Christian imagination: vulnerability and connectedness

Willie James Jennings published a book last year — The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race — that is stunning both in its conclusions and its eloquence. He’s woven together several accounts of specific persons of faith at different pivotal moments in Christian history as a way to understand how varied and diverse Christian imagination has been, and how constrained into a specific mold it became when aligned with certain forms of temporal power.

One deeply painful and toxic fruit of this alignment was the social construction of race in the Americas.

We were fortunate to have Dr. Jennings on campus this past year to speak about his book, and to elaborate on ideas he raised there. I’m pleased that we’ve finally gotten the recording up on the web, so that you can hear him yourself: