Racial Justice, Theologically
February 16, 2017 | 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Adobe Lodge
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Recent years have seen the largest protests against anti-Black racism since the civil rights movement a half century ago. Sometimes protesters invoke religious ideas, such as “beloved community,” but other times these protests seem decidedly secular. My talk locates the current struggle for racial justice in a long – but often forgotten – tradition of religiously-motivated social justice organizing that is oriented by appeals to God’s law.
Vincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University. He has held visiting appointments at Notre Dame, the University of Virginia, Emory University, and the University of Wisconsin. His research focuses on the intersection of religion, race, and politics, using the tools of critical theory. Lloyd serves as co-editor of the journal Political Theology, and he is the author or editor of ten books, including Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham University Press, 2017), Black Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 2016), and the co-edited collection Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics (Orbis, 2017). Lloyd’s current research project, funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, focuses on religion and mass incarceration.