Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity

by Denise Buell

Overview

Why This New Race offers a radical new way of thinking about the origins of Christian identity. Conventional histories have understood Christianity as a religion that from its beginnings sought to transcend ethnic and racial distinctions. Denise Kimber Buell challenges this view by revealing the centrality of ethnicity and race in early definitions of Christianity. Buell's readings of various texts consider the use of "ethnic reasoning" to depict Christianness as more than a set of shared religious practices and beliefs. By asking themselves, "Why this new race?" Christians positioned themselves as members of an ethnos or genos distinct from Jews, Romans, and Greeks.

Buell focuses on texts written before Christianity became legal in 313 C.E., including Greek apologetic treatises, martyr narratives, and works by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian. Philosophers and theologians used ethnic reasoning to define Christians as a distinct people within classical and ancient Near East society and in intra-Christian debates about what constituted Christianness. Many characterized Christianness as both fixed and fluid-it had a real essence (fixed) but could be acquired through conversion (fluid). Buell demonstrates how this dynamic view of race and ethnicity allowed Christians to establish boundaries around the meaning of Christianness and to develop universalizing claims that all should join the Christian people.

In addressing questions of historiography, Buell analyzes why generations of scholars have refused to acknowledge ethnic reasoning in early Christian discourses. Moreover, Buell's arguments about the importance of ethnicity and religion in early Christianity provide insights into the historical legacy of Christian anti-Semitism as well as contemporary issues of race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231133340
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	08/03/2005
Series:	Gender, Theory, and Religion Ser.
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Denise Kimber Buell is professor of religion at Williams College and the author of Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy.
Denise Kimber Buell is associate professor of religion at Williams College. She is the author of Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
1. "Worshippers of So-Called Gods, Jews, and Christians": Religion in Ethnoracial Discourses
2. "We Were Before the Foundation of the World": Appeals to the Past in Early Christian Self-Definition
3. "We, Quarried from the Bowels of Christ, Are the True Genos of Israel": Christian Claims to Peoplehood
4. "A Genos Saved by Nature": Ethnic Reasoning as Intra-Christian Polemic
5. "From Every Race of Humans": Ethnic Reasoning, Conversion, and Christian Universalism
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Ancient Sources
General Index

What People are Saying About This

Vincent L. Wimbush

Why This New Race is a superbly researched, elegantly written, and honestly and courageously argued book. It is usually enough in the western academy and beyond to disturb the peace with the invocation of 'race.' It is also usually enough to rattle and unsettle many by seeking to problematize 'early Christianity.' Buell's sensitive effort to explain 'early' (masking anxiety over ongoing contemporary) Christianity in terms of complex social collectives, including those the ancients (and moderns) call 'races' and 'ethnic groups,' will surely disturb the peace and haunt the discourses. Not a moment too soon!

— Vincent L. Wimbush, Claremont Graduate University, author of The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History

Karen King

Why This New Race is a stunning contribution to the history of Christianity. Buell masterfully demonstrates how ethnic reasoning permeates early Christian theology and identity formation. She shows how Christian claims to universalism did not exclude particularistic claims to peoplehood which set boundaries between insiders and outsiders, orthodox and heretics. A must-read for anyone interested in the problematic intersections of Christianity, race, and religion in antiquity and the modern world.

— Karen King, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, author of What Is Gnosticism?

Editorial Reviews

Deserves wide reading.

Michael A. Williams

Recommended.

Choice

An important book.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Stanley Stowers

An invaluable resource... the topic is timely for the Church and the work itself is thoroughly researched.

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology - Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

For those who insist on historical depth and nuance...Buell's book is the place to begin that engagement.

Harvard Divinity Bulletin - Karen L. King

With elegant prose and compelling historical research, she examines a little-known early Christian writing.

ForeWord Magazine - Henry L. Carrigan

An invaluable resource... the topic is timely for the Church and the work itself is thoroughly researched.

— Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

For those who insist on historical depth and nuance...Buell's book is the place to begin that engagement.

— Karen L. King

Harvard Divinity Bulletin

With elegant prose and compelling historical research, she examines a little-known early Christian writing.

— Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

ForeWord Magazine

Deserves wide reading.

— Michael A. Williams

Journal of Religion

An invaluable resource... the topic is timely for the Church and the work itself is thoroughly researched.

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology - Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder