The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race

by Willie James Jennings

Zurara asks God in this prayer to grant him access to the divine design to help him interpret this clear sign of God-ordained Portuguese preeminence over black flesh. He seeks from God the kind of interpretation that would ease his conscience and make the event unfolding in front of him more morally palatable. His question seeds a problem of theodicy born out of the colonialist question bound to the colonialist project.

Both Jesus and the slaves suffer outside the city gates. Outside the city gate for Jesus meant suffering in a place designated by the Roman state for displaying its considerable power over bodies. The parallel with the slaves is remarkable. They too stand outside the city gates and mark the orchestration of the Portuguese state over their lives. This christological architecture of the sale of slaves like the Christ event signifies a similar instrumentality, a similar use of the body for the sake of the state.

Christianity will assimilate this pattern of displacement. Not just slave bodies, but displaced slave bodies, will come to represent a natural state. From this position they will be relocated into Christian identity. The backdrop of their existence will be, from this moment forward, the market.