The Jarvis Lecture on Christianity and Culture

Professor J. Kameron Carter

Religion and the Post-Racial Condition

March 13, 2011 | 7PM | Wright Auditorium

Professor J. Kameron Carter teaches courses in theology and black church studies at Duke University. Working as a theologian, he addresses the basic areas of Christian thought, especially Christology (the person and work of Jesus Christ) and theological anthropology (the human being in the Christian perspective). In engaging such matters, he does so with a view not just to the church or to Christian believers, but also to the broader humanities, particularly, such fields as cultural studies, gender studies, philosophy, and literature. His most recent book is entitled, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Carter is working on a new book on the ideological uses of Jesus in the modern invention of the human, and thus in the making and sustaining of the present. Addressing this in its religious, secular, and now arguably post-secular forms, Professor Carter calls this the problem of “the cultural Jesus.” The cultural Jesus project provides a kind of theological archaeology which is, at the same time, a cultural archaeology uncovering and discussing layers of meaning in how contemporary culture has both shaped and been shaped by this pivotal religious figure. Professor Carter re-imagines the identity of Jesus and the politics of Jesus of Nazareth’s identity in light of shifting global realities of the twenty-first century.