Towards a Critical White Theology

Towards a Critical White Theology is a landmark text bringing together contributions from scholars and practitioners, Black/Postcolonial theologians and critical White theologians, from the UK, the USA and New Zealand, exposing the dynamics of whiteness in the history and the present of the Christian church, and setting an agenda for the future, especially for White-racialised theologians committed to dismantling whiteness. With sections addressing whiteness in relation to the Bible, church history, education and mission, congregational life, the contemporary USA, and public theology, this book tracks the emerging of a new theological discipline of Critical White Theology, that consciously follows in the wake of the long-established discipline of Black liberation theology. It acknowledges that so much that has passed for ’theology’ over the centuries has been White Theology without naming it as such, and reaches out to its Black and Postcolonial theologian siblings in repentant, receptive humility and hopeful solidarity for a future liberated from the toxic sin of racism. The chapters in this book were originally published in Practical Theology and Black Theology.

Revd Dr Al Barrett has been Rector of Hodge Hill Church (in east Birmingham, England) since 2010, and is author of Interrupting the Church’s Flow: a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins (SCM Press, 2020) and co-author (with Ruth Harley) of Being Interrupted: Re-imagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside, In (SCM Press, 2020).
Revd Dr Jill Marsh served as Inclusive Church Implementation Officer for the Methodist Church in Britain (2020 - 2023) and is now Superintendent Minister in the Coventry and Nuneaton Methodist Circuit. She has published a number of articles and papers based on her University of Chester doctoral thesis Cosmopolitan Practical Theology and the Impact of the Norming of Whiteness (2020).
Professor Anthony G. Reddie is the Professor of Black Theology in the University of Oxford, a historic first ever appointment. He is also the Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture in Regent’s Park College, in the University of Oxford. He is also an Extraordinary Professor of Theological Ethics and a Research Fellow with the University of South Africa. He is the first Black person to get an ’A’ rating in Theology and Religious studies in the South African National Research Foundation. He is the Editor of Black Theology: An International Journal.