Rhetoric Race and Religion
Evangelical theology in the United States is often racialized. Racialization pertains to race’s impact on education, health care, job placement, place of living, urban planning, and so forth.
When I speak of Evangelical theology as racialized, I am not thinking primarily of what we say and write about race, but of what we don’t articulate and possibly assume. In other words, it is not always the black print, but the white backdrop on the page that makes a theology white. Such racialized theology can occur in various ways.
A given theology might not address the issues of race. It may be the case that the theologian in question assumes that race has nothing to do with theology or that we live in a post-racialized society. To the contrary, theology had everything to do with America’s heinous, historic capitulation to racism and slavery. The Bible and theology were used as justifications for the promulgation and promotion of slavery. Moreover, if we don’t address race, but think that we live in a post-racialized society or that by addressing the subject, we only make matters worse, we fail to account for the tendency to proceed by way of our predominant, homogeneous tendencies and inclinations.
Read the rest here
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In