A God Worth Worshiping: Toward a Critical Race Theology
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Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Dissertations (1934 -) Projects A God Worth Worshiping: Toward a Critical Race Theology Duane Terrence Loynes Sr. Marquette University Follow this and additional works at: https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Ethnic Studies Commons Recommended Citation Loynes, Duane Terrence Sr., "A God Worth Worshiping: Toward a Critical Race Theology" (2017). Dissertations (1934 -). 738. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/738 A GOD WORTH WORSHIPING: TOWARD A CRITICAL RACE THEOLOGY by Duane Terrence Loynes Sr., B.A., M.A., M.A. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin August 2017 ABSTRACT A GOD WORTH WORSHIPING: TOWARD A CRITICAL RACE THEOLOGY Duane Terrence Loynes Sr., B.A., M.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2017 Theologian James Cone has declared that White supremacy is the American Church’s greatest, original, and most persistent sin. Although the Church has engaged in numerous attempts to remedy racism, theology still seems to witness to a God that stands relatively unopposed to the status quo of racial injustice and marginalization. This dissertation begins with the claim that Christian theology still operates from the normativity of whiteness. I will argue that, although the Church has made admirable progress with regard to racial justice, the attempts have been at the surface: the underlying structural logic of White supremacy remains intact. My thesis will be that the systemic problem in North American Christianity of a persistent “White privileged theology” or “normalized whiteness” can best be eliminated by constructing a theological response in classical categories—theodicy, anthropology, and epistemology. A black existential phenomenological approach—perhaps best illustrated in the work of Lewis R. Gordon—and the intersectional analysis exemplified in critical race studies, offer significant promise for exposing and correcting the existing methodological privilege of White theology. First, this project begins with the challenge presented in William. R. Jones’ Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology. In this provocative work, Jones contends that Black suffering vis-à-vis God’s divine justice should form the methodological core of any theology that purports to support economic, social, and political justice. In taking up Jones’ challenge, I argue that the theodical question can be foregrounded without the humanist conclusions that Jones draws. Second, I look at the anthropological question of who counts as human before God. Focusing on how scholars of color have always prioritized an anthropological structuring of humanity that does not traffic in universal notions of value, I argue for a theological anthropology that specifically opposes the dehumanizing axiological systems that denigrate those who deviate from the normativity of whiteness. Thirdly, this dissertation looks at epistemology as a framing device for how some people are seen, mis-seen, or not seen at all. In particular, I evaluate how the Church has been complicit in the rendering of some as invisible or less worthy of concern. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Duane Terrence Loynes Sr., B.A., M.A., M.A. To my wife, Ericka, who gives me more love than I deserve. To my son, Duane Jr., who gives me more joy than I can imagine. To my mother, Susie Mae Teal, who worked so hard for this dream to come true. To my dissertation committee: Dr. Duane Stephen Long, Dr. Robert L. Masson, Rev. Bryan N. Massingale, and Dr. Michael J. Monahan. Thanks for your wisdom and your commitment to this project. And, to the Church, may we be faithful witnesses to a God worth worshiping. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................................................................................i CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: BLACK SUFFERING AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD..........................................................................1 The Perils of Theological Method: Method as a Site of Critique and Liberation............................................................................5 Crisis: White Normativity in Modern Christianity....................................11 Black Religious Critique............................................................................31 Black Methodological Approaches............................................................49 II. TOWARD A CRITICAL RACE THEODICY..................................................84 Case Study in Justifying Evil: The Theology of Jonathan Edwards and Evangelicalism......................................................85 Case Study in Ignoring Evil: The Theodicy of North American Philosophy and Theology..............................................104 William R. Jones and the Inadequacy of Early Black Liberation Theologies..........................................................115 III. TOWARD A CRITICAL THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.................142 Subpersonhood and the Black Experience...............................................152 Anthropology in Black Thought and Making Value in a Racialized World...............................................................................160 Emerging Models of Humanity...............................................................167 IV. TOWARD A CRITICAL THEOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY...................188 Epistemology, Descartes, and Race.........................................................194 Epistemology of Ignorance......................................................................203 Literary Excursus: Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, and Invisibility in Black Culture..............................................................213 iii Making the Invisible Visible....................................................................228 V. CONCLUSION...............................................................................................243 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................251 1 I. Introduction: Black Suffering and Theological Method “Black people have met with as great injustices from American scholarship as they have from American life.” Sterling Stuckey In a penetrating article in the journal Black Theology, Stephen G. Ray, Jr. poses a question regarding the symbolic usage of the Christian cross: What was/is it about the American practice of Christianity that made/makes the cross available for symbolic use by such groups as the Ku Klux Klan or the Church of the Identity?1 Ray clarifies that he is not primarily concerned with why groups may choose to adopt the cross, but rather: how the symbolic mediation of the cross in the American context creates the conditions under which “hate groups,” to use the contemporary language, can sensibly utilize what the Christian faith has, from its earliest period, deemed the ultimate symbol of divine love, as their symbolic representation in our culture?2 Ray is looking at the necessary conditions that make possible the appropriation of the cross by groups whose aim is explicitly racist. Ray cites similar attempts at symbolic reappropriation that have not succeeded, such as the effort to redefine the Confederate flag to appeal to a broader range of American life by altering the colors of the original to red, black, and green (colors traditionally associated with Black liberation and/or African nationalism).3 The attempt to merge the Confederacy with Black liberation/nationalism 1 Stephen G. Ray, Jr., “Contending for the Cross: Black Theology and the Ghosts of Modernity,” Black Theology: An International Journal 8.1 (2010): 53–54. Less familiar than the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Church of the Identity (or, the “Christian Identity”/“Identity Christian” movement) is an explicitly White supremacist interpretation of Christianity that identifies northern Europeans as the descendants of the ancient Israelites and hence, God’s chosen people. 2 Ray, “Contending for the Cross,” 54. 3 In Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities Press International, 1995), Lewis R. Gordon provides three reasons why he prefers using ‘Black’ over the more “politically acceptable” (1) expression ‘African American.’ First, although ‘African American’ caters to the concerns 2 has consistently been a failure, one Ray attributes to the fact that there was not already a cultural milieu that made the pairing sensible. That is, trying to make an historically racist symbol amenable to Black liberation was “nonsensical.”4 But, this leads him to ask: “Why has the cross not been similarly nonsensical when it has been/is used as a symbol by the Ku Klux Klan in the context of the United States?”5 Focusing specifically on theological and ecclesial issues pertaining to the reception of the cross as symbol, Ray finds an idolatrous and perverted representation of Christianity embedded within the advances of modernity at fault. Even in a postmodern (or, post-postmodern, as some have argued) world, we are still formed by the discursive and ideational frameworks of modernity, the most notable of which is how the meaning of “Western Christianity” has shifted from a geographical reality to a concept that traffics in racial-ethnic-theological concepts. Christianity was reduced to a closed religious system that found its natural expression in people and productions originating in European