Contesting Post-Racialism : Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

Contributions by William Ackah, Allan Boesak, Ebony Joy Fitchue, Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Walter Earl Fluker, Forrest E. Harris Sr., Nico Koopman, AnneMarie Mingo, Reggie Nel, Chabo Freddy Pilusa, Anthony G. Reddie, Boitumelo Senokoane, Rothney S. Tshaka, Luci Vaden, Vuyani Vellem, and Cobus van Wyngaard After the 2008 election and 2012 reelection of Barack Obama as US president and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first of several blacks to serve as South Africa's president, many within the two countries have declared race to be irrelevant. For contributors to this volume, the presumed demise of race may be premature. Given continued racial disparities in income, education, and employment, as well as in perceptions of problems and promise within the two countries, much healing remains unfinished. Nevertheless, despite persistently pronounced disparities between black and white realities, it has become more difficult to articulate racial issues. Some deem "race" an increasingly unnecessary identity in these more self-consciously "post-racial" times. The volume engages post-racial ideas in both their limitations and promise. Contributors look specifically at the extent to which a church's contemporary response to race consciousness and post-racial consciousness enables it to give an accurate public account of race. Cover Contesting Post-Racialism Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction I. Periodizing the Discourse on Black Christianity and Race A Restless Presence: Church Activism and “Post-Apartheid,” “Post-Racial” Challenges Shape-Shifting: Cultural Hauntings, Contested Post-Racialism, and Black Theological Imagination II. Race, Social Divisions, and Restructured Ecclesial Spaces High School Students, the Catholic Church, and the Struggle for Black Inclusion and Citizenship in Rock Hill, South Carolina Christian Youth Activism and South African Black Ecclesiology White Theology amidst White Rhetoric on Violence III. Religious Cultural Impairments in Assessing Racism’s Social Costs “They Must Have a Different God Than Our God”: Towards a Lived Theology of Black Churchwomen during the United States Civil Rights Movement Church Youth Activism and Political and Economic Constraints within “Post-Racial” South Africa Black South African Christian Response to Afrophobia in Contemporary South Africa IV. Theology and (Re)Vitalized Race Consciousness Collisions between Racism and the Truth of the Cross Pursuing American Racial Justice and a Politically and Theologically Informed Black Church Praxis In Defense of “Christian Activism”: The Case of Allan Boesak Legitimacy: The Praxis of Consensing and Consenting in the Contested Post-Racial Democratic Discourse in South Africa In Search of a Transforming Public Theology: Drinking from the Wells of Black Theology V. Concluding Thoughts Whither Transcendence? Framing the Contours of Transatlantic Black Unity in Contested Post-Racialized Times Contextuality of Black Experience and Contributions to a Wider Debate Contributors Index Contributions by William Ackah, Allan Boesak, Ebony Joy Fitchue, Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Walter Earl Fluker, Forrest E. Harris Sr., Nico Koopman, AnneMarie Mingo, Reggie Nel, Chabo Freddy Pilusa, Anthony G. Reddie, Boitumelo Senokoane, Rothney S. Tshaka, Luci Vaden, Vuyani Vellem, and Cobus van Wyngaard

After the 2008 election and 2012 reelection of Barack Obama as US president and the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first of several blacks to serve as South Africa's president, many within the two countries have declared race to be irrelevant. For contributors to this volume, the presumed demise of race may be premature. Given continued racial disparities in income, education, and employment, as well as in perceptions of problems and promise within the two countries, much healing remains unfinished. Nevertheless, despite persistently pronounced disparities between black and white realities, it has become more difficult to articulate racial issues. Some deem "race" an increasingly unnecessary identity in these more self-consciously "post-racial" times.

The volume engages post-racial ideas in both their limitations and promise. Contributors look specifically at the extent to which a church's contemporary response to race consciousness and post-racial consciousness enables it to give an accurate public account of race. This title contains some chapters based on papers presented at the 2011 Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (TRRR) conference at University of South Africa, and at the 2012 TRRR conference at University of London, Birkbeck College