Race and Secularism in America

Jonathon S. Kahn is associate professor of religion at Vassar College. He is the author of Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois. Vincent W. Lloyd is assistant professor of religion at Syracuse University. His books include The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology and the edited volume Race and Political Theology.

Race and Secularism in America shows how conversations about race and secularism can be enriched by bringing the two together. This timeliness, coupled with the excellence of the contributors, makes the book essential reading for our times. -- Ted Smith, Emory University Candler School of Theology A tremendous volume. Its originality and interdisciplinary breadth will attract a range of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It will shift conversations within and facilitate new discussions across the fields of race, religion, literature, and theology. -- James Manigault-Bryant, Williams College Jonathon S. Kahn and Vincent W. Lloyd have pulled together a deeply original set of essays on race and secularism in the United States that effectively challenges intellectualist, European-derived accounts of secularist discourse. Focusing on the fundamental whiteness of American secularism, the collection highlights the ways in which the specificities of both race and religion have been managed-and obscured-through the ideals and practices of secular statecraft. It is an impressive and necessary critique of the widespread neglect of race and racialization in contemporary secular studies. -- Leigh Eric Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis This well-conceived and well-crafted collection provides another account of secularism by interrogating those processes by which not only are religion and religious discourse regulated or excluded but also race and religion are entwined, managed, or resisted. Methodologically and theoretically, these essays substantially deepen and complicate our understanding of secularism, religion, and race. -- M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College A turning point for understanding how relegating the sacred and the secular to incommensurable realms has produced and protected the structured advantages of whiteness and imbued the secular sphere with presumptions of innocence that preclude racial justice. -- George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place This review cannot do justice to the brilliance, beauty, and timeliness of these essays... The joy of reading these essays lies in the nuances and subtleties of the arguments. Marginalia LARB

• Introduction: Managing Race, Managing Religion, by Vincent W. Lloyd Part I: Orientations 1. White Supremacy and Black Insurgency as Political Theology, by George Shulman 2. Secular Compared to What? Toward a History of the Trope of Black Sacred/Secular Fluidity, by Josef Sorett Part II: Readings 3. Slaves, Slavery, and the Secular Age: Or, Tales of Haunted Scholars, Liberating Prisons, Exorcised Divinities, and Immanent Devils, by Edward J. Blum 4. "Welcome Back to the Living": Resurrections of Martin Luther King Jr. in a Secular Age, by Erica R. Edwards 5. Overlooking Race and Secularism in Muslim Philadelphia, by Joel Blecher and Joshua Dubler Part III: Inflections 6. Two Ways of Looking at an Invisible Man: Race, the Secular, and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Theology, by M. Cooper Harriss 7. Secular Coloniality: The Afterlife of Religious and Racial Tropes, by William D. Hart 8. Binding Landscapes: Secularism, Race, and the Spatial Modern, by Willie James Jennings Conclusion: James Baldwin and a Theology of Justice in a Secular Age, by Jonathon Kahn Afterword: Critical Intersections: Race, Secularism, Gender, by Tracy Fessenden List of Contributors Index