Radical Theology: The New “White” Religion? [View all]

April 25, 2013
By Christian Piatt

I’ve experienced some strange extremes lately. First, I attended – and spoke at – the Subverting the Norm conference in Springfield, MO, where we took some time to consider how, if at all, so-called “radical theology” could exist within today’s religious systems. Then I got home and found my latest TIME Magazine, with a cover story titled “The Latino Reformation,” which reveals what most within Protestantism have known for some time, which is that formerly Catholic Latino Christians are dramatically reshaping the face of the American Christian landscape.

Interestingly there is little to no overlap between these two groups – a point which was made clear to me by the fact that there were very few people of color in attendance at Subverting the Norm. One comment, from an African-American woman who was there, was that the very focus of the conference (on academic, esoteric questions of theology and philosophy) assumed the kind of privilege still dominated by middle-class white males. Put another way: while we’re busy navel-gazing and discussing the meaning of Nietzsche’s “death of God,” non-Anglo religious leaders were busy dealing with real-world problems, right in front of them.

A fair critique, for sure. I’ve said before that philosophy is the preferred recreational sport of the intellectual bourgeois elite; she just put a finer point on it.

Then I read an article by Diana Butler Bass on the Huffington Post this morning that indicated such a bifurcation along both racial and ideological lines: