Towards an Anti-Supersessionist Theology: Race, Whiteness, and Covenant

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I love the use of Kendi’s typology of segregationist, assimilationist, and anti-racist activism to supersessionism. That works really well. I have two very personal responses for further consideration.

(1)  the problem with white European-Christian is the desire to become the “exclusively favored object of God’s desire.” This erotic charge in covenantal thinking might be worthwhile exploring further from a feminist perspective. Especially now when more people are entering into second relationships because of divorces or death, and have to learn to live with the reality and memory of the first marriage, the ex and children (fruits) who is  part of the new relationship. The exclusivity of monogamous, patriarchal love relationships (and the marriage metaphor in the prophets with Israel as wayward wife, the jealousy, the violence, etc) is hidden in this covenantal language, and could be brought up profitably. 

(2) (starting line 317 ff) At what point does decentering, humility, and accepting the provisional nature of Gentile election cause resentment and generate hostility? Must the Gentile church accept secondary, derivative status in order to fight supersessionism and antisemitism? The election of the outsider, the second son, the slave, the nobody who is transformed by God's grace and election into the chosen, the insider, the somebody is so central to the covenantal story of israel, of Abram who was chosen although/because his father was a wandering Aramean, and of Jacob/Israel who were chosen because they were small, undeserving, and in need of rescue from enslavement in Egypt. There is never any boasting in election!  The problem is not the adoption, but the superior or inferior, the competition,  contempt, jealousy, and inability to accept and celebrate “irreducible difference.”   Or to put in the context of racism: It is racism that is the problem, not white people as such… Kendi is very good at keeping that apart…. This may just be on the language level, but might be worth going over again...

Author Response

I appreciate the author's two points.

Regarding the first one, the encouragement to consider a feminist perspective, especially around exclusivity of covenant is a welcome one. Doing so for this article would require a fundamental restructuring but I will take this under advisement for further expansion of this work.

Regarding the second point, I have added some sentences to discuss the problem of resentment in the work of decentering.

Reviewer 2 Report

To the author: Please note that the categories for which I rated your essay as "average" does not correlate with my sense of the potential of the piece but rather my sense that it needs revision to develop the argument to its full potential, including by engaging with additional scholarship.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I appreciate the reviewer's encouragement for me to expand my argument by engagement with additional scholars. I have done this in several ways.

Regarding the first point around the entanglement of supersessionism and whiteness, I have added some additional material. Some of this had been cut from an earlier draft and other portions have been included at the reviewer's suggestion.

Regarding the second point on intersectionality and Pauline scholarship, additional material has been added that addresses this concern.

On the third point on the extent of my interaction with racism, I have added some clarifying sentences that indicates my awareness of what is absent. It is my intention to more fully address these areas in a future work.

Concerning the fourth point, I have tempered my language about post-supersessionism and indicated how anti-supersessionism offers a complimentary perspective.

I appreciate the final statement regarding if decentering is a sufficient move. I intend to compose a follow up work that fully explicates this decentering work. But to fully address the issues raised would exceed the scope of this current work.