Nathaniel Jung-Chul Lee is an Episcopal priest who studied with Stanley Hauerwas at Duke, completed a Ph.D. from Baylor and teaches at St. John’s University. We’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on issues of race and faith at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan, and I am so grateful to him for this deep theological dive into the work of liberation.
Greg Garrett: A few months back we did a forum about the gifts of Black liberation theology at the Church of the Incarnation. What does that tradition have to offer us in the present moment? How does Black Liberation Theology encompass the concerns of those who are marginalized or disenfranchised?
Nathaniel Jung-Chul Lee: As you know, I have spent the better part of the last 15 years reading and thinking about the tradition of Black Liberation Theology. It is probably right to say that I’ve had no more significant interlocutor during these years than James Cone, and in a sense, no one has had more influence on my theological imagination. I live with him every day and am profoundly grateful to coinhabit the theological world he created. That said, my own work could ultimately be described as a critique of Cone — an appreciative critique and, perhaps even, a hopeful one — but ultimately, still a critique.
Nathaniel Jung-Chul Lee
I see three issues here — especially as it relates to articulating a theology that does justice to all marginalized persons.
Now first, I really don’t think we’re done with Black Liberation Theology. I feel this — and I do mean feel, in my body, in my bones — when I preach in the mode of Black Liberation Theology. For example, check out this sermon I preached on Good Friday in 2022 at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, which essentially channeled Cone’s Cross and the Lynching Tree.
When I preached this sermon — and I think you can sense this, even on YouTube — the atmosphere was electric. If you check it out, listen especially to the exhale from the congregation at the end. It was a profound, collective catharsis, as Cone’s (and others’) voices carved out a space for the people of color to breathe, to grieve, to rage, to make fun, and most of all, to recover some of the “somebody-ness” (to quote Martin King) that has far too often been robbed from us.
A second and related issue in offering an “appreciative critique” is a problem with who it is that seems to “appreciate” it. I’ve been increasingly troubled that those who seem most excited when any sort of criticism is offered against Black Liberation Theology are also those who most need the challenge of Black Liberation Theology — and that their excitement really comes from the fact that they think they have found a way to sidestep or circumvent its challenge.
That is a major problem, and one that has made me rethink when and how to offer this critique — made me question whether a critique of Black Liberation Theology can really be trusted in the hands of the average Christian.
GG: I get this. Offering a critique of a challenging theology allows folks who might feel indicted by it to imagine they don’t have to respond to its call for change, even if, like lots of people who look like me, this is a call they need to heed.
NJCL: Right. Then, a third issue we face in the present moment is that Black Liberation Theology has proved over time to be limited at its best, and at its worst, a trap. I have in mind Victor Anderson’s now-famous critique in Beyond Ontological Blackness that Cone left Black existence without the possibility of “transcendence,” trapping it within a “Blackness that whiteness created” — that is, an “ontological Blackness” that was overdetermined by its opposition to whiteness, and thus, defined by white racial ideology’s metaphysical determinants (as its mirror image).
Anderson’s incisive critique is one of the most prescient appraisals of racial identity we have seen. However, one of the deep convictions of my work is that we have not yet come out the other side of it, and that anti-essentialist forms of racial identity (such as “intersectionality”) that have been proposed in its wake are simply improvisations in the same register — and so, are insufficiently ontologically revisionary.
I also have in mind the critiques made by Black Marxists like Cedric Robinson and, specifically, what Robinson called “racial capitalism.” For Black Marxists, one of the problems with Black Liberation Theology has been that it fails to recognize how deeply the production of racial identity has been entangled with the production of capital — that is, that racialization was itself a way of extracting social and economic value from various people groups.
“Racial identities were created so that some identities could be bought and sold.”
Imagining peoples as classified by these racial identities became a broad and sweeping way to imagine unequal differentiations of human value, which could then be exploited for market purposes.
I’m going to make a somewhat bold claim here: I don’t think Black Liberation Theology is capable of addressing the concerns of most marginalized persons. I don’t think it is capable of addressing the concerns of most marginalized persons, because the way it tends to figure identity does not cohere — and more, cannot cohere — with the identities of most marginalized persons.
I had the chance to think about this the other day, when reviewing some of the materials for “Sacred Ground,” the Episcopal Church’s dialogue series on race. In one of the videos for the course, Stephanie Spellers claims the creation of race required the erasure of the history of racialized peoples.
Stephanie is right as far as Black identity goes. The creation of Black identity is a result of the erasure of the history of Black peoples through Black slavery — so that, for example, most Black people in America don’t know if their heritage is from Angola or Gabon or Congo. But I’m Korean. And being Korean means I know my history.
In fact, my family — like many Korean families — has a leather-bound set of volumes in our home tracing our family ancestry back dozens of generations. I know, for example, that I am the ancestor, 22 generations removed, of King Sejong the Great’s uncle. That history is a crucial aspect of my identity and one that has persisted.
“The erasure of that history, in my view, is threatened as much by antiracist projects in the lineage of Black Liberation Theology as it threatened by white racism.”
The irony is that the erasure of that history, in my view, is threatened as much by anti-racist projects in the lineage of Black Liberation Theology as it threatened by white racism. Please don’t misunderstand that — white racism is, of course, a greater existential threat in general. But in many anti-racist projects, the particularity of my Korean identity — and, in fact, I am not just Korean, but a second-generation biracial Korean American — is constantly in jeopardy of being elided into some more generalized category.
Sometimes, that more generalized category is something like “the oppressed,” which raises questions of its own. But here I’m thinking more about the fact that I’m much more likely to be called an “Asian American” than a (second generation biracial) “Korean American.” And, when I am, “Asian American” is also supposed to somehow be analogous to “African American” (or “Black”).
The problem is, you simply cannot try to invent a category called “Asian American” as an analogue “Black” identity without the elision of multiple histories — including the history that led to the creation of Black identity, but also the histories that make the various “Asian” peoples of the world (60% of the world’s population!) distinct.
GG: So an unthoughtful or simplistic consideration of race — even if that attention emerges from good motives — can itself have racist consequences?
NJCL: To someone like my Korean grandmother (God rest her soul), the idea of being lumped in with other “Asian Americans” in a general category called “Asian American” was not a point of solidarity, but a horror.
“Stop Asian Hate” was completely incoherent to her, because over the scope of her life, the people from whom she experienced the greatest hate were the Japanese — whose imperial rule over Koreans involved forms of brutal torture unimaginable in a Western context. My grandmother thought of Japanese people the way most Jews think of Nazis (or worse). And, if I’m honest, she also hated them for it.
What I’m not saying is that division (or hatred) is a natural or necessary feature of “Asian” experience. But what I am saying is that we do profound violence to an untold number of people by trying to haphazardly force those particular identities into coalition identities (like “Asian American”) for the sake of political agency.
Another issue with trying to invent a category called “Asian American” as an analogue for “African American” or “Black” is that the analogue (in this case, “Asian American”) always winds up figuring like a secondhand knockoff. Within an antiracist discourse that has been defined by a “Black-white binary,” “Asian American” (again, whatever that means) identity and concerns wind up occupying that kind of imaginative space, as if we were cheap copies of the “original” people of color.
“The ironic result is that we are made invisible not only by white racism, but also in antiracist movements.”
So, Korean identity doesn’t just get denuded into a general category like “Asian American.” It also becomes diluted, as if it were a watered-down form of racialization. The ironic result is that we are made invisible not only by white racism, but also in anti-racist movements.
Now, there are some really complicated questions about the sorts of privilege “Asian Americans” have access to by virtue of being lighter skinned. That’s important to remember and to hold in tension with all I’m saying. At the same time, peoples from Asia who have immigrated to this country have experienced breathtaking forms of racialized violence. It’s wrong to compare that with what Black people have experienced in this country, but it’s also wrong to say it’s somehow lesser or secondary or that it ultimately finds its meaning in relationship to “Black” existence.
This is why I’m absolutely convinced the persistent call of Womanists to attend to individual lives and their fulfillment remains the most essential task for anti-racism in the present moment — again, especially if we are going to encompass the concerns of all those who are marginalized or disenfranchised.
GG: Where are you finding hope about America’s future and the future of the American church? Are there writers, thinkers or resources you could recommend for us?
NJCL: Such a great question to finish with; thank you for asking it. I alluded above to the fact that I think we’re at a crossroads, a sort of threshold moment — and I find a lot of possibility in that, and so a lot of hope.
In terms of a way forward, the writers and thinkers I turn to most often are the Black pragmatists, especially Eddie Glaude. In a Shade of Blue is still one of my favorites.
From an Asian American perspective specifically, I recommend Grace Ji-Sun Kim, especially Healing Our Broken Humanity, and also my friend Soong-Chan Rah. One of the things I love about the work of these two thinkers is the way they connect grief with hope — help show that grief is just the other side of hope, in that grief, like hope, expresses that the way things are is not the way they should be. And I love how they point us toward the biblical theme of “lament” as a way of expressing that grief prophetically, in the hopes of calling forth a more just world.
But the more time I spend doing anti-racist work, the more I think the hope will come primarily from elsewhere. When you asked “where I find hope,” the first person I actually thought of was Jane*, a member of our Altar Guild at Church of the Incarnation, who recently was elected to the vestry.
As a Black woman from the Bronx, Jane is something of an anomaly at a predominantly white and wealthy Manhattan church like Incarnation. She also is humble and diminutive in stature, never one to draw attention to herself, probably the last person who would want to be mentioned publicly in an interview like this.
If you went by purely secular or worldly standards, you might not think of Jane for a leadership board like the vestry. But in our parish, when our Rector asked her to stand, the choice was obvious. Part of this was because she has been so deeply faithful in her worship and in her service to the church, and those many years of selfless dedication behind the scenes deserved recognition. Even more so, it’s because she has in so many quiet ways earned the respect of everyone in our parish — for her wisdom, for her integrity, for the strength of her character and conviction, and for her willingness to speak the truth, on many issues, but especially on issues of racial justice.
It’s the Janes of the world and of the church who give me hope. This is actually what I think Tolkien gets really right in The Lord of the Rings. We always think it’s going to be the Gandalfs or the Aragorns who are going to win the battle against the armies of Mordor. But actually, Gandalf and Aragorn lose — or at best, are a hapless distraction that draws the eye of Sauron away from those who really have the power to undo him, the hobbits.
I say this as someone who has probably too often imagined himself a Gandalf or an Aragorn, but I have really come to think of my job as a priest much less in terms of being a white knight (or wizard) riding in on the white horse to save the day, and much more in terms of inspiring, equipping, supporting and protecting all the Janes out there.
* name changed for privacy
Greg Garrett
Greg Garrett teaches creative writing, film, literature and theology classes at Baylor University. He is the author of two dozen books of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and translation, including the critically acclaimed novels Free Bird, Cycling, Shame and The Prodigal. His latest novel is Bastille Day. He is one of America’s leading voices on religion and culture. Two of his recent nonfiction books are In Conversation: Rowan Williams and Greg Garrett and A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation. He is a seminary-trained lay preacher in the Episcopal Church. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jeanie, and their two daughters.
More from this series:
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Starlette Thomas
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Samuel Perry
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jimi Calhoun
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with David Dark
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Randolph Hollerith
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jillian Mason Shannon
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Vann Newkirk II
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Sarah McCammon
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Winnie Varghese
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Kaitlyn Schiess
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Russell Moore
Politics, faith and mission: A BNG interview series on the 2024 election and the Church
Politics, faith and mission: A talk with Tim Alberta on his book and faith journey
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jemar Tisby
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Leonard Hamlin Sr.
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Ty Seidule
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jessica Wai-Fong Wong
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Brian McLaren