Theology & Racial Justice

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores the topics of race and racial justice (in a particularly American context) in conversation with Christian theology. While it is initially tempting to reduce this conversation to identification of theological grounds for anti-racism, things are not so simple: theology itself is implicated in the long history of American racism. This is not merely to note that theology has been passively vitiated by racist thought; it is also to affirm that theology has played an active role in the creation of racialized categories and the perpetuation of racial injustices. Nevertheless, when theology is utilized well, it can galvanize individuals to endorse and join in the work of racial justice. This tenuous relationship—between oppressive theologies and racial harms, and between uplifting theologies and racial justice—is this course’s focus. Along the way, students will engage a host of other topics students including the (mis)use of racial terms; types of racial wrongs, historical and continuing; and controversies like implicit bias and the “Model Minority.”