Christianity, Otherization, and Contemporary Politics: A Postcolonial Reading [Hardcover]

In Christianity, Otherization, and Contemporary Politics, Roberto E. Alejandro argues that the identity politics of the American far-left follow an identity paradigm nurtured in our intellectual history by early Christian thinkers such as Clement of Alexandra, Origen of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who all claimed that a form of wokeness gave them special access to truth and thereby an exclusive right to speak it. At one time this argument was a strike at power, but once mixed with power, it became a moral justification for violence against non-Christians. Alejandro warns those engaged in political practice to beware the way our intellectual history, steeped in theological propositions, can operate silently to steer us towards reinforcing problems we intended to resist.Roberto E. Alejandro practices civil rights law, holds a PhD in religion and theology from Durham University, and wrote this work while a fellow for the Institute for Contesting Religious Violence (UTS-NYC).Roberto Alejandros provocative text brings his sensibilities as a journalist covering woke activism to bear upon the struggles of early Christian activists with a deep academic rigor. Weaving together the voices of Baltimore, early Church theologians, and post-colonial theory, his argument is as simple as it is bold: what passes for today as woke activism repeats the mistakes of the early Christians. This book has the power to rethink not only what constitutes activism proper, but how we engage with Christian theology in its historical, philosophical, and contemporary forms. Marcus Pound, Durham University

Chapter 1 Revolution and the Death of Postcolonial Theory

Chapter 2 Metaphysical Anthropology, Natural Science, and Otherization:

Chapter 3 Morality and Otherization

Chapter 4 Epistemology and Otherization

Chapter 5 Some Concluding Thoughts