In Critical Race Theology, religious historian Juan M. Floyd-Thomas uses a “moral historical approach” (xlii) to present a “moral theology”—a study of the “nexus of human thought, being, and action” (xxxv)—concerning the perennial crisis of US white nationalism. Like many Black liberative theologians, Floyd-Thomas critiques theologians who overlook hierarchized thinking, culture, and oppression in the United States. He uses the logic of critical race theory (CRT) to offer a moral perspective on the history of supremacist thinking and actions in the United States. He argues that supremacist thinking has distorted the mission and ministries of both predominantly white and Black churches.
The legal concepts of CRT and disestablishmentarianism serve as the organizing principles for Floyd-Thomas’s work. Rooted in critical legal realism, CRT explains how dominant forces use the law and legal systems to mask and perpetuate racial inequality and injustice. For example, CRT scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced intersectionality to uncover how the law fails to address the discrimination experienced by marginalized groups with multiple identities as the law helps create and maintain complex social hierarchies. In addition to CRT, the disestablishment of a national church or religion is the bedrock of his moral theology. For Floyd Thomas, the United States is neither completely secular nor sacred in its orientation. Although he acknowledges how the progressive-era social gospel and post-civil rights liberation theologies have combated racism, Floyd-Thomas uses the logic of CRT and disestablishmentarianism to expose US Christianity’s complicity in white and Christian supremacy.
In chapter 1, Floyd-Thomas explains the supremacist logic of racial hierarchy and religious hegemony. He reminds us how important “race” is to those racialized as white and that every mention of race is not always a discussion about racism. He encourages us to focus on “inspired” racism, which goes beyond individual acts, institutional influences, and internalized beliefs. In addition to white supremacy, he also asks us to consider how Christian supremacy has caused hostility toward religious diversity. White Christian nationalism, which functions more as an ethno-national identity rather than a religion, feeds on both supremacist logics. Chapter 2 then describes how white Christian nationalism misrepresents and mocks Christianity by replacing God with whiteness. For Floyd Thomas, the result is endless culture wars about whiteness disguised as a fight to reclaim the nation’s Christian identity.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the complicity of progressive white Christians and Black churches in white Christian nationalism. First, in chapter 3, Floyd-Thomas focuses on Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness and on the longstanding criticism by Black theologians, such as James Cone, that Niebuhr (and, by extension, other white progressive theologians) failed to address racism prior to the civil rights movement. Chapter 4 then mounts a similar critique of Black churches and theologians during the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) regarding heterosexism and sexism. BLM occurred outside institutional Black churches because many Black churchgoers were hesitant to oppose illiberal theologies that oppress women and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
Finally, in chapter 5, Floyd-Thomas wraps up by analyzing the January 6th Insurrection as an example of how the United States has accepted and sanctified violence to the point that Christians seem morally unfazed by the possibility of social death and the death of democracy. Drawing on Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Paul Sartre, and René Girard, he shows that the nation’s collective indifference toward anti-Black lynching, school gun violence, and the Mother Emmanuel Church shooting serves as a form of state-approved violence and scapegoating.
The book provides an indispensable survey of the history of the United States’s moral life in light of white and Christian supremacy. Because Floyd-Thomas explores a wide range of US history and theological movements, it may not be the best fit for an introductory undergraduate course. It is, however, a valuable addition to advanced undergraduate, seminary, and graduate theology courses focused on race and religion in the United States. Law school professors may also find the book useful in courses on jurisprudence, race and the law, or law and religion. Floyd Thomas primarily uses the logic of CRT to guide readers through a complex history of moral failures. At the end of the book, he cites Derrick Bell’s posthumously published law review essay, “Law as Religion.” In the article, Bell argues that US Americans often treat laws like religious texts and display a blind, unquestioning faith in both the law and religion. Law school professors might consider including Floyd Thomas’s book as a substitute for the in-depth religious and theological history absent from Bell’s developing argument.
