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RACE, RELIGION, AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF IDENTITY: A THEOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH DOUGLASS's 1845 NARRATIVE
Author(s) -
CARTER J. KAMERON
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2005.00274.x
Subject(s) - narrative , identity (music) , reading (process) , race (biology) , politics , subject (documents) , theology , sociology , identity politics , narrative identity , religious studies , philosophy , gender studies , aesthetics , political science , law , linguistics , library science , computer science
This essay is about identity and the place of religion and theology in how it is thought about and performed. I purse this subject through a theologically informed reading of the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . Taking Douglass's Narrative as emblematic of how identity continues to be conceived, I explain what is promising in the close link forged between religion, theology and culture. The promise of Douglass's Narrative resides in the emancipatory politics of race that it produces and the creative use of the theology of Easter in that politics. But I also explore the contradictions arising from that link—in particular, Douglass's oppressive gender politics. To overcome this problem, I conclude the article by pushing Douglass's cultural reading of identity and the Cross in a more robust theological direction, a direction that gestures towards a theology of Israel and of Pentecost.