Abstract
Based on papers presented at conferences held by the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race in 2011 and 2012, the edited collection of essays gathered in Contesting Post-Racialism were prompted by the question of whether South Africa and the United States truly are beyond racial issues, as has often been touted in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela being elected in 1994 as the first of several black presidents in South Africa and of Barack Obama’s successful 2008 and 2012 presidential bids in the States (R. Drew Smith, ‘Introduction’, p. 3).
After Smith’s brief editorial introduction, Allan Boesak reflects upon the question of church activism in light of the history of post-apartheid South Africa with the aim of seeking to reclaim the radical ‘restless presence’ of first-century Christianity, which he sees as having been unseated by an accommodationist mindset during Constantinian times (pp. 13–36). This is followed by an essay by Walter Earl Fluker, who seeks to reframe black liberation theology in the States under the biblical motif of ‘exile’ as opposed to ‘exodus’, which he sees as ‘antiquated’ (pp. 37–62). A series of shorter essays follow. Of these, Leah Gaskin Fitchue and Ebony Joy Fitchue’s co-authored piece helpfully gives voice to the spectrum of ‘“psychological dispositions” of racism exhibited by white Americans’ amidst the task of black liberation (pp. 164–5; cf. 153–69), while Vuyani Vellem’s distinguishing of ‘consenting and consensing’ (i.e., of legal progress and progress with regard to ‘symbolic normative values’), constructively speaks to the unfinished business of post-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa, in which the task of ‘consensing’ continues to trail behind that of ‘consenting’ (pp. 198–210).
Since the volume’s publication in 2015, at least in the United States (if not also in South Africa), race relations have taken several regressive turns so as to render the book’s title to be already outdated, as ‘post-racialism’ no longer needs to be contested, for issues of race have been kept at the forefront of America’s national conversation by way of media and social media coverage surrounding contemporary events. Nevertheless, amidst the antagonistic climate that is unfortunately continuing to develop, the book’s sixteen chapters, embodying the spirit of the Belhar Confession, put forth liberationist ecclesiological reflections that are not only historically grounded, but also more timely and relevant than ever on both sides of the Atlantic.