Witnessing Whiteness

In Witnessing Whiteness, Kristopher Norris explores the challenges that lie at the intersection of race, church, and politics in America and argues for a new ethics of responsibility to confront white supremacy. Norris provides in-depth analysisdescriptions of the ways whiteness, as a process of social/identity formation, is fueling racial division within American Christianity and the inadequacy of efforts at racial reconciliation to fully address thechallenges posed by white supremacy poses. Seeking deeper theological reasons for racial injustice, he focuses on two of the most important thinkers in American religion of the past half century, Stanley Hauerwas and James Cone. Examining the current manifestations of racism in American churches, exploring thetheological roots of white supremacy, and reflecting on the ways whiteness impacts even well-meaning, progressive white theologians, this book diagnoses the ways in which all of white theology and white Christian practice are implicated in white supremacy. By identifying the roots of white supremacy within the Christian church's theology and practice, it argues that the white church has a particular, and fundamental, responsibility to address it.Witnessing Whiteness uncovers this responsibility ethic at the convergence of two prominent streams in theological ethics: traditionalist witness theology and black liberationist theology. Employing their shared resources and attending to the criticisms liberation theology directs at traditionalism, it proposes concrete practices to challenge the white church's and white theology's complicity in white supremacy.

Overall, this is an eminently worthy read. Norris offers a vulnerable, important contribution to a matter of life and death on which the white church has been far too complicit and silent.

Kristopher Norris is Visiting Professor of Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He earned his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and a Master of Divinity at Duke University. He is the author of numerous essays and articles in publications such as the Journal of Religious Ethics and the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.