RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND RELIGIOUS COMPLICITY: RACIALISED DISCOURSE AND PERPETRATOR CULTURE

A review is presented of Kelley's (2002) Racializing Jesus. Race, Ideology and the Formation of Modern Biblical Scholarship, in terms of the following question: " If the argument about Western culture's complicity in racism is taken seriously, how does one move forward towards a hermeneutic that is racially sensitive but not racist? " In terms of the current trend of African discontent with the role of Western hermeneutics in Africa, the article questions the validity of the (general) accusation of Western complicity in the perpetration of racism when the accuser as victim appears to exploit categories of Western hermeneutics.