Arguing that at the root of modern racial thinking is the effort to constitute Western identity as overcoming its internal, Oriental Other, the Jews, in Race: A Theological Account this book engages this problem for what it is: a theological problem. This book contends that the modern race question and the modern Jewish question are linked through the theological problem of the constitution of modernity's racial imagination, a constitution grounded in Christian supersessionism, or the effort to oust all things Jewish from the Western imaginary. Filling out this imagination is whiteness, nonwhi ... More

Arguing that at the root of modern racial thinking is the effort to constitute Western identity as overcoming its internal, Oriental Other, the Jews, in Race: A Theological Account this book engages this problem for what it is: a theological problem. This book contends that the modern race question and the modern Jewish question are linked through the theological problem of the constitution of modernity's racial imagination, a constitution grounded in Christian supersessionism, or the effort to oust all things Jewish from the Western imaginary. Filling out this imagination is whiteness, nonwhiteness, and the negative anchor of the entire scheme, blackness. Beyond outlining this problem is the constructive task of reimagining Christian identity and theology beyond its tyrannical modern performance inside of whiteness. The book engages texts by patristic writers (like Maximus the Confessor), antellebum writers (like Frederick Douglass and Jarena Lee), and contemporary writers (like Michel Foucault).