Abstract
This paper outlines the means by which candidates training for Christian ministry are encouraged to engage with the deontological positionality of anti-racism as a substantive element of Christian praxis. The first part of the paper provides some brief historical reflections on what was then the conventional approach to teaching an anti-racist ethic for Christian ministry, namely, the practice of “racism awareness”. Following these reflections, the author proceeds to outline the epistemological change that has occurred in his own ethical teaching, moving from the focus on racism awareness to a more critical, postcolonial deconstruction of Whiteness and its concomitant links to Mission Christianity. Mission Christianity, the religion that underpinned the British Empire, is identified as the repository that helped to institutionalise the existence of “white supremacy” and racism within the body politic of colonialism and the rise of notions of “manifest destiny”. In switching the modus operandi for an anti-racist ethic within Christian ministry, this paper seeks to reframe the ways in which the ethical basis for opposing and resisting racism is effected within Christian theology
Highlights
The Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, The University of South Africa, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Whilst previous iterations of the training process for preachers have stressed the importance of social justice as a key element in the Methodist kerygmatic tradition, I am convinced that little exists in the way of an explicit anti-racist ethic that asserts the necessity of deconstructing the toxicity of White normality, entitlement, and privilege
The frustration of the protestors that led to the toppling and disposal of the statue reminds me of the very human anger and frustration of Jesus in turning out the money changers in the temple (Matt. 21: 12–17, Mark 11: 15–19, Luke 19: 45–48 and John 2: 13–16). It seems like it is alright for a “White Jesus”71 as depicted in Western iconography to be angry and destroy property, but not unruly Black people! An anti-racist ethic in Christian ministry is one that most support Black Lives Matter if White Christians are serious about seeking to be in solidarity with Black people as we wrestle with the continued realities of systemic racism
Summary
My scholarly development has always existed in a series of dialectics. The primary ones of relevance in this paper are the constructive tensions between scholarship and ministry and Practical theology and Black theology. There are queries directed at the effectiveness of “unconscious bias” training in terms of diversity and equalities strategies as they pertain to corporate management, my concerns with its utility are located solely in terms of inculcating ethical forms of ministry as it relates to Christian ministry My problem with this new model is the lack of any serious analysis of the wider socio-cultural and political construction of Empire and the ways in which the embedded nature of Whiteness has formed a world in which notions of manifest destiny and White exceptionalism have given rise to a toxic reality built on White supremacy.. Jennings explores the construct of “race” within the body politic of Christianity in exemplary fashion using several generative stories of how the world of Europeans collided with that of Africans, and it is in this combustible nexus that the new, toxic order of Christian thinking emerges.26 The creation of this alternative approach to creating an anti-racist ethic for those training for Christian ministry is predicated on a critical rereading of Christian tradition and the concomitant development of White Eurocentric theology. This developing work I am describing is an acute critique of the racism awareness work I used to undertake and its successor that is framed within the intellectual frameworks adopted by unconscious bias training
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