If you are not acquainted with acclaimed Duke University Divinity School professor J. Kameron Carter’s, his intriguing work Race: A Theological Account, Oxford, 2008, is just what the doctor order to introduce you this serious scholar. To further wet your appetite and provide some insight for those who prefer it, the following is an abbreviated review by Professor Ernest Gray, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, IL., with some additional commentary by Z. M. D. McGregor.
Description
In Race: A Theological Account , J. Kameron Carter appears to be a constructive attempt to identify the origins of race and racial understanding. As such, the broad spectrum for which Carter draws from to mitigate his thesis places it in a category of its own.
The Problem. Essentially, modernity's racial imagination has been incongruently informed by an epistemology embedded in Western Christianity; a strain of Christianity that has erroneously divorced its Jewish roots and assigned an enlightenment epistemological category to the Jews as a racially oriented body. This harmful endeavor has worked much mischief into the trajectory, reasoning, and means by which Christian theology has formed and subsequently been deformed. Essentially, to racialize the Jews is to racialize Christ and establish a category which dichotomizes Christ from his flesh.
Carter's proposal. In his section, the Drama of Race, the author adopts Irenaeus' exegetical method of refutation of the Gnostics to dislodge the problematic exegetical practice that Irenaeus encountered and do so in an analogous way within the modern racial discourse. And according to Prof. Gray, this section is essential. Throughout his work, Carter will go one to engage rich luminaries, including but not limited to, Albert Raboteau, James Cone, and Charles Long, just to name a few. Like with most works, over time one can anticipate that the value of this text will be realized. Some will prefer to avoid engaging this text due to the exasperation over yet another text admonishing racial understanding. To those who would avoid Carter's treatment of the subject, one could only summarize it as unfortunate.
*Reviews
“An intellectual tour de force! This book demonstrates great intellectual range and theological imagination; it should be read by all students of theology, religious studies and African American religion and history. I have nothing but praise for this work by a young African American scholar who must be reckoned with.” –James H. Cone, Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary
“Jay Kameron Carter has written an extraordinarily insightful and sophisticated analysis of race as it has been constructed in modern philosophy and theology. His study reconceptualizes modernity and demonstrates the centrality of religion to any understanding of racism.” –Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
*Additional Reviews provided are taken from the date of it's initial release.
Book Reviewed by Ernest Gray. Post by Z.M.D. McGregor
