Kristopher Norris - Böcker

In Witnessing Whiteness, Kristopher Norris explores the challenges that lie at the intersection of race, church, and politics in America and argues for a new ethics of responsibility to confront white supremacy. Norris provides in-depth analysisdescriptions of the ways whiteness, as a process of social/identity formation, is fueling racial division within American Christianity and the inadequacy of efforts at racial reconciliation to fully address the challenges posed by white supremacy poses. Seeking deeper theological reasons for racial injustice, he focuses on two of the most important thinkers in American religion of the past half century, Stanley Hauerwas and James Cone. Examining the current manifestations of racism in American churches, exploring the theological roots of white supremacy, and reflecting on the ways whiteness impacts even well-meaning, progressive white theologians, this book diagnoses the ways in which all of white theology and white Christian practice are implicated in white supremacy. By identifying the roots of white supremacy within the Christian church's theology and practice, it argues that the white church has a particular, and fundamental, responsibility to address it.Witnessing Whiteness uncovers this responsibility ethic at the convergence of two prominent streams in theological ethics: traditionalist witness theology and black liberationist theology. Employing their shared resources and attending to the criticisms liberation theology directs at traditionalism, it proposes concrete practices to challenge the white church's and white theology's complicity in white supremacy.

This nuanced book gives a Bonhoefferian account of contemporary moral issues with a fresh method, style, and perspective. Norris addresses the most pressing ethical issues today, such as racism and politics, along with everyday ethical topics like friendship and truthtelling; he does so through the lens of a particular theological interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s work. This considered book makes an argument for Bonhoeffer as a forerunner of what are now considered liberation and postliberal theologies, while providing analyses of contemporary ethical issues that emerge out of the use of this interpretative lens upon his work. Norris highlights how Bonhoeffer holds these positions together and reveals the nuanced ethical conclusions and practices one might reach from that perspective. Ultimately, this work argues that the life of discipleship, for Bonhoeffer, is a way of formation into a community of responsibility to and for others as a means of resistance to systems that suppress human liberation, especially for the marginalized. This book intervenes into academic conversations, but it also provides resources for practitioners and clergy.

A call to free Jesus from the colonial ethic of exploitation and oppression that has distorted much of Christian theology and ministry. Norris presents an ethical model that draws upon liberationist, womanist, Anabaptist, and postliberal theologies, and offers a framework for a communitarian virtue ethic of liberation. It identifies the commonalities between these threads, notably the importance of community, character, and justice—while acknowledging their distinctions—and directs them toward the target audience: Christians who embody and enjoy various levels of social, economic, and political privilege. In doing so, it calls on them to confront the oppressive legacy of Christian ethics and begin to understand ethics as formation into a life of service and advocacy, following the witness of Jesus, for the liberation of the marginalized. This book provides Christians with various levels of privilege a way to understand their role and responsibility in participating in movements for justice and liberation.