Book Review: Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance

Abstract

s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. By Reggie L. Williams. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2014. xii + 184 pp. $39.95 (paper).Bonhoeffer s Black Jesus is, currently, the only book-length study of and race available today, now that Josiah Youngs No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich and the Problem of Racism (1998) is no longer in print. Bonhoeffer's formative years in Harlem have been little explored, but scholars are beginning to understand that without this period in s life, his later theology is unintelligible. Reggie Williams focuses on s time in Harlem in order to build a constructive theological ethic based on solidarity.Williams makes the argument that Bonhoeffer had formative experiences in New York in a key historical moment that inspired his efforts in Germany to uncouple the false connection between white imperialist identity and Jesus and its tragic imprint for Christianity (p. 3). He interprets s time in Harlem and his later theology through the lens of what he calls empathie resistance, a resistance born from empathy and solidarity with the oppressed. This empathy allowed to overcome the imperialist and colonialist understandings of Christian faith that he harbored from being raised in Germany in order to stand with those who were despised, that is, with Blacks while in America and with Jews once he moved back to Germany.After a brief biographical sketch of leading up to his time in Harlem, Williams moves on to an introduction to colonialism and postcolonial attempts at doing theology, with an extended discussion of the theology of Willie James Jennings. This chapter demonstrates that the Christian imagination was bred during colonialism to resist empathy through the brutal practices of slavery and oppression of non-white, non-European peoples. This diseased colonialist imagination is evident in some of s own early writing and sermons, wherein he strongly aligned himself with the white-supremacist Volk theology that ran rampant in post-World War I Germany. It was this diseased imagination that the Harlem Renaissance helped to overcome.Williams provides not only an introduction to s theology, but also an introduction to the literature and art of the Harlem Renaissance and a brief history of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He takes readers through the relevant literature of the events of the Harlem Renaissance in order to contextualize Bonhoeffers own time in Harlem. He provides a special focus on the figure of the Black Christ in the works of various Harlem Renaissance authors, giving particular attention to Countee Cullen s poem The Black Christ. …