This volume, a call to intellectual, theological, and moral accountability, deserves to be required reading for Christian theological ethicists. The ten essays that comprise the volume—which were first presented at a 2016 symposium on anti-blackness and Christian ethics—form a coherent whole organized in three thematic parts. One of the many strengths of the volume is that its contributors represent a variety of interpretations of Christianity, thus demonstrating the pervasiveness of anti-blackness as well as distinctive resources to construct a more adequate Christian theological ethics.
The essays effectively use the social sciences and other disciplines to analyze contemporary and historical manifestations of anti-blackness (such as policing, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement) in light of Christian theological ethics. The authors not only scrutinize the systemic anti-black distortions in the discipline, Christianity, and society but also creatively reconstruct Christian doctrines such as anthropology, soteriology, incarnation, eschatology, and others to develop the implications of the affirmation that black lives matter.
Chapters in the first thematic section, on theorizing anti-blackness, by Kelly Brown Douglas, Katie Walker Grimes, and M. Shawn Copeland lay crucial groundwork by carefully assessing the social implications of terms such as “anti-black supremacy,” “white privilege,” and others, as well as the consequences of sacralizing whiteness in society and Christianity. Undergraduates will particularly benefit from these essays, as the analyses provide accessible examples of how theoretical categories relate to individual, church, and societal practices. Santiago Slabodsky shows how anti-black supremacy is connected to coloniality and the history of racialization, and denounces the privileged role religion appropriates in limiting the boundaries of who counts as human.
The second thematic section, on black bodies and selves, features Andrew Prevot's essay on the ethics of authenticity, which is most effective when it creatively retrieves the narrative of Sojourner Truth as a resource for black selfhood. Elias Ortego-Aponte applies Niebuhr's ethics of responsibility to the spectacle of neo-lynchings of black bodies via social media. Ashon T. Crawley draws upon the movement of the character Helga Crane in Nella Larson's Quicksand, as well as the sounds of what he terms Blackpentecostal worship, to suggest an anethical approach to resisting anti-blackness.
In the third section, on the topic of black loves, Vincent W. Lloyd reclaims theological dimensions of the writings of Black Power thinkers as resources for an ethic that involves a conversion from the distortions of anti-blackness. Eboni Marshall Turman contributes a cogent denouncement of societal and church systems that manifest hatred of black girls and women, and offers an analysis of black females’ resistance evidencing a redemptive self-love. Finally, Bryan N. Massingale reflects upon the relationships between ethics of race and sex by analyzing white police sexual violence against black women and men, and the ways in which pornography makes explicit the sexual racism underlying police violence. He suggests that a theology of the Trinity may provide a way to construct a theological ethic of loving embrace across differences.
The collection as a whole lays bare the normative whiteness of almost all Christian theological ethics in this country as not merely a blind spot but as a paradigmatic malformation. It calls for the discipline to avoid characterizing anti-black supremacy as just another applied issue in the field. Instead, the essays show that anti-black supremacy remains foundational to the field itself. The authors correctly insist that anti-black supremacy should be seen as intertwined with violence, misogyny, poverty, immigration, and other concerns.
The volume is highly recommended for libraries because it contributes nuanced thinking to significant national dialogues on ongoing suffering with which US society and Christian theological ethics have yet to grapple adequately. The essays not only effectively critique church and society but also engage in the constructive task of imagining Christian symbols and doctrines in ways that affirm the truth of the conviction that black bodies, lives, and spirits do matter and deserve to flourish.
