White Innocence / White Supremacy: Exploring the Theo-political Intersections of Race and Salvation
This article starts from the observation that current debates about race and racism are often couched in soteriological terms such as guilt and forgiveness, or confession and exoneration, and it argues that this overlap calls for theological analysis. Using the debate about Achille Mbembe’s disinvit...
| Published in: | Interdisciplinary journal for religion and transformation in contemporary society |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2021
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| In: |
Interdisciplinary journal for religion and transformation in contemporary society
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| Further subjects: | B
Theology
B performative race studies B Race B Soteriology B Racism B Whiteness |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article starts from the observation that current debates about race and racism are often couched in soteriological terms such as guilt and forgiveness, or confession and exoneration, and it argues that this overlap calls for theological analysis. Using the debate about Achille Mbembe’s disinvitation from the German art festival ‘Ruhrtriennale’ 2020 as a case that is typical of a specifically Western European discourse on race, it first sketches a brief genealogy of the modern/colonial history of religio-racialisation and its intersections with Christian tradition, in which racial categories were forged in soteriological discourses, and in which, in turn, soteriological categories were shaped by racist discourses. It proposes that in this process, Christianity, Whiteness and salvation were conflated in a way that has sponsored White supremacy, disguised as innocence. Engaging with performative race theory, the article concludes by making a constructive proposal for a performative theology of race that can account for the profound intersections between racism and soteriology, but also opens trajectories for transforming hegemonic discourses of race and their theological underpinnings. |
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| ISSN: | 2364-2807 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Interdisciplinary journal for religion and transformation in contemporary society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.30965/23642807-bja10022 |