This workgroup asked how theological commitments and convictions shape the understanding of race and interracialism, especially in communities engaged in the practices of racial healing and reconciliation. The ever-enlarging bibliography on religion and race includes virtually no material on the theological sources of racial healing and reconciliation. In the case of intentionally interracial Christian communities, of which there has been a dramatic increase in the past two decades, a host of questions follow.
The members of the Workgroup on Lived Theology and Race represent a theological and cultural cross-section of American Christianity and bring to the collaboration considerable personal and pastoral experience in areas of race relations and racial reconciliation.
First Meeting – Charlottesville, Virginia
December 1-3, 2000
Readings
Participants read the following works in preparation for this meeting:
- Davies, Alan. Infected Christianity: A Study of Modern Racism. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.
- Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.
Meeting Resources
The following are the available resources from this meeting:
- J. Kameron Carter’s paper: Black Faith and the (Im)Possibility of Christian Theology in Raboteau’s Slave Religion: A Question
Second Meeting – Memphis, Tennessee, and Oxford, Mississippi
February 23-25, 2001
Readings
Participants read the following works in preparation for this meeting:
- Anderson, Victor. Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism. New York: Continuum, 1995.
- Pedraja, Luis G. Jesus is My Uncle: Christology from a Hispanic Perspective. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999.
- Perkins, Spencer and Chris Rice. More Than Equals. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
- Weary, Dolphus and William Hendricks. “I Ain’t Comin’ Back.” Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1997.
Meeting Resources
- Luis Pedraja: Testimonios and Popular Religion in Mainline North American Hispanic Protestantism
- Dolphus Weary: Dolphus Weary on Mission Mississippi
- Victor Anderson: Contour of an American Public Theology
- Chris Rice: On Voice of Calvary
Third Meeting – San Francisco, California
August 3-5, 2001
Readings
Participants read the following works in preparation for this meeting:
- Armour, Ellen T. Deconstruction, Feminist Theology and the Problem of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
- Cartwright, Michael G. “Wrestling with Scripture: Can Euro-American Christians and African-American Christians Learn and Read Scripture Together?”, The Gospel in Black and White: Theological resources for racial reconciliation. Ed. Dennis L. Okholm. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997.
Meeting Resources
- Michael Cartwright: Wrestling with Scripture: Can Euro-American Christians and African-American Christians Learn and Read Scripture Together?
- Susan Glisson: “Neither Bedecked Nor Bebosomed”: Lucy Mason, Ella Baker and Women’s Leadership and Organizing Strategies in the Struggle for Freedom
- Russell Jeung: Asian American Pan-Ethnic Formation and Congregational Cultures
Fourth Meeting – Charlottesville, Virginia
October 26-28, 2001
Readings
Participants read the following works in preparation for this meeting:
- Cook, Anthony E. The Least of These: Race, Law and Religion in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997.
- Holmes, Barbara A. A Private Woman in Public Spaces: Barbara Jordan’s Speeches on Ethics, Public Religion and Law. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2000.
- Marsh, Charles. The Last Days: A Son’s Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
- Yu, Henry. Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact and Exoticism in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Meeting Resources
- Charles Marsh: The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama: Interpretation and Application
- Stephen G. Ray Jr.: Not All Black and White: African-American Christian History and the Politics of Historical Identity
- Timothy Tseng: Trans-Pacific Transpositions: Continuities and discontinuities in Chinese North American Protestantism since 1965
Lived Theology and Race Workgroup Participants
For more information about each member, please click on their photos below.
Lived Theology and Race Workgroup Consultants
For more information about each member, please click on their photos below.
Not pictured in gallery:
Blanca Simpson, Casa de Oración Church in Memphis, Tennessee