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

266 Pages·2015·1.027 MB·English

by  R. Drew Smith (editor), William Ackah (editor), Anthony G. Reddie (editor), Rothney S. Tshaka (editor)

Contesting Post-Racialism

Contesting

Post-Racialism
Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa
Edited by R. Drew Smith, William Ackah,
Anthony G. Reddie, and Rothney S. Tshaka
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2015 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2015
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contesting post-racialism : conflicted churches in the United States and South Africa /
edited by R. Drew Smith, William Ackah, Anthony G. Reddie, Rothney S. Tshaka.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-62846-200-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-62674-505-6 (ebook) 1. Race
relations—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. South Africa—Race relations. 3. United
States—Race relations. 4. Church and social problems—South Africa. 5. Church and social
problems—United States. 6. Post-racialism. I. Smith, R. Drew, 1956– editor of compilation.
II. Ackah, William, editor of compilation. III. Reddie, Anthony, editor of compilation. IV.
Tshaka, Rothney S. (Rothney Stok), editor of compilation.
BT734.2.T74 2015
261.8328496—dc23 2014031673
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Contents
vii Acknowledgments
3 Introduction
R. Drew Smith

I. Periodizing the Discourse on Black Christianity and Race
13 A Restless Presence: Church Activism and “Post-Apartheid,” “Post-Racial”
Challenges
Allan Boesak
37 Shape-Shifting: Cultural Hauntings, Contested Post-Racialism, and
Black Theological Imagination
Walter Earl Fluker

II. Race, Social Divisions, and Restructured Ecclesial Spaces
65 High School Students, the Catholic Church, and the Struggle for Black Inclusion
and Citizenship in Rock Hill, South Carolina
Luci Vaden
80 Christian Youth Activism and South African Black Ecclesiology
Reggie Nel
96 White Theology amidst White Rhetoric on Violence
Cobus van Wyngaard

III. Religious Cultural Impairments in Assessing Racism’s Social Costs
111 “They Must Have a Different God Than Our God”: Towards a Lived Theology of
Black Churchwomen during the United States Civil Rights Movement
AnneMarie Mingo
vi Contents
122 Church Youth Activism and Political and Economic Constraints within “Post-Racial”
South Africa
Chabo Freddy Pilusa
130 Black South African Christian Response to Afrophobia in Contemporary South Africa
Rothney S. Tshaka
IV. Theology and (Re)Vitalized Race Consciousness
153 Collisions between Racism and the Truth of the Cross
Leah Gaskin Fitchue and Ebony Joy Fitchue
171 Pursuing American Racial Justice and a Politically and Theologically Informed
Black Church Praxis
Forrest E. Harris Sr.
185 In Defense of “Christian Activism”: The Case of Allan Boesak
Boitumelo Senokoane
198 Legitimacy: The Praxis of Consensing and Consenting in the Contested Post-
Racial Democratic Discourse in South Africa
Vuyani Vellem
211 In Search of a Transforming Public Theology: Drinking from the Wells of
Black Theology
Nico Koopman
V. Concluding Thoughts
229 Whither Transcendence? Framing the Contours of Transatlantic Black Unity in
Contested Post-Racialized Times
William Ackah
243 Contextuality of Black Experience and Contributions to a Wider Debate
Anthony G. Reddie
251 Contributors
253 Index
Acknowledgments
Many persons have contributed to the production of this volume, and we
are deeply gratefully for each contribution. Our thanks goes especially to
those who contributed chapters to the volume, but also to all the conference
participants who served as interlocutors when these chapters were presented
at the 2011 Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (TRRR) con-
ference at University of South Africa, and at the 2012 TRRR conference
at University of London, Birkbeck College. We also want to acknowledge
the generous support provided for these conferences by the University of
South Africa’s College of Human Sciences and Department of Philosophy,
Practical and Systematic Theology, and by Birkbeck College’s Department of
Geography, Environment, and Development Studies. We are also indebted
to Craig Gill at University Press of Mississippi for his interest in the research
we assembled in this volume and for shepherding the volume through to
publication. We are most indebted to the persons and groups discussed in
these chapters whose grapplings with intersections of religion and race have
provided cautions, critiques, and crosswalks for those caught at the crossings.
vii

Contesting Post-Racialism