In a world still marked by the effects of colonial displacements, slavery's auction block, and the modern observatory stance, can Christian theology adequately imagine racial reconciliation? The thesis pursues this question by surveying several important new contributors to this discussion, comprising the Duke Divinity school of theological race theory. Willie James Jennings and J. Kameron Carter investigate the colonial genesis and Enlightenment maturation of the racial imagination to suggest a new path for Christian theology. The thesis' main project is mapping the theologies of Carter and Jennings in order subsequently to display the doctrinal positions they share. Chief among them is their insistence that supersessionism, which they understand as the various forms taken by the quest of Christians through the centuries to sunder themselves from the particularity of Israel, has been constitutive of a racialized hierarchy which continues to hold powerful sway over Christology, anthropology, and ecclesiology. Their shared theses are positioned between – and beyond – the poles of modern liberalism and “traditioned” orthodoxy. The Introduction to the thesis demonstrates the theological difficulties faced by contemporary pursuits of ecclesial reconciliation. Chapters One and Two investigate Carter's work, positioning his account between black liberationist thought, as exemplified by James Cone, and recuperations of scholastic orthodoxy, as exemplified by John Milbank. Chapters Three and Four interact with Jennings' work, positioning his thought between cultural studies, especially related to late medieval colonial theology, and contemporary virtue ethics, as refracted through Alisdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas. Building upon Jennings' and Carter's Christological insights, the Conclusion proposes a sympathetic extension of their ecclesiology of joining. Drawing on the theological race theory presented in the thesis and contemporary experiments in racial reconciliation, the conclusion engages theological treatments of eating together in order to display the ecclesiological importance of this more robust theology of race.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by Robert A. Krieg and Mary C. Doak for the Department of Theology. "July 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-248).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-134).

Thesis (M.A.)--Simon Greenleaf School of Law, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-143).

Thesis (M.A.)--International Christian Graduate University, School of Theology, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [102]-106).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-79).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53).

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [213-216]).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 2005. / Includes vita. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-155).