Abstract
What do apartheid South Africa, the Ku Klux Klan and doomsday cults all have in common? The answer, according to Leah Robinson in Bad Theology: oppression in the name of God, is that they have all espoused and practised ‘bad theology’. She defines this theology as one that, in various ways, embraces violence. It does not focus on human flourishing, refuses to engage in critical self-reflection, and shows no interest in the poor, equality or social justice. We may repudiate it as hateful, intolerant and murderous, but it is still theology.
Robinson’s book seeks to identify and examine key cases of such ‘bad’ theological thinking in the post-Reformation era. Drawing on a series of notorious episodes, such as the Jonestown Massacre, the Massachusetts Bay Colony (the first slave-holding colony in New England), and Winthrop and Mason’s theology of election, she illustrates how Christians have all too often interpreted the Scriptures in a manner that promotes racism, misogyny and exclusion.
The author, who is Associate Professor of Religion and Practical Theology in Charlotte, North Carolina, explores the link between religion and violence theologically rather than from a sociological or ethnographic perspective. She believes that the task of the practical theologian is to determine ‘whether a person within a religious tradition has come to the right or wrong interpretative conclusion in accordance with that religion’s belief system’ (p. 5). Here, however, Robinson encounters a tension that is never fully resolved in the rest of her discussion. The problem is that she never succeeds in telling us how we are to ascertain what is ‘in accordance’ with a religion’s belief system. While she claims that theologians actively seek knowledge about God, she is equally clear that it is never possible to define in any scientific way the nature of God’s will or the character of an authentic Christian ethic. Robinson thus fails to explain how one could speak with any confidence about whether someone within a religious tradition has reached the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ conclusion.
She insists that we must differentiate between what people believe God is saying – the Bible, for instance, has been used by many to justify slavery, the suppression of women and the persecution of homosexuals – and what God is actually saying (p. 7). Robinson suggests that the latter can somehow be discerned through the prism of our modern, liberal and enlightened culture; but if, as she maintains, all theology is a human construct that is inevitably subjective, how is it ever possible in any human situation to know the true meaning of God’s will?
Nonetheless, the book is lucidly written and was clearly a labour of love for the author, whose excitement is infectious. For the most part, it is a well-researched work, in which there is a serious, if unconvincing, sustained argument. It rests somewhere between scholarly analysis and popularizing simplification, although Robinson does achieve her aim of addressing some egregious examples of ‘bad theology’. She makes connections between ‘bad’ religious interpretations and violent acts, which is in direct contrast to the temptation in some circles to dismiss such connections as anomalies within religious traditions. This demonstrates her willingness to take a stance that will not sit easily with some religious conservatives.