An Asian-American Renewal Historical Theologian’s Response to the Duke African-American Nouvelle Théologie of Race

In this article I critically engage the Duke theologians of race—Carter, Jennings, and Bantam—devoting attention especially to Jennings. While appreciating and acknowledging the significance of these projects, I critique Jennings’s selective historiography and suggest that engaging the Anglo-American early modern supersessionist theologies of culture and race would have benefitted Jennings’ project. Then I trace out some implications of Jennings’s call to re-engage Israel and examine how his idealized vision of “submersion and in submission to another’s cultural realities” affects the notion of conversion theologically. As an Asian-American historical theologian, I argue that race is not and should no longer be looked upon as a black-white binary reality. In conclusion, I call for a historiographical fine-tuning of these theologies of race

African american · Archaeology · Historiography · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies