Christianity, Otherization, and Contemporary Politics: A Postcolonial Reading

In Christianity, Otherization, and Contemporary Politics, Roberto E. Alejandro argues that the identity politics of the American far-left follow an identity paradigm nurtured in our intellectual history by early Christian thinkers such as Clement of Alexandra, Origen of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who all claimed that a form of “wokeness” gave them special access to truth and thereby an exclusive right to speak it. At one time this argument was a strike at power, but once mixed with power, it became a moral justification for violence against non-Christians. Alejandro warns those engaged in political practice to beware the way our intellectual history, steeped in theological propositions, can operate silently to steer us towards reinforcing problems we intended to resist.