Bonhoeffer and the Racialized Church

Ross Halbach has achieved the first theological study of the hermeneutic enclosure of whiteness  from the inside. A brilliant and overdue engagement with the reasons why it seems so difficult to escape the labyrinth of a failed mindset, as he puts it, Halbach renders intelligible the reasons why Christians with immense privilege feel trapped and unwilling to change, and so resign themselves to a way of life sealed off from the voices and concerns of the non-white other.

~Brian Brock, Professor of Moral and Practical Theology, King's College, University of Aberdeen

In this erudite and honest book, Ross Halbach makes an invaluable contribution to the complex work of understanding whiteness and unraveling racial logics and histories. As part of this contribution, he provides a rich and nuanced reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of creation, Christology, and ecclesiology. Even more impressively, he brings Bonhoeffer into close and careful dialogue with three contemporary theologies of race: those of Willie Jennings, J. Kameron Carter, and Brian Bantum. Halbach’s book is among the very best constructive deployments of Bonhoeffer to date.

~Michael Mawson, Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology and Ethics, Charles Sturt University

Confronted by what seems to be the inevitability of racism, the temptation is to give up. By drawing on Bonhoeffer’s work, and in particular his Christology, Ross Halbach surprisingly resists that conclusion. It turns out surprise is a crucial category for him that befits the eschatological character of his proposal. He develops his position by providing substantive analysis of Jennings, Carter, and Bantum. Halbach has a strong theological voice that we desperately need if the church is to be faithful to the gospel.

~Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics Emeritus, Duke Divinity School

...it is a book that will repay careful engagement, especially for Christians who find themselves searching for a theological lens through which to view the quest for a church (and churches) that reflect God’s purpose for humanity.

~Stephen R. Haynes, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

I think Halbach’s Bonhoeffer and the Racialized Church is a remarkable book. He makes an excellent contribution to existing scholarship on Bonhoeffer’s pertinence to the struggle against white supremacy (as did Bonhoeffer in his way and in his own time). Halbach also provides erudite analyses of many of Bonhoeffer’s works, particularly his Ethics. Further, he shows that Bonhoeffer’s oeuvre is a gestalt that one cannot reduce to any one text. Each piece-- Act and Being, or Creation and Fall or Christ the Center, or Ethics --has its own space and time, but never apart from the whole of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and thought. Halbach, in addition, takes the inventive, fresh works of notable African-American theologians to address systematically one of humankind’s most pernicious problems.

~Josiah Ulysses Young, III, Modern Theology