analysis of the modern problem of religion takes no account of the modernity as a colonial reality and because of this blind spot there is no account of how liturgy and sacramentality were themselves made to function within religious constitution of the modern/colonial world–he is nevertheless right to see a deep connection between religion conceived of as a personal conviction and the state’s production of bodies or citizens. To this I would simply supplement Cavanaugh by observing that religion conceived of in terms of beliefs, the beliefs constitutive of a particular religious faith, get ordered according to a hierarchy of rationality that coincides with a hierarchy within the human species itself. This hierarchy within the species is the hierarchy of races. The most rational or reasonable religions are those that habituate the rational races toward loyalty to the state as its Ecclesia or what ensures humans’ natural redemption or salvation and safety in a dangerous world. The irrational religions are those that do not so habituate the irrational races into citizens of the state. … (393-394)

Suffice it to say, if you’ve got a question and you see a number in the text, check the back.

And to leave you dear reader with another quote, chew on this:

Beyond an ontology of separateness, I propose a theology of participation, the content of which is YHWH’s covenantal relationship with the one to whom YHWH has elected YHWH’s self. This one is the covenantal and theological–and therefore, to say it again, not the racial–people of Israel. Hebrew Scripture and then the New Testament bear witness to this covenant. It is in light of the reality of the covenant that Chalcedonian Christology itself must be understood so as to decenter dialectic, which is to say, ontologized understandings of the person and work of Jesus. Understood in the light of YHWH’s covenant with YHWH’s parnter Israel and thereby with the world, Chalcedon is to be conceived of as witnessing to a theology of covenantal participation in which the life of YHWH is thoroughly implicated in and suffuses the life of Israel. Indeed, YHWH is known only in this suffusion, for such suffusion is proper to YHWH-God and is constitutive of YHWH’s transcendence. This can be called YHWH’s identity in historical transcendence with Israel and therby with the world. It is precisely this participatory transcendence, this ecstasy by which God is God for us, that makes creation strnscendent within itself in its ecstasy back to its Creator, YHWH. The problem with dialectical thinking and related forms of philosophical thinking is that they being from closure and then have to negotiate passage through an “ugly broad ditch” between things that are closed.

But in modernity as looked at from its underside, this ditch is the ditch of coloniality, which itself is the ditch of the racial imagination built upon the severance of Jesus from the covenantal people of Israel and thus Christianity from its roots in the reality of YHWH’s historical transcendence toward the world through YHWH’s covenant with this people. The covenant witnesses to the fact that for God, and only because of God’s identity as God for us, there is no ditch to be crossed by us. God has from the first bound Godself to us in God’s communion with Israel as a communion for the world. This is the inner logic of the identity of Jesus, the inner logic by which Israel is always already a mulatto people precisely in being YHWH’s people, and by which therefore Jesus himself as the Israel of god is Mulatto. At the level of his identity, or who he is, Jesus carries forward, and does not supersede, Israel’s identity as partner to YHWH for the world. He is miscegenated, and out of that miscegenation discloses the God of Israel as the God of the Gentiles too. What the covenant framework discloses, then, is this: Because YHWH is on both the Creator and creaturely sides of the covenant holding it, a dialectical framework of I-Thou, while useful in some regards in responding to problems in the world, proves ultimately inadequate. Indeed, it is not radical enough. pgs. 191-192

More Quick Impressions of Carter’s Work

I’m still reading J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Account, albeit rather slowly. I’ve got other things to do. But I do have some more impressions and quotes.

1. As far as I’m concerned, he abuses Kant, or is it that he exposes Kant? And not in a bad way, a good way. He makes Kant, the neo-Marcion, squeal. Granted, I’m not exactly up on Kant’s corpus and I’d need to spend more time studying Carter’s reading of Kant (or wait for a scholar with a specialty in Kant to review the section), but so far, Carter proves his point about modernism’s fundamental, pragmatic racial anthropology. Carter begins his summary of chapter 2 and introduction to part 2 with:

Thus, the “euthanasia of Judaism,” which Kant figures as coeval with the realization of the coming ethical community, only brings to completion a rational theology of the atonement in which the death of Christ is a dying away from Judaism and from all that makes one a “son of the earth” rather than a son of God. In short, it is a dying away from all that holds one “fettered to earthly life to the detriment of morality.” (pg. 120)

2. I was surprised that Christ was understood by Kant as a revolutionary: “Eh? I didn’t see that one coming.” Only to find out, the revolutionary Jesus is a Marcion-like (“white”) Jesus: no longer actually Jewish through the “loss of his covenantal identity as a Jew”, a supercessionist Jesus (117).

3. A senior theologian was right, I need to read more Foucault. He’ll help my own project, especially when addressing sovereignty and bio. Oh, and He sounds fun. History of Sexuality here I come, which isn’t about the history of sex acts… I think. Imagine that!

4. There is a short contrast between Agamben and Foucault, so its a good thing I’ve read some Agamben. But he doesn’t play heavily in the book (only a few times really), so no worries to those who don’t know Agamben. Also, Carter attempts to catch the reader up on his point about Agamben. When Cone talks about breadth, he isn’t joking. Carter closes chapter two, focused on Kant, with:

What the Kantian vision discloses, then, is that the dramas of race and politics in modernity are, in fact, a great drama of religion. Yet, behind the veil of this great religious drama is a less easily detected but controlling story, the story of how whiteness came of age as a theological problem that camouflages itself as just such a problem. When looked at from this vantage point, whiteness as a theological problem is inseparable from the production of the modern citizen on the one hand, who as a citizen subject is constructed in such a way that the body articulates the body politic. And on the other hand, it is inseparable from what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben refers to as the modern state’s constitution of itself through bios or bare life, life that is bounded by and ever exposed to death. This “death-bound subject” is “homo sacer,” or “sacred man,” the figure whose life is ever exposed to death or sacrifice for the life of the nation-state. Furthermore, Agamben grasps that the quintessential homo sacer figure of modernity is the Jew.

But what Foucault understood beyond Agamben, and what has been important for the argument developed here in part I of this book, is this: homo sacer’s sacrality is simultaneously religious and racial. Indeed, homo sacer’s dark body is the body not fully assimilable to the body politic, except by a process of excruciating violence. This violent process of assimilation is a singular process of racialization and “religionization”: religion racially dramatizes the body (politic) and vice versa. It is the religio-racial process as an immanent teleological process that functions internal to imperial power. It is this process that constitutes the Western metropole as white and in relationship to the colony as nonwhite. That is, homo sacer’s sacrality contains within it modernity’s Rassenfrage, which has as its animating center Judenfrage or the theological problem of gentile Christianity’s refusal to think its existence from within the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The three chapters making up part II of this book offer a reading of the field of African American religious scholarship as an ongoing attempt to diagnose this situation and respond to it. To this I now turn. (pg. 120-121)

5. “Cosmopolitan” functions as an ugly concept in this book so far. I can agree with that notion whole heartedly. Boy, do I wish I had this book when we reviewed Appiah’s book in class. Some of my favorite sentences are when he riffs on cosmopolitan secularism.

Early Impressions of Carter’s Book

1. Clarity. His writing is generally quite clear. I would feel confident giving this book to many different levels of students, mainly because I think they could read it and mostly understand it. He digests and summarizes concepts quite well. Sure, explaining might be in order for newer students to theology or philosophy, but I don’t think it’ll have much to do with the way Carter writes. The biggest problem is keeping up with Carter’s breadth. Cone is right, the book does demonstrate “great intellectual range and theological imagination.”

2. While Carter maintains a helpful level of self-control to keep his argument admirably on track, every once in awhile, he’ll go off and say something like this (particularly the part I emphasize below), and make me smile from ear-to-ear:

How do the new science (of the true), the new philosophy (of the good), and the new aesthetics (of the beautiful)–the discursive elements of modern discourse, according to West–represent a disassembling and then a reassembling for its own purposes of Christian theology’s understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful? And how do they do this at the juncture of the Jewish question, and how does a discourse of race emerge out of this? Lastly, how is the discourse of modern state sovereignty (which mutates into a discourse on the nation) constituted so that it reinvents itself at the same time that it masks the way it operates parasitically on theology as simulacra of a Christian soteriological vision of redemption, through the agent of redemption is different, namely, “Leviathan” (Hobbes)? That is, how does the discourse of modern state sovereignty conceive of the state as democratic “redeemer” inasmuch as it is the “creator” of a new mode of political existence and thus a new way of imagining community? [pg. 52, from part of Carter's critique of Cornel West, and the emphasis is mine]

3. The book itself is interestingly minimalistic. And I love it. Theres little to the cover, but they designed it quite well. Its not some sort of eye-grabbing book, its captivating in its form following function. Continuing the minimalism, there is no forward and the blurb on the inside jacket about Carter only makes note of his professorship at Duke and does it in less than three full lines. The book avoids all the bullshit, flowery fluff that accompanies many other projects on race that don’t go anywhere positive, or commit an equally bad sin: uninteresting and unhelpful. You could judge this book by its cover, if that judgment is good. I could go on about the graphical beauty, but I’d convince people of something I don’t have: a book fetish. I just have a crush on this book. Honest.

4. This book will be big. If it isn’t in the near future (or perhaps moderately near future, after all, some academics can be pretty slow sometimes), there is something seriously wrong. It has the feeling of books that have made a tremendous impact in the past.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts in the future, but until then, let this quote sit amongst your thoughts:

I say theological and political (or theopolitical) to signal that my claim calls for analyses of the problem of race (and, relatedly, of the Jewish question) that explore the senses in which such a discourse is bound to the nature and practice of modern politics and thereby indelibly tied to what is religious about modernity and the way it parodies theology at the same time that it cloaks this fact. The discourse of race is critical to the cloaking process and thus functions as a vital cog within modernity’s own religious and quasi-theological machinery, a machinery intent, as the quotation by Étienne Balibar that opens this chapter alerts us, on producing bodies and people, but bodies and people of a particular sort. It produces bodies and people that can populate an enlightened, global, and cosmopolitan social order, the domain of civil society. The people produced is the modern citizenry; the body, that of the modern citizen; and the social order enacted and perpetuated, that of the modern (nation-)state. Given this, the politics of race and the politics of the modern state are of a piece, for both are religious or pseudotheological in character. Failing to reckon with this fact not only leaves the problem of modern racial reasoning inadequately understood but also can yield responses that risk–unwittingly, no doubt–reinhabiting, at the politically unconscious, theopolitical level, the very problem that needs overcoming. pg. 40

Race’s Theological Account

J. Kameron Carter’s thesis:

My fundamental contention is that modernity’s racial imagination has its genesis in the theological problem of Christianity’s quest to sever itself from its Jewish roots. This severance was carried out in two distinct but integrated steps. First, Jews were cast as a race group in contrast to Western Christians, who with the important assistance of the discourses of Christian theology and philosophy, were also subtly and simultaneously cast as a race group. The Jews were the mirror in which the European and eventually the Euro-American Occident could religiously and thus racially conceive itself through the difference of Orientalism. In this way, Western culture began to articulate itself as Christian culture (and vice versa), but now–and this is the new movement–through the medium of a racial imagination. Second, having racialized Jews as a people of the Orient and thus Judaism as a “religion” of the East, Jews were then deemed inferior to Christians of the Occident or the West. Hence, the racial imagination (the first step) proved as well to be a racist imagination of white supremacy (the second step). Within the gulf enacted between Christianity and the Jews, the racial, which proves to be a racist, imagination was forged.

From Race: A Theological Account by J. Kameron Carter, pg. 4.

More on Race

Two things.

First, J. Kameron Carter’s book, Race: A Theological Account is out. I happen to hold a copy of it in my hand. (Unfortunately I have to wait until the proficiency test is done this Monday until I can give the book the time it deserves.) Also, the book was less than $40 in hardback to boot. Woo hoo!

Second, CNN has written one of their better articles that I’ve seen recently on race and the church (especially after the Wright debacle brought on by them): “Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated.”

Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it’s segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation’s churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of “United by Faith,” a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.

DeYoung’s numbers are backed by other scholars who’ve done similar research. They say integrated churches are rare because attending one is like tiptoeing through a racial minefield. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating.

DeYoung, who is also an ordained minister, once led an interracial congregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that eventually went all-black. He defines an interracial church as one in which at least 20 percent its membership belongs to a racial group other than that church’s largest racial group.

“I left after five years,” DeYoung says. “I was worn out from the battles.”

The men and women who remain and lead interracial churches often operate like presidential candidates. They say they live with the constant anxiety of knowing that an innocuous comment or gesture can easily mushroom into a crisis that threatens their support.

Ordering Thought

Above, the reader will note a new tab: Theological Responses to the Wright Fiasco.

I decided to order the reflections on Liberation theology, Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Barack Obama, and the media fiasco and to make a space for such a list. I expect such a tab to become somewhat important around November. I also have found some current readers show up at some of the less important posts, so in an effort to guide the reader towards the core, I have also emphasized certain posts on the list. Lastly, I suspect for now, the majority of people would not care for continuing posts, but I do plan on updating the list when need be in the future, say, around election time when all those negative adds slam Wright to slam Obama.

Politics and Faith in North Carolina

I’ve been waiting to post on J. Kameron Carter. He came by Union to speak at Columbia in mid-April from his up coming book, Race: A Theological Account — specifically the lecture was on the scientific classification of race driven by its theological roots. The video of him should be up here soon, said an email response to my query for an eta, but as one can tell they have quite a backlog and I am unsure as to when the video will actually be made available. So bug them to move the video up on their priority list.

And so, with the possibility of the video not getting posted soon, I figured I would mention an appearance by Gregory Jones, dean of Duke’s divinity school, J. Kameron Carter, professor at Duke, and William Barber II, president of North Carolina’s NAACP were on a local news show discussing faith and politics. Any time one has the opportunity to see Carter speak, I highly recommend it.

An interesting side note, when Carter came by, he mentioned a few current and future projects. If he stays on course, well, lets just say Radical Orthodoxy will get quite a critique soon. I expect such a critique will be flowing from his book to be published this summer and along the lines of “the way beyond the present isn’t always about looking in the past to move forward.”

Cone and Carter

As much as I appreciate J. Kameron Carter’s work already and look forward to his forth coming book, Race: A Theological Account, I worry that many people will simply pick up his book and begin to engage race from a contemporary starting point.

Carter is making a critique of Cone, but Carter is also indebted to Cone in a number of fundamental ways. Black theology would not exist today the way it is, if it were not for the space that Cone created (not to mention the entire tradition stretching back centuries even). I suggest that, and I myself will be doing this this summer to refresh and learn things I do not know, we must go back to reading W.E.B. DuBois and others that have carried the tradition forward. Carter, as far as I understand, is still very much in his tradition and we must seek it out. We must not be lazy. Honest theological discussion is hard work.

Also, in some respects, Carter is seeking a fulfillment to what Cone has been yelling about for years, mostly to deaf ears. Cone insists that race is a theological problem. Yet still theology by and large has avoided such a topic. Interestingly, Carter’s book, by virtue of its title alone, is addressing Cone’s direction at the same time it deconstructs and reconstructs. To understand Carter, we will need to understand Cone.

The Recent Posts on the Media Fiasco and Race and Theology

I figured it would be good for readers to be able to see all the posts I’ve done recently on this whole fiasco surrounding Wright and Obama. Heres the list so far in chronological order:

1. Obama, Race, and Theology: A theological analysis of Obama’s speech.

2. Cone on CNN?: A rumor that hasn’t seemed to have panned out unfortunately.

3. A Humble Suggestion: Suggesting a book along the title of Religion Still Matters for Cornel West.

4. Wright’s Sermon: A longer video of Dr. Wright’s sermon where he utters the infamous phrase “God damn America.”

5. Understanding Wright by Understanding Cone: Black Liberation Theology from Cone: A very short introduction to reading Cone.

6. Carter on Obama: Citing J. Kameron Carter’s response to Obama’s speech.

7. Cone Explained: How the Media, Politicos, and Others Like Them are Stupid as a Brick and Got it All Wrong: Explaining the significance of Tillichian symbolism in Cone’s work, how one should rightly understand what Cone does say, and a link to Carter’s critique.

Carter on Obama

I was looking around the internet a few minutes ago and found J. Kameron Carter’s response to Obama’s speech on the Des Moines Register.

Here is some of it:

Obama sought to narrate race in such a way as to cut to the quick of the matter: the realities of race and how the destructive effects of racism damage everyone. And rather than “transcending” race or denying the effects of racism, he called us to cast our eyes in hope toward the possibilities of what can be.

The challenge of Obama’s speech is that it advanced a politics of race that says post-racial politics cannot amount to a refusal to remember. It requires memory, even though it is more comfortable not to remember. We remember for the sake of being responsible for the present so that we can chart a new American future.

Obama had no choice but to distance himself from Wright, whose comments, when reduced to a couple of video snippets and 30-second sound bites drawn from his sermons, were racially inflammatory and politically incendiary. The reaction threatened to derail Obama’s presidential bid.

Obama’s speech therefore was arguably the most important of his political career: Its immediate objective was to rescue his campaign.

Yet the significance of Obama’s Philadelphia speech should not be measured ultimately by how it affected his run at the presidency. Rather, it should be viewed as Obama’s effort to take the American public to a new place in engaging the fraught intersection of race, religion and politics.

It is worth noting that in disavowing his former pastor’s remarks, Obama also held up his former pastor as a symbol of the larger frame of black prophetic Christianity. This Christianity is a voice of the nation’s conscience, calling us to our better lights. Black prophetic Christianity lives from hope and from a memory of America’s less-than-stellar racial past that is oriented toward America’s future possibilities.

race in the coming year

I am not a fan of new years resolutions, aside from the fact that it takes away from the Christian calendar, personally they just never fan out. Empty promises I say. However, there are two things of note that I am really looking forward to this coming year – and now they have dates – so keep an eye out for them.

First is J. Kameron Carter’s book Race: A Theological Account. It’ll be available at the end of May. Woo hoo!

The second is the Ekklesia Project’s Summer Conference. It’ll again be at De Paul, and here is the description they just sent out:

Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism and the Body of Christ
EP Summer Gathering, July 7-9, Depaul University
We approach this year’s gathering in great hope, believing that the church has been given adequate and even abundant gifts which make unity possible across the false divisions of race. We hope to explore some of those gifts and celebrate the practices of the congregations among us who are being formed graciously into a new body. We are also asking endorsers and guests to help us closely examine our own practices and institutions in order to expose and heal hidden wounds. We plan on worshiping and singing together, and on listening to one another as we encounter a difficult moral issue.

Confirmed speakers or preachers include James Lewis and Mike Budde, but we will soon announce many more. As always we offer our time together in service of the church and pray that our efforts will contribute to its unity.

Thoughts on Hermeneutics

Note: this post, like so many others, is the product of a class assignment, however, that is not to say I have not been thinking about this sort of thing on my own for quite sometime. There are clearly some holes within the post (like I say nothing about Barth and Word), but I think this begins to get to where I am currently at. Keep in mind that this also had to meet some professor specified requirements and although I have stripped away some unneccessary text for the internet, the form is still similar to what I turned in – when you wonder why I am actually looking at three views more indepth, it is because the prof wanted that. Anyways, enough talk, here are some thoughts on hermeneutics.

My Social Location and the Beginning of My Hermeneutic

In terms of social categories, I am the oppressor – Caucasian, male, and affluent. I am white and my genealogical makeup is European; it is German, Scottish, Irish, English, French Canadian and even has a hint of Icelandic red. Although my extended family has been in the North American continent for just over a century, it would seem that we have been here for longer – not because they come from old money (which they do not), instead there is a silence about the past and a sense of ownership and entitlement in the present that creates an atmosphere where the success of the past thirty years seems to re-create our entire story in terms of work and wealth. Granted there has been profound tragedy, separation between family members, and lower class status (during my parents’ childhood), however, that only serves to further the narcissism, rather than calling into question the truth of the family’s perception or bring people closer together. I come from a self-blinding family of white riches earned through the American dream and the power of oil.

Ironically, for all the money, hard work and conservative evangelical roots, my family is disconnected to say the least, and when there are relationships, they are generally warped through the lenses of patriotism, fear, imperialism, pain, wealth, and anger. I will say, that as they age, my family has developed and matured as persons (and maybe a cohesive family) in many ways, however, in the categories that Union cares about (mainly systemic oppression), my family is the quintessential oppressor – ignorant to their privilege and the pain of others.

As a Christian I have begun to react to what I see as wrong within my family and the church. I started with a problem that I saw in the evangelical church – that it lacks cohesion and relationality. Instead of brothers and sisters gathering for encouragement and support for themselves and those in the surrounding community, the church in my eyes seemed like a poorly done academic lecture with the inclusion of a popular sub-culture that had no intention of addressing the holistic needs of people. I saw to be the root of the problem to be the presupposition of individualism over community instead of the relational nature of the church acting like the body of Christ. My struggle for envisioning a right community led me towards kingdom theology – that is, the body of Christ enacting now the values of the suffering Christological and eschatological kingdom.

The church I was involved with (during my undergrad at a Bible College) was a group of believers that lived out the Christian call of prayer, preaching, and upbuilding and correction.1 I have never been so encouraged or supported in my life. I have never seen so few people meet the needs of so many people around them within the community, be it the Christian or secular communities. It is with this theology and experience that I begin my interpretations of the text.

Other Considerations – Some of My Basic Assumptions

First and foremost, we deal with a text and without access to the actual data that formed the text. Techniques of pre-rhetorical form are interesting and help one understand that the text was indeed fashioned in its own way by humans, how the text was influenced before it was written down, and as a possible indication as to the structure of the current text. Nevertheless, twenty-first century academics do not have access to the oral tradition, nor do we have access to “Q”, among other texts that would have helped form the text we have now. Method without the data itself seems a tenuous situation of theories based only on what can be dug up and thus I begin with the text that, for good or ill, Christians call Holy Scripture.

The Nature of the Text
We primarily deal with text that we find, to in some way, call scripture. The word scripture means that the text “is ‘authority’ for the common life of the Christian community.”2 And in as much scripture is authoritative for the community, “these texts are the church’s scripture”, and so this text is formative for the community, for the church – the community of faith.3 On another note, the use of the word scripture denotes “some kind of ‘wholeness” or canon.4 Thus, to call the biblical text scripture, is to say that the Bible is in some form an authoritative canon for the life of the community of faith.

As the Bible is a text, it is inherently genre specific, and best understood as a text with multiple genres – ranging from narrative, to poetic, to letter/epistle. Thus, whether reading or analyzing, it is vital to understand what genre the passage lies within; however, genre is a broad term that indicates a more detailed idea of structure like: introductions and closings, narration, story order, poetic devices (i.e. inclusio, repetition, chiasm, etc.), argumentative examples, word choice, how Paul is not writing a systematic theology and so forth. Simply put, analysis of the text as a text is incredibly important for me and, from what I can determine, is a rich tradition within the hermeneutical world and has produced: structuralism, post-structuralism, narrative criticism, rhetorical criticism, and canonical criticism to name a few.

Author, Text and Audience
Interestingly, textual criticism has run into rough waters with the advent of deconstructionism advocated by Jacques Derrida.5 Although there is a perceived demise of platonic language theory, I have found a haven within Speech-Act language theory – a theory that asserts both the author and the audience in relation to meaning are problematic, but the text does maintain meaning. This is to say that the author is inaccessible, but also on the other hand, the audience is not free to create meaning without the voice of the text; instead, the text itself retains meaning and is able to communicate meaning through clues like structure.

Elements of Interpretive Methodology from Class

Me in Relationship to Theories Presented in Class:
A great deal of the interpretive methodologies introduced, while not particularly new to me, were generally attractive to me. On the theme of liberation, I found the post-colonial, liberationist and (for lack of a better term) political-imperial criticism to be fairly interesting, if not convincing. A few summers ago I was listening to a number of recorded N. T. Wright lectures and that probably was the first time I saw the “Lord’s prayer” in a new light – a liberative light – that envisioned and cried out for the heavenly kingdom breaking into the present and against the imperial and false powers, which in that day was Rome. Even I, who am probably more on the conservative side at Union, has found a liberative reading of the Bible from a conservative, Anglican bishop. Also, I think in this context of America’s rule, I can move towards privileging a liberative reading of the Bible while still holding to my current core methodology; I see no reason why liberative readings (advocacy criticism) cannot join and mix with my current interpretive method and be more informative and compelling than a conservative, white, male, Anglican bishop. The result of the mixing would be an even richer and productive methodology for answering the true problems of the current world.

As one can probably tell, I am whole-heartedly for a communitarian hermeneutic and that it is not simply scripture alone, but also the local and universal community of faith that reads and interprets the text together. As far as redactionists, I appreciate the personal treatment given to each section of the text, be it story or sayings, however, redactionists can tend to lose the structure when they look too individually; they can lose the forest for the tree. Thus I prefer the canonical criticism approach that maintains that there is a theological/thematic center to each book and attempts to find the same for the entire Bible. As far as psycho-analytic criticism goes, I am hesitant when they attempt to characterize the author whom I do not think we can know, although I suppose an analysis of the tendencies in the text would prove interesting and likewise for the lens that the audience brings to the text. It is vital in my opinion to scrutinize the assumptions that the audience brings to the text; assumptions govern the types of questions the audience will ask and thus dictate the answers and, in the end, the theology supposedly derived from the text.

Three Theories from Class in Conversation with My Methodology:

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (Feminist)
A few years ago I would have been alarmed by feminist hermeneutics, for I was just coming from a house that had a mother who read Paul’s subordination to mean that a wife ought to submit to the husband in a conservative fashion (and she still does). Today my stance is much different, though I am still relatively new to it. At first glance I am worried by looking at a Canon within the Canon – my knee jerk reaction is that one book ought not to be subordinated to another book for no book is a second class citizen – however, I quickly realized that there is always a Canon within the Canon.6 With texts that were written in another context, and not always to us who is an audience 2,000 years later, we naturally drop all sorts of sayings and notions, no matter how literal one might pride themselves in being.

On this basis I have begun to make my peace with the hermeneutic of suspicion. When I came to Union, the view about the text seemed to say the Bible was helpful, but quickly the text turned to something largely distrusted, negative and harmful. It seemed as if the book in front of me transformed into a monster that was grabbing for my throat; I finally saw how truly the Bible could be oppressive. I called myself an egalitarian at Bible college and chided the hierarchical John Piper and Wayne Grudemn fans, but I had yet to really see the frustration from oppression – the women at the school either accepted hierarchy or rarely let out their frustration it seemed (or perhaps I just missed it). It is odd how suppression, in the guise of obedience, eliminates the reality of experience.

First and foremost I think we ought to take Paul seriously, and when we do so, we might encounter patriarchy, but we also encounter a Paul who seems to lead us towards a direction of subversion. It seems to me that Paul might have told people to stay in their place in the secular world (so as to be Christ), but he also told those whom the people are submitting to, to be submitters also. I do not think it a fluke that within the early church both women and slaves had a space to be human and free because the structures of the world were turned upside down. Paul could have been a chauvinist, or the text seems to reflect the patriarchal time in which it was written, and we should take those negatives seriously to see the humanity in the writings,7 but we should also notice that sometimes in the same breath the text moves towards freedom. Perhaps seeing a flawed text moving towards the suffering and risen eschatological kingdom is the best thing ever for those 2,000 years later who are doing the same thing within the same community of faith.

Vincent L. Wimbush (“Darkly”)
Similar to feminist criticism, the African American hermeneutic that speaks about the African American experience and church approaches the text with a heremeneutic of suspicion; however, Wimbush is not speaking about gender, but race. Wimbush seeks to show theology the African American lens so to break white theologians out of their incorrectly narrow theology – a theology that sees only the white person, for it envisions a white Jesus.8 This idea is certainly nothing new after taking Prof. Cone’s systematic class last semester, nevertheless it is still powerful every time it is used for theology still seems to exist to some degree within whiteness.

However I wonder what happens when one enters into the church – the community of faith. Does this change how we see race or gender? Certainly oppression is not sanctioned, however, what happens once within the community? I have recently encountered an essay by J. Kameron Carter of Duke Divinity School titled “Christology, or Redeeming Whiteness: A Response to James Perkinson’s Appropriation of Black Theology.”9 Certainly there is the agreement to “call the white church to a deeper faithfulness to its Lord” and that Lord’s power instead of the power of whiteness; however, liturgy, and in particular baptism, is then what?10 Carter instead understands baptism as “induction into a different mode of being in the world, one that surpasses the mode of being whose nodal points are hegemonic and counterhegemonic.”11 Best understood, the induction into the community through baptism “involves handing oneself over to God in Christ so as to receive oneself back as a gift… [and thus] to receive Christ himself” on Christ’s terms and “mission” which moves from Martin Buber’s and James Cone’s use of I-Thou and into a political body in which exists a “different way of being.”12 I bring Carter’s essay up because itself has come up in discussions I have had with others on the topic of Black Liberation theology and this essay is already in dialogue with Cone inside my head, although it is unresolved. This is the question that chases after me now, now that I have been sensitized toward racism in theology.

Historical-Critical
Historical-criticism is something I appreciate, but am largely skeptical of. I disagree with the fundamental precept that we will actually know the author of the text.13 The author to Job is indeterminable, much less when the text was written, and while many books within the New Testament are certainly closer to our time than Job, the historical author seems still beyond our reach because of Derrida and my own experience of history. One of my majors in undergrad was a history major and I wrote a thesis that involved both primary and secondary sources around a rather unknown but controversial topic.14 Through my experience I discovered the utter reliance a historian has the texts and the baggage that comes with the texts, and I began to wonder how far history can inform humanity – certainly no more than concretely than, “it was probably like this from what we can determine at this time.” Ironically, history can only speak to what it has dug up and analyzed at that time, rather than stating for once what life was like; the past is always under construction and revision.

Another concern for me is those who use history, but do not have the adequate background. For instance, I have seen, in both the pulpit and the class room, the speaker who gives too much weight to one theory, without mentioning the other theories that are equally viable, and thus the speaker incorrectly privileges the theory to look like fact – I have seen Christians do terrible history, committing moves that the historical community would laugh at, and I want to avoid the disinformation and embarrassment. Likewise, I also want to avoid elevating the privileged theory to canonical status (one might call this midrashing with history), despite how unpopular it might be here at Union. We are Christians who have a text we call scripture and we ought to deal with it as such.

I have also lately become aware of a possible problem concerning the reliance on history for theology through Jürgen Moltmann’s chapter on the nature of history in his book Theology of Hope.15 His critique about history as a philosophy of crisis seems insightful concerning many schools of history. While Moltmann’s argument may or may not have aged well and has been adequately responded to, I am still concerned that the presumptions by current philosophical history (though at least excluding the Marxist historians) can, without examination, shape theology towards the French revolution instead of the cross and resurrection.

Despite all the negativity and urge to separate the categories of theology and history, there is within me a sympathy for history and certainly a few concessions. Without the study of the past, there would be no text – Greek would be gibberish. Even for the literary person who wants to avoid historical-criticism because of the language theory critique, the translation of a text is indebted to the study of languages; without an understanding of word meaning amongst various languages of the time like Syriac and Coptic, Greek would be indecipherable.

Also, I find interesting what history does have to say. I think I have the background to envision what history is actually saying (which is always less than we think) and therefore determining what is helpful that history claims. However, I still handle history as if it is apocrypha (though I still handle it) insomuch that it is outside of the canon, because it is, and therefore also outside of the community of faith’s interpretation.

_______________
1. This church, The Church of the Servant King, is part of the “New Monastic Movement” and is committed to the church as community. They have also been largely informed by recent ecclesial writings, particularly Stanley Hauewas. The Hauerwas Reader, edited by John Berkman and Michael Carwright (Durham: Duke University, 2002), 384-385. A list of what the church is and does: charity/hospitality; valuing both the married and single equally; fiscal responsibility and leveraging of resources for the needs of people; living simply; racially diverse; inclusion of all ages; resisting the Kingdom of Evil; and the list goes on.

2. The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology by David H. Kelsey (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975) 89.

3. Ibid., 89.

4. Ibid., 89.

5. Is There A Meaning In this Text? by Kevin Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998).

6. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 14.

7. Ibid., 18.

8. “Reading Darkness, Reading Scriptures” in African Americans and The Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures by Vincent L. Wimbush (New York: Continuum), 8-9.

9. “Christology, or Redeeming Whiteness: A Response to James Perkinson’s Appropriation of Black Theology” by J. Kameron Carter, Theology Today, 60, number 4, January 2004.

10. Ibid., 526.

11. Ibid., 537.

12. Ibid., 538.

13. An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond E. Brown (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 35.

14. Titled: “Truth, Dare, and Death: Epistemological Conflict Between Quakers and Puritans in Boston, Massachusetts from 1656-1661.”

15. Theology of Hope by Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 261. Although, perhaps I would do well to review one of the books for my Historiography class, History in Crisis? by Norman J. Wilson. This paragraph is meant to speak to a concern and question that has recently popped up within the last week in relation to other classes, rather than to give an answer.