Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity

by Denise Kimber Buell

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.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book a couple of weeks ago at the library, largely because I have been intrigued by the language of nation used by some Christian writers in which Christianity was defined as third race in association with the 'pagans' and the Jews. That has always struck me as interesting, influenced as I am by writers like Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder and William Cavanaugh. Dr. Buell places this imagery in the context of race or ethnic reasoning (something she explicitly equates)which served various functions in early Christianity to help define both who was and who was not part of the Christian community. Her analysis is informed by modern scholarship of race and has the secondary objective to expose modern racial thinking in the portrayal of early Christianity and, especially, Judaism. Dr. Buell's objective is to identify the racial/ethnic thinking of early Christianity as a means of dealing with the Christian-Jewish divide today. The ensuing discussion is heavily influenced by (post)modern theories of race as much as the sources themselves. The interweaving of these themes create some interesting comparisons and insights and make this book well worth reading. I should note that this approach can also make this a rather dense book, so be prepared for a fair amount of theory as well as source work.

I do worry about a couple things in this book. First, the concept of race is a rather post-modern one, emphasizing the fluidity of the concept of race, rather than its fixed nature as in a more modernist approach. That worries a bit because the key Greek word that Dr. Buell uses for race is genos which is notoriously open-ended in meaning. There are times when I wonder if the term genos in seeming to mean everything, so means nothing. And if we add the amorphousness of the post-modern concept of race, that impression is increased. I'm not saying Dr. Buell is wrong to use race here, but the effort is rather like nailing jello to the wall.

The only second concern I have is with the secondary objective that Dr. Buell mentions about re-defining the relationship between Christians and Jews today. Now, that is an excellent objective and one that I support. Christians should be thinking more about how they express their differences with their Jewish neighbours and the tendency to establish Judaism as particular and bound to race, while Christianity was universal and free from racial distinctions doesn't, as Dr. Buell points out, doesn't reflect the fluidity in the relationships between Christians and Jews in antiquity. That is fair enough, but what worries me is when history is written to solve a modern (or even post-modern) collective sin, the danger of distortion grows considerably. Dr. Buell is an excellent scholar, so that danger is kept in check, but I worry about danger of anachronism when applying admittedly very modernist concepts into an ancient world. I think Dr. Buell is right that the concepts behind our concepts on race are discernible in embryonic form in the early Christian period, but it is important to recognize that they are embryonic, not fully developed and that there was no particular reason why they had to develop the way they did. Modern concepts of race and of Judaism may well have been conceived in the early Christian period, but they are also peculiarly contingent on the preoccupations and assumptions of the modern and post-modern eras, so there is a danger of over-reading the intellectual realities of later times into the evidence.

Despite these caveats, Dr. Buell's book is well worth reading. While rather densely written, it forces a reconsideration of the role of race in developing our concept of Christian identity.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those contemporary scholarly volumes that seems to pop up everywhere in the field--in this case, with very good reason. "Why This New Race" addresses the prevalence and variety of claims about race in found in early Christian texts. She treats an impressive range of texts with acuity and a clarity that would make this compelling reading for anyone interesting in ancient Christianity. Her concept of "ethnic reasoning," however, honed from recent works in the sociology, psychology, and epistemology of collective identity but attentive to the particularities of her primary sources, will be an enduring contribution far beyond her subfield. Capacious enough to address the work done by identity categories both ancient and contemporary, the framework is a graceful and sophisticated approach to an enduring question: how is it that we come to know who we are, and who comprises "us"? Finally, Buell's concern with the material consequences of "ethnic reasoning" keeps a deeply theoretical discussion grounded in its historical and ethical import.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers many important aspects of reading ancient Christian texts in a racially-charged era (today). The problem with the book is that Buell's argument gets muddled or lost quite often. She covers so much in only 140 pages (or so, I had the e-book so I don't know the exact page count), that I think she sacrifices clarity in favor of depth. I learned a ton from this book though!