Racism And The Weakness Of Christian Identity

Despite the command from Christ to love your neighbour, Western Christianity has continued to be afflicted by the evil of racism and the acts of violence that accompany it. Through a systems theoretical and deconstructive account of religion and the political theology of St. Paul, this book traces how the racism and violence of modern Western Christianity is a symptom of its failure to secure its own myth of sovereignty within a complex world of plurality. Divided into three sections, the book begins with a philosophical and critical account of what it calls the immune system of Christian identity. Focusing on Pauline political theology as reflective of an inherent religious "autoimmunity" built into Christian community, a theory of theological-political violence is located within Western Christianity. The second section traces major theoretical aspects of the historical "apparatus" of Christian Identity. It demonstrates that it is ultimately around the figure of the black slave that racialized Christian identity becomes a system of anti-blackness and white supremacy. The book concludes by offering strategies for thinking resistance against such racialised Christian identity. It does this by constructing a "pragmatics of faith" by engaging Deleuze’s and Guattari’s use of the term pragmatics, Moten’s theory of black fugitivity, and Long’s account of African American religious production. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary view of Christianity’s relationship to racism will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Theological Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Race Studies, American Studies, and Critical Theory.

According to Michael Barkun, many white supremacist groups of the radical right are deeply committed to the distinctive but little-recognized religious position known as Christian Identity. In Religion and the Racist Right (1994), Barkun provided the first sustained exploration of the ideological and organizational development of the Christian Identity movement. In a new chapter written for the revised edition, he traces the role of Christian Identity figures in the dramatic events of the first half of the 1990s, from the Oklahoma City bombing and the rise of the militia movement to the Freemen standoff in Montana. He also explores the government's evolving response to these challenges to the legitimacy of the state. Michael Barkun is professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is author of several books, including Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-over District of New York in the 1840s.

"Race over Grace" is a fascinating, critical look at a religion on the margins of modern American culture: the Christian Identity Movement. Embraced as truth by some in militia and far-right racialist groups, and by others not politically involved, Christian Identity is supported by advocates who promote such disturbing beliefs as the Jews being the literal offspring of Satan and that only Caucasians may go to heaven. In this book, Reformed scholar and pastor Dr. Charles H. Roberts examines the historical underpinnings of the movement and its better known exponents, past and present. He provides the reader with a uniquely Biblical, Reformed, evangelical analysis of the major doctrines of the movement.

Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.

This book provides an original and comprehensive assessment of the hypotheses concerning the origin of resurrection Christology. It fills a gap in the literature by addressing these issues using a transdisciplinary approach involving historical-critical study of the New Testament, theology, analytic philosophy, psychology and comparative religion. Using a novel analytic framework, this book demonstrates that a logically exhaustive list of hypotheses concerning the claims of Jesus’ post-mortem appearances and the outcome of Jesus’ body can be formulated. It addresses these hypotheses in detail, including sophisticated combinations of hallucination hypothesis with cognitive dissonance; memory distortion; and confirmation bias. Addressing writings from both within and outside of Christianity, it also demonstrates how a comparative religion approach might further illuminate the origins of Christianity. This is a thorough study of arguably the key event in the formation of the Christian faith. As such, it will be of keen interest to theologians, New Testament scholars, philosophers, and scholars of religious studies.

"The Oxford Handbook of Humanism aims to cover the history, the philosophical development, and the influence humanist thought and culture. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, and thinkers forming a humanistic response not only to traditional religion, but to the pressing social and political issues of the 21st century. To address these areas, the chapters in this volume discuss humanism as a global phenomenon-an approach that has often been neglected in more Western-focused works. The Handbook will also approach humanism as both an opponent to traditional religion as well as a philosophy that some religions have explicitly adopted. Sections are divided into regional studies, intellectual histories, humanist organizations and movements, the impact on culture, humanism in the public arena, and influence of humanism on social issues. Keywords: Humanism, atheism, unbelief, free-thought, secularism, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, history"--

Brian Bantum says that race is not merely an intellectual category or a biological fact. Much like the incarnation, it is a Òword made flesh,Ó the confluence of various powers that allow some to organize and dominate the lives of others. In this way racism is a deeply theological problem, one that is central to the Christian story and one that plays out daily in the United States and throughout the world. In The Death of Race, Bantum argues that our attempts to heal racism will not succeed until we address what gives rise to racism in the first place: a fallen understanding of our bodies that sees difference as something to resist, defeat, or subdue. Therefore, he examines the question of race, but through the lens of our bodies and what our bodies mean in the midst of a complicated, racialized world, one that perpetually dehumanizes dark bodies, thereby rendering all of us less than God's intention.

"WHITE TOO LONG draws on history, statistics, and memoir to urge that white Christians reckon with the racism of the past and the amnesia of the present to restore a Christian identity free of the taint of white supremacy"--