Unite and Conquer: What the White Christ Costs White Workers

This is the final Q&A of the class, and the story doesn’t end where the book did. Christ and Empire came out in 2007, right before Obama was elected and a lot of people decided empire wasn’t our problem anymore. Then came 2016, and everyone started worrying about empire again. Joerg’s last lecture brought the whole thing into the present: Christian nationalism, the white Christ, and a president posting himself in white robes. He also pushed past the easy targets, because the hard empire is always the easiest one to see. Your questions pulled the whole six-week arc together: the Christological surplus, deep solidarity, and a doctrine of God that starts with the day laborer instead of Caesar. We covered twenty questions in about eighty minutes, and I think it’s the best one yet.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Dr. Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology and the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt University and founding director of the ⁠Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice⁠. For three decades, he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses relations of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His interest is in movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life. Several of his 24 authored and edited books address the topics of this course, including ⁠No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future⁠; ⁠Unified We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities⁠ (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger); and ⁠Faith, Class, and Labor: Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context⁠ (with Jin Young Choi). ⁠www.joergrieger.com⁠

Previous Episodes w/ Joerg

⁠Empire Hard, Empire Soft: Joerg Rieger on Las Casas and the Conquest That Learned to Be Nice⁠

⁠Anselm’s God Can’t Just Forgive: Joerg Rieger on Why That’s Good News, Not Cruelty⁠

⁠Who Owns the Creed? Joerg Rieger on the Conservative Gimmick and the Surplus They Missed⁠

⁠Empire Goes All the Way Down: Joerg Rieger on What “Christian Nationalism” Misses⁠

⁠Why Religion Matters Now⁠

⁠Theology in the Capitalocene⁠

⁠Divine Justi