Christ Divided: Antiblackness as Corporate Vice - Softcover

Walker Grimes, Katie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1506427995 ISBN 13: 9781506427997

Publisher: Fortress Press, 2017

Synopsis

Bringing the wisdom of generations of black Catholics into conversation with contemporary scholarly accounts of racism, Christ Divided diagnoses "antiblackness supremacy" as a corporate vice that inhabits the body of Christ. Antiblackness supremacy operates as a unique form of oppression: it arises from the enduring association of blackness with slave status and plays a foundational role in processes of racialization and racial hierarchy in the United States. In fact, since non-black people often amass power at the expense of black people, much of "white supremacy" is more accurately described as "antiblackness supremacy."

In addition to introducing a new framework of racial analysis, this book proposes a new approach to virtue ethics. Anti-blackness supremacy inhabits not just the biased mind and the individual body, it also resides in the corporate body of the church. But due to the porosity of Christ's body, the church cannot reform itself from within. Antiblackness supremacy has twisted even baptism and the Eucharist in its image. In response, the theory of corporate virtue outlined here contemplates the conditions under which the church's corporately vicious and necessarily porous body can be made to "do the right thing."

About this title

About the Author

Katie Walker Grimes is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. She is the author of Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery (Fortress Press, 2017). She has published articles on the relation of white supremacy and the Catholic Church in Political Theology and Horizons and has articles in the Journal of Religious Ethics. She is a regular contributing author to the blog Women in Theology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1506427995
• ISBN 13: 9781506427997
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344