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The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2010
269 people are currently reading
2713 people want to read
About the author
Willie James Jennings
31 books91 followersDr. Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School. A Calvin College graduate, Jennings received his M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke.
Writing in the areas of liberation theologies, cultural identities, and anthropology, Jennings has authored more than 40 scholarly essays and nearly two-dozen reviews, as well as essays on academic administration and blog posts for Religion Dispatches.
Jennings is an ordained Baptist minister and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches. He is in high demand as a speaker and is widely recognized as a major figure in theological education across North America.
Jennings is now working on a major monograph provisionally entitled Unfolding the World: Recasting a Christian Doctrine of Creation as well as a finishing a book of poetry entitled The Time of Possession.
Writing in the areas of liberation theologies, cultural identities, and anthropology, Jennings has authored more than 40 scholarly essays and nearly two-dozen reviews, as well as essays on academic administration and blog posts for Religion Dispatches.
Jennings is an ordained Baptist minister and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches. He is in high demand as a speaker and is widely recognized as a major figure in theological education across North America.
Jennings is now working on a major monograph provisionally entitled Unfolding the World: Recasting a Christian Doctrine of Creation as well as a finishing a book of poetry entitled The Time of Possession.
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August 26, 2016
A book this is both a conceptual symphony and prophetic challenge.
February 17, 2013
This is the third book in the last year that I have read about the entanglement between Christian theology and racism. Each has provided a slightly different perspective. Each has been well-written, provocative, and original.
Much like Carter in his Race: A Theological Account, Jennings believes that the way toward racism directed against black people was paved by the church's supersessionist anti-semitism. The thesis is convincing in both accounts. For Jennings it is a fundamental flaw dating back to the early days of the Christian church that has stifled the central Christian message throughout our history and has inflicted deep wounds in the modern era.
The central Christian message should be communion -- relationships of belonging built across divides, as Gentiles are brought into relationship with Israel and Israel's God through Jesus Christ. This should have paved the way for the church to become what was enacted at Pentecost, a diverse, multi-lingual body wherein every person was treated with love, respect, and mutuality. Instead, it has become something very different.
Jennings seems to claim that the central theological symbol of Christianity in the modern age is the slave ship. And the slave ship is a terrifying distortion of Pentecost, as a cosmopolitan mix of people are brought together in a community built around violence and death, not communion and belonging.
The universal perspective of the Enlightenment has furthered the problem (Carter makes a similar point) by ignoring the particular, especially the particularity of Jewish flesh in Jesus. For Jennings the major loss of the modern era is identity shaped by relationships with the land and environment. Instead, identity is now shaped by one's racial or ethnic group, as we have become displaced from the land. His vision is that a genuine Christian communion would enact a renewed doctrine of creation, restoring our relationships with the land and environment. I would love to hear a dialogue between him and Wendell Berry.
He argues that the methodology of Christian theology is fundamentally flawed because it has incorporated the hegemony of whiteness. It must expose this history and seek to be renewed. Theology should take as its aim the promotion of genuine communion and a restoration of creation.
Along the way, Jennings' book narrates elements of the history of theology that are often overlooked, focusing on figures like Gomes Zurara, the royal chronicler of Prince Henry the Navigator; Jose de Acosta, an early Jesuit missionary to Peru; John William Colenso, an Anglican bishop in the Natal; and Olaudah Equiano, who published his slave narrative in the 18th century. The first two help to construct a modern theology of race, the third works to move beyond it but reveals how one is trapped within it, and the fourth indicates possibilities for the path forward.
I thought in a handful of places the book resonated with the systematic theology of James McClendon -- the focus on bodies, the role of jazz, the importance of biography as theology, the ecstatic fellowship of all creation.
In its emphasis on how theology has abused Jewish and black bodies, I thought more attention should have been paid to other bodies. Native and aboriginal bodies did appear in the chapter on Acosta and were mentioned elsewhere, but could have had a little more development. Female and queer bodies were non-existent. Carter and Cone, in their books on race and Christian theology, devoted significant sections to women, and Monica Coleman's Making a Way Out of No Way focused almost exclusively on it. Queer bodies were noticeably absent from all except Coleman's book. I know it wasn't a focus of this book, but it could have been mentioned, especially when talking about the role of Jewish and African-American authors and artists in creating much of America's artistic culture and referencing James Baldwin as an example.
Despite these neglects, the book is a fascinating, thought-provoking read.
Much like Carter in his Race: A Theological Account, Jennings believes that the way toward racism directed against black people was paved by the church's supersessionist anti-semitism. The thesis is convincing in both accounts. For Jennings it is a fundamental flaw dating back to the early days of the Christian church that has stifled the central Christian message throughout our history and has inflicted deep wounds in the modern era.
The central Christian message should be communion -- relationships of belonging built across divides, as Gentiles are brought into relationship with Israel and Israel's God through Jesus Christ. This should have paved the way for the church to become what was enacted at Pentecost, a diverse, multi-lingual body wherein every person was treated with love, respect, and mutuality. Instead, it has become something very different.
Jennings seems to claim that the central theological symbol of Christianity in the modern age is the slave ship. And the slave ship is a terrifying distortion of Pentecost, as a cosmopolitan mix of people are brought together in a community built around violence and death, not communion and belonging.
The universal perspective of the Enlightenment has furthered the problem (Carter makes a similar point) by ignoring the particular, especially the particularity of Jewish flesh in Jesus. For Jennings the major loss of the modern era is identity shaped by relationships with the land and environment. Instead, identity is now shaped by one's racial or ethnic group, as we have become displaced from the land. His vision is that a genuine Christian communion would enact a renewed doctrine of creation, restoring our relationships with the land and environment. I would love to hear a dialogue between him and Wendell Berry.
He argues that the methodology of Christian theology is fundamentally flawed because it has incorporated the hegemony of whiteness. It must expose this history and seek to be renewed. Theology should take as its aim the promotion of genuine communion and a restoration of creation.
Along the way, Jennings' book narrates elements of the history of theology that are often overlooked, focusing on figures like Gomes Zurara, the royal chronicler of Prince Henry the Navigator; Jose de Acosta, an early Jesuit missionary to Peru; John William Colenso, an Anglican bishop in the Natal; and Olaudah Equiano, who published his slave narrative in the 18th century. The first two help to construct a modern theology of race, the third works to move beyond it but reveals how one is trapped within it, and the fourth indicates possibilities for the path forward.
I thought in a handful of places the book resonated with the systematic theology of James McClendon -- the focus on bodies, the role of jazz, the importance of biography as theology, the ecstatic fellowship of all creation.
In its emphasis on how theology has abused Jewish and black bodies, I thought more attention should have been paid to other bodies. Native and aboriginal bodies did appear in the chapter on Acosta and were mentioned elsewhere, but could have had a little more development. Female and queer bodies were non-existent. Carter and Cone, in their books on race and Christian theology, devoted significant sections to women, and Monica Coleman's Making a Way Out of No Way focused almost exclusively on it. Queer bodies were noticeably absent from all except Coleman's book. I know it wasn't a focus of this book, but it could have been mentioned, especially when talking about the role of Jewish and African-American authors and artists in creating much of America's artistic culture and referencing James Baldwin as an example.
Despite these neglects, the book is a fascinating, thought-provoking read.
August 9, 2019
In the past 8 years since The Christian Imagination was released, I have seen a diverse group of Christians say that this is the most influential theology book of the last decade. I am not going to disagree, although I do not have the depth of theology of make that type of statement.
I do not usually quote the description of books when I am writing, but I am going to here because I cannot think of a better way to describe the book.
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.
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.
I was aware of the concept of superssionism prior to this book (the idea that Christianity superseded Judaism and replaced God’s covenant with Israel by a new covenant with the church.) But it is just not something I have thought much about. Christianity has failed to reject supersessionism clearly and there has always been a stain of supersessionism, from the overt Marcionism and Manichaeism that were both rejected as heresy, to the much more subtle replacement theology that arose later. It has really only been since World War II and the Holocaust that Christianity has widely started seeing supersessionism as a theological problem. Jennings makes the case that the ethnic prejudice against Jews that was rooted in supersessionism and was strongly present throughout the middle ages, gave theological cover for a different type of ethnic superiority that gradually developed into the concept of race and the racial hierarchies that undergirded colonialism, race-based slavery and White supremacy.
The second significant stream that Jennings explores is the lack of connection to the land. When people mostly did not move except for a few traders or pilgrims, there was a connection to the land and large scale migration and colonialism destroyed that connection.
...when the Spanish arrived, they did not arrive alone. They brought pathogens, plants, and animals: wheat, barley, fruit trees, grapevines, flowers, and especially weeds; horses, pigs, chickens, goats, cattle, attack dogs, rats, and especially sheep. The world changed—the landscape became alien, profoundly disrupted. Daily patterns that depended not only on sustaining particular uses of certain animals and plants, but also on specific patterns of movement, migration, and social practices in certain places met violent disruption or eradication. This environmental imperialism was shaped around what environmentalists call ungulate irruptions. Ungulates, “herbivores with hard horny hooves,” when introduced to lands with an overabundance of food, reacted to this wealth of food as the Spanish themselves reacted to the wealth of gold and silver: “They increase[d] exponentially until they [overshot] the capacity of the plant communities to sustain them.”31 They ate everything in sight, decimating existing crops, destroying cycles of food growth and harvest, changing the biological regime of the New World, and altering the spatial arrangements of native life.
A third point of exploration is how the concept of providence and lack of empathy and viewing of Native Americans or Africans as fully human allowed Europeans to view colonialism as providential blessing from God. "He (Acosta, a theologian in Peru during early Spanish colonialism) calculates the dramatic increase in wealth to Spain and the church as irrefutable signs of the workings of God through them not just for the propagation of the gospel but also for the financing of wars against the enemies of Christianity.” Acosta and many other Christians did not see the death and destruction brought about by colonialism as harmful but a blessing. The early Puritans did not see the widespread disease that was introduced through Spanish and other invaders that left large swaths of North and South American unpopulated as a human disaster and tragedy, but as God’s providence that opened up space for them to build new communities that were dedicated to God.
The supersessionism (replacement theology) of European Christians allowed them to not see themselves as the gentiles that were being grafted into the Jewish covenant and therefore see the native populations of North American, Africa and Asia as also gentiles just like them; instead the European Christians viewed themselves as the owners of the covenant and therefore read Old Testament as justification for destruction.
Acosta perpetuates the supersessionist mistake, but now in the New World the full power of that mistake is visible. Acosta reads the Indian as though he (Acosta) represented the Old Testament people of God bound in covenant faithfulness and taught to discern true worship from false. Acosta reads the religious practices of indigenes from the position of the ones to whom the revelation of the one true God was given, Israel. Christian theology contains at its core a trajectory of reading “as Israel,” as the new Israel joined to the body of Jesus through faith. Yet by the time Acosta performs his reading, this christological mediation has mutated into the replacement of Israel as the people that make the idea of idolatry intelligible as a primarily Christian insight.74 From this position of holding an idea of idolatry resourced solely by a supersessionist Christian vision, Acosta speculates as to the possibilities of whether Indians as pagans under the control of the devil may be led to the light.
Throughout the 15th to the 19th centuries Christians of European dissent are following in Acosta’s footsteps and are not even sure that non-Europeans can hear the gospel message, both because they are not sure if non-Europeans are fully human and if they are fully human if they are worshipers of satan. If the invaded people are worshipers of the satan and controlled by satan, then they are to be overcome, not wooed into the Christian faith. The distortion of Christianity that views non-Christians without full imageo dei does not see all of humanity as brothers and sisters because they were all created in God’s image, but only views other Christians as brothers and sisters.
Part of what Jennings is making clear in The Christian Imagination is that what happened historically was not the only historical option. There were others throughout this history that called the church to a different way of thinking, a different Christian Imagination. Sometimes it is even the same people that over time, develop a different Christian Imagination.
These comments are already too long and I cannot flesh out Jenning’s full insights into a blog post, but this is not just history, but constructive theology. Jennings is inviting the reader to reconstruct our Christian Imagination in a way that rejects supersessionism, embraces the full humanity of all and the sibling relationship to all people in and outside of the church, and to reattach ourselves to the land and sustainable human sized practices.
Immediately after reading The Christian Imagination, I started reading Jenning’s commentary on Acts, which has many similar insights but from the perspective of biblical theology. The Acts commentary is much less academic and I think would make for a good bible study, or as I used it, personal devotional reading.
I have 53 highlights on my Goodreads page if you want to get a sense of the book.
March 26, 2021
This is one of the more thought provoking and framework shifting books I have ever read. I dare say it would be impossible to read this and think about “race” the same way. And, in my view at least, it only reveals how much steeper of an uphill climb the church has ahead of it to undue the problems of race.
August 8, 2022
This is a monumental, pioneering, thought-provoking, and demanding work. Willie James Jennings explores the harrowing legacies of capitalism and colonialism and the corruption these have caused on the Christian social imaginary. Western Christianity came to regard Africans and indigenous Americans (both North and South) as less than which allowed Western Christians to dominate, enslave, and take over land for they were sharing the liberating light of the Gospel to those who wandered in darkness. This presumptive and arrogant attitude had its roots in supersessionism or "replacement theology," which asserts that the Christian Church has succeeded Israel as God's covenant people. Thus, Christian Gentiles now enjoyed the privileges of God's blessing and could find biblical justification for their conquests and colonialism. And as Europe expanded its holdings abroad, other peoples were judged based on a scale of likeness; those who were deemed to be more similar to Europeans (not just by skin colour but more so by culture and mentality) were made "white" (e.g. the Japanese) while those distantly unlike (e.g. Africans) had their very dignity as beings created in God's image undermined and were enslaved and oppressed. Jennings constructs his argument via case studies of figures such as the Jesuit José de Acosta and the former slave Olaudah Equiano and he presents creative interpretations around these figures, such as the symbolism of the Atlantic slave ship.
One of the main themes stressed by Jennings in land. Connection to the land had been one of the primary ways that peoples inculcated an identity and part of the tragedy of the slave trade and colonialism was uprooting peoples from their homeland. This rhetoric about land is present today as well, especially among First Nations (there are many events in which land acknowledgements are given: "We live and work on the unceded, ancestral lands of the..."). Yet at times I wonder how much we can really stress the importance of land. In terms of modern politics, countries that seek to preserve their cultural integrity by restricting immigration are rebuked (i.e. Hungary). I also find much that resonates with the "somewheres" who are tied to their homelands compared to the globe-trotting, mobile "anywheres" as discussed by British journalist David Goodhart. Another dilemma for me when it comes to emphasizing the connection to land is that human beings are not necessarily static; many peoples in the past were nomadic and land has been taken over throughout the centuries, even among indigenous peoples (Tlaxcala allied with the Spanish against the Aztecs who had conquered other Mesoamerican peoples and some African tribes were keen to capture other Africans to sell them to Western slavers). It is abundantly clear that Yahweh has given Israel land - the Promised Land - but it seems to me the warrant for land for other peoples can only be based (biblically, which, it's fair to point out, may not be where we need to find justification for this) on a vague verse like Acts 17:26 ("From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live"). It seems to me like a lot of justification for "natural ownership" of land (i.e. land not acquired through conquest or colonization) is, essentially, "finders keepers" (of course, don't get me wrong, I am NOT arguing in FAVOUR of colonization and who are we to deem ourselves more deserving of the land that a people has inhabited for centuries; I am rather trying to investigate the theological roots of land while, admittedly, also pointing out that often in discussions the oversimplified plot is "the West vs. the rest" which can ignore the agency of "the rest" against itself).
'The Christian Imagination' has, in a little over a decade, become a major work. Breathtaking in scope and conversant with theology, history, sociology, economics, and other fields, even if most of us find this work challenging (not only academically but emotionally), I suspect many will be exposed to its insights from the pulpit, especially as pastors lean into a cultural moment where there is a renewed focus on discussions of race. It was interesting to read Jennings critique Andrew Walls and, especially, Lamin Sanneh, and their works on translation. Jennings ends with a moving, imploring, meditation on Jesus' body and how we are united to one another through the body of the crucified Messiah.
One of the main themes stressed by Jennings in land. Connection to the land had been one of the primary ways that peoples inculcated an identity and part of the tragedy of the slave trade and colonialism was uprooting peoples from their homeland. This rhetoric about land is present today as well, especially among First Nations (there are many events in which land acknowledgements are given: "We live and work on the unceded, ancestral lands of the..."). Yet at times I wonder how much we can really stress the importance of land. In terms of modern politics, countries that seek to preserve their cultural integrity by restricting immigration are rebuked (i.e. Hungary). I also find much that resonates with the "somewheres" who are tied to their homelands compared to the globe-trotting, mobile "anywheres" as discussed by British journalist David Goodhart. Another dilemma for me when it comes to emphasizing the connection to land is that human beings are not necessarily static; many peoples in the past were nomadic and land has been taken over throughout the centuries, even among indigenous peoples (Tlaxcala allied with the Spanish against the Aztecs who had conquered other Mesoamerican peoples and some African tribes were keen to capture other Africans to sell them to Western slavers). It is abundantly clear that Yahweh has given Israel land - the Promised Land - but it seems to me the warrant for land for other peoples can only be based (biblically, which, it's fair to point out, may not be where we need to find justification for this) on a vague verse like Acts 17:26 ("From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live"). It seems to me like a lot of justification for "natural ownership" of land (i.e. land not acquired through conquest or colonization) is, essentially, "finders keepers" (of course, don't get me wrong, I am NOT arguing in FAVOUR of colonization and who are we to deem ourselves more deserving of the land that a people has inhabited for centuries; I am rather trying to investigate the theological roots of land while, admittedly, also pointing out that often in discussions the oversimplified plot is "the West vs. the rest" which can ignore the agency of "the rest" against itself).
'The Christian Imagination' has, in a little over a decade, become a major work. Breathtaking in scope and conversant with theology, history, sociology, economics, and other fields, even if most of us find this work challenging (not only academically but emotionally), I suspect many will be exposed to its insights from the pulpit, especially as pastors lean into a cultural moment where there is a renewed focus on discussions of race. It was interesting to read Jennings critique Andrew Walls and, especially, Lamin Sanneh, and their works on translation. Jennings ends with a moving, imploring, meditation on Jesus' body and how we are united to one another through the body of the crucified Messiah.
February 26, 2019
One of the hardest, most challenging, and yet formative books I have read in a long time. Jennings gets right to the roots of the diseased Christian imagination in the West. Absolutely required reading for seminaries, in my opinion.
December 22, 2020
This may be the most important theology book I have read in a long time. If I was to recommend one theology book to pastors and teachers to read right now, it would be this one.
Jennings argues the Christian imagination is deficient and he traces the roots of this to the dawn of modernity. If you have studied theology in any formal matter, you ought to be able to see the problem Jennings identifies: we move from the New Testament and early church to a bit of medieval and the scholastics then to the Reformers and the challenges of the Enlightenment. This curriculum ignores the formation of modern identity.
Jennings spends a lot of time examining history. The figures Jennings focuses on are not usual ones in a theology work. There is Jose Acosta, a Jesuit in Peri in the 1500s and then John Colenso, an Anglican in South Africa in the 1800s. Jennings also looks at the work of Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave writing in England in the late 1700s. Throughout all of this, Jennings is illustrating the way colonialism twisted Christianity.
Emerging through all of this are a few themes, primary among them is that the movement away from an emphasis on the role of Israel in scripture provides a direct line to elevating and universalizing whiteness. This supersessionism replaces Israel with the Church and enables theology to then favor national identity. Jennings illustrates this by looking at Isaac Watts translation of the Psalms, where he often substitutes “Britain” for Israel. As Israel is ignored, so to is an emphasis on geographical place. Through colonialism, Christians looked out at the world as a place to conquer and tame. Jennings thoughts here blend well with other critiques of capitalism and histories (such as McCarraher’s The Enchantment of Mammon).
In order to restore Christian imagination we must recognize the deep harm to our thinking of colonialism. Colonialism drove a wedge between land and people as well as giving a vision of a Creator endorsing the eradication of people’s way of life and the creation of private property. Colonialism turned away from identity in the resurrected Son and created an identity of assimilation into whiteness and capitalism. Our interaction with the land and other people became rooted in production and consumption.
Jennings admits near the end that his critique will be difficult to hear. We in the west simply assume capitalism is the only way to function in the world. As Christians, we assume we have Jesus all figured out for that matter (a Jesus who basically endorses neoliberal capitalism). Jennings writes:
“I want Christians to recognize the grotesque nature of a social performance of Christianity that imagines Christian identity floating above land, landscape, animals, place, and space, leaving such realities to the machinations of capitalistic calculations and the commodity changing of private property. Such Christian identity can only inevitably lodge itself in the materiality of racial existence” (293).
And:
“To change one’s way of imagining connection and one’s way of desiring joining is no small thing. Yet I am convinced that such a change is not only necessary but now stands before human communities as the only real option for survival in a world of dwindling natural resources and tightening global economic chains of commodification. To imagine along the direction I suggest in this book would be nothing less than theological act, indeed, as I suggest, a Christian act of imagining. And if, as I believe, Christian life is indeed a way forward for the world, then it must reemerge as ac impelling new invitation to life together” (294)
This is a book that deserves a much longer review. I am unable to do Jennings’ work justice. It is fantastic and I am sure I will be thinking about it, and returning to it, frequently in the future.
Jennings argues the Christian imagination is deficient and he traces the roots of this to the dawn of modernity. If you have studied theology in any formal matter, you ought to be able to see the problem Jennings identifies: we move from the New Testament and early church to a bit of medieval and the scholastics then to the Reformers and the challenges of the Enlightenment. This curriculum ignores the formation of modern identity.
Jennings spends a lot of time examining history. The figures Jennings focuses on are not usual ones in a theology work. There is Jose Acosta, a Jesuit in Peri in the 1500s and then John Colenso, an Anglican in South Africa in the 1800s. Jennings also looks at the work of Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave writing in England in the late 1700s. Throughout all of this, Jennings is illustrating the way colonialism twisted Christianity.
Emerging through all of this are a few themes, primary among them is that the movement away from an emphasis on the role of Israel in scripture provides a direct line to elevating and universalizing whiteness. This supersessionism replaces Israel with the Church and enables theology to then favor national identity. Jennings illustrates this by looking at Isaac Watts translation of the Psalms, where he often substitutes “Britain” for Israel. As Israel is ignored, so to is an emphasis on geographical place. Through colonialism, Christians looked out at the world as a place to conquer and tame. Jennings thoughts here blend well with other critiques of capitalism and histories (such as McCarraher’s The Enchantment of Mammon).
In order to restore Christian imagination we must recognize the deep harm to our thinking of colonialism. Colonialism drove a wedge between land and people as well as giving a vision of a Creator endorsing the eradication of people’s way of life and the creation of private property. Colonialism turned away from identity in the resurrected Son and created an identity of assimilation into whiteness and capitalism. Our interaction with the land and other people became rooted in production and consumption.
Jennings admits near the end that his critique will be difficult to hear. We in the west simply assume capitalism is the only way to function in the world. As Christians, we assume we have Jesus all figured out for that matter (a Jesus who basically endorses neoliberal capitalism). Jennings writes:
“I want Christians to recognize the grotesque nature of a social performance of Christianity that imagines Christian identity floating above land, landscape, animals, place, and space, leaving such realities to the machinations of capitalistic calculations and the commodity changing of private property. Such Christian identity can only inevitably lodge itself in the materiality of racial existence” (293).
And:
“To change one’s way of imagining connection and one’s way of desiring joining is no small thing. Yet I am convinced that such a change is not only necessary but now stands before human communities as the only real option for survival in a world of dwindling natural resources and tightening global economic chains of commodification. To imagine along the direction I suggest in this book would be nothing less than theological act, indeed, as I suggest, a Christian act of imagining. And if, as I believe, Christian life is indeed a way forward for the world, then it must reemerge as ac impelling new invitation to life together” (294)
This is a book that deserves a much longer review. I am unable to do Jennings’ work justice. It is fantastic and I am sure I will be thinking about it, and returning to it, frequently in the future.
May 12, 2023
Nothing like it.
May 6, 2022
Now having read his Acts commentary, After Whiteness and this book, I can tell you definitively that no one conducts the theological task like Willie Jennings. No one puts so much into the pages they write -- so much energy and pain, so many wounds and painstaking erudition.
February 20, 2021
"To change one's way of imagining connection and one's way of desiring joining is no small thing." (294)
Published in 2010, this is one of those books that is held up as a classic of contemporary theological studies. It's a deep, detailed dive into the ways the Christian imagining of creation has contorted itself in justifying colonialism, slavery, oppression. It's very much an academic book (60 pages of footnotes!), but it's truly essential reading for understanding the conversation in studies of theology and race.
Published in 2010, this is one of those books that is held up as a classic of contemporary theological studies. It's a deep, detailed dive into the ways the Christian imagining of creation has contorted itself in justifying colonialism, slavery, oppression. It's very much an academic book (60 pages of footnotes!), but it's truly essential reading for understanding the conversation in studies of theology and race.
February 6, 2020
Normally when I rate 5 stars AND write a review, it means I’m recommending the book to everyone. The situation is more complicated with Jennings’s masterpiece. This book is extremely difficult intellectually. It requires not only intellect and interest in the subject, but slow, careful reading and the patience and willingness to theologically reflect.
BUT if the stars align and you’re on board, there is perhaps no book I could recommend more highly. Jennings takes you to four critical moments in colonialist history and explores how Christian theology worked in tandem with European colonialism to:
— Remove place/land as sources of peoples’ identities and create the racial scale to facilitate new identities from the vantage point of whiteness
— Translate the Bible into new languages as part of a process that also translated people into enslaved black bodies and land into private property
— Offer a deformed “salvation” that could do nothing to change the realities of enslavement and commodification
— Etc.
This may prove to be one of the most formative books I read in my entire life. If you do take up the gauntlet, I hope it is as powerful for you!
BUT if the stars align and you’re on board, there is perhaps no book I could recommend more highly. Jennings takes you to four critical moments in colonialist history and explores how Christian theology worked in tandem with European colonialism to:
— Remove place/land as sources of peoples’ identities and create the racial scale to facilitate new identities from the vantage point of whiteness
— Translate the Bible into new languages as part of a process that also translated people into enslaved black bodies and land into private property
— Offer a deformed “salvation” that could do nothing to change the realities of enslavement and commodification
— Etc.
This may prove to be one of the most formative books I read in my entire life. If you do take up the gauntlet, I hope it is as powerful for you!
July 9, 2019
A demanding but fascinating read about race, theology, mission, and history.
June 25, 2021
As a white American Christian, I’ve often looked around and asked myself “how did we get here?” I’ve been repeatedly drawn to history to try to understand. I’ve been baffled, I’ve been surprised, I’ve been shocked. I’ve found it very difficult to hold competing truths together, like “the greatest American theologian Jonathan Edwards” made a multi-day journey for the sole purpose of spending a third-of his yearly pastor’s salary on a fourteen year old girl, enslaving her. If his theology (for the most part *my* theology(!) made no discernible difference in one of the most pressing practical ethical issues of his day, what good is that theology? What went wrong and where can I go for answers?
Sometimes these questions take a particularly “reformed” flavor, as we consider the relationship between reformed theology in America and white-supremacy. Robert Lewis Dabney wrote The Five Points of Calvinism, a book so “good” that Desiring God recommends it. But Dabney was also a white-supremacist and slavery apologist. Did his reformed theology cause his white-supremacy? Or was his racism “in spite of” his “good theology”? Or did his white-supremacy shape and form his theology in obvious or subtle ways? But why, if the theology is so “good,” did it not substantively change his heart and life and actions? Brian Brock’s academic review of the book gets at this: “Given the historical perseverance of racialised cultural constructions it seems odd, to say the least, that Christian theologians seem never to have gotten to the bottom of the problem. More pointedly, they seem not to have even made a beginning in analysing it.”
Questions like these will drive you down to the core of theology, identity, and belonging, and it is in this space that Willie James Jennings has worked for years. To be clear, he is not directly answering my questions articulated above, but his work does, in its own way, expose the very core of these issues. Interestingly, he starts in 1444, over a half-century before the “Reformation” began, and by uncovering the theological planks in the ships of European empire and colonialism, he gets down to the roots of “how we got here.”
Jennings pushes us into a deep consideration of “place” and connection to the land. He critiques a too-easy supercessionism in which “Christian nations” and even churches flatly appreciate the promises to Israel. Ultimately, Jennings points us to Jesus, and it was in these places that I found my oft-disoriented faith confirmed and grounded again.
The book is expansively broad and deep, and I must admit, much of it went over my head. I was grasping at conceptual trajectories and barely, if at all, hanging on. I deeply enjoyed the last two chapters, though it all was enlightening. This is a book that would repay multiple readings.
Sometimes these questions take a particularly “reformed” flavor, as we consider the relationship between reformed theology in America and white-supremacy. Robert Lewis Dabney wrote The Five Points of Calvinism, a book so “good” that Desiring God recommends it. But Dabney was also a white-supremacist and slavery apologist. Did his reformed theology cause his white-supremacy? Or was his racism “in spite of” his “good theology”? Or did his white-supremacy shape and form his theology in obvious or subtle ways? But why, if the theology is so “good,” did it not substantively change his heart and life and actions? Brian Brock’s academic review of the book gets at this: “Given the historical perseverance of racialised cultural constructions it seems odd, to say the least, that Christian theologians seem never to have gotten to the bottom of the problem. More pointedly, they seem not to have even made a beginning in analysing it.”
Questions like these will drive you down to the core of theology, identity, and belonging, and it is in this space that Willie James Jennings has worked for years. To be clear, he is not directly answering my questions articulated above, but his work does, in its own way, expose the very core of these issues. Interestingly, he starts in 1444, over a half-century before the “Reformation” began, and by uncovering the theological planks in the ships of European empire and colonialism, he gets down to the roots of “how we got here.”
Jennings pushes us into a deep consideration of “place” and connection to the land. He critiques a too-easy supercessionism in which “Christian nations” and even churches flatly appreciate the promises to Israel. Ultimately, Jennings points us to Jesus, and it was in these places that I found my oft-disoriented faith confirmed and grounded again.
The book is expansively broad and deep, and I must admit, much of it went over my head. I was grasping at conceptual trajectories and barely, if at all, hanging on. I deeply enjoyed the last two chapters, though it all was enlightening. This is a book that would repay multiple readings.
April 10, 2023
Jennings does a remarkable job demonstrating how the origins of race are woven together with Christian thought throughout history. Although it can be easy to get lost in Jennings thoughts, he created an immersive experience for readers to understand how others came to their conclusions throughout the ages.
The final chapter and conclusion help the reader to see that there is indeed a way forward for the Christian Imagination. Jennings envisions a world where the idea of race is a concept of the past, which can help Christians engage with current conversations and imagine a world in which we are not displaced, but instead focused on our unity in the Kingdom of God.
The final chapter and conclusion help the reader to see that there is indeed a way forward for the Christian Imagination. Jennings envisions a world where the idea of race is a concept of the past, which can help Christians engage with current conversations and imagine a world in which we are not displaced, but instead focused on our unity in the Kingdom of God.
July 8, 2021
I suppose I should begin by saying that this book is not about race, but rather it uses the development of a racialized worldview as a case study for how the work of theology has been diseased by power and appetite. For that reason it is a work of theological genius, even if some of Jennings' points are a bit overstressed and underdeveloped. He is getting under the whole of Western thought to expose the deformed social imagination we've inherited while trying to point the way forward to a new way of faithfulness to Jesus and his kingdom.
This is not an easy book to read for multiple reasons, but it is an important one, maybe the most important work of theology in America in the last ten years (I claim no expertise in this matter). Theology at its best is relational, but we've made it entirely pedagogical and have therefore removed it from the life of the church. This book helps it come back to us.
This is not an easy book to read for multiple reasons, but it is an important one, maybe the most important work of theology in America in the last ten years (I claim no expertise in this matter). Theology at its best is relational, but we've made it entirely pedagogical and have therefore removed it from the life of the church. This book helps it come back to us.
May 20, 2020
Thought-provoking book, unearthing insidious ways in which non-biblical colonial persuasions have infiltrated Christian thought. It's a book I will re-read a few times.
June 16, 2022
This rating would have been 5 stars if not for the extraordinarily dense writing. The ideas Willie James Jennings discusses in this book are seminal, original, and extremely important. Unfortunately, in order to approach and absorb these ideas, one has to get through sentences like this: "The multiple levels of translation, that is, of transference, transformation, transliteration of land, animals, space, language, and bodies mean that worlds overlap and in that overlap they are altered irrevocably, hybridized, and cross-pollinated."
June 15, 2015
Jennings' claims in his conclusion are laudatory and necessary, I just find the historical argument he builds so limited as to be unconvincing and his prose heavily theory laden, repetitive, and tedious.
If only all his prose was as clear as this:
"I anticipate some resistance to the fundamental claim of this work, that Christian social imagination is diseased and disfigured. In making such a claim I am not saying that the church is lost, moribund, or impotent. Rather, I want my readers to capture sight of a loss, almost imperceptible, yet articulated powerfully in the remaining slender testimonies of Native American peoples and other aboriginal peoples. This loss points not only to deep psychic cuts and gashes in the social imaginary of western peoples, but also to an abiding mutilation of a Christian vision of creation and our own creatureliness. The loss is nothing less than the loss of a sense of our own creatureliness. I want Christians to recognize the grotesque nature of a social performance of Christianity that imagines Christian identity floating above land, landscape, animals, place, and space, leaving such realities to the machinations of capitalistic calculations and the commodity chains of private property. Such Christian identity can only inevitably lodge itself in the materiality of racial existence."
If only all his prose was as clear as this:
"I anticipate some resistance to the fundamental claim of this work, that Christian social imagination is diseased and disfigured. In making such a claim I am not saying that the church is lost, moribund, or impotent. Rather, I want my readers to capture sight of a loss, almost imperceptible, yet articulated powerfully in the remaining slender testimonies of Native American peoples and other aboriginal peoples. This loss points not only to deep psychic cuts and gashes in the social imaginary of western peoples, but also to an abiding mutilation of a Christian vision of creation and our own creatureliness. The loss is nothing less than the loss of a sense of our own creatureliness. I want Christians to recognize the grotesque nature of a social performance of Christianity that imagines Christian identity floating above land, landscape, animals, place, and space, leaving such realities to the machinations of capitalistic calculations and the commodity chains of private property. Such Christian identity can only inevitably lodge itself in the materiality of racial existence."
September 19, 2016
Certainly one of the most important books I have read this year, Jennings makes a profound case that is conversant in the fields of history, economics, anthropology, sociology, and, of course, theology, while being painstakingly-researched and footnoted. If he is right, and the burden of proof will now lie on those who are contesting his claims here, then his work needs to be taken seriously by anyone in ministry, or even simply those desiring to follow Jesus in the West.
Like many people, I suspect, I've had a nagging feeling that racial tensions are staggeringly deep and rooted in a history that is vaguely communicated, at best, and intentionally misleading, at worst. Jennings has helped me to "clear the air" and see our history for what it is: deeply stratified along racial lines, which has been supported on theological grounds throughout the colonial era. By weaving together our attitudes towards land, language, capital, and religion, Jennings has punched a massive hole in the segregationist rhetoric that we typically employ in the church today. If you can swallow pretty heavily academic prose, then read this book!
Like many people, I suspect, I've had a nagging feeling that racial tensions are staggeringly deep and rooted in a history that is vaguely communicated, at best, and intentionally misleading, at worst. Jennings has helped me to "clear the air" and see our history for what it is: deeply stratified along racial lines, which has been supported on theological grounds throughout the colonial era. By weaving together our attitudes towards land, language, capital, and religion, Jennings has punched a massive hole in the segregationist rhetoric that we typically employ in the church today. If you can swallow pretty heavily academic prose, then read this book!
April 21, 2020
A thoughtful and erudite historical and theological analysis of the interrelationships between racism, capitalism, and Christian theology. Jennings argues that a more properly developed and more biblical theology would have better resisted the drift toward colonialism and white supremacy. This book is not an easy read for multiple reasons. I am in no position to offer any kind of critique here, but I will say there is much in Jennings’ careful analysis worth pondering, not the least of which is the lasting damage caused by the doctrines of supersessionism and adoptionism.
Adam wrote a great review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Adam wrote a great review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
November 3, 2016
This is amazing content! It is very heady, and it takes a lot of effort to study and understand the concepts suggested. But I think that it is worth the effort, especially in light of the racial conflict and tension that we are seeing daily.
October 23, 2020
This one is going to take me a while to digest (and likely require a reread). Very relevant, worthwhile, and put together with both nuance and relentless purpose.
December 15, 2021
Jennings’ book has been called “brilliant”, a “theological masterpiece,” at one point, one might have called it a “tour de force.” No doubt it is, but I must sheepishly admit, this was a *really* difficult book for me to read and understand.
Jennings contends that in the telling of Christian theological history, we usually weave the thread through the councils, medieval church, Reformation, scholasticism and Enlightenment and so on. But we have left a gaping and crucial hole: COLONIALISM.
Colonialism was not only a nationalistic and capitalistic venture, but it was deeply THEOLOGICAL—and the theological imagination birthed out of the colonialist period helped birth what we now know as RACE.
Race, as a category, began not merely about superiority/inferiority, but about “like us” vs “not like us”. As Western colonialists ventured out, those they considered more “like us”, they ended up deeming “White;” those least “like us”, they ended up deeming “Black.” Everyone, from Japanese to Senegalese to Native Americans were evaluated on this racial spectrum, from “closest” to us to “furthest” from us.
The main theological question born out of the colonialist project then was: How can we get those “furthest” from us to become more “like us.” (Hint: Blacks & Natives must always be brought closer, but given their racial difference, could never become sufficiently “like us.”)
This betrayed two errors:
FIRST, people were branded with identities no longer as God’s image bearers in the context of their LAND, but first and foremost based on the Western-centric conception of RACE, that is more/less like “us.”
SECOND, this revealed that Western Christians began to see THEMSELVES as the center of God’s plan, rather than as Gentiles grafted into Israel; the goal was no longer to become more like the Jewish Messiah, , Jesus, but for the non-Western world to become more like them. Jennings identifies this theological error with SUPERCESSIONISM. (Side note: See how we ended up with White Jesus?)
Together, this gave the theological framework for God’s chosen people (the Western colonialist church) to conquer and possess other people and lands, since they were the central vehicle of God’s mission on earth.
The solution, Jennings suggests, is that we must (1) re-attend to geographical spaces as places of identity formation and hospitality rather than separation and mere capitalist consumption (2) that the Church must reconnect with Israel, recognizing that WE are those “once were far but have been brought near”, so that we have the humility to pursue a truly new co-equal humanity with others in Christ.
My thoughts: While I found Jennings’ analysis very helpful (a far cry from cartoonish racism), I’m less warm on his solution.
Can we really completely reshape our geographical spaces? In our society, land IS money/power, I’m skeptical that any reshaping will do much more than move the chairs on the Titanic.
I found his call for the Church to re-embrace our status as Gentiles humbling and thoroughly biblical (Eph 2:11f). But his call to reconnect with Israel? What does that even mean today? Many Jews are (justifiably) suspicious of Christians. And the modern state of Israel is complicit of many of the same sins as the Western Church.
Jennings contends that in the telling of Christian theological history, we usually weave the thread through the councils, medieval church, Reformation, scholasticism and Enlightenment and so on. But we have left a gaping and crucial hole: COLONIALISM.
Colonialism was not only a nationalistic and capitalistic venture, but it was deeply THEOLOGICAL—and the theological imagination birthed out of the colonialist period helped birth what we now know as RACE.
Race, as a category, began not merely about superiority/inferiority, but about “like us” vs “not like us”. As Western colonialists ventured out, those they considered more “like us”, they ended up deeming “White;” those least “like us”, they ended up deeming “Black.” Everyone, from Japanese to Senegalese to Native Americans were evaluated on this racial spectrum, from “closest” to us to “furthest” from us.
The main theological question born out of the colonialist project then was: How can we get those “furthest” from us to become more “like us.” (Hint: Blacks & Natives must always be brought closer, but given their racial difference, could never become sufficiently “like us.”)
This betrayed two errors:
FIRST, people were branded with identities no longer as God’s image bearers in the context of their LAND, but first and foremost based on the Western-centric conception of RACE, that is more/less like “us.”
SECOND, this revealed that Western Christians began to see THEMSELVES as the center of God’s plan, rather than as Gentiles grafted into Israel; the goal was no longer to become more like the Jewish Messiah, , Jesus, but for the non-Western world to become more like them. Jennings identifies this theological error with SUPERCESSIONISM. (Side note: See how we ended up with White Jesus?)
Together, this gave the theological framework for God’s chosen people (the Western colonialist church) to conquer and possess other people and lands, since they were the central vehicle of God’s mission on earth.
The solution, Jennings suggests, is that we must (1) re-attend to geographical spaces as places of identity formation and hospitality rather than separation and mere capitalist consumption (2) that the Church must reconnect with Israel, recognizing that WE are those “once were far but have been brought near”, so that we have the humility to pursue a truly new co-equal humanity with others in Christ.
My thoughts: While I found Jennings’ analysis very helpful (a far cry from cartoonish racism), I’m less warm on his solution.
Can we really completely reshape our geographical spaces? In our society, land IS money/power, I’m skeptical that any reshaping will do much more than move the chairs on the Titanic.
I found his call for the Church to re-embrace our status as Gentiles humbling and thoroughly biblical (Eph 2:11f). But his call to reconnect with Israel? What does that even mean today? Many Jews are (justifiably) suspicious of Christians. And the modern state of Israel is complicit of many of the same sins as the Western Church.
February 25, 2021
This book was an entirely new experience for me. I read it for my Theology of Race course under Dr. Jacob Lett at MidAmerica Nazarene University. Over the past three years, I have had lots of exposure to the pop conversation around race. This is not that.
In this book, Jennings takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the history of colonial expansion and its effects on the colonized peoples of Africa and the Americas. Each chapter is spattered with primary source excerpts from the events covered, and he points out the overlooked ways in which colonial thought and action irreversibly shaped the development of theology (particularly in the West). I absolutely loved the dense and in-depth coverage of rarely-talked-about historical events which Jennings sees as having more importance than most people realize.
The reason I give it four stars is because of the excessive wordiness of his writing. He often says in a complex string of sentences what could have been clearly stated in one.
If I had to summarize what I understood to be his thesis, it would be this: The systematic stripping of people from their land removed from them their source of identity. Their identity was, as a result, placed in their colored bodies. The white ownership of Africans as slaves further mutilated their identity, placing it inside that of their white land-owning master as his property. This destruction of identity and resulting warping of theological thought is the primary reason we face so many of the racial challenges we face today.
Jennings contends that the only way to move forward from this is to remove our identities from our bodies (and the bodies of others) and collectively place our identities into the body of Jesus, the Jew, in whom we all are identified.
He ends the book by acknowledging that this seems like an idealistic vision, but he refuses to give trite solutions and maintains that this vision is the only way to progress from the point we find ourselves. Essentially, he gives the church a new theological framework to work from, and he leaves it in the hands of the practical theologians, pastors, and laypeople to carry out this task in its concrete forms.
In this book, Jennings takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the history of colonial expansion and its effects on the colonized peoples of Africa and the Americas. Each chapter is spattered with primary source excerpts from the events covered, and he points out the overlooked ways in which colonial thought and action irreversibly shaped the development of theology (particularly in the West). I absolutely loved the dense and in-depth coverage of rarely-talked-about historical events which Jennings sees as having more importance than most people realize.
The reason I give it four stars is because of the excessive wordiness of his writing. He often says in a complex string of sentences what could have been clearly stated in one.
If I had to summarize what I understood to be his thesis, it would be this: The systematic stripping of people from their land removed from them their source of identity. Their identity was, as a result, placed in their colored bodies. The white ownership of Africans as slaves further mutilated their identity, placing it inside that of their white land-owning master as his property. This destruction of identity and resulting warping of theological thought is the primary reason we face so many of the racial challenges we face today.
Jennings contends that the only way to move forward from this is to remove our identities from our bodies (and the bodies of others) and collectively place our identities into the body of Jesus, the Jew, in whom we all are identified.
He ends the book by acknowledging that this seems like an idealistic vision, but he refuses to give trite solutions and maintains that this vision is the only way to progress from the point we find ourselves. Essentially, he gives the church a new theological framework to work from, and he leaves it in the hands of the practical theologians, pastors, and laypeople to carry out this task in its concrete forms.
July 10, 2023
Maybe the most depressing and most important book on theology I've read yet?
Growing up in Canada, I've realized in adulthood how isolated I was from antisemitism and its effects. In particular I've been wrestling a lot with Chritianity's approach to Judaism and the way my tradition often had a consumptive, colonialist attitude to Jewish beliefs and practices. Combined with Protestantism's evangelical obsession, one begins to wonder how Christianity can learn to live side-by-side with Judaism without continuing to inflict harm.
Willie James Jennings' "The Christian Imagination" sees Christianity's antisemitism as the Original Wound of modern racism, and traces how theology evolved along with the colonial movement to develop an attitude of race and the categorization and denigration of fellow human beings. In so doing, strains of thought that had their origin in antisemitism infect the whole framework of faith and skew the entire project astray. Jennings compelling depicts the disease inherent in Western Christianity's thinking by telling the stories of a few central historical figures and exploring their context, intents, and fallouts. In his final chapter, Jennings brings everything to the present and asks how we might fix the problem. Following in the footsteps of Brueggemann, Jennings paints an image of humble unity to work towards rather than supplying a simple ten-step plan. "The Christian Imagination," for all its weight, is still just the beginning of a conversation - one that has been a very long time coming, and one that will probably continue for just as long. It is imperative that we act sooner rather than later and begin undoing the damage we have caused.
Growing up in Canada, I've realized in adulthood how isolated I was from antisemitism and its effects. In particular I've been wrestling a lot with Chritianity's approach to Judaism and the way my tradition often had a consumptive, colonialist attitude to Jewish beliefs and practices. Combined with Protestantism's evangelical obsession, one begins to wonder how Christianity can learn to live side-by-side with Judaism without continuing to inflict harm.
Willie James Jennings' "The Christian Imagination" sees Christianity's antisemitism as the Original Wound of modern racism, and traces how theology evolved along with the colonial movement to develop an attitude of race and the categorization and denigration of fellow human beings. In so doing, strains of thought that had their origin in antisemitism infect the whole framework of faith and skew the entire project astray. Jennings compelling depicts the disease inherent in Western Christianity's thinking by telling the stories of a few central historical figures and exploring their context, intents, and fallouts. In his final chapter, Jennings brings everything to the present and asks how we might fix the problem. Following in the footsteps of Brueggemann, Jennings paints an image of humble unity to work towards rather than supplying a simple ten-step plan. "The Christian Imagination," for all its weight, is still just the beginning of a conversation - one that has been a very long time coming, and one that will probably continue for just as long. It is imperative that we act sooner rather than later and begin undoing the damage we have caused.
December 19, 2017
A treasure trove of theologically-based examinations of the formation of race originating in the colonialist period. Beginning with a discussion of Christian missions work in South Africa, Latin America, North America, etc., Jennings sets out a foundation for understanding the conception of race based on identity, land, and race — ultimately highlighting their inextricability. He emphasizes the importance of land in the shaping of one’s identity and how moving away from that (displacement) is detrimental. Capitalism + colonialism = commodification, specifically as it relates to racialized bodies. Role of indigenous Christian faith and its implications for today’s culture in the adoption of that framework/faith.
So many complexities and intricacies to mull over, especially as Jennings adds this unique perspective to the mix. A discussion of land, place, identity, race and a connection to our reading of the OT Israel and the Christian Church as a metaphor of our own impulse to “re-read.” So much historical background at the start that it was quite dense/heady to get immediately interested, but subsequent chapters only get better and tie it all back together by the end. One to re-read soon enough!
So many complexities and intricacies to mull over, especially as Jennings adds this unique perspective to the mix. A discussion of land, place, identity, race and a connection to our reading of the OT Israel and the Christian Church as a metaphor of our own impulse to “re-read.” So much historical background at the start that it was quite dense/heady to get immediately interested, but subsequent chapters only get better and tie it all back together by the end. One to re-read soon enough!
April 18, 2020
Jennings weaves together various narratives of colonial incursion into the lives of indigenous and/or 'African' people in order to give the reader a sense of how race was constructed and understood, which largely amounted to the displacement of or assimilation of the other to the hegemonic category of whiteness. Must like Carter, he argues that supersessionist strategies (the replacement of Israel with the Church) were a significant theological culprit in promoting whiteness as the 'place' where the other was defined. The last chapter then offers a corrective which grounds the identity of the church in the Jewishness of Jesus and thus in Israel's story. While a difficult and painful book as it recalls stories of horror and evil, this is essential reading for those who wish to look critically at the understanding of race that we have inevitably received.
October 13, 2020
A friend suggested this book to me as I began anew to think about race (as many have) in the midst of the renewed conversations about race in the wake of unspeakable tragedies involving the loss of life in the Black community in America this year. As I lamented the seeming lack of robust Christian academic though in this area, this book was a breath of fresh air. Jennings provided a narrative of the theological origins of race steeped in rigorous academic thought. While I’m not sure I agree with all of his presuppositions (another more careful read is in order!), his vision of what the Christian imagination ought to lead to in this is compelling. A dream of a people united in Christ is one fighting for in our world of increased division.
May 25, 2017
Reading Dr. Jennings book was like being with this amazing, trailblazing guide who could see things I would have never recognized. There were amazing vistas, confounding paths, and heart-breaking valleys. Most of this work I will need to think about and reread in the months to come before I can say what I have learned, not learned, etc.
Somewhere in the last 75 to 80 pages of the book, Dr. Jennings left me. I back tracked. I moved carefully forward. No joy. Once or twice I picked up his trail only to lose it again. By the conclusion of the book I was lost. I have no clue where Dr. Jennings went, but I couldn't seem to follow no matter how hard I tried. *sigh*
Somewhere in the last 75 to 80 pages of the book, Dr. Jennings left me. I back tracked. I moved carefully forward. No joy. Once or twice I picked up his trail only to lose it again. By the conclusion of the book I was lost. I have no clue where Dr. Jennings went, but I couldn't seem to follow no matter how hard I tried. *sigh*
February 23, 2021
What a challenging but important read! I read this for a Race and Theology class.
I suggest that if you read this book:
DO read the introduction. The rest of the book is pretty much a historical and theological background to make sense of the stories he mentions in the intro.
DON’T stop going when the reading is difficult intellectually and emotionally. It’s not an easy read.
DO understand that the point of this book is not so much to provide a step-by-step framework for solving racism as it is a realistic way to view our world and Christianity as it has been influenced by racism over history. It is also a reminder of how desperately we need to take the words ”being of one identity in Christ.”
I suggest that if you read this book:
DO read the introduction. The rest of the book is pretty much a historical and theological background to make sense of the stories he mentions in the intro.
DON’T stop going when the reading is difficult intellectually and emotionally. It’s not an easy read.
DO understand that the point of this book is not so much to provide a step-by-step framework for solving racism as it is a realistic way to view our world and Christianity as it has been influenced by racism over history. It is also a reminder of how desperately we need to take the words ”being of one identity in Christ.”
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