Race and Universalism in Early Christianity

Abstract

Through rhetorical analyses of Clement of Alexandria's Protreptikos, Origen's ContraCelsum, and the Shepherd of Hermas, this article demonstrates how some early Christians use ideas about race and ethnicity to make universalizing claims about Christianness by defining Christianity as a race, open to all peoples. In so doing, it challenges prevailing ways of interpreting the meaning and significance of race in early Christian self-definition. Adopting a different approach to reading race and ethnicity in pre-Constantinian Christian texts holds great potential for analyzing the intersecting domains of Christian-imperial, Christian-local, intra-Christian, and Christian-Jewish relations.

The Origins of Racism: A Critique of the History of Ideas

“…110 More common are the complaints of misrepresentation where scholars of the modern era are accused of oscillating between nostalgic representations of the Middle Ages as a "golden age" ("advocates of pre-modern innocence" 111 who romanticize an alterity that eclipses the violence and atrocities committed over centuries) or "as a backward, brutal period," 112 the Dark Ages. The effect, in either case, is to assume that the "modern legacy of racial thinking can be shut off" 113 when engaging ancient texts; it is tantamount to treating the Renaissance "as somehow existing in a state of exception" 114 or worse, for "[i]nstalling the ancient world as a domain before prejudice"-a reference to Snowden's book Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks-"amounts to imagining it as before history." 115 It is apparent that the driving force behind recent efforts to establish a premodern origin for racism stems from the desire for, and an insistence on, political relevance-that ancient, medieval, and early modern history (whether in reference to art, philosophy, literature, or politics) continue to have a bearing on, and/ or are foundational to, the making of our contemporary moment.…”

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

“…50 Esp. with further bibliography : Buell 2002;Johnson 2014; for examples of a more unspecific use of ethnos and genos, for the rich and poor classes, or for bakers and potters, for instance, see Aaron P. Johnson's review of Buell 2005 at http://bmcr. brynmawr.edu/2006/ 2006-02-31.html (last accessed 1.1.2017).…”

Persecution, Apology and the Reflection on Religious Freedom and Religious Coercion in Early Christianity

“…The relevance of the "race" argument in early Christian self-definition, and how modern notions of race have biased the reading of the early Christian idea of peoplehood, has become a major theme in recent scholarship. See Buell 2002Buell , 2005Johnson 2004Johnson , 2006Lieu 1995;Olster 1995. 29 For Aristides Apology 2, the Christians formed the quartum genus, after the barbarians, Greeks and Jews.…”